BattleTech (2018)

Battletech is a compelling turn-based game where you lead a mercenary lance of 4 mechs against enemies in a variety of scenarios.

At its surface, you are balancing maintaining the equipment and funding for your merc company, with buying new gear, mech parts, and upgrades for your ship (as well as paying your increasingly expensive mech warriors). You do this through merc contracts, and when accepting a contract, you can negotiate for higher pay, or better salvage.

During battle, too much damage to your mechs means you will have to pay sometimes hefty fees to repair and replace parts, encouraging approaches focused on overwhelming force and engaging enemies in focused ways, because you will almost always be outnumbered.

Pros

Mech Building Creating and customizing mechs works really well. There are a good number of choices to make, and as you play, you get upgraded versions of weapons, allowing even more customization.

In general, the system encourages you to lean into specific roles so that your weapons work effectively together. The suggested builds from the game are pretty terrible.

Learning what I liked to use, and then experimenting when I found new items in shops or on the battlefield, is where like 80% of the fun for this game comes from, and it works well!

Battles The core gameplay is relatively easy to learn, but has some deep strategies tied to using terrain, weapons, builds, and pilot abilities. I appreciate this easy-to-learn, tougher to master approach.

Cons

Story

The story/pacing of the main campaign is almost good in parts, but it has extremely odd pacing. It escalates with some big reveals and developments in the second half, which are tidied up almost as quickly as they appear.

I don't think the campaign is bad, but often it is just a set piece to fight on a unique battlefield, and then make future merc contracts harder.

Oddly, I also found campaign scenarios were pretty easy compared to a lot of the random merc contracts that appear.

Pilot Customization I appreciate that there is some difference between pilots, and that their skills impact weapon use. But the first two choices are really the only ones that matter; after that, you don't have choices you can make. This means early on mech warriors leveling is really exciting, but deeper in its just clicking "next" on a skill tree.

Overall, I enjoyed Battletech. I think if you like turn based strategy it is worth trying. The main campaign is short enough that you could probably complete it in 30 hours if you don't feel the need to grind to gather 5+ Assault Class mechs (like I did)

Been really working at making progress in Battletech Advanced (Mod) I find that to avoid finding yourself getting bushwhacked you have to max out every advantage you can, (even more than the base game) otherwise you spend tons of time and money repairing mechs and playing it takes longer. Well, I've got a full squad of Shadow Hawks and Griffins now and taking on 1.5 skull missions is a breeze. (These are great second tier mechs to advance towards once you're sentinels, assassins and Panthers start feeling soft)

Here is a configuration for the shadow hawk i really like that seems to fit really well in this particular mech (and the combo isnt bad in other mechs)

1 - LB 20-X
1 - SRM-4
Rest is armor (max out the arms first and match rest from there)

This configuration gives you a well balanced and powerful mech with a dmg rating of over 150!

I've since learned that these LBX systems are nice to have at least one unit in your squad to have. They fire first and your second shot will be the SRM. This is a really good way to kill stuff (particularly vehicles and turrets) You can get a lot of seemingly lucky kills too with it, even at further range because since the LBX is a long range weapon (with no minimum range req.) you can manage to strip the armor off of most things and get 1-2 missiles in after it, which makes for a really nice way to take out those escaping vehicles in those annoying convoy raid mission!

been playing this more the past week. Enjoying the mod Battletech Extended on my 'second playthrough' as career (first was campaign) this seems to be the route to take from what i understand (and have thus far experienced about 180 days in) if you like your initial experience. the mod basically ands more randomness, interjects it with lore (on a month by month basis as the state of political affairs changes) and in general, makes things a bit more interesting from one encounter to the next by what it adds into the mix. It's still the same game, but it still scratches that sweet spot I can't quite describe that revolves around taking assignments and managing your crew in that of a mercenary business simulator.

Don't know how long i'll keep at it... This might be it because i'm going back into No Man's Sky to win me a Normandy! :D

Do I even know what a Normandy is? (No) Do I need A Normandy? (Yes) Why? (Because Reasons!)

BattleTech is a mostly okay average game... but i sure did get into it and sunk at least a hundred hours in. (I'm actually installing a Mod while writing this review and plan to fire it right back up again). I've always been a fan of turn based strategy games and this scratches many of my itches nicely. First off, you act as not only a tactical commander but also must manage the financial cash flow of your 'mercenary company' (I really do like business/management simulations that mash with warfare simulators) the customization of your mech 'force' is also really nice (an important thing for any MechWarrior series game) and it even combines some light Role-Playing aspects such as character specialization, light quirks/perks, and Random Encounter Events while travelling from one mission to another. Overall I found it to be a very nice mix of things, but the game has some drawbacks though. First of all know that it's definitely a game you NEED to know how to play and how it works under the hood. It's a game you really need to read about and watch tutorial videos on how it all works. Fortunately, once you learn these things you are good and are ready to experiment and learn how to game the mechanics of it. The game also has a very involved and advanced UI with lots of cues and clues in the form of icons and symbols (again you need to know all this stuff) indicated penalties, debuffs and other advantageous info. Sometimes this works better than other times and you may or may not spot something. Playing this game and doing one battle after another is fun, but after a while it gets VERY repetitive and becomes a grind, because in this game you are basically farming for gear to strap onto your mechs, hunting and collecting +1, +2, and +3 gear upgrades until you twink out your four mech squad with nothing but bonus gear. However by the time you FINALLY manage to do that by end game, the game becomes something of a cheese-fest once you get your squad upgraded, Initially its fun to explore different comps (such as using light mechs) but near mid game its pretty clear you just want bigger meaner mechs over time and wont use anything else! but until you do, enemy mechs will viciously shoot you in the back and target shots on your +1 equipment, destroying it (and you), and making you grind more. This design naturally leads to some serious save scumming (or just doing missions over) do the sunk time investment costs of finding such gear.

In the end I found that this is a well made and solid TBS game with the perfect scope of depth (not too shallow and not too daunting, however it is a bit of a learning curve and a bit different direction than some more clean and simple games in this genre) with a lot of customization abilities that make it quite satisfying if you can get over some of it's flaws and peculiar design choices (such as some aspects of the planetary travel mechanics) I look forward to starting career mode and exploring the flashpoints as I play at least one of these mods (BattleTech Advanced)

Oh, also lots of lore which is somewhat optional if you dont want to do the reading but it's there for those that do.

so far i'm really liking this. it feels a bit on the easy side but i'm also playing easier missions. Would love to see more people steal ideas like this about building up your pirate military force with armor, equip, vehicles, etc (it's not quite Xcom Xpirazez or Freeman guerilla warfare but it does scratch the itch)

what's nice about this game is there is this sense of high stakes involved. You know if you screw up during a mission it s gonna be costly to repair (or cost you time) combine this with what seems like a whole lot of randomization in the battles themselves (both in the sense of how attackers attack you and where/if any reinforcements come) it tends to be a somewhat more calculated experience than I'm used to.

i'm not sure how i feel about character paths/upgrades its got variety but i'm still early into this game and learning its mechanics.

googling a guide is highly recommended. IT helps if you have some experience with the world/lore too or at least willing to learn a bit about the different kinds of mechs and what combat role they have (this is what the pilots character pathing is for)

There is a lot of wonderful stuff in this game. The art direction is great, the scene setting, all the intricate details of managing your merc company are fun, outfitting and refitting mechs feels very involved. There's so much detail that goes into building the world, and there are lots of small gameplay elements that help to build on that. The problem is that all of the scene-setting, music, and atmosphere are in service of weak core gameplay. Everything feels good until you drop into actual combat.

The combat sequences are repetitive, and not much fun. The mechs are total bullet sponges, and you will waste 3-4 turns with four mechs just blasting away at a single enemy. Because of that, the tactical options are pretty limited: it's hard to execute a decisive ambush, hit-and-run isn't really viable, and usually it's best just to post up in an elevated position or a forest and out-shoot the enemy. Like so many strategy games, there isn't much strategy in Battletech, and it's a shame that all the great elements serve such weak core gameplay.

Este juego esta lleno de potencial lamentablemente desaprovechado :(

Aunque no tengo experiencia con el mundo de Battletech se alcanzar a ver que existe un universo amplio y complejo donde se desarrolla la historia. Como aspecto positivo siempre tenemos al alcance un glosario rápido que permite estar contextualizado. Por el lado de la jugabilidad los tableros poseen algo de potencial estratégico combinado con el posicionamiento y ángulos de nuestros Battletech son los aspectos más importantes del combate en el que dependiendo del tipo de unidad procuraremos cerrar distancias o mantenernos alejados. Desafortunadamente hasta hay llegan los aspectos positivos para mí y la ilusión de un nuevo "Front mission" para mi empieza a caerse a pedazos. El combate es poco balanceado ya que los mechas útiles son tan solo unos pocos de cada categoría los demás existen solo de relleno, armas repetitivas y poco balanceadas así como el hecho de que la mejor alternativa en cada mapa es simplemente volar cada enemigo por los aires para extraer componentes y bonificaciones de dinero. La mecánica de tener que enfocar los daños en componentes cuando estos se distribuyen aleatoriamente lleva a situaciones en las cuales los pilotos son heridos o los robots reventados en el antebrazo de la munición y todo se va a la $%&”!# por física mala suerte. Los viajes entre planetas se sienten eternos repitiendo una y otra vez la misma animación hasta el aburrimiento y después el desespero. La historia es un aspecto polémico que gusta a algunos pocos. Personalmente yo la encuentro aburrida, lineal y predecible. La verdadera protagonista (nosotros somos un cero) es una princesa Disney empoderada de sí misma la cual procura recuperar su poder monárquico de su tío el usurpador mientras dice una y otra vez como ama a su pueblo el cual no es que tenga posibilidad alguna de escoger en el asunto ni expresa mayor aprecio por ella que por su en extremo maléfico tío.