BATTLETECH - Season Pass

While I could hope for a little more depth in the story, this is a stellar entry for Battletech. The AI needs a bit of assistance to be trully difficult, but this is an issue with every game, so I can overlook some of the inexplicable idiocy when they infrequently fail to own my lance. Opens up a great franchise to RTS with RPG investment.

A combination of badly implemented source mechanics, nonsensical levels, and incompetent game design. It seems the developers couldn't write an AI so they attempted to compensate by throwing waves of brain dead enemies that don't have to follow the rules and orchestrating mission goals seemingly designed to induce frustration. As an example, you will escort slow moving tiny NPC's across the map to a drop point (a lot), then walk all the way back across the map to another drop point dragging you through hordes of brain dead enemies that mysteriously popped up out of no where to another drop point fpr evac, even though you were literally right next to an empty landing pad. In one mission the ambush point was so obvious I moved 3 of my mechs to that location, had the forth step on the trigger hexagon and watched a mech lance appear out of thin air right next to my mechs. Most of the missions seems to be story variations on two concepts - escort tiny slow moving NPC's or blow up X number of building. Story missions are the worst and all depend on figuring out what gimmick this level is intended for rather than application of any solid strategy. By the end of the game you will simply grab every “biggest mech” you have collected and steam roll the content. The designers apparently don’t understand why mechs come in different weight classes and it's not usually a good sign when the tutorial phase has the hardest missions in the game. If for love of the source material you do decide to play this, do yourself a favor and grab one of the many mods that address this game’s numerous shortcomings.

The base game is worth every penny heck it is worth it at double price, but these expansion packs are really not necessary. I bought the season pack and I do not regret supporting HBS, I just wish there were more to these expansion packs than just giving extra things to do in career mode. The best part of this game is the solid story and how you build up your mech stable from lights and mediums to heavy and assaults. The whole sandbox career mode is weak in comparison to the campaign. Yes there are new urban maps and flashpoint missions, but these do not add to the game for a player who has finished the campaign.

Loved the original game and look forward to the upcomming expansions

I have this game on Steam, I tried to play it twice, and managed to play 2 hours and 20 minutes total before uninstalling. I understand the appeal, otherwise I would not have bought it, but the gameplay is just SO SLOW. Turns take forever. To add insult to injury I was forced to do the first tutorial mission twice (probably quit the game at the wrong time). Great graphics, but the gameplay is just not that good. This game is also very resource intensive. My PC easily runs Death Stranding FullHD @ 60 fps, but I had to tweak Battletech settings to make it somewhat playable.