Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus II

I do truly enjoy the foundations of what's here, but this game is unfortunately just kind of mediocre. It seems like it was rushed out for the Warhammer Skulls festival, it just feels very unpolished with bugs, graphical errors, and a slightly empty feeling gameloop. Maybe in a few patches I'll be able to change this, but after being softlocked 3 separate times in the Necron campaign, and facing several instances of lag and stuttering, I cannot recommend the game in it's current state, especially for being the successor of a fairly popular and beloved game to come out of Warhammer's catalogue. Despite being made by the majority of the same people, it falls a little short in comparison to the first game too, a sorry sight for fans of the Adeptus Mechanicus and Necrons alike.

TLDR: An acceptable game that is tragically inferior to the first in pretty much every way except the story The Long: like many others i loved Mechanicus 1 and i was ungodly hyped when i saw the second get announced but now that its here, now that i beat both campaigns and the Epilogue i must state that i am thoroughly disappointed, Sequels are meant to expand and improve on the base, Mechanicus 2 is a step down on most fronts, now given that Mechanics 1 is phenomenal it still means that its an okay game, its mission structure allows for fairly good quick sessions but i cannot forgive the failings to live up to its predecessor THE POSITIVE the Story and characters are the one thing i will credit this game for improving, the story is pretty good, i enjoyed the characters as their dialogue is memorable and the voice acting is stellar (props for taking a fair amount of established 40k Audiobook Va's shoutout to Toby Longworth who voices Faustinius however if you are one of the people who hate the idea that they now speak english however silly that as a complaint, you can turn it off should you wish so its best of both worlds) if this was a Warhammer book it would be among the decent ones, i enjoyed the Necron politicing, the Deciver whispering in your ear is funny and i enjoy the dynamics between the different Mechanicus Leaders. being able to play as the Necrons is also a rare treat for Xenos enjoyers so that is a good selling point for the game, its also a graphical step up from the previous which is nice. THE BAD the combat is just worse and the games systems are badly designed, one of the best parts of Mechanicus 1 was the Tech Priests, you got a gang of customisable and upgradeable Tech Priests with different Gear that you unlocked through completing Missions, this made for fun buildcrafting, it made doing missions exiting because you unlocked something new whenever you did one and piloting them in mission was fun, however this has been completely abandoned in favour of set Lords with upgrade trees but they offer no real customisability or flexibility which not only makes combat worse by not letting us have our Tech Priest gangs but also makes doing missions less exiting because the rewards are so much less, this is a massive negative point for fans of the original and is my greatest personal disappointment, this change actively makes progression less fun and pigeonholes your playstyle massively because you will essentially gravitate towards the two-three you like the most and ignore the rest. for the second most irritating flaw of this game is the troop system, in the first game you simply had to pay in resources to use a certain unit out a list that you slowly unlocked as time progressed and this worked fine, in Mechancius 2 you unlock units through a tech tree and then for each mission it will randomly select from your unlocked units and give you a list that you can take along, this is completely awful as a system and is nothing but frustration as the one Tech Priest you can take will have some specific synergy with certain unit types that you are not guaranteed to get because your options are RNG, the fact that i was compelled to just not unlock certain units as to rig my chances to not get bad units that don't work with my Lord of choice is a testament to how bad this system is and how annoying it is to deal with. the most baffling part is that this was Mechanicus-only Necrons just have the units be unlocked per lord with no randomisation instead of a universal Tech Tree this was fine, good even since it helped guide the playstyle i genuinely have no clue why they implemented this god awful system especially since this game is EXTREMELY troop focused since you can only take one hero per mission, its absolutely baffling they did that and it brings down the game so much. speaking of the one hero per mission it also really restricts your playstyle in the early game since combats fail if the Lord Dies, this is manageable for Necrons as they can get back up once per combat but for Mechanicus this is extremely restrictive because it forces you to play super cagey to not fail which hurts lords like Rho who is meant to be a frontline Tank. some have claimed online that its actually good that Tech Priest usage was limited because you could just optimise and stomp the game, this is false as by mid to lategame you can still massively stomp once you get the resources and unlocks to field good troops and upgrades to make the lords death machines and you can generally clown on the game from there with your only enemy being bad troop RNG, the sole exception for the Mechanicus campaign is Triarch Pratorians, in a strategy game that emphasises positioning its pretty bad that there is an enemy unit that just ignores all positioning, can cross the map from turn one and also will delete most units on its first turn, and the game likes to spam five of them at you. The Votann, i'm not a fan personally but i have a friend who is and i had to break the news that they are sadly completely irrelevant in this game, DLC bait at best a marketing stunt at worst, not sure why they were even here when they show up for about five missions and then leave the story. The Missions themselves, Mechanicus one had you explore the tombs you infiltrated, you made choices on where to go, what rooms to interact with and microchoices in those rooms, this was fun however they completely removed that aspect as each mission is a straight series of events in a fixed order, not even sure why the map is even there because its pointless and so its another aspect of wasted potential. last of all the downgrades, the music is also worse which sucks because the music from Mechanicus one is iconic and Mechanicus 2's sound design is honestly stellar but the music is boring and unmemorable. overall this game isn't absolutely abysmal to play, i did finish both campaigns after all but it does not escape the shadow of Mechanicus one as its a worse game in many aspects and it immeasurably disappointed me, get on sale if you want a 6/10 turn based tactics game but better options exist and at least they aren't worse than their predecessors i pray that the devs get another chance to actually make a worthy sequel but the devs have to really earn the goodwill back after fumbling like they have

I don't recommend this game. Play Mechanicus I instead.

finished necron campaign, having a tough time forcing myself to play admech. wished it was the same gameplay as mechanicus 1.

不如一代好玩

Despite serious PC optimization issues on release this was an excellent 40K strategy game. I was pleasantly surprised by how they wrote the Necron campaign in such a way as to make Necrons interesting and relatable. I have been so pleased with all the 40K Adeptus Mechanicus content this year. I hope there's more in the future.

Go play Mechanicus I instead, this game was a huge dissapointment after spending a lot of time enjoying the first game.