MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (2019)

MechWarrior 5 is a very solid action game mixed with economical management. You go for missions and shoot everything that moves, then return to the ship so you can manage your mechs, pilots, economy, plan out your next step and so on. It is balanced out pretty much perfectly if you ask me, not too much action that would make you exhausted, and not too much managing that would make you bored.

It might not be as fast-paced as your regular shooter, but you can't expect it from a game that let's you stomp around with such big and heavy battle units. MW5 stays faithful to its story-rich BattleTech franchise and is way more grounded and realistic than other mech games like Gundam or Armored Core . It is satisfying in its own way if you get used to a slower tempo. There is a big variety of mechs to pilot and mission scenarios to dive into, some of which are unfortunately locked behind DLC.

MechWarriors 5 Mercenaries obviously has it's flaws and isn't perfect. AI isn't the best, sometimes your lancemates can just run around and do nothing while you get shot at from all sides, while enemy vehicle units get stuck somewhere in the trees or mountains, so you have to go find them to get the mission done. NPCs just stand on board of the ship and are barely animated, they won't even turn to you when talking. Campaign storyline is very weak with no character development and has a lot of text messages without any voice acting. Some DLC questlines can be really annoying when they dont let you repair your mechs or let your pilots heal their injuries, because sometimes next mission starts right away or isn't going on the planet that lets you repair. It sadly does lack polish and other small things that show you how much effort developers put into their creation.

Despite all that, MW5 in my opinion is a really nice game totally worth giving a try for everyone, who enjoys piloting heavy machines of war and blowing up stuff while listening to metal, especially considering replayability value it has with sandbox career mode, and with upcoming Mechwarrior 5: Clans.

It's been a while since a game presented dialogue so cringey I just had to skip it without listening to it once.

This game is very uneven. The core game loop of stomping around in a Mech destroying buildings and blasting enemies with your tank style controls is great. The graphics for the world landscapes are fantastic. The story and cutscenes are really bad both in terms of lame dialogue and texture pop-in.

Still I am enjoying it enough to keep going and I got it for free with Xbox Gamepass. The reviews made me wary and I would not have tried it otherwise but I am glad I did.