This is a hard game to recommend, I think. On the one hand, I did enjoy the story, for the most part, and I enjoyed the fact this was a singleplayer story-driven mechwarrior game. As much as I do love the HBS Battletech and the Mw5 Mercs style open galaxy, it is very nice that this is a focused experience. They should do more of these, in my opinion (I will be playing the DLC as well).
The good stuff is that this is basically an improved version of Mw5 mercs, it looks and feels a lot nicer, perhaps a little less Simulationesque, but hey, that's the direction the series has been headed in. Besides, even as a kid I would change all the setting to be like this, with throttle decay and the legs moving to face the torso. The omnipod mechlab is fun to mess with and you can still make some very silly builds still, especially with the nice mix of Battlemechs and Omnimechs you get with the DLCs. There's also co-op, which I didn't use but when I played in Mw5 was very fun.
The bad stuff is, well, unfortunately kind of a lot, imo. The mission design is probably the weakest part of the game, especially towards the third act of the game. It mainly starts out fine, but there are several pretty crazy difficulty spikes as you go on. I'm not necessarily an expert at these games, but I have played a lot of MechWarrior. I was cruising through the game on normal with basically zero bumps until it suddenly felt like I hit a wall out of nowhere. Missions rapidly become battles of attrition and little else as any interesting design or notion of sanity falls away as planetary militias and rinky-dink merc groups start dumping waves of Awesomes, Orions, and any other grab-bag IS heavy/assault mech at you. It's genuinely insane. There's a later game mission where you have to investigate some smugglers after taking over a planet and the smugglers come at you with 3 or 4 lances of heavy and assault mechs. The smugglers were several magnitudes better armed and armored than the actual DCMS troops defending the planet. AND NO ONE COMMENTS ON IT. I felt like I was going insane. For half of the game you're fighting a guerrilla war against insurgents yet these guys are packing Atlases and Banshees and Warhammers and wave after wave of Quickdraws and Grasshoppers and Dragons.
The missions get longer and longer too, with repair and ammo bays getting fewer and further between, if at all. This would be one thing if there were checkpoints, but no, a Star wipe means starting over from the beginning of a 20 to 30 minute mission. Each late game mission felt like it went on for one encounter too long, there's always a last minute objective or lance of mechs to harass you right when you think it's over. Even the campaign does this, there's like three missions that are setup to be the final battle and then there's another one after it. Even the last boss of the last mission is a fake out, there's a whole section at the end after you beat the boss (at least on the path I chose, it might be different for the other ending).
Now, I don't mind a challenge, but these long, grinding missions with few ammo options means you are basically pushed into using a laser boat that can take some heavy hits. A Warhawk with quad PPCs will carry you through most of the game, same with a Timber Wolf armed with pulse lasers. Not that those Mechs aren't fun, but I made a Rifleman IIC build with 6 LBX ACs I wanted to use, but in the one mission I took it on I was out of ammo by the third encounter with no ammo around for me to resupply with. It's just a shame. The boring missions largely had me wanting to play MW4 Mercs, with its plethora of fun and challenging missions that weren't just 'what if you had to fight a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of heavy mechs?'. You rarely get any support either, late game missions are usually just you and your star vs a planet's worth of mechs and armor. I will say though, the rare missions where you do get allies are quite fun, and the battles can feel properly epic when there's a couple lances and stars battling it out.
The story is fine, I've read the novels so I kinda knew where things were headed but the star is pretty likeable for the most part, fighting a trial of position after reading about it in the novels was sick, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. My one story related gripe at the game is towards the end when [spoiler] you have to essentially choose between two starmates from your sibko, Ezra and Mia. I found Mia to be extremely annoying and was glad to be rid of her, but everyone else seemed so damn attached to her, including the player character, who seemed head over heels for her. Sorry Mia, I was glad to be able to turn your stravag ass to ash. Naomi was way cooler anyway. [/spoiler]
Final thoughts, I do recommend this game, but with caveats. Know you are in for a fairly long ride and boy does it turn into a meat grinder. If you can grin and bear that part of it, it's pretty good. Here's hoping for a Jade Falcon expansion pack or game next, I demand the return of Star Colonel Aisa Thastus!
