The most interesting part of Phantom Brigade is in how its combat functions. Yes, this is a turn based tactical game, but the entire thing is based around a time manipulation mechanic. Basically time freezes and you are able to see enemy movements, and plan your own five slow motion seconds in advance. After you get that all setup you press the execute button and watch the battle unfold. If you've ever looked at a video editing timeline and thought "wow, this would be so cool if it let me control a wargame" then you'll be pretty at home here.
Brace Yourself Games, of Crypt of the Necrodancer fame, initially released the 1.0 version of this one back in 2023. February 28th to be exact. Now, 1.0 if I understand correctly had virtually no story elements and a more open world feel in general. I guess there was a simple cinematic giving a real basic world setup and then dumped you into a gameplay loop more akin to Mount and Blade. That being a large overworld map for you to retake back from enemies at your leisure.
This first version of the game has changed in a few big areas when a 2.0 saw the light of day November 19th of 2025. Notably the overworld was replaced with a much more structured setup of liberating specific areas incrementally before moving on. Some areas are optional while others are mandatory as you make your way to the final faceoff in the capital city. This also includes some more story text but overall still feels pretty minimal. This 2.0 version is what I played.
First off when you get into gameplay you'll be prompted to navigate a world map. This has a handful of province areas on it. Like Hedmark, the Western Pass, Breakfast or the Capital District. Once you move into these areas you get presented with a province map. In the province map you control the mobile base, which carries your crew around.
While in the province map you'll sometimes get random events with a question mark. These are sometimes things like found supplies, or traders. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. While you're here you can also upgrade the mobile base and its workshop. Print armors faster, have more room for pilots and so on. The mobile base also functions as our garage for swapping out mech parts, leveling up pilots, camping to recover HP and so on. The goal here is to liberate the entire province. If you notice the top left of the screen we'll see a liberation meter. Completing events against the Kaskad Dominion will increase this liberation meter dependent on the difficulty of the combat scenario. The further along we get in the campaign the more events need to be completed for liberation. More events, that raise in difficulty, and grant less liberation.
The balance in regards to this felt pretty decent for me, really. It felt like it incrementally raised the difficulty. On the otherhand some of the scenarios and maps really started to take their toll in terms of repetition. Increasing the number of event completion needed per area makes for a long play session if you get some bad rolls and repeat the same objectives. What I mean by that is that the enemy nodes within this map section disappear when they regroup overtime, and a new set is generated. When you move or camp time moves on, so we gotta think carefully about our moves. Basically this ramps up, first we do raiding missions, then move onto bigger liberation missions and finally have a showdown against a boss. Boom. Province provided freedom, baby.
The real meat and potatoes is the combat sections themselves. There's a pretty decent variety of objectives, actually. Sometimes its pretty simple like enemy patrol moving around the map or an ambush on enemy supply lines but other times its great boss fights or slick assassinations.
Pilots all have their own specific stats but I'll talk about that in a second. In the actual encounters you'll control up to four mechs. You control them via this timeline up to 5 seconds into the future. Movement, waiting, attacking, dodges, and so on, all has to be lined up on the timeline before hitting the execute button. After that you'll watch what you've setup play out. It's pretty easy to not pay attention and cause your mechs to friendly fire or crash into eachother. Luckily, if you do pay attention, like you're supposed to, you can see everything that is supposed to happen within the timeframe. Also actions will all have a heat rating, meaning you'll wreck yer mech if you try to do too much at once due to overheat. It might sound complicated but its actually pretty intuitive.
That is until you get into the very last second of projected future. You really can't see further ahead in the timeline than this so its possible to set actions that cause overheat into your next turn without really knowing it'll happen. Also sometimes you'll be able to set a RUN action several turns into the future, but sometimes it hiccups if its too close to that exact 5 second mark. Also some things like missiles don't track very well in this system. You'll launch them and then maybe watch them fly around in the sky for a couple turns before actually hitting their target.
The unique time manipulation gameplay mechanic of Phantom Brigade carries its shortcomings but you gotta like it. What this game misses out on in terms of story or maybe graphical charm it gets in return in novelty for it's 5 second planning playstyle. I'd recommend this one for fans of tactical strategy games who are looking for a new and unique spin on the genre. Overall I did end up enjoying my experience and feel like I could play around in this one even more to try out different build setups however the flaws were pretty noticeable. Phantom Brigade is kind of like getting a pair of shoes that are kinda boring looking but super comfortable to wear. Except sometimes the left shoe comes untied when your walking. The laces coming untied is annoying when it happens, theres more fashionable shoes in your closet but dang this pair just feels so good when you wear'em.
full review available on video here;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osq94GLMNwU
