Possibly the most threadbare part of the whole game is the story, because there’s effectively nothing here. Enemy stats get higher as you push further into the campaign map but, as you can salvage parts so easily, that’s how you gain strength as well. Even late into the campaign, the same handful of enemy types repeat (mechs using the same parts system and two types of tank) with no fast-movers, helicopters or strategic modifiers. It gives you so many pieces of equipment and gameplay systems that encourage you to overwhelm the enemy and exploit their unchanging weaknesses. Phantom Brigade works best when you feel like a plucky guerrilla fighter working against the odds. Win the battle early and the reinforcements will never show up.
While there’s missions where you can technically win by getting in and securing an objective, it’s almost always quicker and easier to just wipe out the enemies as fast as possible, especially if reinforcement waves are due to arrive. There’s only a handful of map types (hills, villages, towns, industrial complexes and military bases) and aside from there being proximity-activated turrets in bases (solved by letting enemies come to you), they’re functionally identical in most regards. This wouldn’t be such an issue if there was more variety to the missions and battlefields. It felt like I was bullying the AI and, even as their stats inflated, they couldn’t do anything meaningful to counter my intensifying cheese. Enemies are also unable to use or react to melee weapons (or at least never did in my campaign), letting me just combo sword attacks against helpless foes when my hail-of-lead strategy was getting boring. In almost every battle they’d just run out of cover to engage me, even if they had indirect-fire missiles. I was a mindreader able to predict their every move, but I often didn’t have to.
Phantom Brigade works best when you feel like a plucky guerrilla fighter working against the odds.Īt this point it dawned on me that the enemy were effectively mindless.
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