MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

I'm a huge Battletech fan, and have been playing since the 80's, playing almost every electronic game that's ever come out for it (I don't own MW5:Clans because it's not on GOG), as well as a longtime player of the original tabletop game. I will thrilled at the concept of a sandboxy type Mechwarrior war sim game of running a mercenary company in the Battletech universe. That said, I must be honest. The vanilla game is maybe a 3/5, with a lot of credit coming from the DLCs and later free updstes. The mech combat feels good, and adds most of the replayability to the game. However, the selection of truly viable units is limited due to the specific MW5 extremely limited customization abilities. The original selection of missions are very samey, with even the base story missions being mere variants of normal generic missions. The DLCs and free updates did a lot to improve upon it, but it was still just an "okay" game vanilla. That's where modding comes in. Thank God PGI made the decision to support modding, and the game is stupidly easy to mod! With just a few mods it becomes almost an entirely different game, with full customizability (Yet Another Mechlab), better AI (TTRulez_AIMod2) a slew of new mission types (Coyote's Mission Pack), and a plethora of mechs spanning the entire timeline of the game and beyond (Lore Based Mech Variants, Yet Another IS/Clan Mech, Brian Cache, and more), make pilots feel meaningful (Pilot Overhaul - Eternal) and even flesh out the map (Known Universe, slighly more difficult to install). Ironically, with DLC7 coming in a month (sometime September 2025 at time of review), the game will finally be where PGI promised to have the storyline day one, with the original announcement stating the game would run from 3015 to 3052 in the Battletech timeline. Until now the gameplay and available map changes run their course at 3042. DLC7 will push the available timeline to 3057. About time. Worth a pickup on sale, worth more with mods!

Was wary going in, given the reviews from the original Epic release a year ago, but especially after such a long gap since the last MW game have found thoroughly absorbing, particularly with the updates from the latest patch which I understand were not originally present or weak (e.g. news feed of in game lore, enemy AI improvements). Closer to the original MW1 in open ended-ness (and initial storyline setup) but with the piloting refinements from the games in between, and enough content to really feel like a travelling mercenary band (with a little suspense of belief). Handling with a HOTAS helps keep this feeling sufficiently 'sim' like, though broadly speaking a little more arcade in style/pace vs MW2. Hoping there is enough interest for us to get some additional DLC adding new handcrafted and procedural mission types and variables (e.g. duel/solo/convoy/recon missions, optional secondary objectives, competing merc groups/personalities). Feel this has more potential to feel like 'free roaming the living battletech universe' than its predecessors, if given a chance to evolve further.

levels are same same, no meaningful mech customisation, shallow gameplay, poor control of lance consisting of stay where i am or hold fire/rejoin me. absolutely no tactical depth. only positive is you can just get a fast light and strafe your way to victory till you get to the mission parts where not only have you had to trigger by (proximty btw nothing to do with stealth, approaching via cover has anything to do with it), waves of mooks, then taken down a full lance, oh you now have to take down a second full lance. even with mods the numbers and tonnage is stupid from cbills payments, to repairs and what your asked to do. any real merc commander would sardonically ask the mission briefer if 'they would like fries with that'. It's utter garbage just get battletech or play MWO.

The game is very grindy and repetitive, as you end up doing the same thing over and over. It does have a nice selection of mechs to play with, though. The problem is the story is not very good or long and you are left with a sandbox that is quite boring. They corrected this problem in MechWarrior 5: Clans, which I think is 500% better than this game.

It's hard to understand, but this game is less engaging than the 90s versions of Mechwarrior 2. This iterationof the games didn't evolve the games in any way. The only difference is the starmap which allows the player to move around and choose engangements. Unfortunately these engagements are extremely repitive. While it is funto develop your lance in the first few hours of the game, it quickly devolves into an endless series of copy&paste engagements, which basically force you to fight through x waves of enemies. The better your mechs are, the more waves you will face. That's it. The few story misssions scattered in between don't really change the pace, they are too few and lack any sophisicated mission design. The story is told in text boxes, with only a few spoken intermissions. The devs didn't even bother to create cut scences of any kind. It's just not worth the time to play through it in order to get some mediocre ending scence. TL:DR: This game is actually a step down from MW 3 and MW4, especially in terms of story and immersion. It's an eventually boring grind, with a cluttered, uninteresting story. It lacks atmosphere, an engaging story, immersion and ceativity. And worst of all: A lot of game improving mods are broken now, because of the latest update. Mechwarrior deserves better than this lackluster game.