I'm getting a decent amount of play out of this, but the experience is dampened a lot by loads of different issues. Just the basic mission to mission gameplay can be fun, and on the rare ocassion you get a fitting challenge in a mission with loads of crits, explosions and maneuvers, makes the setting really come alive.
On a baseline Level there wasnt really that much just "Look" wise they could've done wrong. Giant Robots lobbing Salvos at each other always looks cool, albeit melee lacks any sort of weight and feels like you're slapping two Lego-Bots together. This is particularly bad with Heavier Mechs, it just doesnt feel the way giant Mecha melee should feel. The fact that Mech-Kills just have set animations and bodies don't ragdoll at all also makes it look very odd and sterile often.
The management Layer annoys me to no end, the Dev having exactly 0 respect for the players time gives me Flshbacks to Monster Hunter Worlds. It's slow as hell, every window change either has a little delay or an outright loadingscreen. If you're jumping in between Mech Loadouts and managing upgraded gear is a nightmare. Traveling takes an eternity and a half, with Jumpship scenes being unskippable, and there just generally being nothing to do except stare at the timeline advancing. And you need to travel a LOT.
The money management is also just a literal waste of your time. The just cut a large part of your monthly income off for passive expenses to make it feel like you're always on the edge of bankrupcy and slows down all upgrades. Made extra dumb in the story
When the Noble Lady buys your loans to free you out of debt, but then your expenses actually go UP afterwards.
They should've honestly just dropped 80% of this whole management idiocy and invested the time into balancing, more Mech and Weapon variety, and most importantly, some playtesting. Because the actual Gameplay and putting together Mechs is the part that's actually fun about this.
Mechwarrior skills are laughable at the moment. You want Multishot and consequently Breaching Shot on almost everyone, except maybe 1 guy leaning for a more scouty approach. Seriously, it's incredible how hard those two abilities beat the rest of the tree in a game where Guarded HALVES all damage, and Cover takes off 25%. After those I usually go for Bulwark, due to the aforementioned incredible amonts of Defense awarded for being guarded.
Sensor Lock, extra evasion and "move afters shooting" has at least a jsutified position due to being almost necessary on Light Mechs (Which you'll swiftly stop using unless you're trying to cheese salvage). The other two are literal wastes of slots. "Melee knocks enemy back 1 Initiative Phase", wow, you mean the thing melee does anyway with Knockback, which doesnt stack with the ability? Or the other one "Gain 1+ Initiative and increase stability by 1 when reserving" which is also worthless, due to reactionary play being superior in this, meaning you usually reserve up until most enemies have moved anyway. Stability was really never a big issue for me, unless I literally walked someone into a ridicolous crossfire.
The way the game communicates mission-difficulty is also either buggy or just done incredibly poorly. Missions have a skull rating from 1-5. 1 Skull works fine as far as I can tell, it's just hordes of Vehicles and some Light Mechs, meant to be easily doable early on so you can pay your bills.
Everything after that, you might as well roll dice.
I've had 2 Skull missions with enough enemies to fill out the cast of a Mecha-Anime of your choice, plus some extras for filler. Seriously, outnumbered more than 2 to 1 tonnage wise, and it pays an absolute sad pittance for the amount of work the game expects. Then I had 3 skull or higher where I had to capture a base, and the garrison consisted of an elderly man in a glorfied bipedal-wheelchair, and a pack of novelty Gremlin-Toys that explode if you cough too loudly in their direction. And then the mission pays 3 or 4 times the amount you'd gotten on the above mentioned 2 skull order.
The game also has awful progression. You have very little motivation to use Light Mechs, with their only real application beyond a certain point is Convoy Raids. This is due to no limit on the amount of tonnage you deploy, and also no deployment costs. It would've been very easy to just in- or decrease the mission reward depending on how much tonnage you deploy. That way you could use times when your heavier lads are down for a couple lower tier missions where you deploy mostly Lights so it still has a decent payoff. Or include Lighter Mechs on harder missions since the extra payout affords you some extra repair costs.
It's especially annoying when you're trying to make the jump from a mostly med squad to getting your first heavies. The game likes increasing numbers way more than it does giving the AI bigger Mechs. Combined with skulls being broken anyway, I often find myself mercilessly savescumming engagements where I know that I'll win, and the salvage will be worthless anyway because I already have around
four Vindicators and
two Kintaros game, and for the love of god just give me a friggin Thunderbolt-Part already instead of 70 million Light Mechs I never use because I have a Firestarter that beats all of them.
Lot of this could be fixed with Patches, and due to the aforementioned lack of variety I do hope the game goes on to maybe get an expansion that includes Clans. On the other hand, seeing how it's made right now, I wouldnt be surprised if they abandon ship within the next few weeks and just leave the game as it is.
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Topic: BATTLETECH - X-COM meets ROBOTS! - Release day April 24 2018! (Read 111299 times)