BATTLETECH

Best game ever!! Hopefully there will come a next one!

I haven't played very much, nor do I feel inclined to revisit this game in any meaningful way. The reason why? Its difficulty and the opacity/complexity of its systems (skills, salvage, mech builds, contract ratings, etc.) have drained almost all the fun from the game. For example, I'm playing a 1-1/2 skull rated contract, which I had previously enjoyed playing and beating. This mission drops me into a scenario where I'm almost immediately set upon by 6+ mechs and some LRM artillery. The environment is "badlands", so the heat build-up is yet another limiting factor. The level's terrain is a ridged valley, where you can choose to get mired in the canyon floor, getting pummled from all sides, or try to make it to high ground, only to be closed down within the first two turns and be stuck on the middle tier, with terrible hit chances and almost no cover. It's a complete nightmare and just an overall terrible experience. I don't understand how this contract could be rated so low and be placed in the game so early, when it clearly requires heavier mechs and / or more familiarity with the game (which is never forthcoming). The game does a poor job explaining how to build optimal mechs and lances, as well as what to drop your upgrade points into. The RNG for hits will always tilt the battles in favour of the AI and on a number of occasions I've had a medium mech, in cover, with 3-4 evasion get internal damage on the first volley from a light mech. It just doesn't feel great nor fun to play. I backed the game a long time ago and don't regret it, but with that said, knowing what I know now, I wouldn't recommend purchasing it. I find it so unwelcoming to the player as to be unpleasant and near-unplayable.

So everything everyone says is true. This is one of the worst optimized games I've ever seen (how does a turn based game with a max of 4 units run ten times worse and have ten times the loadtime as the Witcher 3 at max settings?). The tutorial is a dumpster fire of uselessness. It doesn't explain ANYTHING and just briefly glosses over some very important features without going into specifics. In fact the tutorial spends one-third of its time demonstrating how water cools mechs faster, then none of the following levels have any water! Why focus on teaching a mechanic that never comes up but never explain the most basic interface stuff? Prompts constantly tell you how important "stability" is, yet it NEVER tells you the slightest hint on how it works. Good thing they dedicated all that time to talking about water that never shows up instead... I would say it's a typical Hairbrained product that you should wait for the director's cut on, but I don't think patches will save this. Beyond the optimization and garbage tutorial, it's just not very fun. Way too many missions are designed to be 30% fighting, 70% sloooowly traveling to the next waypoint, like someone decided to design every mission around the most tedious aspect of X-COM battles. At least your squad moved quickly in X-COM, not like this game's slow clunkiness. Tons of interface and design issues too. How it hit chance determined? What ranged are each weapon best at? The game does not tell you. Why can the enemy run around and melee me from behind, yet my only melee option is a straight charge and hit from the front? Why is a helpless, knocked down battlemech at point blank range harder to hit than a moving mech at medium range? I quit in boredom on the 3rd mission of stuttering between empty waypoint paths. I was never a fan of Mech Commander, but firing that up would be more fun right now than this. Maybe check it out once it's optimized, but even that may not save it.

A fantastic giant robot / battle mech strategy game. The best since Mechcommander 2. Some initial bugs (game sometimes not saving) were overcome after help from GOG Support (right click the Battletech file from the game's folder location and run as administrator - fixed the save problem and reduced load times). The core of the gameplay is excellent - build up your ship and battle mechs while managing cashflow by taking on missions. The combat missions are excellently done - great sound, mech movement and battle effects. However, the game lost a star because of the poor plot in the campaign. The basic plot here is similar to Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (an ousted ruler fighting a campaign to regain her throne), but lacks most of the suspense, interest, choice and character and plot development of Thronebreaker. If only they had Thronebreaker's writers writing the plot for the campaign, this would have been a 5 star game. Overall, still a game well worth playing.

In the early game I focused quite heavily on doing non-story mercenary missions to build up my lance tonnage and level my pilots. Combat, starting out fairly simple, did eventually flesh out to require some more lateral thinking when I found my 4 mech lance taking on 8 or more mechs coming at me in waves. Using mobility and terrain became imperative to success and rarely did it devolve into the toe-to-toe slugfest I feared. I loved initiating melee combat and stomping on a ground vehicle never grew old. In general the turn based ruleset worked great, though it is highly recommended you disable most of the combat cinematics and animations to speed things up. There are enough mechanics away from the combat to keep you occupied. Mechs need to be repaired and refitted and you can modify their weapons, armour and equipment. Pilots need to be trained across 5 (?) attributes which add bonuses and unlock new skills, both active and passive. I trained each to have a particular speciality like indirect fire (using a catapult with many many missiles) or long range with autocannons, or melee. The dropship itself can be upgraded in many different areas such as medical facilities, mech repairs/bays and so on. I won't go into the story too much as it's fairly generic fare. Someone loses their position of power, you used to work for their clan, now you're a mercenary. That person engages your mercenary group to help take the power back. After a bunch of things™ happen, you come to a bittersweet conclusion involving guns and explosions. Tidy, but unremarkable. When the story ends you can embark on an endless series of randomly generated mercenary missions picked from locations all over the galaxy (or at least the portion the game is set in). VERDICT: I really enjoyed it. A definite recommendation for lovers of stompy robots, science fiction, or turn based tactical combat games. Final Word: RECOMMENDED https://belligerentoldergamers.blogspot.com/2019/11/battletech.html