BATTLETECH - Digital Deluxe Content

Sadly this game is just almost good. It brings a lot of interesting things and makes some kind of fun, but it is not a really good game. Pro: - The campaign story makes fun and is a real driver of the game. - The campaign missions are very well designed. Every mission was interesting to play and challenging. - There are interesting and diverse characters inside the game. - It makes fun to maintain and improve the Mechs while the game is improving. Cons: - There is really a lot of grind inside the game. In order to improve your company, you have to do the same random generated mission over and over again. In the mid of the game I switched from normal difficulty to easy, not because the battles where too hard for me, but because I want to have more payment and salvage in order to improve my company faster and get rid of those boring random battles. - There is not much tactics in a battle. The most important thing is to concentrate your fire on a single Mech and in the same way to encourage the enemy to split his fire on different Mechs. Or to allow only some Mechs to fire at you at all. Also when you skill your MechWarriors, there are just two skill combinations, which are important: a scout, which has higher initiative and can sensor-lock enemies behind walls and then the Lancer, which maximizes damage output. Other roles are possible, but since you can only bring 4 Mechs to a fight and damage dealing is essential in every battle, it makes no sense to bring a MechWarrior with with less damage output but a special role. - You cannot control the path of improvement of your Mechs. It is kind of random, which Mechs and Weapons you can buy in a planet system and which salvage you will find on the battlefield. Thus you have to do a lot of random missions (grinding) to find the Weapons and Mechs you need for driving the campaign. All in all the game is ok, but not really good. After the campaign was over, I lost interest in playing more (random battles).

Being made by the people who created this fictional universe to begin with, the game rings true to the source material even as it might sometimes deviate from it. It 'feels' more like Battletech than any of the Mechwarrior or even Mech Commander (which was very good) did. And not just Battletech, but 80's Battletech, which had a dose of Mad Max in there, where scrounging for parts and trying to make enough scratch to keep the lights on was as big a part of the game as giant robot battles. Combat wise, the battle system is essentially the board games with bigger numbers since you don't have to keep track of them with a pencil. The interface does an excellent job of information in a useful fashion, and while the graphics are dated they're functional and they capture the sense of mass you'd expect from a 50 ton war machine, even when said 50 ton war machine is flying through the air on it's jump jets. Elements traditionally missing from BT computer games, such as light 'Mechs having certain advantages and vehicles that aren't simple one-hit annoyances, are present, and while some treasured bits from the tabletop aren't here (artillery, etc) it's a richer tactical experience than I was honestly expecting. It's also refreshing to see battles where you sometimes have to make a choice between total victory and your bottom line. 'Mechs (and their parts) are expensive. Making a sacrifice play is truly that on this game, and managing the expenses, your pilots morale, etc. in between missions with a well-thought out set of mechanics and options will give you a regard for lost equipment and trained pilots that simply wasn't present on most other games in the franchise. There are some issues, a couple of days after launch, with crashes, long load times, etc. These haven't been enough to prevent the game from cutting well into my sleep and giving me that treasured 'one...more...turn/mission...' disease.

This is a very faithful interpretation of the FASA boardgame. That alone earns it 4 stars. There has not been a more faithful adaptation since the freeware/shareware Mechforce for the old Commodore Amiga. There are some problems though. The Unseen. If you have played Battletech for any length of time you already know about them so I won't go into detail suffice to say that every 'mech looks like a clan 'mech and pretty much the same as every other mech. If you are a new player then it won't bother you- move along citizen. I'm sure a modder could fix this over a weekend. That is a mod I sorely desire. The other thing is "hardpoints" this limits mech customization to a huge degree. You cannot build something as basic as a three medium laser Locust because there are specific hardpoints where only specific weapons can be mounted. These hardpoints cannot be changed no matter how skilled your techs are. This is an app killer for me. Half of the enjoyment of Battletech is customizing your personal 'mech into outlandish configurations to suit the mission you're on, or just to fit your play style. This will hopefully be addressed by the modding community also because that creativity-stifling awfulness has gotta go. One last nitpick. You can't control which melee attacks you use (no punch, punch, kick either- you get one single attack), and machine guns, small lasers, and flamers only trigger (automatically) when you use melee attacks. A minor annoyance considering everything else, but still there is no reason for it to be that way if the goal was to make a faithful adaptation of the boardgame.

I have enjoyed BattleTech and Mechwarrior games before, but like this the best. It has been a long time since the story at the start of the game had me muttering under my breath "I will come back and get you, for what you have done. I will have my revenge!" The music is great, the combat is brutal and because you have to limit damage to your mechs as much as possible, I have bailed before completing bonus objectives on several missions, because my armor was depleated I had internal structural damage and the 25 percent more they were going to pay me was just not worth it. I really like the Merc Company management part of the game with repairing, and modifying the giant metal monsters takes time and money. I have already stayed up way to late on several nights because I want to finish just one more contract. You should buy this game it is great, I like rts games like Xcom and Xcom2 but I love this game because there is so much more customization that you can do to fit YOUR playstyle. Want to sensor lock enemy mechs and rain Long range missles on them, you can do that. Want to Jump Jet Death from above with a Firestarter mech loaded with machineguns and flamers you can do that. Want to disregard the over heat warnings and fire all 8 medium lasers to cut down that heavy mech and you can do that. Great Game,