[h1]I'm horribly conflicted about recommending this game, let me paint you a picture.[/h1]
So here I am getting better from a back injury and staring at my backlog. I am feeling the "make your mercenary outfit stronger" itch but really don't want to jump into another run of Battle Brothers and Menace is a ways off from reaching 1.0. I also just finished Xenonauts 2 a few months back when it released and the new Star Wars X-Com isn't out yet.
I'm faced with either checking out Battletech's Rogue Tech mod or boot up my copy of Mechwarrior 5 with all the dlc for the first time, yes I'm like that.
And boot Mechwarrior 5 I did. Entirely vanilla. Thought I'd beat the main camapaign and then put some mods on this bad boy...
[b]I didn't last 4 hours without mods.[/b]
[h2]What is Mechwarrior 5 about?[/h2]
The entire series comes from a long running tabletop wargame where people in the future are in constant war and pilot ridiculous machines into battle. Sound familliar? well too bad because this is a vehicle combat franchise most well known for its big stompy mechs not it's big stompy boys in blue.
The gist of a campaign is usually that you're some sort of mercenary captain that has a squad of mech pilots working under you and you are usually tasked with assisting one of the ruling governments fight and/or destroy something on some planet.
Mechwarrior 5 adds a revenge story to the formula but continues this trend. You fly around the vast galaxy, take on contracts for a certain group, negotiate your pay, drop down and get to work. After you're done you get to salvage components and parts to customise or rebuild mechs and make your mercenary outfit stronger, which in turn increases your upkeep but also nets you better pay since you'll get access to harder contracts.
There's management in terms of pilots who all have their individual skills, your mechs, their loadouts, some time management as some missions have multiple parts and sending mechs for repairs will make them inoperable for a few days. All fits the bill for a fun time if you like these sorts of progressions.
Mechwarrior 5 even adds a bit of a mechanic where your weapons have tiers. A tier 0 AutoCannon/10 is quite a bit worse than a tier 5 AC/10. Guaranteeing that even if you're lucky enough to slavage some late game machine it'll be limited by what equipment you have available.
The mechs in this world all have essentially a nuclear reactor at their core and overheating a mech will prompt it to shut down. So you can't just slap all the big guns and expect your walking tank to fire without cooking its internals.
Last but not least. Mechwarrior has location damage. Hit a spot on a mech often enough and its armor will tear off, subsequent damage will damage the internal components. This can set off ammunition, destroy weaponry and heat sinks among other things.
[h3]Why am I so conflicted then?[/h3]
There are a number of things that I figured the devs would've changed by now:
For one the UI and fonts used seem to all be the stock Unreal Engine 4 ones, anyone who dabbled in game dev would likely know what I mean. It makes the game look cheap and unappealing. Even when you shut down your mech, the shutdown sequence graphics seems like it kept its Alpha placeholder.
In the vanilla game, the mech customisation feels like it's missing a bunch of stuff. I don't know where the components are meant to go and for the short time I played without mods it seemed like you could just pack anything into every available slot. This makes mech variants within the same family of vehicles completely redundant. What's the difference in running a Centurion CN9-A versus a CN9-AL? Don't know. In other games of the series the A packs a AC/10, Long Range Missiles 10 and two Medium Lasers, the AL switches the AC/10 and its ammunition for a Large Laser and more heat sinks to better bear the extra heat generation. Here it's just the base loadout it seems.
And my biggest issue was how dumb the AI is. I was fighting three light mechs when my allied pilots just decided to stand there. It's early game so everyone's running lights and mediums and you'd expect these classes to be running around constantly, nope AI just switched off. Until I gave them the attack order and they hyperfocus the one target.
[h3]But all's good right? you have mods to fix these issues right?[/h3]
Here's my modlist:
Yet Another Mechlab, TTRulez_AImod, VonBiomes and Mod Options.
Mod Options is required to run other mods and adds customizable parameters to the mods such as how much you're paid and difficulty etc.
VonBiomes adds missions and alternative biomes to the game, also seems to make weather a bit more of a thing making better use of the various termal, x-ray and night vision modes. Also adds headlights in case stuff is too dark at night.
Yet Another Mechlab is the big one that adds more stuff accross the board. the Mechlab now is way more readable and mech chassis have specific hardpoints. You need to salvage enough parts of a mech to be able to build it, you can change the mech's engines and adds a host of other stuff such as ferro fibrous wich is a modification that lightens armor, better sensors, just better mech customization across the board and a much deeper experience building your crew.
Lastly TTRulez_Aimod. This should've been the one, as said on the tin improves AI and adds roles to chassis so your squadmates act according to their loadout.
Will you believe me when I say that my squadmates not only still require me to designate which target to focus on before they wake up and start doing anything but they will actively ignore enemies.
This would be fine if you're fighting a few enemies every mission, but I'm at the point where the enemy garrison is 4 mech strong PER OBJECTIVE SITE with the added map patrols and reinforcements. Sure, the enemy AI is dumb as bricks too, but the onslaught of enemies eventually starts wearing your team down. It's tiring, leaving every mission with a good few components lost. Not only do I need to have substitutes for the repairs, the repairs start completely eating up my money.
I came out of an engagement with my Centurion CN9-A losing its autocannon arm and enough damage to the engine that I need to replace it entirely, my CN9-AL had only armor damage, my Kintaro KTO-19 had both its arms ripped off, the right side torso gone and enough center torso damage to destroy it's Tier 4 Short range missile-6 which I won't be able to replace any time soon and my modified Warhammer WHM-6R with barely a scratch.
What happened was that I had set the WHM-6R on the sniper role in the mechlab so he hangs back and engage the least possible. During the engagements i noticed that my mechs, again woud have issues working autonomously. if I didn't designate targets they'd often stick together and stare at each other with clear line of sight to enemy targets, and the moment I designated a target I saw my KTO-19 rush an enemy medium while they had two light mechs wailing at them from behind, complete loss of any notion of preservation.
The game went from feeling inconsequential to being too punishing.
And these are the bare minimum mods. The game already has a repetition problem where you do a lot of the same so sessions are best kept small but now the stebacks add frustration because you're watching a good chunk of time and resources evaporate. And while this is true in any of the other games I mentioned before, it gets particularily grating when you know the issue lies with the AI where it's either TOO agressive or not agressive enough or is taking a coffee break when you need it the most.
[b]Is the game good?[/b] kind of. Base game is a 5 to 6 /10 experience, get it on sale, you need the dlc to add some needed content and depth to the game.
With Mods it easily jumps to a solid 8/10 but honestly what it really, desperately needs is a modpack that enhances the AI.
[b]Punching out /10[/b]
