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Phantom Brigade - An Indepth Review Of A Fiddly Turn-Based Strategy

918 View2023-03-12

Hey folks! If you were hoping for a review of Brace Yourself Games' Turn-Based Strategy Phantom Brigade, Look no further.

Into The Breach

In a matter of seconds, a Routine Training exercise turns into a rout. Invaders emerged in the morning mist- and it was only through the advantages afforded by the prototype predictive system that the brigade was able to survive.

But survival is a different beast from winning. The country fell, it's streets reduced to desolate battlegrounds, it's populace suppressed.

Still, hope wasn't lost. The brigade waited until they were forgotten- accruing the resources needed to maintain their mechs- until the day finally came to strike back, enacting a campaign of guerilla warfare in order to upset the already precarious status quo, and reclaim the land their stolen country.

Storytelling wise, it did manage to get my attention- since it does a decent job of marrying the tutorial and narrative together. And the ensuing segue into some cinematic scenes only further helps to establish things in a fairly satisfactory manner.

Unfortunately, if that happens to whet your appetite for more- you’re apt to feel bamboozled, because once this initial introduction is out of the way, the rest of the game becomes almost devoid of narrative.

Essentially, it’s frontloaded storytelling, because once you get into the crux of the gameplay- the only real story elements you’ll have to look forward to are the sporadic events. While these little vignettes are well written, they effectively border on purple prose, for segments which are narratively insignificant at the end of the day. Mostly, they serve as a vehicle for some form of mechanical choice you’ll need to make- like choosing to provide some survivors with supplies, in exchange for hope (which lets you hold contested regions for longer), or whether you want to capture a deserter - a somewhat poorly explained mechanic.

Ultimately, they don’t really matter. Just things you can randomly pluck up along the way that add a little spice to your journey- and which you can entirely see again shortly after going through one.

Aggressive Editing

But what about the gameplay? Well- Phantom Brigade is at its heart a turn-based strategy game with a very simple goal: reclaim your country's fallen capital. That said, there’s a few things complicating this. For one thing, resources. While you -could- hypothetically try and rush straight towards the capital, you start out with the base minimum of equipment, a minimal amount of forces, in a mobile base held together with duct tape- and a slew of enemy territories between you and your goal, who are better geared by a considerable amount.

Which is then made worse, because lingering in a region for too long will alert the forces that are present, intensifying their overall difficulty, and the frequency of their patrols- which, in a game that has you maintaining damage on your mechs from combat to combat, will lead to some pretty nasty deaths by attrition. Sure, you have 'Liquid Fix' which can replenish you between encounters- but, your reserves are limited, and it's progress is slow.

Essentially- Guerilla warfare is the name of the game- as you’re incentivized to carefully find isolated targets and pick them off in order to get the precious mech parts and weapons you need to mount a offense, whether it be from stockpiles- or off the scavenged bodies of their mechanized defenders. And then to slip away again to lick your wounds and do it all over again.

Well, that, or to subvert the region as a whole- plunging it into a state of chaos, where you’re tasked with bouncing from combat to combat, clearing objectives before your allied forces can be repelled- a time limit that frequently forces a -lot- of consecutive combat- in order to convert it into a new safe zone- and thus putting all your scavenged supplies and preparation to the test.

Really, it's a grueling endeavor. And yet, despite all these lopsided odds- there’s something about the execution of Phantom Brigades combat that really makes an impression. Remember that predictive combat system I mentioned in the story segment? That -isn’t- just a narrative quirk.

See, each round of combat takes place over a 5 second snapshot of the fight, where you’re provided an accurate readout of where an enemy will travel, as well as which unit they’ll attack and what weapon they’ll use. It’s then up to you to carefully arrange your own troops movements and actions in order to make use of this information, whether it’s weaving behind cover to avoid a barrage of fire, or capitalizing on an exposed mech to empty an ultra heavy machine gun into their back. Hell, you can even fire missiles at a location you know an enemy will be at later in the timeline- opening up all sorts of vicious tactical opportunities- and providing you the edge you need for those constant combat encounters.

And even the tactical option to wait can be satisfying- such as knowing when not to move in order to force a snipers shot to whiff and hit a hill- or the exact moment you’ll need to slide in front of a squishier, near dead mech in order to have a heavier mech hunker down, raise a shield and foil what should have been a kill shot.

All in all, it’s a powerful tool. . . but, it’s not infallible, which is another tactical element you need to take into consideration. For instance, just because you can -see- an attack coming, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to avoid being flanked by more mobile mechs, nor is the cover afforded by buildings impervious to sustained fire.

What’s more, you have -heat- to fuss over. Since, when you fire a weapon, take damage from certain attacks, or use the dash action (which also doubles as an attack), you’ll generate heat. Take too much, and -all- your mechs parts will begin taking damage- which is not only a serious drain in the fight, but a potentially hefty Tax on your liquid fix reserves out of combat.

Worse, it has the possibility of blowing away a limb- which can not only deprive you of your weapon and mobility- it can also cause your mech to Crash.

Which- crashing is a massive doozy- and one you’ll have to contend with a fair bit, since it can be triggered not only by damage- but also mech to mech collisions. If a smaller mech gets bowled into by another, they crash- collapsing to the ground like a sitting duck, and losing the entirety of their turn. Which can not only be caused by enemy units aggressively ramming you, but also -friendly- units, either because you haphazardly charted a movement path during your turn, or an NPC ally decided they’d ram into your back. Thankfully, you can -cancel- an ally's movements, but- seriously, I’m at a loss for why they choose to do this sometimes.

Still, even with how much this mechanic can turn a supposedly well oiled turn into a catastrophe- I’m fairly fond of it, in large part because you’re -also- able to take advantage of it- with my favourite strategy being, making a heavy but mobile mech, slapping a shield on it, and just ramming face first into the enemy. One less turn going off -and- increased vulnerability? Yes please.

Which, you’d think would be the perfect pairing with a melee build- but, well, I just don’t seem to have much luck in getting melee attacks to hit nicely. They’re odd to aim, and overshoot frequently. Plus, they leave you exposed- to a -very- frequent form of attack.

Namely, missiles. I honestly don’t know what it is. despite the various different weapons in Phantom Brigade, I just find myself -continously- getting matches where every single enemy is equipped with a metric fuck ton of missiles- which is sort of a problem since the majority of them are homing weapons, forcing you to either take cover (provided it can soak the hits), or dash at the last second- Provided you can remember -when- they fired off, since they don’t show up on the timeline, requiring you to -intuit- when they’re going to land. And even if you do Dash, you have to ensure your dash is actually up to the task.

In fact, the brutal efficiency of missiles is to the point that I was able to tackle the first phase of the final mission with an under leveled group, just by tactically barraging the enemy with them. Though, that was less because of the part damage it was doing (Though it was doing work), and more because of the concussion damage. Which- okay- so you have -multiple- ways you can take down a mech. You can shred them to pieces, blow off their weapons and force them to eject, or you can deal concussion damage- which hits the pilot, and can either knock them out, or outright kill them. I honestly -vastly- prefer concussion damage over anything else, if only because an undamaged mech essentially is cheaper to loot than a damaged variant- allowing you to potentially strip down the entire battlefield if you’re especially careful- and is incredibly useful in a game where you're -reliant- on these battlefield resources.

(P.S. I should note here that the developers -are- aware of this issue, and are looking to tweak both the spawn rates -and- the overall efficacy of the missiles, but, that doesn't seem to address the inability to properly predict their spot on the timeline. Also, who knows how effective the change will be.)

Still- while this is all good and interesting- there's a bit of a problem.

For a game that is so very combat-centric, it’s not going to be too long before you’ve seen the crux of what it has to show you on this front. In the course of 20 hours, I reclaimed 4 territories- a process that forced me into a major amount of engagements, and quickly led to a really unpleasant epiphany. Once I’d claimed my first post Tutorial Territory, I had seen the bulk of the new content that I was going to encounter. Very rapidly, I’d burned through the various objective permutations. Sure the maps changed, but that didn’t help with the overall sense of ‘been there, done that’- especially given that certain objectives, like the convoy ambushes, didn’t seem to have quite as many map variants as their peers.

Like yes, it’s neat I could tackle the final fight early on. Even clearing the first portion of it and, limping to the second half with a slightly reduced squad of partially battered bots .

But at that point , the damage was done. Because even though I felt like i could feasibly clear it with just a bit more tweaking to my overall gear- the actual process of accumulating a loadout I’d like came with the promise of a -lot- more busy work.

Because although I was (slowly) accumulating items, they were frequently lower quality, lower level, or a copy of something I had. And while I could turn them into salvage in order to make a schematic from my list - well.

Experimentation feels bad on that front too. For one thing, you don’t actually get to preview an item before it’s made, either for the sake of comparing it to an existing mechs parts . . . or even to see -what- it’s basic or upgrade quality stats would be. It -just- asks that you sink the resources into creating it, and then wait out the in-game time for them to finish crafting.

What’s more, you also don’t get a training or simulation area in order to try out different weapon builds- essentially forcing you to commit to potentially calamitously bad loadouts . . . in fights that are -not- only fiddly endeavours of 30+ minutes of fine tuning where you are, but which -punish- you by reducing your rewards, if the items you blindly took in without being able to practice with them steer you down the wrong course, and cause you to take unnecessary damage.

And that’s -if- you don’t just lose a pilot. Although . . . I’ll admit, The loss of a pilot genuinely didn’t tend to bother me, since they don’t really have much in the way of identity, or even skillset. They mostly exist as a component for piloting a mech, in the same way as equipping a frame. Sure, you can customize their appearance, or name them- so it can be a slight tragedy that Lord Trufflesworth the Octagonal has perished. But, realistically- they aren’t that fleshed out. The most you might see is their name dropped during one of the events, and even then- it's usually just to explain they are going to lose pilot health if you don't sit there and rest.

Oh, and on the note of resting, actually -recruiting- a pilot if you lose one sucks as a process, since you’re forced to just sit still and twiddle your thumbs for a bit while you wait for said component Something you're also obliged to do when refueling at a base, or for several events (such as the aforementioned pilot health one), and a number of others (Which don't even let you know the potential rewards) - and which are miserable to get in enemy territory. Seriously, even with the fast forward option, just forcing me to -sit- there and do nothing for a bit was more annoying than anything.

And that’s with a lot of annoying elements to compete against. For instance, you also start out -ludicrously- slow, which is definitely a major contributor to all the early fights you’re going to get into. While it -does- eventually get better if you dabble in the mobile bases upgrade system- it does take a substantial degree of investment to get there. And doing so winds up being a double edged sword- since a good number of the upgrades -also- come equipped with major downsides. Like, alerting enemies to your presence from further away, and increasing the chance that heaps of reinforcements will ruin your day. Or just.. making you slower. There’s a pretty good reason that I ignored the bulk of the upgrade tree- because there’s not really later upgrades that -fix- the repercussions for earlier ones. And given those upgrades tend to use uncommon or rare resources- which you have a fairly low cap for, they can seriously dent your supplies for some very mixed results.

I honestly wish that there were more interesting options in there- or alternate technology trees to poke around at- because it just ultimately feels like a waste, Especially given that at the current juncture, those penalties are irreversible.

De-Livery-Service

But that's gameplay. How do the aesthetics fare? Well, On a purely aesthetic level, I think that Phantom brigade is a nice cinematic looking game. And it's pretty fun to be able to mess around with the 'Livery' system, and tweak the colors of a mechs components to get a pretty looking battle bot.

That said- the UI isn’t exactly the nicest thing to contend with. A lot of it’s elements aren’t actually well explained in game- and again, things like the inability to tell what you’re making before you do so, or being able to properly measure items against each other is a bit of a hassle, and very fiddly.

Also, those missiles that I loathe? I honestly, genuinely wish that we could get some sort of prediction system as to where they’d land- or at least, where in the timeline they exist. When you have enemies firing off 1-2 barrages -each- which then end up dropping at some nebulous point in the next turn, it often winds up feeling like a cheap chunk of damage.

Also, having to repeatedly click an attack on the timeline, manually fiddle with it, cancel it, and then reselect where I should place it is -super- annoying, then just being able to slide along where it’s placed.

Lastly- I just wish we could see a playback of the entire battle. Actually watching the last 5 seconds go by in real time is sort of neat- but frequently not the most useful tactically, since we’re not able to get a lot of data from it. So if it’s a purely aesthetic thing, just let us review and save the fights. That’s all.

I did appreciate the music though. Thankfully. And the voice acting was surprisingly quite good- which is why I was so vexed that the storytelling just sort of.. stopped until the very end of the game.

Deserting The Cause

TL;DR If you're looking for something that will keep changing the formula and keep you invested with new and interesting elements as you press forward, or a neat narrative to sink your teeth into- you're not going to get it here. What Phantom brigade provides is a vehicle for a lot of pitched tactical battle, albeit of a relatively iterative nature.

Yes, there’s leeway for tackling things in different fashions- but it’s pretty punishing in regards to actually allowing you to do so in a timely manner, since grind is built into the core of it's gameplay loop. And the frequent pauses in order to do nothing just felt disrespectful as fuck to my time. That’s not to say I dislike this game. It just.. occupies a very weird space in my library where I -want- to -actively- like it, but find myself unable to really sink my teeth into it long term, since it feels like it hit its peak early on. I'm still mulling over whether or not to uninstall it.

Ultimately, it's hard for me to parse all of this together- but, if you’re just looking for some tactical action that you can sink your teeth into for small bursts- while blowing apart chunks of a city, and overall being a menace to society? You might actually find something here. So, To a very select few people, I could see myself recommending this game- which is why I ultimately rate this title a FUMBLE.

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Feeling Out Phantom Brigade - A Crit Hit Review!

Hey folks, thanks for tapping and tuning in! As it stands, today I'm going to be talking shop about Brace Yourself Games recently released Phantom Brigade- A turn-based strategy title that has you navigating -simultaneous- turns with your enemies in 5 second slices. Check out the video! P.S. If you want to see my other reviews, you can check out & Follow me @-Youtube→ And my other socials, if you want ::Discord→

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