[Introduction]
BattleTech is a squad-focused, turn-based strategy game akin to XCOM.
Set in the eponymous BattleTech universe, it largely focuses on missions where a lance (team of 4) consisting of MechWarriors and their respective BattleMechs are sent on missions. More specifically, it focuses on the endeavors of a mercenary company lead by the player.
[First Impressions]
It's XCOM, but with mechs.
Seriously, you have the squad of soldiers, except they're piloting 'Mechs. You have the steady upgrade progression and associated looting mechanics. You have the budget balancing. You have the individual character progression. You have the grid-based movement system. You have the wildly inconsistent hit chances that piss players off to no end to the point of achieving meme status.
All that's missing are the aliens, because there are no aliens in BattleTech.
Or, well, technically there are, but we don't talk about Far Country.
[Development]
Development of BattleTech by HareBrained Schemes began in 2015. The original released was scheduled for 2017, but the actual release was pushed back to 2018. Significantly, the team included none other than Jordan Weisman, one of the minds behind the original creation of the BattleTech franchise. However, it was also backed by a Kickstarter campaign, which makes it slightly cursed.
The original goal was some $250,000, which is a relatively small amount of money when it comes to developing a game. Naturally, the campaign included stretch goals which, when combined with the cult following of the franchise, resulted in the goal being met pretty quickly, and then exceeded 11 times over. The campaign was a massive success with $2,785,537 being pledged, and another $772,000 from late backers.
The stretch goals included pretty much everything that makes the game what it currently is. Apparently, the base game would have been pretty simple if not for the 41,733 people willing to throw money at the project. Vehicle units, environments, voice acting, cinematics, customisable base, multiplayer, post-campaign free play; these are all stretch goals, and that's not even an exhaustive list.
It's good to be sceptical when it comes to Kickstarter campaigns and other crowdfunding platforms, particularly when they're ambitious. There have been a great deal of campaigns that never went anywhere or delivered a mediocre or subpar product at best. With that in mind, BattleTech was a success. Sure, its release was delayed, but by most accounts, this seems to have been with the support of the backers who funded the development.
It should be noted that the game was delayed so the developers could "give the game the time and attention they need to create a turn-based game worthy of the name." While the extra time spent definitely helped, there's no doubt that there are still optimisation issues. Some might chalk this up to the game running on the Unity engine (and that may play a part!) but I think there's more to it. BattleTech wasn't rushed, but it probably also didn't get all the ironing out it should have gotten.
[Game Mechanics]
It's pretty simple when it comes down to it.
You pick a character portrait, select pronouns (if that's important to you), choose a couple character origin and background elements and then you're in-game. Unless you opted to not skip the tutorial, then you have to do that first, and it might be more challenging than one might expect. It's certainly longer than I thought it'd be.
Anyway, once in-game, you can customise your mercenary outfit if you so desire. Three colors, a logo and a name is all you get in this regard, but it's possible to add custom logos to the game, so at least you have all the options in the world in that regard. You can also select what particular pattern the colors should be applied in, from a list of presets.
Once satisfied with the appearance of your murder machines and the name of your mercenary company, you can start taking contracts and completing missions for various bidders in the Periphery. If you're playing the campaign and not free-play, then you're initially quite limited in the operational theater available to you. This will expand to a sizeable chunk of the Rimward Periphery after a certain point in the story.
Each mission has to be negotiated with your prospective employer. There are three things to take into consideration when negotiating: payment, salvage and reputation. These are mutually exclusive. You will always get some of each, but you can lower some to get more of the other. For example, you may forfeit a higher paycheck in order to get better salvage rights. Contrarywise, you may also ditch most of the salvage in favor of more C-Bills. Or, if you wanna kiss up to the boss, you can say no to a portion of both salvage and payment in order to increase your reputation with the faction hiring you.
This is worth considering, because you're not running a charity operation, nor are you a member of a standing army or enjoying permanent employment. You're a mercenary company operating on contractual basis, and each contract typically only involves your deployment for a single mission. You need all three of these resources. As you upgrade your base and your 'Mechs, your expenses increase, so you need more money. To earn more money, you need to take higher risk contracts. To survive high risk contracts, you need better equipment. To get better equipment, you either need more money or better salvage rights, the latter of which is particularly important if you're on high risk missions where better equipped enemies will yield better loot.
This sounds real fancy, of course, but it's actually not as engaging as one might imagine. It's not particularly hard to make ends meet at the end of the day, and while I'm okay with it being relatively easy, others might not get that particular itch scratched. You know, the "I want to be run a mercenary company in financial turmoil" itch.
As for the missions themselves, they usually take the form of retrieval missions, escort missions, base defense, base destruction or just straight up fights with an enemy force. Your objective is usually only tangentially relevant, because in most cases, it'll be most practical for you to destroy the opposition instead of leaving once your primary objective has been completed anyway.
Every enemy you kill provides more salvage, and salvage is king if you want better gear. Similarly, optional objectives are optional only in the sense that they're not strictly speaking necessary to complete the mission. However, most are fairly easy and there's usually no real reason not to do them. Often, you'll end up doing them regardless of whether you deliberately intended to or not.
Combat can be quite rough initially, but it becomes more fair pretty quickly and eventually gets skewed in your favor. Once you get better 'Mechs, the competition seems less overwhelming, and once your Lance consists of heavily customised killing machines with rare and powerful equipment, it almost turns into a cakewalk. Of course, you might get unlucky and have your head blown off, but frankly that's an unlikely happenstance at most.
Just remember: every weapon has an optimal range in which it operates most efficiently. For example, LRMs (long range missiles) can hit targets on the far end of the map, but are far less accurate in close quarters. Similarly, SRMs (short range missiles) are useless beyond short to medium range. These limitations also count for your enemies, so being aware of the loadouts of opposing forces can make all the difference in the world.
This combines well with the fact that positioning is crucial to your survival, especially if outnumbered. The direction your 'Mech is facing, the terrain between you and your enemy, the terrain both you and your enemy are currently occupying and staying mobile are all factors that should be taken into account.
Mobility is important as well, because a moving target is harder to hit. Movement speed and distance are directly tied to your 'Mech, with heavier 'Mechs generally being slower than lighter ones. This means that something like a 100-ton Atlas assault 'Mech won't be dodging a whole lot of attacks and will likely rely more on sheer survivability through heavy armor than avoiding attacks. This can be off-set with jump-jets, at least to an extent, but an Atlas will never outrun a Commando.
This probably sounds like a lot to take into account, but it's really not all that complex once you get the hang of it. It's very easy to get into, but it absolutely pays off to learn and understand the various mechanics involved in BattleTech combat.
As for the customisation aspect, it's a lot of good fun. Chances are you'll spend a substantial amount of time trying to find a good balance for your 'Mech's loadout. Every piece of equipment adds weight and takes up space. Each section of your 'Mech only has so much space, and the chassis can only hold so much weight. Most weapons need ammo, and all weapons need heat sinks. Every weapon also takes up an assigned hardpoint, of which there are limited amounts, and each 'Mech chassis and variant have different hardpoints.
Now, nothing stops you from filling out every weapon hard point and providing enough ammo and heat sinks for the whole arsenal to keep firing from now until the heat death of the universe, but you should always take into account that whatever you're shooting at will likely shoot back, and you should never gamble that you can take out every threat in one turn. What I'm saying is that your 'Mech needs armor, and armor adds weight.
Frankly, I think I've had more fun with coming up with various 'Mech loadouts than anything else in the game.
Oh, and stomping on vehicles is tremendously satisfying. Yeah, there's melee combat. Some 'Mechs are even designed for the express purpose of literally brawling enemies, with at least one straight up having a big fuckoff axe in its arm. You can actually outfit your 'Mechs with equipment that vastly improves their melee capabilities, which can lead to some scary scenes where your pilots just run in a straight line to the nearest enemy and start beating them up like they're an MMA fighter piloting a mech.
[Graphics]
They'e all right.
The vast majority of 'Mech models are identical to the ones from MechWarrior Online and stay true to the BattleTech aesthetic of industrialised, squarish and practical looking machines. Most animations have appropriate weight to them, although seeing a King Crab using jump jets will probably always look a little off to me. But then, canonically 'Mechs can perform somersaults and do handstands when operated by sufficiently skilled MechWarriors, so who am I to argue?
The environments are mostly well put together, but it goes without saying that the handcrafted ones are better than the procedurally generated ones. There's no real clipping issues or anything similar on any of the maps, at least not as far as I've noticed, so the map generator does its job as well as can be expected.
Occasionally, you'll get 'Mechs running through eachother, but that's little more than a visual quick due to the grid-based movement system and the engine occasionally deciding that beelining the pathing is more important than walking around obstacles in the form of other units.
But for the most part, there's nothing wrong with the graphics at all. The explosions are satisfying and I like watching enemy 'Mechs topple. It's pretty solid.
Also, it bears mentioning that, throughout the game, there's gonna be quite a few cutscenes (roughly 21 minutes' worth) which feature some pretty darn good purpose-made BattleTech art.
[Story]
Regardless of your character's origin and background, you always start out as a member of the Aurigan Royal Guard. You prepare for a ceremonial event, shit hits the fan and you're smack dab in the middle of it all. It culminates in a situation so dire that you're forced to eject from your 'Mech, after which you're rescued by a mercenary company who happened to be in the area.
Following this, you inadvertently become the leader of the mercenaries, and the company rather incidentally gets involved in the aftermath of the aforementioned shitstorm, which in and of itself turns into an even larger shitstorm.
The story is decent, but it pretends that your choices are going to have any impact. The only thing that changes based on dialogue choices is an occasional change in response. The only thing that changes based on your chosen origin and background is an occasional change in available dialogue choices. If you expect to have any real impact on how events unfold, I'm sorry to say that you really don't. The only thing that ever changes is your motivation.
What I'm saying is that it's all fluff. It's not bad fluff, it's actually quite nice fluff. Very soft, very comfortable. You're just along for the ride, and events always play out the same, even though it occasionally seems like you might have a chance to influence the outcome of a situation.
I don't really have any major complaints with it though. Your mileage may vary, which is also true for the voice acting. There's nothing wrong with the voice acting either, not principally, but there are bits and pieces and certain performances that I'm less fond of than others.
There are some discrepancies with the lore, such as the fact that you can conceivably collect as many King Crabs as you want, despite there canonically only being "a mere handful" in active service among the Great Houses in the Inner Sphere by the time this game's story takes place. And we're not even in the Inner Sphere, we're in the Periphery, where technology is generally a little shittier and less accessible.
That's not the only one, of course. There's other stuff, like no one actually wearing proper neurohelmets or cooling vests, but it really doesn't matter. It's perfectly okay that some minor lore aspects are set aside in the interest of fun gameplay and maintaining the rule of cool in the artwork and character designs. Besides, I'm pretty sure that you could deploy more than 5 King Crabs in the tabletop game as well, so it's not like that's a new problem.
[SPOILERS]
The shitstorm described above is a coup d'état carried out by a disgruntled noble by the name of Santiago Espinosa. He and his niece, Kamea Arano, had some disagreements over how to run a government.
Lord Espinosa ousts his niece and turns the Aurigan Coalition into the Aurigan Directorate, essentially transforming it from a pseudo-feudalist nation state to an authoritarian dictatorship. He also goes full Stalin and initiates massive industrialisation efforts at the cost of abject human misery, labor camps and all.
Over the course of the campaign, the player's mercenary company takes part in several key missions that eventually culminate in the defeat of the Directorate and the restoration of the Coalition under now-High Lady Kamea Arano.
It's not terribly unusual as stories go, but there's some neat character development with Kamea in particular going from something of a brat who believed the right to rule was inherent to understanding that leading a nation is more than just sitting on a fancy chair and calling it a throne. In the end, she even admits that it wasn't heroism or a noble cause that won her the throne.
But hiring a mercenary who kicked enough ass and took enough names to tip the scales.
[Pros]
- 'Mechs are highly customisable
- Gameplay is, for the most part, very straight-forward and enjoyable
- The BattleTech setting is cool as hell
- There are some decent mods out there
- Story missions occasionally change things up
- Story, writing and voice acting can be hit or miss
[Cons]
- Buggy and poorly optimised
- The whole "running a mercenary company" feature is mostly relegated to the sidelines
- Difficulty indicator is broken and can't be trusted
- Environments can feel quite samey outside story missions
- Story, writing and voice acting can be hit or miss
[Conclusion]
At the end of the day, despite all its flaws, I like BattleTech a lot.
I love the setting, and I'm a sucker for mechs designed to look like they might be feasible to actually build and operate. It sometimes runs poorly and stutters in performance aren't all that uncommon. Loading screens can be annoyingly long at times, but none of these issues sufficiently impact my enjoyment of the game enough that I won't recommend it.
Am I a hero? Did I sacrifice too much at the altar of victory? Moral compass optional.
/DUX
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