▼ Not recommended
35 hrs
As a huge strategy gamer who enjoys mech games I really like this game but for the sake of transparency I have to give it a thumbs down for now. As of writing this I'm 35 hours in. I'll be comparing this game against similar games like Battletech, XCOM 1/2 and Into the Breach; which I have over 300 hours in across those.
The good I will say first: the game has a very cool design and feel to it. The mechs look slick and the variety of parts and weapons is awesome for creating unique machines. I love that. The battle field explosions and and special effects are pretty awesome. Even the wonky melee system makes strikes look cool to watch. Seeing an enemy mech's legs get taken out or an arm blown off is always satisfying. Battletech is a perfect example of doing all those things very well and Phantom Brigade has the ability to be a strong contender if they didn't fall short in many areas which leads to...
My 4 criticisms.
1. The outstanding issue is that the game play loop is exactly the same every battle, from the first tutorial mission to the last one you play, it's exactly the same with little to no variance. Basically watch what units of yours the enemies are going after, plan to run your units away or shoot back, hit play and repeat. This creates a "cat and mouse" type situation with your units and theirs all the time. Once I figured out how to move the mechs around, got the hang of timing dodges and managing heat, that was basically the end of it and the game became boring. If you have the Home Guard you can basically have them soak the hits and keep your pilots safe. I can carry the game with 4 pilots pretty well now without breaking a sweat. Adjusting the difficulty levers currently doesn't really make the game more fun, it tends to make my battles longer than necessary which is not enjoyable.
2. You have all the time in the world to contest the regions. Yeah if you lose a bit too much in a region you have to start over again but you don't really get punished because you can just come back. If the region gets too "hot to handle" you just have to leave and let the enemy forces die down before coming back. The enemy doesn't really push back once you have captured a region.
3. Progression is not that rewarding right now. Pilots don't have an upgrade system to watch them grow and I don't feel like I'm attached to any of them because their stories are pretty shallow if not non-existent. Even if they go through a "random world event" and get punished they just lose a bit of health which I can heal up at any time.
And there isn't really any incentive to upgrade the Mobile Base speed or additional items because see #2. Expanding the mech bay to hold 4 mechs is probably the most impactful upgrade in the game and everything else is just fluff imo.
4. The lack of a defined enemy and fleshed out story lines doesn't help me get attached.
Suggestions to make the game better.
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To fix issue #1, devs can do two things to battles: A) add more objectives with appropriate punishments and/or B) add in some sense of unknown or a random surprise which demands a player response.
A) Into the Breach and XCOM do this very well because the enemies are attacking not just your mechs but your objectives as well. Having the enemy attack civilian buildings, civilians or deny you from key objectives raises the stakes and makes the mission a bit more challenging because you now have to balance priorities and make sacrifices.
Examples of good mission variants: King of the Hill, Defend an Objective, Destroy Specific Buildings / Targets, Steal the Research, Assassin Missions, Attack and Defend, etc.
-- These are probably very easy to program in to the existing game because the assets are already there and the developers just need to add new "object flags" and adjust some numbers around unit/building health.
Escort Missions and Carry the Payload are harder to pull off but can be very rewarding when designed correctly.
Lol I mean if the Convoy Missions had the enemy realizing they were losing and they started destroying the resources I'm trying to steal I'd be freaking out at the enemy for denying me Supplies and Equipment. ("If I can't have it then you can't either!")
B) Add randomness through unforeseen events. In XCOM and Battletech, we don't know who the enemy is going to hit and shoot at so we have to plan around that. Sometimes new enemies drop in and we have to deal with new problems now. That creates fear and excitement.
To fix #2, Set a Time Limit on the Story Line or on the Regions. In XCOM, the game forces you to take objectives and upgrade as fast as possible because the AI has their own objectives and they are upgrading too. You are forced into a race and if you lose too much then you get penalized with less resources eventually leading to the AI slowly strangling you into submission. The fear of losing and punishments that XCOM 1/2 deal out make those games legends in the community; people actually respect the AI because it's mean.
-- Side note: if PB had an Iron Mode, with a permanent game loss for losing all pilots or mechs then I would probably take my fights more seriously.
To fix #3, add a Pilot experience system and have their skills scale with the type of mech and weapons they use. As an example: if a Pilot is using Heavy mechs with Assault Rifles then give them Perks or Active / Passive abilities which are rewarded for surviving in that mech. On the flip side you can add Penalties or Quirks for near death scenarios or watching team mates die. XCOM and Darkest Dungeon are excellent at this.
The Mobile Base upgrades need a reason to pursue them. If I know the enemy is scaling their tech to find me faster or chase me down faster AND I have a Time Limit to complete objectives, then yeah I'm going to start prioritizing my base upgrades.
To fix #4, just give the enemy a name and their true objective for "why they captured" the country. The story is too shallow and the characters are not memorable in the least. The Phantom Brigade fights against some ambiguous enemy that stole the land from the government. Ok but "Who are the enemy?", "Why did they do that?", "What is the ultimate goal of the enemy?" and "Why should I fight them?"
Outside of a 2 minute tutorial video about people being sad they are being subjugated I don't get many reasons after that to keep going. In other games I know the name of the enemy, I know their purpose for why they do what they do and I know why I need to make it my mission to win against them.
In XCOM 2 I'm fighting aliens whose goal is to subjugate humanity to assist in advancing their evolution. Into the Breach, giant bugs are breeding underground and destroying humans to take over the surface. In Battletech's story line I'm assisting Kamea Arano during the Succession Wars to take back her kingdom which was stolen from her by her uncle and I need to free the planets while fending off other noble families vying for power.
In those examples I'm consistently put into missions where if I don't accomplish that mission or beat that Story Line then something bad very happens. Buildings get destroyed, lives are lost, kingdoms ruined, or in XCOM's case people get kidnapped for human experimentation. Each mission is a reminder as to why the overall Story matters and calls out to us to take action so that we can mitigate damages, develop wins and create our own stories that are worth sharing to friends or online forums.
Because Phantom Brigade hasn't fleshed out the background story of the enemy forces, why they do what they do and why you should care, the game overall lacks a soul that we as players can connect with.
I love mech strategy games and this is great for me through the designs, battle field system, over world, wide variety of weapons and mech customization. Overall an amazing game with lots of love put into it but it needs more work to realize it's potential.
415 found helpful
Steam ↗
▼ Not recommended
19 hrs
I want to say first of all that I actually enjoy this game, so the negative review may seem odd. But here's the thing; we all know you're not trawling through the positive reviews full of "Loving it so far!" and "Awesome game - hope they do more!" just to feel good. You're looking for the negative reviews to see if any of the faults of the game are deal breakers. It's like a relationship - sometimes one big thing, or a collection of smaller things just let you know that it just won't work out. Maybe she smokes. Maybe he runs his fingers down your face like John Travolta's character does in the hit 1997 action movie "Face Off". Maybe they *are* John Travolta. There's always going to be something that you just don't want to deal with, and that's okay. Negatives are far more likely to give you that than not.
So here's the salient parts.
The good:
- A initially very enjoyable gameplay loop - you join battles, zip around in a HIGHLY cinematic battle for a number of turns in 12 foot tall eastern style mecha and save the nation! Battles look awesome, slow motion gives the zipping of bullets and echoing of gun retorts an awesome feel, and it's very satisfying. The simultaneous planning of actions in 5 second slots then enacted out at once, but with a prescient knowledge of the enemies moves take a bit of getting used to, has some kinks, but is otherwise fresh and fun.
- The mechs generally look pretty cool, with sleek aesthetics.
- The sound of the battles, the crunching of buildings getting chewed up, and things exploding is pretty damn enjoyable.
- There's a ton of variety in choosing load outs for mechs, from limbs, accessories, armour, and weapons.
Aaaaaand now we're onto the longer section.
The bad:
- That gameplay loop? Yeah, that's it, again and again and again and again. Every battle feels pretty much the same after the initial excitement wears off, which is a shame, because it *is* initially very fun. At the 18 hour mark I'm not really dying to jump into another battle anymore.
- Zero story other than "Someone took over your country, you hid, now you're saving it from them". Who are they? Dunno. Who are you? Why the Phantom Brigade silly, of course. Yeah, but who are you? What do you stand for? Winning the country back! Duh! Riiigggght. Electrolytes are what plants crave and all.
- Battles are kinda bizarrely brief with some odd design choices. Each turn is five seconds, which you can rewatch after it completes it run. Except the last turn. Y'know, the really cool one where you snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with an almost Napoleonic level of master tactics and plugged the last enemy in the back of the head with a burst of riffle fire (think Mechcommander)? Yeah, no, you can't watch that turn. Or a replay of the whole battle. WHICH, by the way, is probably six turns long. 30 seconds and you're done.
For reference here, in table top battletech, and HBS's game, a "turn" represents 10 seconds, which means a lot of Battletech battles are, to quote Tex of the BlackPantsLegion conducted in a "Blaze of glory", lasting 2 - 7 minutes tops. Still a bit longer than 30 seconds, which also makes you realize how insanely fast everything is zipping around...
- The aesthetics, while good, are incredibly.... generic. Everything looks the same. Every map, every town, every mech. Swapping out different body parts just looked like thinner or thicker versions of the same arm. Weapons all look kinda the same.
Compare this with the remade XCOM (another frequent comparison for it's resistance focused, resource grabbing, turn based qualities) - in that, and especially XCOM 2, you can make your agents look utterly uninque, from tacticool combat gear in bright pink, to post-apocalypse raider punk (complete with mohawk) to wearing the skins of your fallen opponents. PB completely misses that.
- The pacing. There doesn't seem to be any. In XCOM if you ♥♥♥♥ about, you will, sooner rather than later, find out. There is always a sense of pressure to weigh choices; do you save the civilians in the terror mission knowing it will keep Inidia on the Council, but there's a high chance of sustaining injuries to agents you *need* for the next big mission, or not? XCOM doesn't let you relax strategically until quite late in the game. PB has none of that.
When you take a province you kind just sit on it. Take your time a bit. The enemy in all other provinces seem to level up to just above you regardless, so take your time! There's no rush to, y'know, overthrowing the benevolent dictators who took over! There's often timed events that essentially pin your team for several hours. The most obvious is "refuelling" which takes 7 hours in which you put the strategic map on full speed and wait for the time to run out. You're not worrying that spending those 7 hours getting precious resources (they're not precious) is a gamble (it isn't) that could stop you getting the edge on your opponenet (it wont). You just wait those seven hours.
- The writing, when it's there, isn't.... great. I started skipping a lot of it. It's very... erm, well? Saccharine comes to mind. Saving kids and families and telling people that they're strong enough when they're at breaking point. For a game that's missing a lot of features, it almost feels like this one should have been left off. There's a lot of little events and they all kind of run along this very trite "do the right thing for your people" vibe which feels very forced, given we know sweet FA about these people to begin with. Which leads me onto....
- So much isn't explained. In the above case you have a scenario where you find a box, which gives you the choice to pick it up. If you do, it's a bomb. Then you have a choice of giving some resources (70 out of the 1000 + I had at this point), waiting 5 hours or so, or doing nothing. I always paid the scenario off. Then I could choose to keep the bomb! Obviously I did this. What does this do? ♥♥♥♥♥♥ if I know. Never found out with five bombs in my possession.
And that's a lot of the game, it feels like a good manual or more expansion tooltip system should be in place, because there's so much that seems like you have to bumble around until you work it out. Reinforcements (which are a pain in the behind - more on that in a second) can be completely negated by the use of a comms jammer! I found that out on the forums after getting frustrated and rage quitting. Turns out you can research an upgrade for your mobile base and then build comms jammer deployables and then use them before a mission. If this was explained in the game I must have missed it several times. And there's a lot more like that.
- Speaking of frustation, the game has lots of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the combat - reinforcements, if they do show up, are mere turns apart & getting four more units on turn 5, then three more on turn seven on the other side of the map. It's a bit more. Missiles were an absolutel joke of an unbalanced mess until the devs (bless them) hotfixed them within a week to not spawn constantly with every unit and track you with near perfect precision.
- The UI. It's... bad. To having to double click or hold-click menus to select hem is just a bizarre for a start. Comparing the many items you use is borderline impossible, and makes swapping out items a chore.
So look, the game is fun, but it's lacking sooo much. It's a great core game that has so many features haphazardly bolted on, poorly implemented, or missing altogether than it really detracts from long term playability and enjoyment. The devs seem responsive, so I really hope they bring the features and polish the game needs to really shine. But it would need a lot.
If you've somehow made it this far, you deserve a cookie, a glass of warm milk, and a nap. Go, treat yourself. You've earned it.
336 found helpful
Steam ↗
