Phantom Brigade

[Mr_Sukebe]

I'm a little surprised that a thread hadn't already been created for PB, so here we go.

I bought PB over the weekend, as it's currently half price on Steam.
In McDonalds terms, "I'm lovin' it".

PB was introduced I believe a couple of years ago, but early reviews were rather critical due to a lack of content. That appears to have been resolved, as I've done maybe 5-8% after 8 hours.

Ref the gameplay, it's a turn based Mech game, so a little like Battletech.
There is however some key differences:

• It's a bit better looking. Sure, it's not outstanding, but it's fine
• Seems to have plenty of customisation for mechs, though it's done in a different way. You start with a stock frame and then added in components, each of which adds weight, heat generation etc. The weight influences speed and in a very granular manner
• There's a campaign, which seems to be influenced by the choices and outcomes from battles
• I believe that individual combats have the territory generated on the fly, but fall under a variety of mission types (e.g. supply column ambush, hit an enemy patrol whilst minimising damage to the surrounding buildings)
• Also limited to 4 mechs
• Pilots do gain experience, suffer from fatigue, battle damage etc
• It's single player vs the AI only. No PVE or PVP modes

and the biggest difference, which is the "predictive awareness". When you're planning what your mechs will do over the next 5 seconds, you get a prediction of what the enemy will do, so you get to plan how to respond and take advantage of that. By default, that gives you a serious advantage. Making up for that, you can end up heavily outnumbered and facing rather unexpected scenarios, so there's a significant difference in the challenge of some missions.

Personally I'm really impressed. It's like someone started with Battletech, then added a very smart and creative designer for dev team who's really been able to deliver something genuinely new and fresh to the genre.

For the price, if you like turn based games, very recommended.