Let's start with the obvious: this game was never good. Bugs and broken promises aside, its core gameplay is deficient at best and broken at worst. Yes, two years on CDPR managed to fix some issues (and create some new ones), so you COULD play it now, but would you want to? Yes, it looks good, but NPCs are still no sharper than a sack of wet mice. Cars and bikes still drive as if they are made from paper but somehow have the inertia and the turning radius of a small drunken elephant. Interface is still all over the place, I haven't seen anything this kludgey in years. And enemy scaling is handled through straight number bloat, like in oldtimey MMOs. Wander into a wrong area too early, and you get demolished by basic street thugs in tank tops - never mind that minutes ago you were battling armored cyborgs that looked like walking tanks and winning (but it was in a lower-level area). Itemization is likewise lifted straight from MMOs. I had a purple ("epic") level 10 gun in my inventory, and due to a bug, a high-level street thug NPC died and dropped his level 20 common ("gray") gun that looked exactly the same, but did over twice the DPS of my "epic" gun. And of course I couldn't equip it because I wasn't high enough level. Why? It looks exactly the same. It's not a "smart gun" with an AI in it that would refuse to work for me until I accumulated some street cred. It's just because my level wasn't high enough as if I was playing World of Warcraft ten years ago. CDPR dropped the ball with Cyberpunk 2077 early on and no amount of hype from Netflix anime can fix it.
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 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 usually have a hard-and-fast rule against preorders, but in this case it was Battletech and Harebrained Schemes. So I pledged. And waited. And hoped. Silly me. Battetech is not just bad, it is UNFORGIVABLY bad. The story is literally spoiled in the intro - the generic princess tells you, the generic merc, that yay, it's all over, the good guys won, and it's all because of you. Bye-bye tension and uncertainty; to compensate, you are treated to a Shamalyan-esque "WHAT A TWIST!" moment during the tutorial. The story isn't even yours; it's the story of the aforementioned princess, and you are an "NPC" in it, if you will. Her motivation never progresses beyond "THE THRONE IS MY BIRTHRIGHT!" and the villains quickly go from "morally ambiguous and somewhat relatable" to "cartoony and moustache-twirling". Then there's the overall quality (or lack thereof). Graphics ares straight out of early 2000s; animations are primitive and unconvincing and environment elements are often wildly out of scale (think giant bushes that reach the waist of your giant robots). Given the relatively complex system that Battletech is, the tutorial is unforgivably thin. and there's no in-game reference that would help you get a better grip on the gameplay. The interface, good grief, the interface; parts of it could serve as the illustration of what not to do when desining one. And finally, bugs. Including the one that causes some graphic cards to constantly run at 100% and overheat. You'd think HBS is cryptomining in the background. So how did it all go so wrong so fast? The answer lies with one Kiva Maginn, the design lead and an unrepentant SJW, who had the bandwidth to jam in a "pronoun selection" in the character creation and a "gender nonbinary" perk, but not to actually turn out a good product. "Let's all laugh at the industry that never learns anything, TEE HEE HEE". SJWs ruined Dragon Age, Tomb Raider and Mass Effect. Why would anyone expect Battletech to turn out any different?..
I usually have a hard-and-fast rule against preorders, but in this case it was Battletech and Harebrained Schemes. So I pledged. And waited. And hoped. Silly me. Battetech is not just bad, it is UNFORGIVABLY bad. The story is literally spoiled in the intro - the generic princess tells you, the generic merc, that yay, it's all over, the good guys won, and it's all because of you. Bye-bye tension and uncertainty; to compensate, you are treated to a Shamalyan-esque "WHAT A TWIST!" moment during the tutorial. The story isn't even yours; it's the story of the aforementioned princess, and you are an "NPC" in it, if you will. Her motivation never progresses beyond "THE THRONE IS MY BIRTHRIGHT!" and the villains quickly go from "morally ambiguous and somewhat relatable" to "cartoony and moustache-twirling". Then there's the overall quality (or lack thereof). Graphics ares straight out of early 2000s; animations are primitive and unconvincing and environment elements are often wildly out of scale (think giant bushes that reach the waist of your giant robots). Given the relatively complex system that Battletech is, the tutorial is unforgivably thin. and there's no in-game reference that would help you get a better grip on the gameplay. The interface, good grief, the interface; parts of it could serve as the illustration of what not to do when desining one. And finally, bugs. Including the one that causes some graphic cards to constantly run at 100% and overheat. You'd think HBS is cryptomining in the background. So how did it all go so wrong so fast? The answer lies with one Kiva Maginn, the design lead and an unrepentant SJW, who had the bandwidth to jam in a "pronoun selection" in the character creation and a "gender nonbinary" perk, but not to actually turn out a good product. "Let's all laugh at the industry that never learns anything, TEE HEE HEE". SJWs ruined Dragon Age, Tomb Raider and Mass Effect. Why would anyone expect Battletech to turn out any different?..
