Phantom Brigade

Hands down the best Mecha strategy game i've ever played. So much of this game was built with love and care and it shows in every element. True gem that I hope continues to see updates and improvements.

Returned after a half hour. The time rewind mechanic is cumbersome and designed to force save scumming through the game, but not a fun way like Tactical Breach Wizards. The writing is also very generic and uninteresting.

如果完善这几个点，那这将是一款非常非常完美的游戏 1：:游戏地图、任务太少总是重复那几个，应该增加更多地图和更多的任务类型减少游戏的重复性 2：回放没有音效。回放为什么没有音效呢？有的精彩破坏瞬间我正好没看到去看回放，结果是没有音效的 3：平衡一下各种武器的数值和机制，现在有的武器太强导致依赖而有的武器太弱玩家压根就不会用 4：战斗之外的事情，这游戏基本就是从头打到尾，除了战斗和靠捡东西升级装备车间设施基本没有别的事情可以做，希望可以增加一些战斗之外的互动

Fantastic strategy game. Think X-COM gameplay style but with an awesome, all-moves-combined, real time playout. There are a decent amount of guns with wide variation on how they are played. Mech synergies paired with equipment synergies are great to obsess over. There is a solid attempt at a storyline and they don't shove it in your face. There is limitless art/details that could be improved with unlimited budget but it's a $30 game and well worth it.

Really cool idea but not great execution. Too many systems that all sort of do similar things and too little actual variety. Difficulty ramp is insanely steep while gearing and level system basically means nothing. There are at least 3 stats that go into almost every minute thing you do, which is great, on the condition that they matter. This game does not make it feel like it matters. For the most part, all the things end up just being the same balance act as every single game with equipment systems. You can be Light, Medium, or heavy. If you wanna be Heavy weapons then you maybe try light armor to compensate and make it all medium. So there are a gigantic number of stats, but they all boil down to the same rock paper scissors play and the difficulty ramp makes none of it matter anyway. I think their next swing at this could be super cool, but this one is something I wouldn't recommend after the first 10ish hours.

First of all, I would like to mention that the game is definitely fun for a while, it has some stuff going for it. You are essentially playing a game of X-Com against an invading foreign nation, hitting supply convoys, assassinating leaders, etc. You are doing that with your growing band of mechs, piloted by soldiers that have different roles, level up, and so on - again, almost beat for beat like X-Com. During the campaign for the current part of the country you are fighting in, you have a selection of missions with different rewards to chose from, all of which contribute to the war effort in varying degrees (depending on the difficulty). Your mobile base drives around, evading enemy patrols and making stops to give your people time to rest and to do repairs. Through mission rewards and salvaging from defeated enemies, you get better and better parts and weapons to gear up your mechs. What is special about Phantom Brigade is mainly two things: First Instead of being a true turn-based or real-time-based game, Phantom Brigade lets your team look 5 seconds into the future (therefore knowing enemy actions before they are executed) and then plan in this 5-second-window during a time-freeze. Actions like moving, shooting, melee, blocking with your shield, etc. can be combined and/or chained together and you can enact some impressive teamwork with this. By hitting execute the next 5 seconds play out with your and the enemy troops moving in real-time. Many missions will only go on for about 15 minutes (for you) and only about 20-40 seconds of actual in-game-time (measured in 5-second-intervals). Second, the detail that goes into building your mechs. You are not limited to an archetype and you can combine all kinds of parts and weapons (in varying rarity levels) to build the perfect machine for the role you want. This, in a way, IS the game and it directly decides how much fun you will have with it. The core gameplay loop of Phantom Brigade is like this -- Decide on a mission -- drive there and beat the mission -- decide what stuff to keep from salvaging -- Improve your mechs -- make sure to rest every now and then -- repeat So right now, most of what I mentioned is rather positive and for the 12 hours I played, it was fine. So why do I leave a negative review, you may ask? Well, this game may feel like X-Com, but what it is lacking is the excitement, tension and character, that X-Com has in spades! Take the presentation for example: The game starts its tutorial with a short in-game-cutscene without any kind of voice-acting. You realize quite quickly that this is how things will be for the rest of the game. Your HQ and certain enemies will utter comments from time to time, but it's all text. This might not seem like a big problem, but it REALLY lowers what could be a tense and exciting atmosphere. On the map-screens, this is also the norm. You get short descriptions and still pictures, also pretty good music, but the presentation outside of the action in missions I can only describe as shallow. It doesn't help that the game has no characters. And no - your pilots do not count, even if you name them and customize their looks... There is no desillusioned but determined leader figure, no quirky scientist or crafty engineer and really no story outside of red vs. blue. Also - no research, that is the last thing your X-Com-Like should be missing!! You move to the mission, fight, pick up the pieces and then customize your mechs some more - repeat! There is no epic storyline, no sudden twists, no relatable developments, it’s just move over there, fight, customize, repeat. That doesn’t make the game bad – it works for some time and for me, that was 12 hours – but at this point the game has only really started and I am not motivated to go on anymore. So if you are ok with very little variety and no story, you might get a kick out of this game – but in my opinion, Phantom Brigade does not validate the playtime it expects out of its player.

Phantom Brigade 2.0 features an interesting gameplay loop in which you play as a guerrilla force reclaiming your country. The game allows you to extensively customize your mechs, down to individual pieces with various modifiers, as well as customize your pilots both cosmetically and through traits. The most innovative aspect of the game is its puzzle-like combat system: your mechs can see enemy actions up to five seconds in advance. As a result, battles evolve into a cat-and-mouse experience, where success depends on efficiently anticipating and eliminating your opposition, creating a strong sense of being unstoppable. A very unique game and cinematic experience where you watch your battles and strategies 5 seconds at a time.

The game is disappointing. It feels like BattleTech, but set in Scandinavia, and it doesn't fix any of the issues that game had. You're still stuck controlling four mechs against 20 enemy mechs in almost every mission. The crafting system is also unnecessarily demanding. You have to scrap top-tier weapons and parts just to unlock the blueprints for the same gear you just destroyed. The longer you play, the more enemies the game throws at you, and they come equipped with increasingly punishing weapons. Enemy reinforcements can spawn out of nowhere behind your mechs, often armed with incendiary weapons that can destroy one of your units in a single turn. The planning system is a bit of a double-edged sword. You can carefully plan an attack, only for your target to be destroyed by another action first, causing your mech to fire at an empty space. Meanwhile, enemies react dynamically to changes on the battlefield and can alter their actions mid-turn, giving them a significant advantage over the player.

The game seemed good at first, but the longer I played the more I grew to dislike it. Looking at my time played, I put over 60 hours into to finish a single campaign. There's still an entire tier of gear I have yet to get to, and many items are not researched, which takes forever. Considering I've been save scumming to avoid long death spirals and recovery grinds, that's a tough sell. Everything took so long, to go through missions, to unlock any decent gear, and everything was a repeat over and over doing the same missions. With the harsh punishments in the overworld for taking damage or losing, one single mistake could set me back 5 or 10 hours, it isn't like I can just relax and chill playing this. Maybe it's just not my kind of game, I dunno, but it felt like a chore to play near the end. But overall the game is objectively really good. The gameplay loop, visuals, and mechanics all stand out. But, what makes me not recommend is the game ruining bugs. For the last few play sessions, spanning an entire region, I have had no sound. Every time I start the game, it takes 3-4 minutes just to load into the menu. There are serious technical issues with the game, and I have no confidence recommending it to be functional for others.