MechWarrior 5: Clans

I have no problem playing Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries. I figured this would be no problem. Unfortunately, between unbelievable lag, even in menus, and the Fatal Error issue, it is simply not possible to play this game.

Didn't even bother finishing the main storyline before quitting, and I made the mistake of purchasing all DLCs. Tonnage creep has always existed in Mechwarrior games, but in MW5 Clans, it's [i]really[/i] bad. Your friendly AI won't survive the later stages of the game without being in assault mechs, so the idea of trying to deploy a balanced star is a waste of time. You will face seemingly endless swarms of IS mechs until you are simply tired of shooting them. Every mission is virtually the same. Drop in, go to point, survive the waves. Rinse, repeat. AI doesn't use balanced builds, instead they tend to do best with low-heat, high-alpha weapons that operate in roughly the same range profile. So if you have an LRM boat, it needs to be [b]ALL LRMS[/b], not mainly LRMs and some backup weapons. Improving friendly AI skill levels doesn't seem to do anything noticeable, either. Gameplay issues aside, I though the storyline and voice acting was rather well done, minus a few pronunciation issues. PGI really surprised me here. That said, I cannot recommend the game based on good story and decent voice acting when the gameplay just doesn't do much for me.

9/10 Пройдено полностью основной сюжет за клан Ягуара и DLC только за Медведей, причём на экспертной сложности. Игра реально заставляет влюбиться в эту вселенную особенно после Наёмников. Самое крутое это политическая война между кланами. Есть варианты принятий решений: кого поддержать, кого предать, как лучше поступить, чтобы не потерять лицо и не подставить своих. Хочется несколько раз переигрывать моменты, что бы посмотреть, что будет по-другому. Для меня это прям вишенка на торте. Кат-сцены просто огонь. Красивые, кинематографичные, с такой атмосферой, что прям мурашки в некоторых моментах. А девушки-персонажи… ммм, наконец-то в мехварриоре сделали действительно красивых и харизматичных героинь, на которых приятно смотреть. Не просто «функциональные модели», а реально запоминающиеся лица и характеры. Спасибо разработчикам, очень порадовали 😊 Бои на эксперте это жёстко. Когда после нескольких попыток наконец заваливаешь тяжёлый Стар и чувствуешь, как твой мех еле стоит на ногах, кайф просто неописуемый. Если любите не только мясо в мехах, но и хорошую историю, интриги и красивую картинку берите не раздумывая. Я в восторге.

Really bad story, unlikable characters, zero strategic depth, boring customization

MechWarrior 5: Clans looks and sounds great, but once you get past the presentation the game has some serious problems that hold it back. Graphically it’s a solid update for the series and the sound design is excellent. On max settings it runs fine on my system (RTX 5060 Ti) and doesn’t even fully utilize the hardware. However, despite that headroom I still see occasional sluggishness and latency, suggesting the game isn’t well optimized. The biggest issue is the AI. Enemy AI is extremely basic and often feels unintelligent. Instead of improving the AI, the developers seem to compensate by throwing large numbers of enemies at you. Missions frequently turn into a slog where you’re simply fighting waves of opponents rather than engaging in tactical mech combat. It starts to feel more like a horde shooter than a BattleTech game. Your squadmates aren’t much better. The AI controlling your star is inconsistent and often frustrating. Commands don’t always work as expected, and your teammates frequently walk directly into your line of fire. They also miss shots constantly and struggle to finish enemies effectively. At times it feels like you’re fighting both the enemy and your own squad’s poor behavior. Another frustration is the lack of meaningful control over your pilots. You can’t really shape their skill progression or playstyle. Each pilot essentially comes pre-assigned with certain strengths (ECM, lasers, missiles, etc.), and you’re forced to work around that rather than build a squad the way you want. Mission design is also very linear compared to MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. Maps often funnel you through specific objectives with little freedom. Some mechanics feel unnecessarily restrictive as well. For example, scanning objectives prevent you from using weapons at the same time, which feels artificial and breaks immersion. Difficulty balancing is another problem. Even on normal difficulty the game often overwhelms you with enemies, making it difficult to keep squadmates alive. Since the game only saves between missions or after cutscenes, a failure can mean replaying long sections from the start, which becomes frustrating quickly. The story doesn’t help much either. The writing is weak and predictable, and the characters telegraph plot points well before they happen. The campaign becomes more about pushing through combat encounters than being invested in the narrative. There are also stability issues. I’ve experienced random crashes, and the limited save system makes those crashes even more frustrating when progress is lost. Finally, the DLC pricing feels steep at around $20 each, especially given the current state of the base game. In short: MechWarrior 5: Clans has strong visuals and sound, but weak AI, frustrating squad control, poor mission design, and technical issues make it hard to recommend. If you’re a die-hard BattleTech or MechWarrior fan, you might still want to try it on a deep sale (under $20). Otherwise, you’re probably better off sticking with MechWarrior Online or other entries in the franchise.

Poor mission design, poor weapon balance, dumb AI, horrible optimization, cringe-worthy dialogs. In other words, PGI are true to themselves. I'm going to finish the campaign (because of sunk cost fallacy more than anything else), uninstall the game and forget about it forever. P.S. After completing the game the only thing I can add is that mission design in this game is not just "poor", the right term is "disgustingly stupid".

Decent game bogged down by funky performance and absolutely embarrassing AI. FrameGen on & Medium settings all-round still leads to ~40fps consistently during combat, worsening the more 'Mechs there are in the fight - and there can be a LOT involved at once. Allied AI are borderline useless bar being meatshields to stand behind. Commands often do nothing, they'll refuse to move when you order them to, and they consistently don't even fire their weapons. When they DO fight, they'll never target exposed components and just splash damage wherever they feel like and take forever to actually finish an enemy off. You can kill 3 'Mechs solo by the time the four of them get one down to red. Enemy AI aren't much better, they don't seem to be doing much other than either spinning around splashing lasers everywhere, or just rushing face-first into your 'Mech with no regards to the 4+ 'Mechs in between you and them. I've had 3 of them in my face at one point while my Star just stood there doing nothing. There's a "tactical" map. Nice in theory, but largely useless given your Stars lack of willingness to follow orders. Options are pretty much limited to "move here," "attack this," or "use this repair bay." Story is alright. Plot twists are somewhat predictable and the voice acting balance has been poorly mixed, but the talents themselves aren't too bad. Cinematics are impressive, bar the fact everyone seems to have quivering chin syndrome. Music is on-par with MW5, make of that what you will. SFX for weapons was really good, however. Very punchy. Overall a poor MechWarrior experience. It lacks any tactical edge and feels more like a streamlined FPS. Load in, run in a straight line, cut down obscenely increasing waves of enemies as the story progresses and hope you don't get focused the entire time as there's no mid-mission checkpoints or saves. If the AI were half decent I'd give it a cautious recommend since big robot shooty is still fun, but you're a one man army fighting both the reds and your own teammates and it gets incredibly tedious and frustrating after a while. Maybe get it on a steep discount, but keep in mind it does NOT play like a MechWarrior game but just a generic shooter with a robot twist.

I love Mech Warrior games, but this one... it's just so on rails and restrictive in game play that I don't have any fun playing it. See a repair or resource on the map... sorry you can navigate to that yet because you will be out of bounds and we will fail the mission. Push forward in missions, sweeping everything in sight? Oh we ran out of map so now we will spawn the enemies out of bounds and tether you so a small corner that you can't evade in all while the enemy has free reign to attack you. Look at all these mechs you can choose from, not that one though that's DLC we show it to you so that you can be jealous. Want to be able to build mechs like you want? Sorry we have this weird complex omnipods and XP research that prevent you from making the mech the way you want. There are no salvage rewards like the good versions of the mech warrior games where a really lucky or skilled shot on a rare mech 'earned' you the right to pilot that mech. It's like they went out of their way to maximize all the worst aspects of mech warrior, minimized the map exploration or tactical aspects of the game then decided to strip all fun and glory of the old games. I'm glad I bought this on a sale.