Phantom Brigade will me its way to Steam and 1.0 later this month

Tactical mech shooter Phantom Brigade has been held by the twin prisons of early access and the Epic Games Store for a couple of years now, but it’ll soon be set free. Developers Brace Yourself say it’ll hit 1.0 and arrive on Steam on the same date: February 28th.

Here’s the 1.0 release date trailer:

If you don’t know it: Phantom Brigade is a tactical RPG in which you travel a dynamic campaign map and deploy squads of mechs into battle. Combat is a mixture of turn-based and real-time, with move-and-shoot commands carried out simultaneously, Frozen Synapse-style. Once you’re done stomping through cities and suburbs to wipe out your opponent, you retire to your base – which is a big train – for repairs and re-tooling.

I played Phantom Brigade in early access and liked almost everything about it. It feels great to nail an enemy from across town, to smash through buildings as you beat your escape, and it wrings real tension from your need to preserve both your machinery and your pilots. What I didn’t like were all things like UI quirks, boring or absent tutorials, and a general paucity of missions and mech parts; all things I’d hope have been refined over several years of regular content updates.

Oh wait, I just checked what they added in the most recent update, Trial By Fireand it was a revamped tutorial, tooltips and UI.

I’ll be leaping back into Phantom Brigade when it launches later this month, but if you don’t trust my enthusiasm, I know you’ll trust Sin’s.