MechWarrior 5: Clans

In short: This game is fantastic now. On launch it was content-light and buggy, now it is MUCH better in every respect. I recommend it. If MW5: Mercenaries didn't exist as a comparison (which remains the better game in many ways), Clans would have had a much better reception. :: In Long :: So I hesitated buying this game for years, due to poor reception and some slightly odd marketing decisions. While I am glad I waited to buy at a lower price, the game itself is honestly MUCH better than I thought. It is a nice complement to MW5's denser 'management' style gameplay with profit, loss, risk and reward. Clans by contrast is a more traditional action experience with 'levelling up' and readily available mechs and weapons, essentially a candy-box of destruction and honestly, it's great. :: Graphics :: Performance can be an issue with this game: you need something with some decent poke and you need to be using a relatively recent chipset, no potato PCs, and MW5 will run FAR better on low-end hardware like the Steam Deck or other integrated graphics chips so again, that game takes the win. You CAN play this on Steam Deck if you can stand 20FPS, 40FPS with Frame Gen. On the other hand.... wow this game is beautiful. The environments are lush and bright thanks to good utilisation of Unreal's lighting engine, the mechs are beautfully rendered and weapon effects are fantastic. If you have the spec to support all of the eye candy, it is a prettier and more immersive experience than MW5's engine which being older is 'blockier' and feels more artificial. :: Story :: The Clans are hilarious. Genuinely an accurate portrayal of how pig-headed, arrogant and ultimately self-destructive Clan philosophy is, and I absolutely love that they pulled no punches and didn't try to cast Smoke Jaguar as 'misunderstood' anti-heroes. They're not. They're sociopathic invaders at the head of an army of child soldiers, and as one of those child soldiers your PC has no idea how screwed up their society is. As long as you realise you are NOT the good guys (which if you don't know the Battletech universe, you might not), this is basically the TIE Fighter to MW5's X-Wing. :: Bugs :: Yeah. This is where the developers need to work. There are a LOT of 'Fatal Errors' in this game, and while most can be solved by specific settings, the devs need to make those settings either mandatory or at the very least default for all new installs. I should not need to read a Discord pin to get my game working. I realise this is probably an Unreal Engine issue that the devs can't solve directly, but still: this needs to be patched and communicated to players IN GAME. All in all: with this plus MW5 both actively developed and receiving DLC, we are completely spoiled for quality MechWarrior games. Pick this up and enjoy thoroughly, just make sure you solve any graphical settings issues BEFORE your return window expires.

It's OK I spose, fairly faithful to the TTRPG, but I found the characters annoying and the story weak. I played a bit, but it seems that there's only a few good mechs and builds in the game i.e. laser vomit, your star mates AI is woeful and there doesn't seem to be a good way to fix it without micro-managing them all. Maybe if you have 4 mates who'll play it with you it's worth it but I'm going back to Battletech.

Schwierige Sache, aber alles in allem geht der Daumen nach unten. Warum? Naja, MW5: Clans ist einfach ein durchschnittliches Spiel, dass mehr sein will und mehr sein könnte. Und so ist etwas dabei herausgekommen, dass nicht Fisch und nicht Fleisch ist. Pro: + Die Mechkämpfe sind recht spaßig und sehen gut aus. + Die Umgebungen sind vielfältig. + Endlich mal ein Battletech-Spiel, bei dem man nicht als Söldner unterwegs ist und viel zu viel grinden muss. + Zumindest bei mir keine Performance-Probleme, aber ich hab auch einen ganz potenten Rechner. Con: - Endlich ein Battletech-Spiel, bei dem man nicht als Söldner unterwegs ist ... und trotzdem muss man Creds und Loot sammeln, Mechs, Waffen und Zubehör kaufen, Techs engagieren und Forschung betreiben. - Man spielt einen Star Commander, da hat man nichts am Kommando-Tisch neben dem Galaxy Commander verloren und darf sich bestimmt nicht aussuchen, was man denn gerne als nächstes machen möchte. - Warum muss ich nicht mit NPC-Commandern darum feilschen, mit wie viel Tonnage ich in einen Kampf gehe? - Die Charakterentwicklung ist peng. Drei Perks hat jeder der fünf Charaktere und dann hat jeder noch drei individuelle Perks. Die kann man sich aber weder aussuchen, noch passen sie des öfteren zu den Mech-Konfigurationen, die man als erstes freischaltet. - Auch wenn die Gefechte recht spaßig sind, lassen sie jegliches Battletech-Feeling vermissen. Gegner tauchen in Heerscharen auf, der Erscheinen oft aus dem Nichts anhand von Wegmarken gescripted scheint. Pro Planet mehr als 100 Gegner-Mechs am äußersten Rand der Inneren Spähre ... - Taktischer Tiefgang? Gegnerische Stellungen mit überlegenen Sensoren erkunden? Sich einen Plan zurechtlegen und den Gegner in die Zange nehmen? Völlige Fehlanzeige. Man kann zwar seinen Kameraden Befehle erteilen und hat sogar eine taktische Karte, aber meistens sind die Einsatzgebiete eh zu eng und wenn nicht, ist die KI zu dumm für alles. Wenn man seinen Untergebenen befehlen würde, ins Cockpit zu scheißen, würde selbst das daneben gehen. - Wechselnder Schwierigkeitsgrad, stellenweise sind Missionen schon auf normalem Schwierigkeitsgrad kaum zu schaffen. Was meistens auch ein KI-Problem ist. - Der Gegner ist genauso blöd, er kommt gerne in mundgerechten Häppchen angerannt, gerne mit ner Lanze leichter Mechs im Sturm auf den mittelschweren Stern. Und Rückzug ist schon mal gar keine Option. - Die Story, die sich in den Trailern andeutet, kommt zumindest soweit ich bisher gespielt habe, nicht wirklich in Gang und wird in ziemlich mittelmäßigen Zwischensequenzen präsentiert. Die Sprecher sind ok, die Untertitel allerdings teils grottenschlechte Übersetzungen. Da war jemand am Werk, der von Battletech aber mal so gar keine Ahnung hat. Und wenn man dann Funksprüche in der Hitze des Gefechts um die Ohren gehauen bekommt, dann ignoriert man sie halt. - Die Entwickler sollten dringend ne Runde Clair Obsur spielen, damit sie lernen, wie man eine Gruppe von Chars in Zwischensequenzen stimmungsvoll präsentiert. Fazit: Sale als Ballerspiel für Zwischendurch - ok. Vollpreistitel als storygetriebenes Battletech-Spiel? Neverever.

It's fun. No complaints. I'm 59 yrs old, I remember playing games on a Atari 2600. Its a good game,

This game is a great companion to MW5 Mercs, and the presentation of the story in a more ‘wing commander’ style is a fun change of pace. The graphics are a step up from Mercs, the general combat is a good time, Pirhana has done well with these mechanics for years. Does this have the depth and long term appeal of Mercs…no. But it is a fun BT Clan Mech experience, and this is coming from a fan of the BT since the 80’s. The ghost bear dlc was a good time and I won’t hesitate to grab Wolves of Tukayyid upon release.

It's really hard to recommend or outright warn people off from this game. It does a LOT right compared to MW5M, but it also screws up in several ways that is critical for linear gameplay. Pros: - Combat is reasonably tough and it feels better more reasonably polished compared to prior titles. - More options to rearm and repair armor/hack turrets/etc does add a tactical component to longer missions/horde modes. Mehs: - Mech customization options feel better, even being able to modify the engines on certain mechs. BUT they still take the lazy road with 'research' percentage modifiers which feels dumb. I want the full tactical barbie feel to modifying a mech's guts to suit ones playstyle. Roguetech level might be beyond the technical skills of the guys at Piranha, but ffs, let us tinker! - The AI isn't 'as' dumb compared to MW5M, but we still need more options on how to tell friendly AI to behave. Can we not tell friendly AI what targets to prioritize and automatically engage? Or ranged dealers to hang further back off the Star? Also make it easier to have AI go hack the turrets or rearm crates in horde mode! Cons: - The story premise is great and there's a lot to work with. But the feel and tone is so far off. I don't blame Jayden or his star for being a bit immature or some of the drama being present, that I think is supposedly lore accurate with freshly graduated troops. But the casting, writing, and design of much of the other leadership feels really freaking off and artificial and abruptly contemporary at times. Like it wouldn't break tone if they started discussing feedback sessions, or a challenge results in a facilitated conflict-resolution framework. Yes, I'm saying the leadership feels comparable to Karens/Kevins in the HR department, not a secular military monastic order. The dissonance is so severe I'd rather there be no cutscenes. - Performance feels grossly unoptimized. It's pretty, but holy crap compared to MW5M this game eats resources. - And if they were going for the linear route, I think the game would have benefited more by giving players more engagement with the strategy and political aspects of the invasion. Or maybe how the inner sphere reacted to said invasion. - Some enemies are just too tanky and kill the fun of the horde mode. Those highly armored VTOLs suck and just are not fun. So yeah, I'm on the fence, and as much as I'd love a 'so-so' option, I'll just say 'no unless it's grossly on sale'.

I see a lot of people complaining about the difficulty here and it ... is sad to see. Are people not interested in engaging with gameplay mechanics anymore? Trying to figure out how to overcome a challenge? Everything where they lose once seems to be deemed "impossible". And every time I try these supposedly hard games I am just left wondering what everybody complains about so much. True: Mechwarrior 5 Clans is - on normal difficulty - not an easy game. But it is far away from being too hard. You just need to use the mechanics the game gives you. I had missions I only accomplished on my third try. But they aren't too long to begin with. And the fault for losing them was my own. Urban area? My team of long range Shadow Cats got shredded to bits. But I had resources piled up I didn't use up until that point. And maybe Urban areas call for a different approach. The moment I switched to a close range Star with Lasers and Autocannons instead of Gauss Cannons it was I who shredded the enemies. If you use the Mechbay even a little, optimize your mechs and skill your pilots, it is a fun and challenging game. The story is fun and interesting and the prerendered cutscenes very well executed. It is not flawless of course. In the ingame cutscenes for example appear to be very rough. And especially the pacing in the beginning was too fast. It is hard to care for a character whose only purpose is to set his death flags for 20 seconds before he dies. The gameplay also needs more polishing. Styropor mechs which do barrel rolls when they die aren't exactly immersive. Neither are the apparently 15 fps explosions and flames. And the gameplay itself really revolves around your star shooting away at hordes of enemy mechs. But maybe that's fitting for the clan invasion. I just always think that there should be a bit more weight behind these mech battles. It is definitely more engaging than MW5 Mercenaries, which I stopped playing after the tutorial and which definitely needs mods to be a good game. If you mod it though, it is definitely the better game. Vanilla Clans on the other hand is already fun enough and I hope modders can improve on that further with the mod tools which were released mid 2025. In general: You won't get a masterpiece here. But you get a fun story focused MechWarrior game. People looking for a sandbox experience on the other hand should opt for Mercenaries.