Let's start by getting my scumminess out of the way: I'm glad HBS isn't going to make another BT game. For the same reason I hope they never touch my other favorite IP: Shadowrun. Much like they ruined Shadowrun by including tons of nonsensical gameplay choices that work in theory (real time stealth in a turn based game for example), they did a lot of the same to Battletech in the name of balance. That mech line whose entire purpose is to lock down mechs with flamers and machine guns? Well, it can't do that, flamers have 3 shots per map now. That heavy mech you're chasing? Yep, it runs just as fast as your lightest light mech does at full sprint, and their pilot can sprint AND shoot. Oh, a vehicle on one side of the map spotted you? Prepare to get 'sensor locked' by a commando pilot that won't even be able to reach you for 5 or 6 turns. Entire lines of the mechs included in the base game have no purpose other than to fuck you over if you choose a random career start. The store system makes no sense. The performance OF THE GAME ENGINE is ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS. I have like 5 mods installed just to play the game at an actual pace other than `go and have a smoke every time you hit enter`. AI processing? Animations? Random slowdowns for NO REASON? Yeah, they have multiple options to speed it all up, and none of them actually help beyond very specific slowdowns. You're still hitting them every. Single. Unit. You like your camera getting stolen? It's gonna get stolen, despite you turning off the options for that. It's bad. I want to like it. I came back to it after letting the mod community percolate for a few years, and it's still awful. It's just a sad entry in the battletech lineup that could've been way better if the development team hadn't decided to rebalance a game that's already had 30+ years of balancing done to it (you boring clan gene-perverts aside), and, really, the only thing this iteration manages to do well is leak memory everywhere.
Soundtrack being as annoying as it is should've been my first indication with this game. The characters all mostly play the same with a few exceptions granted via their character talents. The difficulty ramp is sudden and intense; if your character isn't built out before the first boss, you're basically screwed on the floors after that. Thrown weapon durability is right up there in terms of annoyance with literally any other game with weapon durability I've ever played, and having enemies that hurt you when you do damage to them, with no way to _mitigate_ that damage, is literally pants on head stupid. Gave it a shot after seeing all the good reviews everywhere, they lied. Avoid it. Clumsy interface, annoying music, samey characters, annoying as fuck enemies. On the upside, and why I'm bothering to review it at all: some of the dungeon rooms with puzzles/clever traps are actually clever. Kudos for that and the actually cool curse/inscrpition/etc system. There's a bunch of cool ideas buried in this trash heap, but unfortunately I can't recommend it. Might be worth it to pick it up on phone; maybe the crapshot UI is better there, I don't know.
