BATTLETECH

So I have a GeForce 650 with an i5 and I have to run it on the lowest settings, add to that I steam link it to my lounge and suffer home network drops. Yet, I still play it everyday. It’s got me into the BattleTech universe, got me playing crescent hawks revenge, it’s an awesome game with an awesome board game and video game history. If you can look past some of it’s flaws and have an untapped yearn for kicking tail with giant BattleMechs, then I would recommend this game.

As an old table top mechwarrior, I REALLY enjoyed this game. The storyline didn't have much of an impact on me at first, but then it started growing on me. In the Shadowrun games and sometimes I felt the character dialogue trees went a little long - especially in Hong Kong. For Battletech they were a tad short. I started as the snarky merc and ended rooting for the NPC heroine. The art is top notch. As is the music. The game play is challenging and in ways more intricate than the actual board version. Unlike some people here, the game worked flawlessly on my Mac. In fact, played the full storyline and over 48 hours of play afterwards. IT. NEVER. CRASHED. I don't have ANY Mac or PC program I can say that about. There were THREE instances where it slowed unnaturally. I do miss some of the older mechs (FU Harmony Gold) and I can tell some things didn't make the cut which should have. But over all I'm very impressed. The gender fluid character bit at the front only impacts 5 seconds of the build (be a he/she/they). After that, it plays no part at all in the storyline or the battles. It's an HBS bid to attract millennial appeal and garner a few extra bucks. I hope it works. Your character background does impact things in the storyline, as you'll have dialogue options when you refer to it. If you set up a character with a shady background, there are decision trees in the storyline (but not in the battles) which you can leverage. The one thing I didn't like about the PC building is that they didn't leverage the artist like they did for Shadowrun PCs. So no matter what kind of PC you build, it kind of looks like bad 3d renders.

A word of advice: please check the game's homepage before believing one of those "1 star because I'm mad" reviews. If you do, you'll see that e.g., 21:9 screen support has been added, that extra skins and multiplayer are linked to a free Paradox account, etc. I, for my part, just played the game in solo and it was great. I did not even use those skins, because frankly, you don't need them at all (it's really just cosmetics, that's all). The game is finally, FINALLY one of those really hard ones that let me restart missions sometimes more than a dozen times. Still, it is not frustrating at all, but incredibly rewarding. Even the really long loading screens (takes up to a minute to load a mission) or the quite generic story did not stop me from enjoying the game. Well done, Harebrained schemes, well done. Go to youtube and watch one of those many let's plays - there are even some from the devs themselves, with commentary - if you're not quite sure yet if to buy this game. Have fun!

I've been a battletech fan for a long time, but I didn't go into this with any particular expectations. Ultimately, it's not a perfect game, and falls short of the old Mechcommander games in a number of important ways, but it also does a lot of things those games never could. More importantly, I see this game as a solid foundation for further exploration of this universe.

It looks great, it sounds great, it feels great - about half the time. The other half, you'll be putting up with insane frame rate drops, events not triggering, the game crashing, freezing, extremely long loading times & other technical errors. It's a real shame because you can overlook a lot of technical mishaps when you see the quality & care throughout the rest of the game - but not this many, this severe. The detail in the game is great - create your own MechWarrior (& backstory), run your own crew, your way. The story thus far is thrilling (though I'm having trouble actually playing it). From the personality in your fellow MechWarrior's radio transmissions to the choice of how you run your crew (from dialog, to finances, to jobs taken), there is a quality game here made by devs who believe in their product - which is why I'm so astounded that this game is so bad technically. As things go, the depth the game has is wonderful, from the Mechs themselves to the way that you can equip them & direct the growth of your pilots. If you want a heavy grunt, you can have them specialize in taking hits & giving them while they pilot a durable Support- or Defender-class Mech. If you want a team of speedy Mechs that can dash away from trouble & launch devastating flank attacks, you can do that. If you want to just float from contract to contract & explore the galaxy, (letting the galaxy save itself), you can do that (for the most part). I've already spent tens of hours on this game - & I plan on spending tens more - but for now, I'm taking a break after the same current mission didn't work for about the 5th time in a row. Keep a book or something handy for those loading screens!