In the deep, dark mists of 2023, Crypt of the Necrodancer developer Brace Yourself Games released a mech-themed, simultaneous turn-based tactics game called Phantom Brigade. It sounded like an instant winner, and it certainly had potential. “There’s so many little aspects that Phantom Brigade gets right,” Dominic Tarason wrote in his Phantom Brigade review, praising its visual design, thrilling turn replays, and tangible sense of weight to its mechs.
Sadly, as a tactics game Phantom Brigade didn’t quite cut it, held back by repetitive missions and rudimentary enemy AI. “The deeper I dug into Phantom Brigade, the more flaws I noticed in its glossy veneer, and the more obviously easy it was to exploit and break with even the slightest effort,” Dominic wrote.
In the end, Dominic gave Phantom Brigade a score of 68, which more or less chimed with the consensus at the time. Yet rather than hit the eject button and watch as its off-brand Gundam suit exploded, Brace Yourself took it back to the hangar and has spent the last two years fixing it.
The result is Phantom Brigade 2.0, a colossal overhaul that tweaks, adjusts, or outright redesigns seemingly everything about the game. Brace Yourself dives into the details in a voluminous Steam post, claiming that 2.0 represents a “truly transformative overhaul of Phantom Brigade as you know it.”
Some of these changes directly address the issues highlighted in our review. The update reworks the campaign with “new maps, new quests, and new combat scenarios along with fully rebalanced factions”, while also reimagining the overworld your squads explore. Players will visit entirely new provinces with more varied landscapes and new points of interest, and encounter new mechanics and “improved” mission generation.
The aim, Brace Yourself says, is to “provide a varied, constantly evolving environment to encourage players to adapt and overcome”. But the update also expands the game in other areas. Pilots, for example, have been made much more distinctive, with Brace Yourself adding “over 100 unique pilot traits and abilities”. These fold in alongside a whole new recruitment mechanic and a new class specialization system, which should help you get overly attached to pilots before they get blown out of their suits.
And these are just the major features. The update also adds new menus, new mission previous, reworks the game’s workshop and crafting system. Perhaps most crucially, it improves damage logic and prediction, while completely rebalancing weapons. This should hopefully make encounters more tactical and stop players mowing down enemies with an entire squad packing miniguns.
On paper, it’s a monstrously impressive patch. But do the changes have an effect on play? Going by the player response, the answer is yes. Phantom Brigade’s Recent Steam reviews currently sit at 90% positive compared to the overall 76%. “Just started a new game for the 2.0 update. Things are looking so clean. It seems like there are a lot of things that actually matter now like the Pilots for one,” writes user blopoflife. Prometheus, meanwhile, takes a break from having his liver torn out to say “It’s really fun to replay the game with the new conditions and changes.”
If you’re still on the fence about Phantom Brigade, it’s worth noting that the game is currently available for half-price at $15 (£12.50). The discount runs until December 3.
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