BATTLETECH

I have been playing this game a lot. HBS and Paradox got a lot right and according to what I have read will be fixing the parts that takes away from the game. Once they do this it will be a solid 5 star game. The good parts The game is turn based and the combat is a lot of fun across a wide array of maps. You can customize your mechs to a limited degree and thus tailor them to the environment you will be fighting in and your fighting style. For example remove a couple of energy weapons and add heat sinks if you are going to be fighting in a desert to keep your heat under control. Combat is smooth and the animation is good enough (they provide information as your weapons strikes the enemy (good) but are sometimes not visible because of blocking terrain (bad). The game is won by setting up your platoon with the right mix of weapons and good squad level tactics. The travel "cut scenes" are very well done in my opinion. The story line is interesting enough but lets be honest, we are here to blow stuff up and this game deliveries in that respect. The "meh" parts -Switching between screens is very slow and over time it gets painful. I have a good gaming rig with NVme and SSD drives, 32 gigs of RAM, etc. This is not caused by lack of hardware. I keep something handy to read while waiting on travel and screens to load/finish. Cannot skip the travel scenes (grrr). -Limited Mech customization. There are hard points that limits the types and numbers of weapons on a Mech. Being a gamer of the original board game, finding the best combo of weapons was one of my favorite parts. The limitation is probably done for game play reasons but it annoyed me. I want to run what I want to run. -Non-Clan weapons or advanced weapons. This is a disappointment for me rather than an actual bad thing. I wanted to use some Clan tech dang it. Maybe in a later DLC?!?!?! All in all money well spent and I would buy it again.

I wouldn't call the game flawless but it delivers battletech back to us after many many years of silence. The combat is well designed and has a good feeling to it. While it can feel a little slow as far as turn based goes, it isn't nearly as painful as Tides of Numenera; The combat mechanics are well thought out and easy to learn, and the missions themselves begin easy and progressively get more difficult without any speed bumps. As a result, it's fun enough to play even though it's predominantly mech combat - but hey that's what we wanted right? HBS has done their typical writing, which I like considering they're a small outfit. The interface is similar to the one we've seen in their Shadowrun series. While I consider the interface amateurish, it does have all the bells and whistles to customize your mechs and character effectively and isn't totally ugly. Story is alright, I wouldn't say it's amazingly original but it does fit the BattleTech universe and includes several lore additions to make the game in-depth enough for any lore snob. Between combat, you remain on your ship. This allows you to travel between missions, rebuild and refit your mechs, sell items, recruit pilots, handle finances, and level up your pilots. The mechanic isn't fun but fits perfectly. It is important to note that the clock/money is against you; You have to pay upkeep costs and creditor dues all while waiting for travel times and mech repairs before you can even think about starting a new mission to make cash and cover your bills. While I just started into the game, I'm struggling with this mechanic, I haven't gone bankrupt, but it's basically like driving a crap box car to work and having to pay some large unexpected bills for repairs on it because you can't afford a new one. All in all as a fan of HBS I do like the game, but perhaps I'm a bit biased. Either way, nobody is going to make BattleTech and this is good enough for me.

Graphics, sound, ui, gameplay - all are very bad. And bad optimization too (created with unity).

The UI text is exceptionally small and does not scale with resolution, so reducing it does not work. Of course it has no option for UI scaling. To be clear, I am a programmer and use a 22" monitor, so I see a lot of small text every day without problems. This game has the text very, very, very small and it requires a ton of reading. People are asking for a solution fro TWO years, and none came. The game looks like it can be good but I, and many other near sighted people, can't play it for longer than 10 minutes due to extreme headaches mounting. This is as good as having the game CTDing, since it is unplayable anyway.

Why would I give more than one star for a game I do not play after over a year of purchase? That's the bottom line, my experience was so crappy I uninstalled it and never played again.