MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

So I had a blast, for a while, playing this game. And further, I really want to like it. The game looks great (although a bit plastic), and the setting is always compelling. How then, you might ask, can I give it two stars? The main reason for my rating is the procedural difficulty. The Pros: Great graphics, great attention to the setting, awesome feel of a giant mech smashing through buildings and other mechs. The game is great fun, for a little while. The Cons: That procedural difficulty. As your character levels up, the game decides to increasingly spam enemies at you in numbers that literally had me in disbelief. Countless, endless enemies no matter the tonnage limit on the mission or what mechs you have at your disposal. This can include vehicles which are not a big deal most of the time, and mechs, which are fun to fight unless you are limping along with a shred of armor from fighting two other groups of four mechs on a 200 ton limit mission and once again have to fight yet another lance that just spawned in along with a dozen vehicles. That's right, your lance of four MEDIUM mechs has to often fight three lances plus vehicles and occasionally artillery (unbelievably annoying artillery that is ALWAYS across the oversized map full of unpassable ridges). It's not as if skill will save you because other than circle strafing it is simply a battle of attrition against your armor (which I always maxed out to no avail). After a point, there are only a couple mission types that are worth playing because of a spawn limit. I will also add that the performance of the game is not very impressive even on my RTX 3080 running in only 1080p. The game often feels sluggish and unresponsive with a tendency to ignore button inputs. In closing, I am disappointed. I had been waiting for this game to come to GOG, and unless there is an update to the difficulty (unlikely as people have been complaining since inception) I will probably seek a refund.

I'm a battletech universe addict. I've rented mechwarrior on snes a lot, it was a revelation. Mechwarrior 2 a few times, felt more like a simulator then on snes. Mechwarrior 2:mercs was the real deal...Good story, felt like a sim, and a certain degree of freedom (the high point of the original mechwarrior on pc from what I saw...but then I played that one after mech3) Mechwarrior3 was a bit of a notch less excellent but in the same vein (xcept for liberty) Mechwarrior 4 vengeance and blacknight were a big let down... very arcadey, the felt less lime a mech simulator, more like shooter...story was VERY meh, missions not so interesting Mechwarrior 4:mercs gave us a much better experience, same mechanics but better story, missions and freedom. Mechwarrior 5... It's halfway between arcadey and sim-like. It feels like a big mech but... gee-wilikers, there's so many less controls now! I simply can't arrange the basic controls like I used to for 2-3-4 either. Also, the bloody weapons have seen their range drop, pretty much always a knife fight. But it still feels like mechwarrior, and to a new commer, well, who cares about the past? Combat feels good. Story seems lame, havn't gotten to it yet, but we've never had this much liberty on the travelling. For the modification of the robots, like on the weapon ranges, everything's been cut alot from what we're used...which I'm unsure off. I miss being able to do what I want with engines and all...but those modifications were unrealistic in past timeframes. After waiting for this for over 12 years, I was somewhat disapointed of buying this game at 50 something bucks (with dlc)...but once you're over the fact this is pretty much equal in fun and all as mech4:blacknight, you can't wait to have some time to play. Like an Oasis in the desert...with camel drool clearly floating on top

The game can be boiled down to two words, "that's it", and it seems like it's all we're going to get. You would think the Epic money could've been enough to save this game, but no. - A broken command center that has cripplingly low FPS performance - No FOV settings for the first-person mode in command center - Awkward movement algorithms in the command center - Nothing to do in command center other than lackluster conversations with the NPCs - Low poly worlds with incredible texture glitches on all terrain - Horrible lighting reflections on 3d model edges - AI that destroys their own base when they move around to kill you. - Loading screens for everything (getting in the mech or jump ship, when loading in out of missions) - Corny story line..... - And so much more! This game has a lot of potential, but we'll never see it happen due to budget constraints or the direction the team is headed, probably both. Maybe they had to rush the base so much that it's unmanagable spaghetti code now. Who knows?! Making video games is hard. I got the game and DLC and it still feels like a pre-release game. I'm not keeping hope that i'll have a good "modern" mechwarrior experience in my lifetime. Buyer's beware. I'll continue buying the DLCs as they come out to support the studio, but don't expect a wild & heart racing experience/immersion from this game.

If you thought the game pass version released last year felt half baked, then this would be well done. Hats off to the devs on the AI, the cutscenes, and even the optimization. I was able to bump up the graphics to maximum when last year I had to keep it at high for a solid 60fps with my gtx1060. Glad the gog version still has mod support, but all the must have quality of life improvements seem to have already made it in the game. Only played the opening missions of the campaign and a few runs in career mode, but so far I'm really liking what I see. There's a lot of little changes to the missions and with the career mode you can now pick your background, which affects your location and starting lance. Not gonna say it's good enough to overpower my nostalgia for Mechwarrior 3 as the best in the series, but this is definitely the game I've been looking forward to for the better part of a decade.