Yes LoS works mostly the same way in Xcom in that it's to the character AND the surrounding tiles. But the problem with Phantom Doctrine is this:
1) Since there are no pods, you could have enemies from the other end of the map shooting at you.
2) YOU personally can't tell if a tile you are going to is safe or not until you get to the tile and check for yourself if you have any LoS to an enemy. Ofcourse you can check if the surrounding tile to the place your are going to is in LoS of an enemy surrounding tile but it becomes hard at large distance and over multiple levels. This makes it difficult to tell if you are safe or not especially due to the isometric camera. There was this one instance where I was outside the building on the 1st floor, there were two enemies on the 2nd floor inside the building. Between me and them there was a full wall, However, that wall had a slight vent/window thing at the top. And because the enemie sinside were one level above me, they were able to get a LoS to me OUTSIDE. And enemy on 1st floor (i.e. same level as me) would not have that LoS. And while that's understandable, I can't actually tell whether I'm visible or not due to the the isometric camera.
3) Unlike Xcom it's not just the tile in front of you (the one you are peeking from) that exposes you but also the one behind you (this is hard to explain but
Rean tried to explain this early in this page's first post).
4) All this is NOT visually represented with animations and instead you get gunfire through the wall which makes it feel very frustrating.
Another thing to note in Xcom is that when it comes to weird and long angles, the chances that the enemy would hit is really low, a 15-20% chance to hit is pretty much a given miss and even when they do hit the damage is on the lower end. In Doctrine it's a guaranteed hit (yea I know you can "dodge" it, which is equal to Xcom's missed target) but hits end up doing a lot more damage then what they should at that angle and range. I know they can be reduced as an operator gains experience and grazes/dodges more but just the way it's presented adds to the frustration.
EDIT: Imo Side step should only work one way i.e. only the shooter side steps to gain a wider LoS. This way the shooter can side step out and shoot but if the target is already in full cover (that also covers the shooter's LoS AFTER a potential sidestep from a shooter) then that LoS should be a no go and as such no hit for the shooter. This way the person can make sure that they are safe whenever they pick a tile/cover and that their character won't side step out to take a bullet to the face just because the adjacent tile of your character is in LoS of the adjacent tile of the shooter's. Check the two picture sbelow, if side stepping was limited to the shooter then only the first one would be a potential hit whereas the 2nd one would be invalid.
Like this is fine, because in this case the shooter can sidestep to get a direct LoS to the target and it feels "fair".
This isn't, because not only the shooter side steps but the target side steps too to take a hit to the face which feels "unfair"
Right.
But there's already a turn-based spy-themed game where you do this, and the implementation is orders of magnitude better. And it's much more replayable.
Invisible Inc?
