First off, I haven't had that much fun in a long time! I am a fan of Battletech since Mechwarrior 2, I prefer the action games actually. My expectations were quite low when I picked up the Mercenary Collection on sale. Now I am over 50h in and I love the game so far. In my opinion the progression is quite balanced, you start off which a small ship and a few mechs, slowly improving your squad, ship and mechs. Between the missions you are busy managing and investing the money you just earned in new gear. But the tactical side is the most fun, you can try different approaches with different mechs, e.g. a fast scout mech with jump jets as a spotter finding targets for a long range rocket launcher mech outside of enemies attack radius, or use some heavy brawlers for close combat with heavy armor. Small mechs can move faster, which makes them hard to hit, this way they have even a chance against some heavy mechs, given they stay out of melee radius. There are many decision you have to make during combat, such as "should I eject my pilot in the heavy damaged mech or do I need him to support my lance, risking his death" or "should I attack the small mechs first, killing the quickly and deal with the heavy mechs later or is it better to neutralize the most deadly weapons of the heavy mechs first". Also, I like the story and the whole setting, but do not expect something out of the ordinary. There are some annoyances as well, which don't bother me at all, but just so you know: long loading times, some repetitive missions, no full voiceover, the camera placement is sometimes not optimal.
Runs and looks great on my 1080ti, around 30 hours and no crashes, only minor visual bugs. Interesting main story, a lot of side missions. The leveling system is well made, you don't need to decide what you want to be at the start, just by playing it you will upgrade the corresponding skills. The perks are balanced and meaningful. The reputation system mostly unlocks new missions, new cyber-implants and new stuff to buy. Crafting system is simple, but I like it. It is a story driven RPG in a Cyberpunk setting not GTA V (an action game), there are a lot of ways to solve a mission, I am playing a stealth netrunner with some combat skills. It is NOT a life simulator, the other cars and NPC are mostly decorations, which is fine for me. Just cruising through night city is a lot of fun. For me the game play of leveling up your reputation and earning money for better gear and implants is an addictive fun. At the beginning I was rushing through the story, which was not a great experience since you miss actually the mayor part of the game.
I really like this game, but be aware that this game is really a text adventure. If you don't like to read then this game is probably not for you. You will miss 90% of this game by skipping over the text. There are incredibly many possibilities to do (like in old text adventures) and how the plot develops. Also, the Mac version is really good, didn't run into any problems playing many hours.
I don't know about the PC version, but there are still many bugs on Mac and it crashes repeatedly. I am a bit tired of games released in a beta state at best. Hold off until it's patched.
