BATTLETECH

I like Battletech as much as the next fanboy, but this game just doesn't do it. Good graphics. But only a 4-mech drop? It's a race to the assault mechs and the highest tonnage. No battlefield tactics. It's just a slugfest, every mission.... over and over and over again. Every mission is the same. The story freeing the queen was lame with no benefits. Being a merc company has no purpose.

TL-DR: irritating bugs after almost 1 year after the release date. --- I really like the game, especially after so many years of waiting for a proper turn-based mech game. But these bugs... 1 year ago, right after release I did the main campaign trying to ignore all the lags, long loading times, corrupted save files and simple crashes even though I have a high-end pc. I also was really irritated by some broken achievements and achievements which force you to play online matches even though I am a pve-player. And now I saw "flashpoint" out and decided to check the game and see if devs did some progress on it before I buy this first expansion. I won't mention some minor visual bugs since it's not that big of a deal. So I didn't want to do the campaign again and started the "career". I selected ironman+lethality+mech desctruction. First happy moment was when I finished my third contract just to find out that one of my mechs and its pilot were somehow destroyed (the mech and pilot was 100% hp and were not at dropship landing spot, not even close). Ok, no problems. Delete save -> start new career. Just to stuck at second contract at 75% enemy reinforcement - searched the whole map and waited for like 40 turns - nothing happened. Complete disappointment. Is it really that hard to fix these bugs even after almost 1 year from the release date? I am probably not coming back to this Battletech game. I also don't like the "melee-weapons" idea of "flashpoint". And finally - I can't believe this game is made by the same people who did Shadowrun trilogy...

Mechcommander is one of my favorite games. This one.. its just bad. My PC can play XCOM2 WOTC at full settings, without any issues. This game but EVERY fan on my system into overdrive. 2xSSD Raid 0, and it still pauses everywhere, load times are horrendous. Graphics are from 2007/8. So many bugs, its hard to list them all. RAndomly, the target to choose your attack is miniscule. You have to move your mouse all over the target hoping the icon will pop, only to realize it is literally 1 pixel. You cant choose the direction your mech faces sometimes. I feel like the programmers gave up, and decided, "It's not a flaw! Call it a feature!" Long story short, this is the only game i have ever bought and requested a refund on. $10 game, not a $40.

The game loads and plays slowly. Mostly the graphics only come into play for a few minutes until you get tired of the camera, turn off the pretty, and actually start to move through levels. Level generation takes forever. I'm pretty sure my rig could have found a bitcoin faster. Here's the real kicker: tactics hardly matter. This is a game mostly focused on heat management. Sure, you can get some minor bonuses by using the terrain to your advantage and trying to gain position. In the end they're minor modifiers. A bulk of the game is simply puttin all 4 mechs in front of another and focusing fire. That's about it. Try to flank someone? Nope, cut down. Try to jump behind a mech in combat, nope...your other 3 mechs' worth of damage is now on the wrong side. It's fun to play but turns out to be very repetitive. During the storyline portion there's little reason to explore. There's no side missions or diaglogue either.

Pros: - Mechanically more indepth than any X-COM with a whole lot of options right out of the gate. - Satisfying enough crunch of metal of metal. Guns sound appropriately shooty, and the exploding robot limbs get you into the mood. - Fantastic GIF-style expressionist imagery that HBS is known for. Neutral: - It's about as faithful an adaptation of the tabletop as the HBS Shadowrun games (AKA completely alien) ... For some this will be a turn off, for others a means to enjoy a TBS mech game with enough meaty crunch without reading a shitload of rulebooks. Cons: - Load times. Missions are often 10 minutes of gameplay, separarted by up to 3 minutes of load times. It's insane. RimWorld with 40 large, complex mods and multiple bases on a 100% full scale world doesn't take as long to load for me as this game does. My rig isn't top of the line, but then again neither should game be so resource intensive. Even without mods, the loading times are just frightful. And yu can't just nip off and get a cup of tea while waiting, not unless yllu want a stomach and bladder to be the size of a beachball after a decent gaming session. - Janky animations. - Not the same calibre of HBS storytelling with this one in comparison to other games they've made. - Silly A.I. Ending commentary: I really wanted to like this one. I did. The loading times alone means I end up partly dreading simply running the game. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why the loading times are the way they are. It makes no sense. It's a grid based, turn-based arena game.