MechWarrior 5: Clans

cutsecens are great. gameplay is good and the new dlcs are really good.

One of the few games I've played where you're playing the bad side, no, you're not an anti-hero, you're not the MC of the whole story, you're a sub side character leading an expendable squad, an NPC given orders by the supposed villain. and spoilers, your side don't get to win, in game and in lore.

A lot of new and interesting things added, but someone needs to take the dev's access to post-processing effects away from them, Firing effects from weapons are so over-the-top that you can't see the target you're firing at beyond the box when you have them targeted. As a result, targeting limbs with high rate-of-fire weapons is almost impossible and thus ruins one of the core concepts of any Mechwarrior game, The HUD display is also poorly contrasted making keeping track of things like heat, jumpjet fuel, ect more difficult, especially when compounded by the excessive fire effects. Same for mech damage displays, as the transparency of those sections makes it harder to determine the color of the meh parts displayed. Even the radar seems more difficult to read, but this one's up to personal tastes, as the icons used on it just seem harder to track to me. Arguably the worst part about this is that this is a stand-alone offshoot of the Mercenaries game, and yet none of this was an issue in Mercenaries. They took something that wasn't broke and fixed it to the point of it being worse. What they were trying to do was make the hud look more high-tech tp fit the theme of clan technology (And of course to make the graphics cooler). I an't fault them for trying since the want for better graphics is always a concern and it was even thematic to the game's settings, but they just did a poor job of it. As a result, I can't say I'd recommend the game. It's unfortunate, those are really my only complaints about the game, but they just impact the gameplay so much that it takes a lot of the fun out of it. It's worth noting that since these are graphical issues and strongly relative to personal preference, milage will vary for this assessment. Severity of the issues mentioned will based on setup, with some players not even having the same issues )Or just not caring), Players who prefer ♥♥♥♥-pit view will be more affected (much to my chagrin). If you're hellbent on playing, you can tinker with the settings for minor improvements, Third-party tools that modify the render pipeline are much more useful, Disabling motion-blur and bloom is very helpful, but you have to use third-party to do so. ReShade can be used to adjust color-balance and tone down some of the blinding effects. I use a combination of the tools to make it more playable, but I still can't recommend it because I didn't really pay for this game to program shaders for the devs.

Scratches my Mechwarrior itch. The format is quite likeable and a welcome change to the Mercenaries sandbox. I appreciate the attention to the details of Battletech lore and the Mech gameplay works very well. Yes, there is room for improvement, especially with quality control, but overall the game is pretty good. I'm looking forward to the DLCs.

MW5 Mercs is it's own thing, but this also kicks ass.

I feel as if many of the reviews of this game to date are pretty unfair. As someone who frequents the BattleTech/MechWarrior franchise - Clans actually seems to have done and is doing far better than people seem to still be reviewing it, particularly in contrast to MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, and the lore in general. This review may be best appreciated by people who have also played Mercenaries. And of course, is just my opinion so far. I may update this as the hours will inevitably rack up - I love Clans! I am also a biased Clanner. In terms of the playability, I find it interesting looking through some peoples reviews complaining about it playing poorly on specs which then have other people on lower specs saying, it plays great for them! I wonder if there is the familiarity of perhaps playing other MechWarrior games. I will choose to directly compare Clans to Mercenaries in terms of this review. I will include, I play on a gaming laptop. The Asus ROG Zephyrus G16, Nvidia RTX 5070. I have not played MechWarrior: Online on this device yet, so I cannot include this in my comparison (but I should fix that!), Battletech does not feel relevant to use as a comparison for this review. I adore MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. Which, at the time of writing this, I have almost 80 hours. However, despite having a respectable laptop that I play it on these days; the hangar pumps my CPU temps horribly, I get GPU spikes if I so much want anything higher than LOW graphics. Mercenaries IS a terribly optimised game, and that upsets me. It does oddly play better on my ancient PC. But it does make me wince preparing for my gaming session on it, knowing Mercenaries is infact the most poorly optimised game that I own. If we were to directly compare my experience of Mercenaries to Clans? I've so far not had to tamper with any performance settings. The graphics and overall visual quality is a wonderful boost (I will include some overly animated facial features from the characters, but I suspect this is for the animated interface you see of them mid combat- if they weren't overly animated as thus, I don't think you'd get the "lip reading" you do in this state) I have still experienced a few network issues so far, which exists in both the MechWarrior 5 games. I would love to see Mercenaries get some TLC that Clans has clearly had, but perhaps there is indeed different catering going on in terms of playability, somewhere in the odd optimisation logic that seems to happen with Piranha. In terms of the characters, of which are commonly referred to as "angsty teenagers" or indeed, the Americanised jock archetype; the Battletech/MechWarrior universe is already heavily Americanised in origin, it comes with the franchise. As much as I can see where some complaints are coming in terms of these tropes, the characters actually do reflect what you'd expect from Clan Smoke Jaguar in terms of the lore, and I feel as if I'm getting a wonderful experience honouring the lore within game, making missions feel more immersive, dynamic and lived in, compared to the obnoxious Major from Mercenaries; constantly repeating the same dried out lines, and missions becoming easily "auto-pilot" in style. It feels like a more purposeful rendition of the game. As Player 2, I also have plenty more options for things to do instead of waiting for Player 1 to set things up! Levelling up pilots, actually purchasing and upgrading mechs with a neat system I personally enjoy that actually feels as if it rewards you for piloting mechs, as opposed to just a afterthought on Steam achievements. I don't have much I can say so far in regards to the most fair reviews I've seen, about some mechs feeling as if they're locked behind a 'paywall' in regards to the DLCs - however, Clans has been great compared to ANY Battletech experience where, you start off with some really fun and refreshing mechs, and the levelling up system improves them mission by mission! I usually gruel starting a new Battletech game with sub-par or boring, or heavily limited mechs. I've been excited for each stage of the campaign for what the game gives me and then rewards me. The reviews put me off getting Clans for over a year, and I can see reviews still don't seem to be improving. All I can say is, I wish I'd gotten into the Clanner cockpit sooner. If your PC refuses to play it properly, Steam are usually pretty kind about this sort of thing. MechWarrior games have often had their performance flaws but, if you love the universe and your mechs, don't be like me and wait it out, just load it up and make all systems nominal!

An overall goofy game not deserving the Mechwarrior name. Another Piranha Games mediocre lackluster. This game lacks basic gameplay best practices known for more than 30 years of game design now. Can't skip tutorial? Can't autosave? Have to redo whole missions because friendly AI is absolutely stupid? The HUD is full with busy effects that don't help me at all. The gameplay is a boring arcade chaos with no strategy or tactics involved. The story seems cool, although its a bit cringe. As of level 4 I have no desire to continue playing.