MechWarrior 5: Clans

Great game; an improvement on MW5 mercs which ended up incorporating many of the popular mods. More story-driven, less open-ended. A different way of modding and repairing mechs which I found enjoyable. Co-op was great and I was able to do almost everything player 1 could do except for choosing and starting the mission. I'm looking forward to playing the expansions.

Some minor glitches especially with getting dropped while deploying but is excellent to play.

The game might be growing on me. Bad stuff first, I still hate the characters. Especially the protagonist and main characters. The story is ruined by said characters. The writing is atrocious. I will not forgive any aspect of the writing here, everyone involved needs immediate unemployment. Holy god it's bad. 5 band kids somehow gained control of 100 ton war machines and are talking like the social reject club you remember from high school. Also reeks of consultancy firm. Objectively trash, do not buy this for any sort of story. Optimization is a mess, as expected of UE5. I did get it to run well and not look extremely blurry, but sharpness on max and upscaling on native is definitely necessary to see in this game. Also to me, and I fully accept I'm horrible at this game and all games in general, it's extremely difficult on normal mode. Enemies just keep coming, there's no checkpoints, and I'm probably doing something wrong. It takes me about 5 attempts for every mission. Setting a checkpoint at least before the final rush of enemies would have helped a lot, because I'm seriously getting fed up with replaying the start of these missions. But on the upsides, the environments are beautiful and have a vibe to them, the first city I entered took me back to what my child brain interpreted MechAssault looked like, and that was just a wonderful moment. The environments are varied and look great. I noticed some cool death animations, I also have grown to like the explosions and laser effects even when they're over-the-top. It makes it harder to see, but also, it just looks cool. I imagine it would be hard to see when two 65 ton robots are firing concentrated light at eachother. The game being extremely difficult is also a plus. It's not that long, so it pads out the playtime, but it also forces you to learn the game. It's not something you can just W+M1 spam, you have to prevent taking fire as much as possible. I even saw an enemy mech trying to hide from me, using whatever building it could as cover, and moving to a new one once I shot through it. So it's not all close range slugging, altough I'd still prefer if the enemies went for complete bumrushes a bit less frequently. Often times I find myself staring down 5-10 heavy mechs at point blank range while I'm backed into a corner. It's also entirely different from Mercs, despite also being "Mechwarrior 5", it's an entirely different engine and style of game, it looks and vibes way different too. I appreciate that, originality is rare today, and effort even more so. This has both. The Mechlab is also great, unlike the Mercs, Clans have the means to completely redesign and reconfigure their mechs, and this goes very in depth. It's great, I enjoy that aspect bigly. Maybe the game isn't so bad after all. I am starting to get it now.

On the easiest setting, I am getting dropped against two-three times my weight and damage, and its always 6 waves. I run out of ammo and get merc'd. Maybe I just really suck at this game, but the waves and waves of enemies on every mission seems excessive. Eventually I get overwhelmed and quit trying.

Too much variance in difficulty curve. Dont want ANY game where the entire map lasts an hour.

Schöne kompakte Story zum Einstieg in die Clans, dazu Basteln und Anpassen um den besten Mech durch ein Level zu peitschen. Storytechnisch wäre mehr möglich gewesen - schlägt aber das Kino immer noch um Lichtjahre (auch im acting). Bin gespannt wie's weitergeht. Schwierigkeitsgrade funktionieren, wenn auch die Waffen etwas imbalanced sind (Laser einfach OP).

Mech piloting has become very arcady, with little to no sense of weight on mechs. It feels more like piloting a humanoid than a mech.

I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed Mechwarrior 3 back in the day.