Phantom Brigade

Finally beat 2.0 and this game is a gem. I remember playing the demo at pax and was instantly hooked. Really hope the devs get a chance to make a second game and take everything they've learned from the first.

This is strictly a Steam Deck review for Phantom Brigade. This game runs quite exceptionally poorly on the Deck. Till very recently, it did very poorly on the holy trifecta of Deck compatibility - UI size, performance and controller support. The devs have added the last one recently, which is much appreciated. The performance is quite poor I’m sorry to say, and you can only get a 30 fps at the lowest possible settings at a respectable power draw. To get any more or to increase graphical quality would mean the game only lasting for about 2 hours on the deck. I feel like this is borderline unacceptable for an over-the-top strategy game which has not too much graphical fidelity on a device that can run Witcher 3, Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk quite well on medium-high graphics. Phantom Brigade seems to be very poorly optimised. The other issue, which was the deal breaker for me, was the very small text size. The default UI size is very small, but this review is about the biggest size (125% scaling). While the main menu etc look fine with this text size, things like description text for abilities are tiny and impossible to read. Text size is very important for such a technically complex game with many details that you need to understand, and so it’s impossible to functionally play this game. I ultimately gave up after trying to make it work for about half an hour. Due to the poor performance and poor text scaling I’d have to say anyone looking to play this game solely on a Steam Deck should pass on this one. If you have a beefier device, do try it out. It’s a shame because it looks very fun and has had good reviews and great dev support.

9/10, amazing game, Battletech meets Frozen Synapse. The good: You map out each 5 seconds of commands and can see ghosts of your mechs go through the motions to ensure good firing lines and no mistakes. Lots of weapons to salvage, from swords to artillery rockets to sustained beams and status effects. Lots of perks to customize pilots. Detailed controls and precise timing lets you move your mechs in and out of cover, lobbing shots in between your own units as you dash around explosions. It's like a coordinated ballet of destruction, even more so when you use the replay feature to show in super-slow-mo how you turned attackers from 4 directions into smoking piles of wreckage at the same time. The bad: Movement commands aren't perfect, movements can't be shortened on the timeline and locations can't be dragged to adjust, so you often have to cancel then reissue a shorter move to adjust a firing angle or not crash into your other units. Artillery arcs are visible when fired, but not on replay or the turn they explode, so better remember where that enemy rocket will be landing! In packed battles it would be a big QOL to have the arc stay visible or show up again when you replay the launch. The ugly: For V1.0, they programmed a whole open world like Mount & Blade. Some players got lost, so patch 2.0 cut the open world in favor of giving you 3 buttons with mission descriptions to go into your next battle. What a waste of all that work! They should keep the open world imo, I prefer driving around and discovering enemy bases rather than having buttons pop up after each combat saying "enemy base with 4/6/8 defenders, click here to go to this combat."

This game has always seemed awesome, and I've enjoyed it immensely, but that pales in comparison to how impressed I am with the games current state. The 2.0 release of Phantom Brigade has been incredible. The developers have carefully gone through and answered the biggest complaints and missteps in the game, creating an awesome product that lets you command your cool mechs in a way more compelling and replayable way. The gameplay is like an antithesis to FTL: Its technically turn based, but the way you interact with the turn structure is so nuanced and fascinating. On the surface its XCOM with mechs, and that's true in a lot of ways, but its also XCOM with more attention to detail, and different takes of realism. I've been really enjoying it, and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys turn based tactics, cool mech fights, or the strategic outside the box puzzle solving that comes with small unit skirmishes.

Very interesting quasi RTS, using an innovating system of 5 seconds prediction taking the spot of "turns". If you wanna play a team of Newtypes, this is your game.

This game was already everything i wanted before 2.0 if you like xcom with the ability to watch the battle in real time afterwards than this is the end all be all its got lots of depth to support the "predition mechanic" Including an overworld when out of combat, pilot development, mech building, lots of paint down the limbs for your mech, and a bunch of other supporting mechanics, and since 2.0 you can now watch the whole battle in its entierity. Being able to appreciate all of your careful and lenghty planning with the ability to control time speed, rewind, and freeze, is amazing! Not to mention that its incredibly user friendly, allowing you to focus on a specific parts of the battle, or follow the path of a specific mech. You naturally create entire action set pieces with every mission you play, it was the one thing that was missing before 2.0 and now we have it. So yeah, Solid buy!

I could ask for little else from a giant mech strategy game. 10/10

too complicated and the motion blur when moving causing motion sickness. The music/sound also not enganging.