BattleTech (PC) Review

The strengths and the weaknesses of BattleTech become apparent fairly quickly for anyone playing through the campaign. The pacing problems present in the story are similar to problems set in the actual battle portion of the game. The depth and options are interesting but far too often some aspects are incredibly complicated, whereas others are woefully simple. This is not to say the experience is bad, since it is actually interesting, but more that the flaws hold back what otherwise would have been a great package.

From the beginning, this throws the player into a tutorial learning the basics of the combat acting as a student under your former teacher. The basics are pretty simple, feeling like the basics of any strategy game, such as Fire Emblem, where the player picks a unit, and then they move and attack after. It is a little more complicated, but these are the basics.

From the beginning, gamers create their character and, while a little limited, the options are interesting regarding various aspects of their past. Options range from picking their birth place, like the outer rim, or some core territory, and then things like what happened to your family, and past job. These things apply different stat boosts, and throughout the story give certain dialogue options based on their past. There are only four stats, excluding levelling up; this determines a major portion of your character's starting abilities.

The battle system is where some of the flaws start to show themselves. Combat is divided into phases where the smaller mechs on both sides get to go before the bigger ones. For each unit's turn they get to shoot, move and shoot, or move further with a few special abilities, like revealing a unit so others can shoot it. It is interesting but far too often someone goes before someone else without much indication why and it leads to an odd hand-off feeling to the way battles develop.

Problems start appearing due to the way damage is done. When attacking, you have the option to choose from all the weapons on a mech to shoot, ranging from missiles, lasers, and so on, each either using up limited ammo or increasing the overall heat of the mech, which needs to be dumped and prevent further firing. The enemy is composed of various sections, like their core, arms, or legs. Depending on where it hits, it can blow off the limbs. The idea is pretty cool but leads to a very random outcome where a hit can suddenly do critical damage and the mech is stuck in place for the rest of the mission.

Other issues that bog the game down are unnecessary depth to areas where others are oddly shallow. There are a lot of aspects to each weapon, such as range, heat usage, damage, accuracy, cost, and given that a typical mech has four-to-six weapons it becomes a chore to sort through what the best weapon might be. Hardcore players may enjoy this but casuals will be put off. Similarly, each mech has different enough stats that they need to be paid attention to, but not enough that it does more to annoy the player if they aren't on top of it. While varied mission objectives are fresh, they often devolve into 'fight your way here; oh, your backside suddenly is ambushed,' which takes a lot of planning out.

Likewise, the strategy part is similar in that some aspects are really watered down, such as only having four character stats, but then weapon and mech customisation is complicated enough that merely finding something 'good enough' becomes the norm rather than trying to figure out what the best ammo type to load might be. It is too bad as, like many parts of the game, with some simplification it would be immensely improved.