I love the style and vibes of this game, but I grew tired of it pretty quickly. I wanted a bit more from the combat and mercenary company management than it provides, unfortunately.
The format of managing a small mercenary company as they mech their way through proceduralized jobs across the galaxy is cool. There is something very appealing about managing your mechwarriors, upgrading your mechs, and influencing galactic politics.
The campaign narrative is good enough -- restore the leader of a faction who was unfairly betrayed and removed from her position. I didn't find it particularly compelling, but it works as a reason for a bunch of mercenaries to do a bunch of specific missions. I did like that these story missions provide unique environments and objectives for you to play. However, I think the narrative strength in this game lies more in the career mode, where your company is making a name for itself and playing in this political sandbox. The campaign mode is basically a waste -- I would have preferred what the extensive mods do, with these missions and others rolled into career mode as unique events you can pursue.
Battles are evocative and interesting at first. There are 5-6 different mission types that involve assaulting bases, assassinating important figures, escorting convoys, and straight-up battles. These seem like they should be a good opportunity for you to field different mechs and have specialized lances for specialized jobs, but they mostly just turn into straight up battles to the death because of how the combat system works.
The actual combat is... disappointing. Mechs have a ton of armor on each of their parts but once it is gone that part is easy to destroy if you can land some hits on it. Removing specific parts removes functionality (though the UI to glean this information is pretty bad) so destroying arms to get rid of armaments or legs to destabilize the mech can sometimes be a good strategy. Mechs are only rendered inoperative if their central torso is destroyed (effectively destroying the mech and killing the pilot) or if the pilot takes enough damage (head shots, some part destruction, and some specific types of critical hits) to go unconscious, letting you salvage more from the undestroyed mech.
Most attacks are arbitrarily distributed over a mechs parts, but facing matters so you can position yourself to protect certain parts or attack specific enemy parts, though the action economy (move -> attack -> turn over) doesn't let you have enough control over this. It feels like they just did what XCom and Shadowrun do without really thinking about the actual tactics involved in the game. At a baseline, you end up in a slug match as you try to get through the enemy's armor before they get through yours. Over the course of the battle you also generate two special abilities -- one lets you target specific parts with increased hit percentage (so you can actually do the part targeting strategy I mentioned earlier), the other lets you gain defensive bonuses and restore your mech's stability (so you have less chance of being arbitrarily destroyed or knocked down and then destroyed). These really just feel like a bandaid for how arbitrary and repetitive the baseline experience is.
Occasionally, because of crits or lucky hits, you (or the enemy) will land a large hit on a mech that instantly destroys a part or (if the part is the head or central torso) the entire mech. This extremely punishes low tonnage mechs, since they just have much less amor. Seemingly to combat this, moving generates "evasion" which is a stacking buff that seems to just drastically lower hit chance against that mech for one attack. In practice this leads to firing on targets you have no chance of hitting in order to remove their evasion so you can hit them with another, better attack.
This all may just be a fundamental part of the Battletech combat system, as it seems like heavier is always better in these games, but it feels especially bad in a system like this one where it feels like you should think carefully about the composition of your lance and what mechs you are using, but the reality is that heavier is just better in every situation. I wanted to make more interesting choices about how I build and use my mechs, but BattleTech doesn't really support that.
I don't really feel like the battles end up being different enough to keep my attention, and the mercenary company upgrading stuff seems like it is just aiming for "field 4 assault mechs and win every battle" which I don't really care to pursue. I may come back to this game and try out some of the more extreme mods, though, since I think the basic experience has a lot of potential, hamstrung by some balance and systemic issues.
The format of managing a small mercenary company as they mech their way through proceduralized jobs across the galaxy is cool. There is something very appealing about managing your mechwarriors, upgrading your mechs, and influencing galactic politics.
The campaign narrative is good enough -- restore the leader of a faction who was unfairly betrayed and removed from her position. I didn't find it particularly compelling, but it works as a reason for a bunch of mercenaries to do a bunch of specific missions. I did like that these story missions provide unique environments and objectives for you to play. However, I think the narrative strength in this game lies more in the career mode, where your company is making a name for itself and playing in this political sandbox. The campaign mode is basically a waste -- I would have preferred what the extensive mods do, with these missions and others rolled into career mode as unique events you can pursue.
Battles are evocative and interesting at first. There are 5-6 different mission types that involve assaulting bases, assassinating important figures, escorting convoys, and straight-up battles. These seem like they should be a good opportunity for you to field different mechs and have specialized lances for specialized jobs, but they mostly just turn into straight up battles to the death because of how the combat system works.
The actual combat is... disappointing. Mechs have a ton of armor on each of their parts but once it is gone that part is easy to destroy if you can land some hits on it. Removing specific parts removes functionality (though the UI to glean this information is pretty bad) so destroying arms to get rid of armaments or legs to destabilize the mech can sometimes be a good strategy. Mechs are only rendered inoperative if their central torso is destroyed (effectively destroying the mech and killing the pilot) or if the pilot takes enough damage (head shots, some part destruction, and some specific types of critical hits) to go unconscious, letting you salvage more from the undestroyed mech.
Most attacks are arbitrarily distributed over a mechs parts, but facing matters so you can position yourself to protect certain parts or attack specific enemy parts, though the action economy (move -> attack -> turn over) doesn't let you have enough control over this. It feels like they just did what XCom and Shadowrun do without really thinking about the actual tactics involved in the game. At a baseline, you end up in a slug match as you try to get through the enemy's armor before they get through yours. Over the course of the battle you also generate two special abilities -- one lets you target specific parts with increased hit percentage (so you can actually do the part targeting strategy I mentioned earlier), the other lets you gain defensive bonuses and restore your mech's stability (so you have less chance of being arbitrarily destroyed or knocked down and then destroyed). These really just feel like a bandaid for how arbitrary and repetitive the baseline experience is.
Occasionally, because of crits or lucky hits, you (or the enemy) will land a large hit on a mech that instantly destroys a part or (if the part is the head or central torso) the entire mech. This extremely punishes low tonnage mechs, since they just have much less amor. Seemingly to combat this, moving generates "evasion" which is a stacking buff that seems to just drastically lower hit chance against that mech for one attack. In practice this leads to firing on targets you have no chance of hitting in order to remove their evasion so you can hit them with another, better attack.
This all may just be a fundamental part of the Battletech combat system, as it seems like heavier is always better in these games, but it feels especially bad in a system like this one where it feels like you should think carefully about the composition of your lance and what mechs you are using, but the reality is that heavier is just better in every situation. I wanted to make more interesting choices about how I build and use my mechs, but BattleTech doesn't really support that.
I don't really feel like the battles end up being different enough to keep my attention, and the mercenary company upgrading stuff seems like it is just aiming for "field 4 assault mechs and win every battle" which I don't really care to pursue. I may come back to this game and try out some of the more extreme mods, though, since I think the basic experience has a lot of potential, hamstrung by some balance and systemic issues.