With the failure of Mechwarrior Tactics thanks to the remarkably shady practices of Infinite Games Publishing, having any tactical BattleTech game see release was a small miracle for fans. The fact that it was handed to Harebrained Schemes must have seemed like an act of divine intervention. Following their repeated successes in bringing the Shadowrun franchise to PC, there were few more appropriate developers for the task and the studio has struck gold once again.
The game places you in the role of a mercenary, serving one house after another in the ongoing feuds between the galaxy’s great powers. Your character’s background, who they favour and how they act toward them are all shaped by you, but these are fairly light RPG options across the game. The options themselves are often meaningful, but it is clear that the developers were prioritising a straightforward but well-told story with solid mechanics to keep the player hooked.
The turn-based combat itself is highly engaging and retains an XCOM level sense of desperation in many battles. The AI is specifically tailored to exploit weaknesses whenever possible and the potential for new reinforcements to arrive means that you can rarely remain complacent. There’s no obvious easy-win method to the game as every mech, class and pilot has a multitude of different benefits and aspects. Light mechs gain substantial advantages by moving at full speed thanks to their capacity to evade shots, while mediums offer a balance between speed and firepower. Equally, this can be offset by pilot skills or even the right series of weapons, or the terrain working against you – Especially in regards to preventing a mech from overheating and shutting down mid-battle. No matter how many times you play through the same scenario, there are any number of ways events can play out differently.
The method of attaining power and influence is also one which is certainly different from the average game, as you can alter your rewards. Money, scrap metal, upgrades or influence with a faction are all viable choices and the latter will be influenced heavily by just what you opt to do. Working for someone for free will certainly give you a substantial reputation boost in that faction’s eyes, but you can find yourself shorthanded in future battles and making new enemies as a result of this. More pressingly still, this can open up new opportunities and repercussions, and the weight of a loss is going to hit you far harder than any game. Not only will you likely lose multiple essential assets and cash, but you can end up giving a poor showing in the eyes of your employer. It’s this quality which offers the game such a heightened level of immersion and keeps you engaged.
With all this said, there are a few notable problems with the game. A particularly noted one is the animation times for many units, as the lumbering gigantic mechs tend to take their time with every action. When you end up with vast numbers of units on the field at a time, battles can rapidly turns into dragged out affairs leaving you waiting for quite some time to just give your next order. Atop of this, the story itself undergoes a few oddly abrupt turns at the last minute, which are not given the full time needed to explore or examine. It’s akin to the major issue behind Shadowrun: Hong Kong, and it disrupts what was otherwise a well-told narrative arc.
However, what truly deducts a few points from the final score is the state of the game on release. This desperately needs a few extra patches, with abrupt frame drops and visual glitches arising repeatedly in the mid to late game missions. A much more serious one is how the game can, on rare occasions, completely wipe away all of your data from saved profiles to settings; erasing hours of experience and storytelling at a time. Were it in a more optimised state this would be a far superior experience, but until then it cannot be granted a higher score.
BattleTech is a clearly ambitious and excellently executed game in terms of its concepts, balancing and mechanics. Save for a few pragmatic choices it remains extremely lore to the source material and the RNG – while often harsh – rarely oversteps its boundaries into being outright unfair. It simply needs a few more patches before it can truly live up to its potential.
BATTLETECH / DEVELOPER: HAREBRAINED SCHEMES / PUBLISHER: PARADOX INTERACTIVE / PLATFORM: PC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
