A breath of fresh air into stale waters of WH40K games. It's actually a good game. It's not without flaws, game balance is very much in favor of the player, you will be stomping the xenos very fast into the game, but it's FUN, it's atmospheric, cool, beautifull and shows promise, that WH40K can have a good game once in a while. :)
It's basically a simplified X-COM with WH40K flavour and shorter gameplay. But it's so cool!
You know the excessive number of Warhammer titles lately? With a lot of games that doesn't even try to be good? Well, this isn't one of them, Mechanicus can be put right there with Space Marine and Dawn of War.
It's basically XCOM in the WH40K universe. While you aren't fighting Necrons in turn based levels, you are upgrading your Adeptus Mechanicus inside you ship, installing cybernetic augments, upgrading skills and equiping them with armor pieces and various weapons, ranged and melee alike (seriously, there are a LOT of them).
The sound effects are perfect, they really put you inside the game; the "voice" acting couldn't be better, really, watch some of them on YouTube and you'll understand! And the soundtrack? By God, buy the Omnissiah Edition just because of it, it's full of gothic/industrial/gregorian goodness. They nailed the soundtrack with glorious success.
Heard about Warhammer for years, but never tried any since most are turn based games and I generally avoided such games like plague for some reason. However, I stumbled upon Mechanicus by pure chance here on GOG and trailer totally hyped me with its dark atmosphere. I'm happy to report this game totally changed my perception about turn based games. It's so incredibly fun and I just absolutely love fiddling with my Tech-Priests which gives this game some RPG feel which I do like. Hours just fly past as I'm preparing my holy specialists and moving them around and fighting xenos. Quite few upgrades and encounters were trial and error, but after few missions I got the hang of it. Things didn't work out as I planned quite often, but it's relatively forgiving in the beginning so it was fine. Only thing that's totally weird and I don't like it are the glyphs in some tombs which seem to be totally random thing and in most cases I got nerfed so I just avoid them entirely now. Devs said you can learn them over time, but same looking one gave me two entirely different outcomes so I'm just confused about them.
Graphics are pretty nice, but what really does it for me is the music and sound effects. Dark atmospheric music and echoing vocals with heavy use of bass makes everything feel so grandiose.
Anyway, enough of incoherent rambling, if you're a weirdo like me who avoided turn based games all this time, Mechanicus is a really good place to get hooked into turn based games in general and also interesting insight into Warhammer 40k lore. I love it so much I might give XCOM a try in the future. I have yet to play Mechanicus a lot more, but so far I'm totally hooked into it and it's just such awesome fun I can only recommend it for old or even for new players.
And since quoting Warhammer 40K seems to be popular among fans, there is one that stuck with me...
Sayings of Archmagos Corteko, Verse 58: "Prayer has power, but I cannot deny fire does, too."
Can't argue with that. :D
When the enemy seeks to break our spirit, meet his blasphemy with flame! -Aphorisms 82
In 41 millennium the humanity is surrounded only by horrifying enemies in an endless battle for survival. The Adeptus Mechanicus has a crucial part in this battle as keepers, worshipers and manufacturers of old human technology or at least of what remains of it. Therefore, the highest priority is to secure undiscovered technology (in archeological terms) for this organization.
Basically Mechanicus can be described as Xcom light with short expeditions instead of single maps. Some game mechanics are different and are quite innovative. For example at the start of a expedition the team needs to collect cognition points to be capable to use most of its weapons and tolls. Additionally, the Warhammer 40k story is in general very interesting with many books and this game tries at least to do it right, especially the language and dark humor that the tech priests are using is really cool. I think Warhammer fans will appreciate that. Another strong point is the excellent music that enhances the atmosphere of the game dramatically. The total play time on normal difficulty is 15-20 h providing a small challenge in the last quarter of the game.
In general, Mechanicus is a good game that does everything right without a larger budged. My only critic point would be the weak tutorial, but it should not be difficult to find out by yourself how the game really works. I give Mechanicus 4 stars because there is still some room for improvement in comparison to the Xcom series which gives more high quality playtime.
