Recent reviews by Stormie

Cool little game.

Have played through full 1st campaign mission on PC and 15 turns or so on Steamdeck.

If you are a player that players Total War games, but autoresolves almost all the battles (in my timepoor mid-30s, this had become me increasingly) then this seems to offer scope to develop into a more streamlined, narrower scope version of this experience.

- I think the user interface needs more attention - often was moving armies around when i wanted to drill down on their makeup etc
- Not my game, but were i the devs I'd be focusing more attention on the campaign and less on skirmish/MP
- I have no issue with the price, and would suggest that just because something is EA doesn't mean you should get a discount. Selling it to you at 25% of cost now, means they cant sell it to you at actual cost when they finish the game. If you don't want to buy an as yet incomplete experience, no-one is forcing you, wish list and wait for full release and see if it makes sense to buy then.
- At the presently available difficulty (supposedly the middle tier) the AI appears to be very passive on the campaign map. I guess it was only mission 1 so maybe its toned down to ease people in, in 40+ turns of procrastinating the AI only attacked my settlements twice both times inside the first 15 turns or so, despite me leaving settlements with no garrisons in within vision range of their units. in will update if this changes with further experience.

Bought this game as a favour to a friend, not expecting a tonne of satisfaction as its quite a departure from my usual fare.

It has completely exceeded my expectations and the last few days when opening steam this has been the game I've wanted to play. I also very desperately want to nuke Santa. His carpet bombing is THE WORST.

The theming is in your face, the price is low. Give it a crack you might just like it as much as I did.

If you are a fan of titles like Geometry Wars, you'll get a few hours entertainment out of this. For the minimal cost its both pretty good and pretty good value.

Pre-review background info: For those who dont know the history of the BattleTech universe, it started out as a tabletop boardgame in the 80's, then made the jump to PC games (under the mechwarrior brand) as first person mech control games in the 90's before heading back to the commander/strategy side of the equation with the MechCommander series of RTS games in the late 90s. But there was never a Battletech game on PC that replicated the experience of the original tabletop gamers (except MegaMek, which was/is a literal digitisation of the tabletop.

So onto this game, BATTLETECH has had to work hard to find its place in the Battletech universe. In order to keep the mechs that are known and loved, a known timeline had to be used, but unfortunately there is already a thoroughly established lore for the known galaxy in the relevant, so those that know that lore may be surprised a new political entity has been created to support tyhe campaign and playspace for the game.

You play as the leader of a mercenary company, and can control up to 4 mechs in turn based combat. Each mech has different strengths and weaknesses and are to some extent customisable (a hallmark of the battletech universe)

Knowledge of the Battletech lore helps but is in noway essential, all properties of the various Mechs/Vehicles/Weapons are clearly laid out and in the between missions area you have access to NPCs that provide the instructions on how various parts of the game work (and one of my peeves: as soon as you know how the game works those members of your crew become essentially useless dummy characters)

The combat is simple to get started but to properly maximise your play, you'll need to fairly carefully choreograph fights, which can feel very rewarding.
Those who know the lore, or have played the other games in the universe, may be surprised to know there are no navies,aerofighters,conventional air units, or infantry, and due to the time period there is also no clan tech.

There is also a high quality soundtrack to the game (it was a stretch goal in the kickstarter that launched the game)

The PVP portion of the game is limited to single lance on single lance skirmishes and the population is quite low. I'd consider this a weakness of the game.

Visually the game is very strong, especially for a game made in the unity engine.

As a kickstarter backer, I'm a little biased but i think you should definitely pick up this game. I also think you should investigate twhat the wider Battletech universe has to offer. (novels, animated TV series from the 90s, Mechcommander games, Mechwarrior games and even the original Tabletop games.

For Full Disclosure: I last played in February, since then there have been further patches/releases/changes

That being said, this game is team deathmatch, over and over and over (regardless of what mode the game is telling you that you're playing treat them all like TDM and you'll do OK)

Some mechs are objectively better than others, but the game wont tell you which are the 'good' ones, and for those that know the Battletech/Mechwarrior lore that doesnt help identify them either.

As others have pointed out there is SIGNIFICANT grind in this game (assuming you go the F2P route), and picking up one of the sucky mechs first up will have you sticking pins in your eyes, so if you do have a go i suggest plenty of youtube research before making that first mech selection

In summary unless you are a Battletech Lore junkie, I'd give this a miss as there are much more complete/polished team deathmatch games out there. Also note that as a lore junkie you are likely to be disappointed as the lore of the battletech universe offers nothing to the game other than names of mechs, weapons and factions. As you can see from hours played, i persevered, I'd suggest that this is only possible if you bring friends or make friends in game (very little UI functionality for doing that though!)

If you take the plunge, good luck!