Phantom Brigade review: great turn-based mech battles, poor UI

As with any other turn-based strategic game, the clock is ticking. Phantom BrigadeYou can issue orders while they wait. Your giant robot pilots are patient and waiting indefinitely to receive your orders. The crucial difference is that when you click the “execute” button, the game then switches to real-time, and every action happens all at once — not only does your team move simultaneously, but so does the enemy.

Five seconds of chaos reigns over the battlefield, a flurry explosions and projectiles exploding and crumbling buildings caught in metallic carnage. Then you can issue new orders by stopping time periodically as a rocket or laser hangs in midair. Phantom BrigadeBrace Yourself Games -? This is a sequence of intense, five-second windows which, although not always intuitive, are very captivating.

Your small team acts as a strike force in a war zone. Your mobile base allows you to scan the globe looking for enemy convoys and patrols. You also discover that the opposition has many more pilots and weapons than you have. What they don’t have is the predictive technology that gives you the edge, depicting their future actions on the map.

Image by Brace Yourself Games

Combatting Phantom BrigadeIt is therefore a constant state of counterattack. In this mode, you go back-and forth across a timeline in an effort to identify the possible paths that enemy units may take. Also, which units you will be targeting, you are able to react accordingly. Phantom BrigadeYou strike a rare balance where you can feel powerful but are still at the mercy complex systems that simulate every turn in each battle.

There is always a situation. Lot Keep going. You may, for instance, see an enemy mech’s laser sight settle on your vulnerable sniper. You might respond by sending another squadmate, stronger, into the fray, holding a shield in case the enemy shooter is deflected. You might also send your strong ally into the line of fire with an enemy shooter if it is not too far away. This will allow you to smash their chassis with the shield. To ensure greater salvage, you can leave the mechs within one inch of complete destruction. The mech may still get in one final hit before the battle ends.

You can always watch the replay of the last five seconds to review the details and pausing to rewind to examine the movements you have put in motion. The recap systems are used in games such as chess to determine victory or death. Ape outOder Super Meat Boy, which contextualize your actions in retrospect by showing them from a bird’s eye view, except in Phantom BrigadeThe recaps happen at every corner. They’re constant visual payoffs to your painstaking choreography.

Image by Brace Yourself Games

Playing Phantom Brigade, I’m reminded of 2011’s Frozen SynapseThe game was similar to ‘Real-Time and Turn-Based,’ The game was played in a sophisticated, computerized environment where the outcomes of your actions were known. You can read the full article here Phantom BrigadeIt is necessary to manage the chaos and uncertainty that war brings at each turn. When you take aim at an enemy mech, you aren’t told which part you’re going to hit or how much damage you’re going to expel. You can try placing your mech at angles that only allow for one enemy limb to absorb a blow, but even then — the outcomes are unpredictable. The projectiles fly individually towards their target. While some may hit the mark, others will miss the mark. You can scrub through replays to see which mechs missed the mark or are colliding with other mechs.

It was a pleasure to enjoy this indecision. It requires a degree of surrender to these enormous machines, an acceptance that they can’t be smoothly bent to your will. You will be overwhelmed by the chaos. Phantom BrigadeIt is the unique thing that makes this game special. The ability to give your robots a feeling of weight and control, even when they are viewed from an omniscient, zoomed in perspective, is what really sets it apart. It is a little bit hands-off, so you can make plans, tweak your systems, but then have to wait for the results. Although you may have the ability to see into the future five seconds in advance, this knowledge is limited and will only get you so far. The rest of the game’s simulated systems are up to you, the pilots, and the other players.

Image by Brace Yourself Games

It’s a shame, then, that Brace Yourself Games often struggles to convey Phantom Brigade’s intricacies, particularly outside of battle. It is filled with little annoyances and omissions that get more irritating the longer you play. You can only compare stats between items you own and the inventory screen. There’s no easy way to, say, sort through your unequipped arm components to figure out the best ones to scrap for parts, particularly when all the names are so similar. The process of salvaging is difficult because there’s no reference to the parts that you have. And while there are a number of helpful tooltips, they’re inconsistent and vaguely organized — this is a game that will greatly benefit from a community Wiki of some sort, because I still don’t know what some of the icons mean or how certain stats interact.

Even during battle, there are some details that can’t be missed. Why, for example, wouldn’t I want to immediately see the enemy’s equipment when they target my mechs? Why do I have to first select the enemy unit and then mouse over the grayed-out “attack” symbol to finally see the weapon pop-up and its effective range? Some symbols are difficult to understand.

Image from Brace Yourself Games

The drip feed of new equipment can be slow, too, never quite nudging you to experiment with new loadouts because none of the encounters tell you beforehand what kind of weaponry you’ll encounter. Beyond the handful of hit-and-run missions, there’s little reason for you to move away from a strategy that works, particularly when all the equipment is such a chore to parse.

I’d be able to forgive these UI foibles if they contributed to a cohesive thematic style. It’s hard to see the game’s interface. Highfleet Even more mysterious is the fact that it appears. Phantom BrigadeHowever, it funnels the vast amount of information into a beautiful cockpit UI. You can slide the gray menus. Phantom BrigadeOn the other side, they are dull and uninteresting. With their anonymous red and blue factions and bare bones story, the setting and story could easily be mistaken for a placeholder. The game’s unique command system manages to capture what is so intrinsically awe-inspiring about giant, fickle robots battling other giant, fickle robots — but the surrounding framework lacks the same refinement and clarity of purpose.

Phantom Brigade Windows PC version was launched on Feb. 28, 2008. Brace Yourself Games provided a prerelease code for the game. Vox Media is an affiliate partner. Although these partnerships do not impact editorial content, Vox Media could earn commissions from products sold via affiliate links. Find out more. additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.