BATTLETECH

A VERY bad game. The writing is horrendous, everything said is exposition, page after apge of it. Its like they decided to design the gameplay, the stages and the terrains and only then try to fit a story into it. For example. When you start a new campaign, you have to read through walls of text about the history of the region, its politics, and the story. but as soon as the stage starts, your instructor starts going on about politics, like "Oh yeah, we forgot to tell you." Also, your character was trained by this "instructor" for one season when you were a child. So after you screw up and nearly die, this instructor happens to be in the area to come and rescue you, at which point he decides you should join the royal guard and be the personal protector of the empress.....because you almost died. Story aside, the graphics are awful, the load time takes longer than even ark: survival evolved, whether thats a map stage or a static image with dialog choices. Watch some TV, read a book, play some 3DS, you will have plenty of time while this ugly game loads. And then you still ahve to deal with stutters, freezing, and speed ups. The game is constantly playing catchup with itself, they even accounted for it by making you stare at smoke for 5 seconds after killing something to allow the game time to figure it out. There is no way to see how much damage you will do to an enemy, and when you fire, the game doesnt always process the weapons in the same order. So sometimes you have enemies dying instantly with no health going down, sometimes they die after losing a tiny bit of health but the game continues showing the damage ticking off after the mech is dead. Sometimes you fire, enemy health goes down, weapons stop....and then nothing..."oh crap" you think, "that should have killed him!" only to have the mech fall over dead two seconds later. This is while there are 6 units in the whole stage..... You will end up fighting the controls the whole time, as they were designed by someone who has never gamed on a PC before. For instance you have to use "ESC" to cancel an order, but only some things can be canceled, and you cant open the menu until you are done moving. So, if you move, but dont attack, you cant open the game's menu until you complete the attack, or wait, or w/e, because you also cant cancel the move with escape. One wrong mouse click, half a move? Well, finish the move that is screwed now and wait for the AI to finish their turn and when its your turn again, you wait 5 minutes for your save to load and this time not accidentally misclick like every single person does from time to time. Then the enemy can do this really cool and effective move where they circle behind you and punch/kick/headbutt you in the back, where your armor is weakest. they do it A LOT, Its devastating and you cant do it, ever. Because the UI is so "well designed" you can move to circle the enemy and then weapon attack (at SEVERELY reduced hit chance because as we all know, medium lasers get harder to hit with when they are right next to the enemy....) or you can put your cursor over the enemy while having the move command selected (the only way I know of to melee, cant tell because if the game doesnt tell you it in plain text, there is NO way to find out.) which will move you in a straight line to attack the enemy's front armor. I could go on all night about how this game is shoddy, ill thought out, poorly executed and incomplete. Come back in a few months when you are then and only then allowed to expect the game to be playable, like most games these days.