BATTLETECH

So most of the mechanics of the game are super awesome. It just suffers from the same issue that Shadowrun had: too much of the outcome dependant on random and super hard 'boss fights'. Together, these are beond stupid. Tactics only matter if you are happy to do multiple playthroughs. Too much easily taking down super hard mechs and then being taken apart by stupid things. You'll get silly results, so will have to reload a few times. Which would be fine if those two outcomes happened because of different strategies..... So frustrating, this is almost amazing, but has mixed in enough 'terrible' to make it OK....

The story awful, but there are cool robots, so who needs a compelling story? I'd rate the game higher if it weren't for the long loading times and the frequent bugs. Minor graphical bugs can be ignored, but there's also a bug where you can lose an entire Mech you've gather parts for if you rely on the autosave feature to be even a little useful. The good new is that the bugs and optimization can probably be improved with future patches. The story wills till be god awful though.

The headline is really all you need to know. Combat is slow, even compared to what they were porting from. While I appreciate the love and devotion that must have gone into the decision to stick so closely to the board game, the PC is such a vastly superior platform that the "fun" is completely lost in translation: COMBAT TAKES FOREVER And that wouldn't be so bad if it was exciting. I was happy to see people saying that missions were multi-staged and could take an hour to finish; the maps are fairly big...just don't go exploring too much. Because 1.) there's nothing to find, and 2.) it could take 30 minutes to get your mechs back into position. Loading times are abysmal, across the board. Don't have a SSD for your game? Expect loading times of 4-5 minutes for even the small, early missions. Expect load times between menus. Hell, even the mechs themselves don't respond to getting shot until sometimes seconds after the animations have completed. And let's talk about getting shot. Let's talk about the following data taken from the last 3 hours of gameplay: Using "Glitch" in a Vindicator, I recorded every shot she took with an accuracy of 85% or higher. Here are the results: Miss, Miss, Miss, Hit, Miss, Hit, Hit, Miss, Miss, Miss, Hit, Miss, Hit, Miss, Miss, Miss, Miss, Hit, Hit, Miss Does that look like an 85% or higher hit rate to you? Or does it look like the displayed percentages are simply arbitrary and in fact are irrelevant for any shot over 50% (anything under 50%, however, is almost guaranteed to miss). Overall, the execution feels like they got lazy early on in design; a lot of AAA games feel like they were good concepts poorly executed. This was a mediocre concept executed to mediocrity. Unfortunately, I don't think this game will be fun without DRASTIC changes that I doubt the developers will be willing to make. Going back to Rimworld sad and aching for MW5 now :'(

And, like the other reviewers, I'm a little disappointed at the loading times. It makes my "Recommended hardware" rig feel like a "Minimum specs" rig, and that's sad. I was a Mech pilot back in the Mechwarrior 2 days, and the only reason I didn't jump on this game day one was because it wasn't a first person sim like those halcyon days. (Ah, Damocles. How I miss you!) That said, I find that while the main plot is not terribly creative, it's executed well enough. The graphics are fine by me--some things are just one artistic preference over another, but the mechs look beautiful, and the overall feel is what I'd expect. Last night, though, I did notice that the AI was being...stupid. Maybe it was the settings, but it was really the first time in playing several hours that it made a purely tactical error. I'll keep a closer eye going forward, but that didn't have to happen. And yes, I have had to restart a mission after a lucky first-hit headshot. Remind me why I spend a ton on armor for the head again, and why, even with called shot mastery, aiming for the head is a bad choice?

Lots of fun, I've been a fan of Missionforce Cyberstorm since I was a kid and this was the first modern game that scratched a similar giant robot itch. My only complaint is that it gets excessively grindy at times, with progress feeling very slow. Highly recommended to anyone who likes Battletech, and/or strategic giant robot battles.