Phantom Brigade

Fun game but it is both poorly coded and explained, which makes in experience get so much worse the more systems the game introduces the more you progress. The gameplay hinges on the prediction of the actions of the enemy units, forcing the players to balance what actions they can take within the 5 seconds every turn and how high the overheat threshold is of each individual mech (think of it like AP and Bonus actions from Baldur's gate). Straight forward enough until the prediction given to you during each turn is no longer accurate, making the actions you've planned inefficient/ineffective, useless, or down right detrimental to the outcome. Examples: - Railgun attacks (especially the railgun shotgun) passing through natural terrain despite the game having a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loading screen tooltip that tells you terrains are impenetrable and can be utilized as cover. - The hydra missile launcher having unclear trajectory predictions completely different from the item description. A fact that I've only learned after accidentally carpet bombing my units a few times. - Missile trajectory disappears once planning starts for next turn. You need to memorize every missile action planned in the last turn, and guesstimates for impact time and place for in-flight missiles so you can maximize damage output. - The unstoppable skill, despite having an in game description of "your mech will remain standing after collision regardless of the weight class of the mech you collided with", only means that your mech won't get knocked to the ground but will still gain the crashing status. The collision mechanism is also very poorly explained as even after 40hr of gameplay, I'm still playing based on the assumption that raising my shield means raising my weight class by 1 as there's no clear description of the consequence of this action, and whether the collision will happen as planned is still uncertain. - Active defense has the same stats as other backpack launchers such as missiles and mine layers but for some reason the heat generation is not written and damage will still go through despite the item description being something along the lines of "generate a force field around the unit that stops incoming projectiles". Which attacks are going to get through? Who knows good luck lol! Keep SLing that mission buster. - Damage of status effects are not displayed period and how are statuses applied are also unclear. I know it works by building up a "invisible gauge" but conventional ways such as using a shield or active defense packs are useless for some reason despite for example, incendiary weapons function by launching fiery [b]projectiles[/b]!!! at enemy units. The game's item description needs some serious work/rework and it needs a proper in-game guide for everything. I know they can do it because descriptions for power, thrust, heat-diss, integrity, just to name a few, already have built-in descriptions which you can read simply by hovering a mouse cursor above them. Edit: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the developers actually addressed the weight class issue. I doubt they did it b/c of this review but seeing improvements being made earns a thumbs-up from me. Keep up the good work!