After how much I loved MechCommander, and my general love of turn based games, I was surprised by how disappointed I was with BattleTech.

It's a game with some shockingly bad flaws. It doesn't bother to tell you how to play the game until the second mission. I could only get to that after going off and watching a 30 minute YT tutorial on the game's systems and UI in order to beat the first mission. It's kind of ridiculous really.

There are some pretty poorly designed/programmed mission too. There are loads of instances where I've had enemy "reinforcements" show up at the same time, if not before, the main batch of enemies. Once, there was even an animation of a dropship delivering the reinforcement lance of Mechs that played after I'd already destroyed 3/4 of them. Absolutely mad.

The core systems and gameplay are fine but I found them rather tedious after a while, especially combined with the samey missions. The financial roleplaying elements are a bit of a drag more than anything, and I ended up modding the game to minimise them, especially the time taken to re-equip stored mechs.

I'm not sure how far into the campaign I got percentage-wise, but I hit an absolutely insane difficulty spike in the Liberate: Smithon mission, where your four mechs are dropped on the south edge of a turret heavy base and tasked with destroying 8 enemy mechs and also some supply trucks if you want/can. There are ammo dumps around the base which you can destroy, but you're incentivised not to. The trucks are almost impossible to take out before they escape, certainly without having a light, fast mech then stuck in the line of fire of multiple turrets and mechs. You can neutralise the turrets, but taking out the enemy mechs was an absolute slog and even blowing the ammo dumps didn't help. I once blew up an ammo dump and the mech standing with its back right next to the explosion was barely scratched. The entire mission was a slog that took me several attempts across an entire weekend to get through. I was ready to just bail on that, but succeeded on my last attempt. But since that mission, my interest has waned regardless. The charm has gone.

There's this phrase eternally uttered among fans of tabletop game that goes something like...

"I wish there was a faithful videogame adaptation of my favourite tabletop game".

It's a nice sentiment, but I can tell you from experience that most people don't actually want that. Warhammer videogame fans, for instance, absolutely don't want to play a game where their carefully assembled Thousand Sons army is torn apart limb from limb by a guy who's been playing Necron since Pariahs were still a thing. D&D fans don't want a game where you don't get to do anything because someone is minmaxing to the point of taking 6 or so actions per run. For a more generalized statement: People clamour for a vague idea of 'faithful videogame adaptation' and never once consider what it looks like, or that the mere act of being faithful leads to what many people/armchair game devs decry as 'bad game design'.

I'm built different though, I actually have wanted a faithful Battletech game for the longest time, warts and all.

Yes, that means I wanted some mechs to be objectively terrible and borderline unusable. Yes, that means I wanted clan tech to shift the power curve unreasonably far. Yes, I wanted to overheat from using my weapons once and then get headbutted to death by a cocky Rifleman pilot. Yes, I wanted to lose mechs to a lucky AC/20 shot from across the map that had about 20% chance to hit. So on, so forth. I actively yearned for a game that was as unpleasant to play as Succession War-era Battletech is on tabletop. I have Mechwarrior 5 if I want one of those newfangled 'fair and balanced videogames' the youth are obsessed with.

HBS Battletech, referred to as such to differentiate it from its parent IP, is the game I've always wanted.

On the surface, HBS Battletech is yet another XCOM clone. Turn based tactics with battles that're defined by positioning, missing 95% chance to hit shots, and reacting to whatever may lurk off screen. Battles that may have negative consequences even if you win due to your deployed units having upkeep costs, repair costs, and other traits that spill out onto your campaign map gameplay.

Where HBS Battletech differs from its ilk, however, is in the customization. Well, 'customization' isn't quite the right word. Here, you're essentially playing the role of an engineer out to fine tune your various Mechs into killing machines that can complete objectives without overheating from a single missile volley, and have enough money to repeatedly deliver those missile volleys without hearing the dreaded click of empty tubes.
Each weapon you can bolt onto a mech generates heat, needs ammo, and has a specific range its most effective at. Each mech you can field has its own varied hardpoints (weapon slots), engine, heat capacity, armor and other endless stats to consider. Plus there are free slots to mount ammo bins, extra heatsinks, additional armor, mods, etc etc.
On top of this, mechs have a tonnage limit. Slap on all you want, but putting 51 tons on that 50 tonner isn't ever going to fly.
On top of THAT, each individual mech part has health, different armor depending on angle of attack, and items are lost for good if a limb is destroyed.

The core of HBS Battletech, arguably more than the actual field gameplay, is a precarious balancing act. Weapons need ammo and heatsinks, but more armor might be the difference between a part being damaged and a part being lost. More weapons can help you kill faster, sure, but mounting all that ammo and those accuracy mods means the repair costs will soar into the stratosphere if the limb they're mounted on explodes. It's one thing to say "I will strap on as many autocannons as possible and go crazy", but what if they explode, player? Now you're down several strong weapons, their ammo, and the money you need to shell out to repair them.

HBS Battletech is a difficult game, there's no sugarcoating it. Oftentimes when people make a statement along these lines, it's followed up by: "It's difficult, but fair! I promise!".

I am a merchant of words, however, and lies are not among my wares. HBS Battletech is bullshit. It is a game where a 100-ton Assault mech clad in enough armor to withstand the heat death of the universe can fall to a few successive headshots from a trashcan with a rifle mounted on it. It is a game where 99% chance to hit should not be read as such, for it is best read as 1% chance to miss. It is a game where you will fine-tune a mech, customize it, give a name like "Anklebiter" and then watch as a tin can with two 1960s machine guns attached to its waist jumps off the top rope and crushes it into paste.

Make no mistake, though. This is not a nail-pulling kusoge that will fight you at every turn, no. Much like learning the actual Battletech, HBS Battletech is a game of risk mitigation. Your early days will suck: You'll teeter closer to debt in game than you are in real life, your mechs will come home missing entire limbs, and you'll sometimes lose more than you gain.
But every failure is a learning experience. A light mech jumping onto your heavy hitter and tearing off an arm is a reminder that it's always worth the action points to remove small threats. Your first death to overheating will remind you that water and rivers are lifesavers. Your first time getting sniped will make you consider the value of Long Range Missile pods. A 'slow' mech getting behind you and blasting your Warhammer to bits from the rear will serve as punishment for not watching your positions.

The learning curve is vertical, but it's still surmountable. Unless one dips into one of the three (excellent) modpacks, it's actually exceedingly rare for a mission to be unwinnable. There's always cover to offset hit chances, water to disperse heat, vantage points for extra accuracy, or something. And you, as a player, will naturally grow and learn the rules of engagement. XCOM-like cluster formations will (hopefully) give way to planned flanking moves, clever use of jumpjets, calculated overheats and other bolder tactics. Remember: Rules are meant to be learned first, broken second. I've always felt tactical RPGs start off encouraging strategy only to discourage it in favour of throwing your best at an enemy. HBS Battletech is consistent, and always rewards good strategy over all else - RNG willing, of course.

Likewise, the game does get easier once you know the arsenal on display here. Being a game centered around the 3010-3040 period of Battletech, the weapon and gear variety is low but in the context of a videogame this means there's nothing truly useless, and every tool is a solution to a problem yet to be unmasked. Even something as simply as the aforementioned shitty 1960s machineguns can turn the tide if you have the tonnage to spare, to say nothing of later acquisitions like particle cannons and targeting modules.

As opposed to many of its peers, much of the difficulty is easier to stomach because battles are far less rapid. This is not XCOM 2 with its rapid fire series of traded instant kills, nor is it Rogue Trader with its 10 actions per character turn, and it is not Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters with its 'being terrible'.
Fights in Battletech are slugfests. Simply 'depleting health' is out of the question, for the game is a race to dissasemble a mech by either destroying its ability to fight, destroying the engine or destroying the pilot. Losing an arm sucks, but a mech that can still shoot is a mech that can still kill. Damaged is different from Dead, after all, and torso-mounted weapons are always a good investment as they're usually the last to go.

That all said, there's a reason I docked half a star: Much like vanilla Mechwarrior 5, a lot of vital information about a mech (free tonnage, engine type, engine heatsinks, etc etc) is withheld from the player. It's one thing to say that the player will come into possession of better Mechs, aye, but it's often hard to know what's good just from looking at the store.
Take the Cicada, for instance. It's a surprisingly fast Medium mech that mounts some okay weaponry, so you might think "Wow! I'll take that as an armoured scout!" Except... The Cicada is overengined - meaning it mounts an engine far too large for its chassis - and thus has terrible free tonnage. Plus, for a Medium mech, its armor is atrocious and for its weight class the weaponry is appalling. These traits are all difficult to discern from looking at it in the store/salvage assembly, and indeed there are more than a few mechs that suffer from the same problems. Early in a campaign/career, these aren't easy to mitigate and Blake help anyone who buys a Charger.

Ultimately, despite the constant XCOM comparisons, I'd say that HBS Battletech has more in common with FTL: Faster than Light, much like its peer WH40k: Mechanicus. All three are games which are more about parts than any collective whole, heavily defined by calculated risks and how the player reacts to damage/losses that they know are inevitable. Games where the hits will come, but can be endured with varying degrees of competence. Where success is never guaranteed, but always possible.

The presentation is also deserving of glowing praise. There's a story, and while it's hardly a modern epic, it perfectly captures the feeling of frontier life in the Battletech universe complete with that mix of mechanized warfare and space western that defines pre-Clan Battletech. All of the VAs are relative unknowns, but their performances are stellar and contribute well to the atmosphere. As usual for Battletech media, the art direction is out of this world and I have great love for the battle maps too, for they manage to blend gameplay-first practicality with gorgeous mood lighting and respect for the source material. Nothing in this game is as high in fidelity as Mechwarrior 5 - though as a Paradox published game, it's sure priced as if it were >.> - but everything fits so wonderfully.

And the audio, oh the audio my beloved. Lasers purr with a satisfying hum as they miss 98% shots on a mile-wide target, autocannons have a hefty boom on launch, missile pods sound like a dream when they go off and collide with a wall, and every mech stomps and whirrs as it moves. Couple that with an amazingly atmospheric soundtrack, great ambience and the pilots calling out every other action, and each battle is a soundscape like no other.

If you want my advice, though? Beat the story once, and then pick up one of the three modpack: Roguetech, Battletech Advanced 3062 or Battletech Extended, listed in order from hardest to easiest. I have a personal preference for BTA 3062, as there's the option to dump some of the excessive stuff and just get more from the game. The better mechlab, bigger starmap and Clan tech really do augment the experience.

Buy it via the grey market, though, because Paradox's bullshit claimed another studio.