Mechwarrior 5 Mercs. Worth it to me or not? mini review, complaining and discuss?

[Boinker]

I purchased this game on launch. I played up until today when I completed the campaign. Hopefully they come out with another story line DLC to take place such as the 4th succession war or the clan invasion.  Hopefully I don't have to wait over a decade to see it either. I feel like this will be hard to pick back up. With almost 5 days worth in game time... I wonder what Ill do.

SPOILERS BELOW

Now that Space AT&T has been embarrassed by a merc group that they outnumber thousands to one I should be content but I am not. Finding what I assume to be the HAAL memory core, cant remember spelling, is a great win in my book.  Granted I got some coin, a few weapons, a mess of Double heat-sinks and one mech. It was not enough. Also I have to ask how I got salvage as I took off while the battle was still raging. Steel cables and hooks I GUESS.... The final mission of course being no joke and all that for a few weapons; Its a kick in the pants to say the least. And all the tech that was inside..... Well space At&T must of got it. I cant explain the blue-balled kick in the nards that was. 

Now that I am done with open complaints I can state the game through it was very fun. Frequently challenged in more ways then one. The upkeep of your unit is a start. Trying to balance unit size versus how much someone will pay you in your general location. Where you are going to find your next set of upgraded weapons or replacing broken components was another. Then finding top tier hard to replace components was an act of God.  Making money is a challenge in itself. Between the aforementioned issues you have plenty of reasons that your C-bills vanish. Then there are the Shiny hero Mechs.. I don't need to explain further.

One feature that was nice, bugged out and made things incredibly difficult all at once. Was the negotiations.  Rationing you relations with the various houses, Independent merc units, shipping companies, exploring corporations, bandit outcrops etc; gave you some benefit. You can work for anyone. But based on your prior actions Its either for a penalty to those you have pissed off or a reward for those you have helped and impressed. This also seemed to unlock some special high reward missions. That's cool and all, but to what end. Usually those missions are a lateral move at best. Some of the time the game will force you to bid for less then what is fair IMHO. You get 15 points to distribute, at best, and negotiate how much money, salvage or damage recovery. The salvage method in the later portions of the game was kind of a joke. Even with some of the best relations and all the apples placed in salvage that assault mech is out of your reach anyhow. Would like to have a conversation to who balanced that affair but that is neither here nor there.  

Single lance drop..... #^#*...... A lance ,group of four mechs, versus several thousand tons of hardware makes for a dicey engagement. All this and It left me feeling unrewarded. Granted the scaling of the content was difficult to the point of near impossibility. Based on my own personal Critique I am not a tactical master, but I will call myself good pilot. MW5 tested this thoroughly and sometime arbitrarily.  In past games MW4 at least would let you drop in 2 lances deep and ready to face the kind of odds MW5 threw at you. Which makes me wonder what could be expanded upon for the coming DLC IF they have one. Ill take 2 lances and a Jenner.... Better yet 2 stars and a Kitfox please. I was begging more then once to send my Pilots to a repair fac.. more then once. But no such thing for those fools.

The story..... Ok, without being a complete jerk it sucked until you started figuring out WHY events had taken place and why your father was sought after. Well, blood of Kerensky equals target on your back. Turns out Pops was a Claner and So are you. Nice plot twist at the very end. Explained a great deal. However left me personally struggling to understand what next. Maybe its my own bias towards games that once the story is done there is no more substance to it. But I am going to see if I can shake things up with the Free Rassalhague Republic to pass time. Maybe some periphery assignments with the Torian Concort would be fun.  

Piloting: My experience goes back to MW3 vengence, Mechcommander 1, 2 and gold,  MW4 Mercenaries, Mechwarrior living legends (personal favorite), Mechwarrior online (insert Zelbrigan TOE and TOF comments here) Battletech and finally this game. I can say that I was no stranger to the mechs. They felt normal. Big stompy war machines for all kinds of warriors. While I prefer Brawling and nothing beats an LBX beatdown this game forces you to branch out which I like. Atlas 2 ppc lb10x srm4 srm6 with a few tons of ammo and Double HS suits me just fine. I think it was Karita Steiner that once said, Our assault mechs may be slow, but they are sticky, and once they get stuck one something they can break away. (Not a direct quote but same same)

The AI pilots: I did enjoy that at times the AI would taunt you. Nice touch. Open radio chatter is nice. However, I kept running into issues where the instructions I gave were either not followed or poorly executed. I would intentionally give my AI pilots faster mechs even if it ment dropping light on a 300-400 ton engagement. More then once left alone to face whatever hell sent my direction or Space At&T determined what was sufficient to take me out. In upgrading to near or at level 60 pilots this issue still frustrated me to no end. What was bad is that Lt. Freeman was my MVP more often then not and it actually felt, I am not exaggerating, that he had my back more of the time then better paid more skilled pilot. DAFAQ???!!!! 

With any hope. Clan invasion DLC will happen for this game and you will be able to either choose sides or it will happen in several installments. 

Another cool mention is that the Star map changed throughout the campaign. seemingly favoring the sides that I worked for at the start of the game and helped out the most. I left steiner out to Die, aided Marik, Shunned Karita and Laio and Death marched with house Davion, Somehow House Davion swollowed Terra and all of the Steiner Territories...... That cant be a coincidence but I am up to be proved wrong as always.

Lastly, as this wall of text needs to end. When at the end of the game you !!!!JUST!!!! hand over the Memory core without being paid a premium for it and everything is hunky dory. I almost screamed at the game until my good sense realized. Its just a game, and whoever wrote that needs... Nevermind. The freebirth coward will refuse my batchall anyhow.....

 

Anyhow. That is my rant, amateur review and hopes that this game will continue. 

If you made it this far through a wall of spelling errors, run on sentences and grammatical errors my heart goes out to you. Comment below if you have anything at all to say. I want to hear peoples perspectives.  

Brenton Bowker.

[Braegnok]

The most jarring part of the game is the writing, the script seems dated, quips that were pulled from 1980s action movies. 

I generally play with a mouse and keyboard,.. only to find it a little too awkward moving both the Mech and the torso with the WASD section on the keyboard, especially when it came to controlling the throttle.

Running the game on a HOTAS or Thrustmaster Flight Control System would be sweet, having a paddle on the throttle, being able to control the lower half of Mech with left hand and upper half with my right hand.

I only played through the game's second mission, so I'll be holding off on any judgment until I've put a lot more time into the game.

[ir_cow]

To be honest the whole 1 billion loadout options put me off from playing.  It takes 15 minutes to setup a loadout and half the stuff I apply, I have no clue what it does. Just that my stats go up.

I really just want a mech game where I can blow stuff up without having to worry about how thick my rear armor is and how it will slow me down and use up my energy reserves. 

Clearly this game is for extremely patient people who want a really deep game. It's just not for me.

[Boinker]

On 2/12/2020 at 12:53 PM, Braegnok said:

The most jarring part of the game is the writing, the script seems dated, quips that were pulled from 1980s action movies. 

I generally play with a mouse and keyboard,.. only to find it a little too awkward moving both the Mech and the torso with the WASD section on the keyboard, especially when it came to controlling the throttle.

Running the game on a HOTAS or Thrustmaster Flight Control System would be sweet, having a paddle on the throttle, being able to control the lower half of Mech with left hand and upper half with my right hand.

I only played through the game's second mission, so I'll be holding off on any judgment until I've put a lot more time into the game.

Thank you for the reply. Keep playing and let me know what you think. Have always wondered what a hotas would feel like. Keyboard and mouse is my jam.

 

On 2/12/2020 at 2:18 PM, ir_cow said:

To be honest the whole 1 billion loadout options put me off from playing.  It takes 15 minutes to setup a loadout and half the stuff I apply, I have no clue what it does. Just that my stats go up.

I really just want a mech game where I can blow stuff up without having to worry about how thick my rear armor is and how it will slow me down and use up my energy reserves. 

Clearly this game is for extremely patient people who want a really deep game. It's just not for me.

You know, I can get that. totally. The game is what you make it. and if you OCD out on too many settings its gonna break yah. 

In the same right that is part of the fun. to be fair with me I max the armor to ensure survival and use tactics to either spread damage and or keep damage to sides I want them to hit rather then others. It is fun for me. sorry it takes the luster away from you. and to be fair you only need enough back armor to have time to turn around and start blasting.

[ir_cow]

Hmm maybe it's a case of not me giving the game enough time. Lots of small details like the type of armor or what to equip only comes from experience. Which takes game-play to understand.

Lots of games that I really like arent very easy to get accustom to. Dark Souls is a perfect example. Extremely hard to the novice. Not very enjoyable until you figure out how the game works. Then that first tutorial is a breeze. In fact half that game is just memorizing movements. Still a very deep and fun game if you just get past the first few hours.

[Boinker]

45 minutes ago, ir_cow said:

Hmm maybe it's a case of not me giving the game enough time. Lots of small details like the type of armor or what to equip only comes from experience. Which takes game-play to understand.

Lots of games that I really like arent very easy to get accustom to. Dark Souls is a perfect example. Extremely hard to the novice. Not very enjoyable until you figure out how the game works. Then that first tutorial is a breeze. In fact half that game is just memorizing movements. Still a very deep and fun game if you just get past the first few hours.

While you are right and this is true for many games. The big stick with Mechwarrior 5, and all the other titles, is survival. Damage mitigation and tactics will get you just as far as other equipment will. Also one part of mechwarrior5 is it rewards you for tenacity and buying expensive equipment.

One thing that I failed to mention is that you can gain an edge just from getting the upper tiers of weaponry. Say when you go from a tier 0- tier 5 PPC (particle projection cannon) the projectile (lightening) moves faster, does more damage and creates less heat, also Double heatsinks can be found. While they are rare they take more component slot but remove double the heat at the same tonnage of 1.

That is what separates Star league tech versus common tech. These items in the game give you a severe advantage. not only that some of the hero mechs or special variants come with better weapon configs to give you more Punch.

Take my go to variant for example. Its an Atlas - Effective range up to 600 meters. and if they get into 300 minus its a murder wagon. x2 PPC tier 4. lb10x (shotgun) tier 4, srm6 tier 4, srm 4 tier 4, then packed full of double heatsinks. Its mean AF. but boy does it suck when I lose a weapon. stupid expensive and hard to replace.