BATTLETECH - Digital Deluxe Edition

I`ve waited for this game a long time... I won`t go into detail but it`s been years. I have played the board game then later the pc versions and even a little on MWO. This game would be XCOM with mechs. Mechs are huge bipedal walking weapons platforms piloted by Humans. they are to me, the most `realistic` of giant mech-type games and one of the originals being around since 30 years ago. You start as a noob for some Lady when there`s... Well I won`t give it away. The story is predictable. It`s really just a tutorial.. This is an impressions review as I have only just got past the Intro, but I`ve seen a fair bit. The mechanics work very well. And tactics work here. Height is an advantage in hitting targets. You can fire all weapons at the same time (Alpha) , but beware heat which will cause your mech to shut down. best to shoot weapons smartly. Visuals are good. Sounds are good. You have full 360 rotatable view and zoom with cinematic modes that can be turned off. Once out of the tutorial you find yourself as the boss of a Merc group and this is really quite extensive. You can name your Company, design the Mech Colours, dismiss and hire Mechwarriors, check out your cash flow and even travel around the system looking for Mercenary jobs. Way more than I expected. Full marks on this. Negatives? There is a `Fire` mode and `Attack` mode. Attack really means `Melee` and several times I`ve melee`d when I meant to shoot weapons. They should change the word `Attack` to `Melee`. I am annoyed by the little SJW influences. For instance when making your character you can have a `Him` or `Her`, which is fine, but now you have the retarded pronoun of `They`. Don`t bring your sjw politics into games! Neither is it or has ever been in the spirit of Mechwarrior or Battletech. We don`t want it. Also people are supposed to wear less in mechs (not full armoured suits) since it gets real hot. Apart from that the game is so far good. So 4 stars for now until I see more.

This game is such a steaming broken pile, its hard to know where to begin. I've kickstarted every HBS game, but after this disaster, I don't see myself re-entering the fold. Disregarding some extremely unfortunate gameplay choices and unintuitive design, there's some fundamental foundational things that can't be fixed even with patches. They are definitely going to be needing a steady supply of patches as this thing is the most unstable game yet released by HBS. I'm also shocked at the abysmal performance. I tested this on three different systems using both nVidia and Radeon cards, and on Windows 7, 8, and 10.1. I would've tested Linunx, but they won't be releasing that for a couple months, and I'll try and update the review when they do. There actually seemed to be fewer crashes in Windows 7 and 10.1 when using the nVidia cards, though some strange problems did seem to popup here and there, particularly in multiplayer mode. (Which became extremely frustrating for everyone involved). Win 8 the game had serious problems when paired with the nVidia card, but the Radeon actually shined (if crap can shine). Performance was better than even the more powerful 1080 TI on the 10.1 sytem or the SLI GTX 980s on the Win 7 machine. (Both of which were suffering from what seemed shell shock). It was more the randomness and the fact that prior HBS games exhibited no similar problems that really threw me for a loop. After a while the graphics started to really become noticeably dated. It almost felt like I was back in the 90s playing Ghost Bear's legacy or Mechcommander.. and not in a good way. The sound is abjectly uninspiring and becomes annoying after you've heard it enough times, but it can be turned off. Another major disappointment was the "storyline". While HBS has never been accused of award-winning plots, long campaigns, proper character arcs or deep character development, this just seemed lazy and frankly offensive. Unfortunately, that leads to the multiplayer disaster. Only skirmish mode is playable, and that gets real old real fast (even for die-hard Batteltech fans, for casuals, forget it man). Adding in a Co-op mode, especially for the campaign could make things interesting (provided you haven't already gone throug the "story"). Of course that would be if the game actually performed well. While there were other problems with the game (biggest problem being that it feels more like work than fun after the initial rush) they really did an amazing job with the *very* informative GUI, props to them on that. This game manages to provide all the info you need when engaging the enemy in a way that makes sense and is a huge evolution from their previous entries, even their latest (Shadowrun Hong Kong). Even if all the bugs and performance issues are cleaned up (and seriously doubt they can be) and with the edition of a full-blown Co-op mode, this game is already yesterday's news. Just move along and save your money for a better game.

I was a backer for this since I am a huge fan of Battletech/MechWarrior since the 90s. What they failed to mention was the backer rewards would require log in to Paradox in order to receive them, which defeats the purpose of choosing GoG as my platform. This is an important thing to mention, specifically when you offer it on GoG DRM free during the kickstarter. The second thing upon my initial start of the game was the hideous load times even on a high-end PC. That, and the terrible performance in the game without the graphic options turned up. To say the game is poorly optimized is an understatement. Beyond the terrible performance and crashing the game is ok. The story is forgettable and doesn't really let you make any decisions that matter. It just takes you from mission to mission with way too much useless dialog in between. The gameplay itself is basically what I expected and is good, but not good enough to make up for the rest of the game's issues. What I really can't stand is the developer's need to inject their political and social views into a game. They need to stop using entertainment as a political podium. I guess it's the nature of the society we live in, but you will almost never have more than half of the fans accept your views. I don't care about your views and don't agree with them. All you do by this is turn people away from your product.

I get that this is Harebrained, who aren't famous for their dazzling graphics, but there's a limit to everything. The game looks and feels like "baby's first XCOM conversion", what with the graphics from early 2000s and RNG-driven combat. The story is bland and literally gets spoiled in the intro. The war's over, you won and installed Generic Princess on her throne for no reason other than "IT'S HER BIRTHRIGHT". Villains go from "relatable and possibly justified" to "mustache twirling evil cartoons" in record time. Add on top of that a godawful interface, sprinkle in some bugs (including a memory leak and something that reportedly causes GPUs to continually run at 100% causing physical damage), and you've got Battletech. And of course it wouldn't be quite complete without the Special SJW Sauce. Thank you Kiva Manginn; you could not find the time or resources to perform proper QA. But you did manage to virtue signal by including "pronoun choice" in character creation (for now it's just "they", but I'm sure "xe", "xhe", "ze" and "mechself" will be added later as DLC) and a "gender-nonbinary" trait on NPCs. Yes folks, now you can hire a mech pilot that looks like Yosemite Sam and sounds like a girl. Hooray! Virtue signal first, turn out quality product second (or never). What a disappointment.

I have to say it. gameplay is solid turn-based strategy, mechs are cool looking, origins are nice. even crew is not annoying. But, there's a slight whiff of rot. With three letters S, J and W. I, honestly, feel conflicted at this point. ON one hand, i like this game for gameplay and mechs, on the other - i don't want to support those people with stupid agenda of everything should be non-white, non-straight and non-male. While is still have time to refund, and this game has 4 weeks to make me reconsider. I, honestly, hope, that developers will remove sjw noncence out of this game