BATTLETECH

Let us for a moment forget that they apparently never played the tabletop version, because things like initiative have been inverted, synchronized fire is gone, and most other mechanics could only be described as "loosely based on Battletech lore." Let us ignore that scenarios are silly, the campaign script writing is amateurish at best and it is clear that no one at Hare Brained ever so much as picked up a copy of the Mercenaries Handbook before writing a game about mercenaries. Instead I'm just going to point out that this game was made with Unity, and if you aren't yet aware of what that implies then sit with me while I explain: Unity is beloved by developers because the base version is free and it is very easy to use. It is often hated by consumers, however, because Unity is notorious for being a buggy, unreliable pile of fecal matter that crashes if you look at it funny... or even if you don't, for that matter. This game exemplifies this issue. It freezes when you load. It freezes when you save. It freeze on mission launch. It freezes on mission completion. It freezes when you go to dock with a jumpship. It freezes when you arrive at planets. It freezes when you leave planets. It also tends to corrupt save files when freezing. In short, if you've probably got a 1-in-10 chance of making it from creating a new character to getting back safely to dropship after completing a mission without the game crashing, corrupting or otherwise freezing up in some way. Before you ask, I'm running this on a Ryzen 8x core processor with a modern 4gig video card, solid state drives and more RAM than I could ever use. I've run it on both Win7 and Win10 with no difference. This game is bug filled piled of junk code that seems like it went through absolutely zero quality control before it was released. It's fun when it works, mind you. It's just that it only works for maybe ten minutes at a time on a good day.

First the good... okay, the great. Gameplay is awesome! If you want to play this game for the enjoyment of outfitting mechs and using them to tromp the enemy on the battlefield, this is your game. Buy it! With the proper mechs and supporting skills I could wreck anything the game threw at me. By "proper mechs" I mean Atlas II with an autocannon 20, four pulse lasers, four SRM6 (short range missile, six-missile salvo) launchers, full armor, a gyro to help my evasion and a few heat exchangers to keep from building up heat too fast. All the weapons were ++ versions (extra damage.) I could put out 560 damage easily. By "supporting skills" I mean I kept my crew morale maxed. That meant I was able to do a called shot twice every round - that's where you choose which part of the enemy you want to hit - and all my crew had tactics skill (increases called shot accuracy, among other things) maxed out. All that 560 damage going into a mech's central core... if I didn't take an assault mech out in one hit, I would certainly get it in two. So yeah, I pretty much trampled everything in every mission. (Nota bien: I wasn't even really trying. If you grind a bit more you can probably put out more damage per mech, per turn.) Now the bad: The story is meh. I mean, they didn't even TRY! The whole story, what little there was of it (you could play the story missions in about an hour and a half, maybe two hours) was a long string of off-the-shelf tropes. Even the "animations" that moved the story along were just still pictures that moved slowly across the screen, with a few smoke or sparks effects to give them life, accompanied by voice-over narration. They even did the old anime trope with a still picture of a guy holding a gun at another guy's head, then fade to white as a gunshot is heard. The story felt like it was just an excuse to send the player off to grind some more to get strong enough for the next story mission. That cost this game two stars.

Loved this game until I hated it. Rediculous difficulty spike in later story missions combined with piss poor level design ruined the game for me. No time for stupid level designs and missions that are too hard. Too many other better games to spend time playing. Was considering buying expansions, but glad I waited. If I can't finish the campaign, why buy expansions? Uninstalled and utterly dissapointed with this game. Too bad after almost 70 hours of gameplay.

The game itself is enjoyable if you're into turn based tactics style combat (I am) but the performance issues really bog things down (on release day anyway, hopefully future patches fix things up)

I've backed the game on KS, because I'm a fan of the games MechCommander 1.2 and MechWarrior, and as the creator of the Battletech universe and the tabletop game participated in the development, I thought the game would be a success. During the beta test in one MP match, I faced a rival who had Victor, Trebuchet, Urbanmech and someone else, at that time there was an Angel of Death skill (JJ buff), and Victor with this skill and Trebuchet just carried my detachment, and I was already thinking about surrendering, but a successful shot of my Orion that hit Victor's head broke the situation and in the end I won the battle, left with the only Mech - that's what a real Battletech means. I waited a long time for the game to exit the development, and when I installed it I lost myself in the campaign for 6 hours in a row until late at night, thinking of one more contract and turning it off ... At the same time, in the second mission, the Mech of the main character and himself almost were lost, because I underestimated OpFor in the beginning, thinking there are no worthy opponents - it took 2 months of ingame time to recover - hardcore