BATTLETECH - Digital Deluxe Edition

If you are a fan of the table top miniatures game you will definitely want to pick this game up, It is a fantastic adaptation of the board game and the management aspects of the game really make it shine. Pros: + Merc corporation management. This is one of the best aspects of the game, you will repair and refit your mechs, hire mechwarriors, choose contracts and pay monthly upkeep. Everything that you do outside of the combat will cost you c-bills and time, you even need to buy the ammo that your mechs consume in missions. The time required to complete these tasks is not inconsequential either to refit a mech can take up to a month depending on how badly damaged the mech is and considering you have to pay your crew and mech upkeep costs every month its a real challenge to keep your merc unit solvent and ready for battle. +Solid combat mechanics: Plays pretty much like the tabletop board game. It does play a bit differently and has tried to emphasize the human part of the mech more through pilot special skills, but everything is here: min and max ranges on the weapons, heat, initiative, terrain modifiers and destruction and falling. It even has a better initiative system than the tabletop game that allows you to reserve mechs so they go later in the round which really helps the light mechs actually be somewhat useful because you can reserve them till the last section of a round so they can essentially have 2 moves instead of one, so you can pop them out of cover fire their weapons then run away when the new round begins. Cons: - Loading times are a bit long, hopefully they will optimise this in the future. - Ai is a bit weak at times. Sometimes the Ai will make some very questionable choices especially the tanks, in one mission I jump jetted a mech onto a hill and the stupid tank just drove around the hill till I blew it up instead of going for one of my other mechs not on the hill. Again hopefully this will be improved in the future. - Does feel a bit rushed and rough around the edges again hopefully this will be improved through patches.

First a little about me so you know my perspective: -I remember playing the original BT game on a tabletop with my friends in high school. Yeah I'm that old :) -I have several decades of experience playing variations of tabletop, computer RPG versions (Crescent Hawk's Inception, Battletech), and VTT as well as the first person games. -I still have a soft spot for Missionforce: Cyberstorm. And now my review: ================ Pros: Solid graphics and sound. Stable build. I've played 200+ hours and it has crashed maybe twice. Good at maintaining the atmosphere of classic story. Good single player story mode. Supports multiplayer. Very stable build and will work on older machines (I run on a 4 year old i7 8BG laptop at 1920 and it is not jerky, ever. ) If you don't like the raw #'s and want it to be more true to the tabletop, you can change them easily. If you like base-building aspects, then you will have a bit of fun with upgrading your drop ship. You can headshot or LEG a mech (MW4 I'm looking at you.) Cons: Some performance issues (specifically loading times* but there is a workaround.) Not 100% = to the tabletop version (still you can change just about all the variables in the game.) Not really a con if you are coming from tabletop, but if you like a faster game, then this may not be for you. Though granted you can adjust the speed as well. Only 1 lance of mechs. I get it but want a company ;) *work around for loading times...for often it is too many save files. For faster load times, keep your main save directory to about a dozen games or so. If you really want to, you can always copy the other saves somewhere else. General: I really enjoyed the single player. At times it did seem to jump, but overall the story flow was good. Now the difficulty spikes did catch me off guard...but I went ahead and did some more random missions, upped my game and usually the hard missions I got through on the 2nd or 3rd try. Overall very solid.

I am reviewing version 1.1. This game is awesome. If you love the Battletech boardgame, I think you will like this game as well. For people without a Battletech background, it might be a litle harder to get into the game since there is lots of complexity, but you should be alright. This game is a mixture of tactical combat with a lance of Mechs that you can configure, and a strategic element of managing your mercenary company. The developers modified a few things compared to the boardgame (e.g. forests provide 25% damage reduction instead of +1 to hit), but to me these modifications simply add more tactical depth to combat. One great addition is "stability damage": some weapons inflict stability damage, which can destabilize and knockdown enemy Mechs - different from the boardgame, where knockdown in simply a question of how much damage was dealt. Sure, not everything is perfect. The selection of Mechs is fairly limited (due to copyright issues, I believe), and quite a few detials could be done better (imo). Since there is no drop-weight restriction, you will not use light Mechs in the game for (you start with 3 Mediums). It would be nicer to have a restriction (like in Mechcommander), so that light Mechs could be more than simply targets in this game. The KI is not always great, making some doubtful decisions that can turn a hard fight into a walk in the park. However, it generally performs pretty well. In summary, this game has been lots of fun in 30+ hours and I am not nearly done yet. Also, I have yet to experience a single crash, the game has been stable for the entire time. I am also playing this game in High settings using an i7 7700HQ + 1050 Ti on a mobile platform, and there are no performance issues at all. I can definitely recommend this game!

I very much enjoy BATTLETECH it is, however, not polished and the release should be a beta test. If you don't like strategy-based games this isn't for you. If you want a tutorial on game mechanics this isn't for you. If you want mechs fighting mechs: this is a good strategy game. (this is more of an optinion-piece on the current version than a review ... ah well who cares) My feedback on 1.0.1 beta: _Gameplay_ +I like this;-I don't like this -needing to login to access dlc that I already downloaded and installed is terrible -larger maps would solve the need for fast units and give more freedom to maneuvers Priority Mission: +campaign mission gating events and enemies General Gameplay: -menu time = gameplay, think of time spent in the leopard/argo as time wasted, shorten repairing, focus on the battle -entering combat on sight, please give me the option to move mechs -on escape of an enemy out of sensor range, do not stop the turn timer +I think mech movement speed is good Base Defense: -spawning in enemies instantly after the first wave is mean, please leave time to recover & cool down or reposition Base Destruction: +good Escort Convoy: +the only mission that requires fast mechs -random enemy spawn is random Destroy Convoy: #good enough Assassination: +currently the best kind of mission to gain mech parts Recover: +cool idea, how about ctf with mechs in multiplayer? Battle: +good, more variety would be nice _User Interface_ +lovely loading screens, more? -menus hide behind menus, make 'hiring hall', 'store', 'contracts', 'mechwarriors', 'mechbay > bays'=mechs, 'star map'=navigation accecible without hovering over another menu item -combine tutorial info into a good tutorial instead of questions to your crew,+the crew can always repeat the information -explain 'mechtech' and 'medical' before getting the argo -please allow naming mechs with +-_.:/#* and please allow renaming mechwarriors #let me pick only my nickname and let everyone call me that?