Then a few exchanges later, it would change accent and be back to radio quality. I dismissed it as perhaps a one off, but then I noticed when Captain Olson was giving me orders over the comms radio, his voice and accent would change as if he was in the cockpit with me. I first noticed in the introductory cinematic that the voice actors were saying words that were different to those on the hardcode subtitles. However, a couple of glaring things kept breaking immersion. The graphics of Phantom Galaxies run very smooth for the most part with the level of space detail comparable to games like Subdivision Infinity DX and Everspace 2. The tutorial does a good job at teaching us movement, combat against drones and shifting to our mech state to use melee or our ultimate abilities.

I would say Phantom Galaxies finds a decent middle ground between these two games and has potential to be a great mecha game providing the developers can make some decent improvements to gameplay and server connectivity. The tutorial teaches you the basics of flight controls and I used keyboard/mouse as it is how I played games like War Tech Fighters (another mech game published by Blowfish Studios) and Everspace 2. I chose the tutorial and then had to choose between two starting mechs – Assault (agile with medium-range weapons) or Buster (slower but more armour and shields). Here we run over to Captain Olson who prompts us whether we want to complete the tutorial or skip it. Once you make your selection, a quick introduction plays and then we find ourselves on the concourse of the space station Halberd-001. There are no sliders or anything, you just have to keep hitting randomise which takes a few seconds to hold down the option and hope it’s a good look. We start by creating a character however we have no way to customise it other than male or female, and then clicking randomise. Despite these red flags, I did enjoy playing the first couple of hours of the game with the review build though there were some issues. The game also involves NFTs but thankfully the Steam build is separate to the Epic Games Store and Web versions. This means that yes, there are items you can earn in-game but they can also be purchased in bulk on the Steam store for real money. The game launched in early access on Steam and Epic Games Store on November 15, and is free to play.

Phantom Galaxies is a sci-fi mecha adventure game developed by Blowfish Studios.

Red flags game review