TL;DR, I would give the game a solid C (75%), probably would be a C+ if I had bought the DLC.

I'll also address the new DLC before I really begin, too. It looks pretty good, and I can totally understand how it would fit into the game well; however, I'm not interested in paying $15 when I'm already most of the way done with the campaign just for melee weapons. That said, if there's another sizable expansion (clans???), I would consider replaying it after buying both DLC. I did play the game with all the other DLC, I assume I bought the game during a Steam sale or something.

If you aren't already interested in large, slowish, stompy robots, don't buy this game. This is not for people who like Armored Core (I assume, I've never played it but it looks dumb) or only enjoys Gundams flying around with energy swords. The more familiar you are with the Battletech/Mechwarrior/MechAssault universe, the more you'll get out of this game, to a point. Looking at Steam now, the base price for MechWarrior 5 is $30, and sadly the game feels like it. I don't know if its because I've had my expectations lowered by other mediocre modern games or if certain aspects of this game are higher quality than you'd expect, but knowing the game is $30, I'm not surprised. While pretty much every basic Battletech weapon, given this series' lineage, there's a lack of options (where are the ER Medium Lasers, Streak LRMs, or the UAC/2, /10, or /20?), but the inclusion of Burst Fire auto-cannons and stream and single shot (not to be confused with single use) launchers is nice. Additionally, the handling of some weapons is just downright stupid or lazy. Splitting the LBX AC into slug and shot makes no sense to me and comes off as lazy, especially when there's other equipment that do allow toggling modes (turning ECM on/off, AMS, MASC, ect.). The number of mechs to drive, while more than MechWarrior 4, with all the expansions, still feels like not quite enough. If you play through the campaign, you'll more than notice the lack of variety. It does have slightly less variety than Battletech (the 2018 strategy game), but given the additional work that goes into a first/third person mech including cockpit instead of just a smaller RTS model, I can understand it. There is also a lack of variety in non-pilotable enemies, such as only having two VTOL models and a handful of tanks. You'll also notice the lack of biomes pretty quickly too.

The bigger issue is the implementation of customization in MW 5. Unlike my experience with other Battletech universe games that allow customization, MW 5 eschews many of the options other games have. Weapons are grouped into three slot sizes (small, medium, and large) and three-to-four categories (energy, missile, ballistic and melee with the most recent DLC). There are a few other slots, such as active probes, electric warfare countermeasures, and anti-missile systems. The main problem comes from the handling of these slots. Slotting a small or medium laser into a large energy slot makes the weapon take the same amount of space as a large laser or PPC. Given the fixed and severely limited number of slots on any mech (unlike other games, a mech will only have the available slots that are utilized in the stock loadout), you end up having very little reason to not stick with a stock or semi-stock loadout. Changing an SRM 6 for LRM 5 or 10, or PPC to a large laser or large pulse laser is about the only real decision you'll make. Additionally, when modifying a mech, leaving slots empty (such as not equipping a Beagle Active Probe) does not free up the slots for use with heatsinks or other uses. You just end up with a dead slot. This becomes especially apparent once you start finding MASC or superchargers (equipment that can speed up your mech) or want to install jump jets. Almost no mechs have a slot of MASC/Supercharger, so you're pretty much better off selling them to pay your Comstar bills. While this forces you to pursue other loadouts for mechs, especially hero mechs, it makes it feel like you can never really make a mech your own. In the end, I just ended up dropping small lasers or flamers and maxing armor. It's also a bit interesting the lack of use that upgraded armor or structure a mech has. Ferro-Fibrous or Endo-Steel has almost no impact. It barely adds any free weight (both of these are weight reducing but more expensive material to build your mech that should also take up free slots on your mech as a trade off) and the refusal of including them as space taking equipment is curious. The absence is doubly strange when (although not shown to the player) extra-light engines do take up free slots on mechs that feature them, though I am unsure if XL engines render a mech inoperable if a side torso is destroyed in MW5.

The gameplay is the only place the game truly shines. It it pretty fun to core a Panther from 1000m away with dual gauss rifles, and some of the slower, larger mechs really do provide a different feel from a standard point and shoot FPS. Managing weapon groups so you don't say, have 4 large pulse lasers firing at once and causing you to overheat constantly is fun. When you're actually piloting a mech, every one I used felt at least in some way different. Even small changes such as having a laser placed higher on a large mech's shoulder instead of in the torso can completely change the feel of piloting it. For instance, the Nightstar's large laser slot is great for headshots, while the Atlas-K's arm lasers often will hit the torso instead of the head. There are some small issues, such as the start up routines being reused across cockpits so that the actions don't line up with actual buttons on some cockpits, but the general feel is pretty good. With the Heroes of the Inner Sphere Cantina upgrades, you do lose some of the differences, though. Slapping turning rate upgrades on an assault (the highest weight tier, 80-100 tons) often removes some of the feel of piloting a hulking death machine.

Another issue that arises in single player is lack of squad control. Too often I would notice my Archer (long range bombardment with missiles unit) had decided to rush in and use his medium lasers or fists instead of hanging back where units would be outside of his missiles' minimum range. Similarly, at least for my play through, you, as the only human, seem almost forced into a close range or medium range brawler. Enemies will focus on you over your squad mates and occasionally objectives once you fire on them and quickly close the distance. If you're planning to be the long range rocket, PPC, or guass rifle sniper for your squad, you better max armor and stock up on medium lasers anyways or you'll be needing to throw robotic fists in no time. I will point out that this game has full campaign and career mode coop, so if you play with another human (the game supports up to 4 player coop), I assume this would be much less of an issue. Even with one other human player, I could see you being able to specialize roles and play much more tactically than one person and 3 CPU lancemates.

There are a few additions that are barely touched, though. In one or two mission types, there will be artillery which fires on your position (again only targeting the player, not the CPU lancemates), and in literally only three missions do mech repair stations show up. It almost feels like someone had a cool idea towards the end of development and it never got fully implemented.

The campaign is where the gameplay really shines. Unlike the randomly generated missions, campaign levels do have some level of difficulty. You may find yourself replaying 2-3 missions more than once after getting killed for playing stupidly and rushing in. Campaign levels are what every mission should be, a multi-part mission with shifting objectives, ambushes, and can make you feel like you're barely scraping by. On the other hand, the randomly generated missions feel very standard. "Defend this objective from 20 enemies," "Destroy these three buildings," all the objectives are very simple and generally extremely short. The Legend of the Kestral Lancers DLC is an excellent example of what the game can be. The DLC campaign forces you to take part in a multi-year war for a planet, with set dates of battles, making you keep multiple lances of mech ready at all times while others repair. There are also a small number of quests in game, normally with missions somewhere in between campaign and randomly generated missions, and offering a large reward if you complete the quest. The only other difficulty comes from multi-level missions, which require consecutive deployment. Generally, these are pretty simple, but you can find yourself hoisted by your own petard if you deploy too many mechs early on and leave yourself with little or no undamaged units for the last missions.

It should be noted there are a number of large, popular mods which fix many of the issues I outlined here. That said, I didn't play with them and cannot comment. Some of the more popular ones, such as the Clan Invasion mod, seem to be pretty new, though, and update frequently, even if their content seems scattershot and have yet to build something I would be willing to put my time into playing. I have to assume a lot of these either gained new life or began development with the recent Steam release (the game was previously an Epic store exclusive). Compared to the other recent Battletech universe game, being Battletech 2018, none of the mods are near the level offered in that game just yet. I should note that I've read many of the mods do work on Xbox, if you're a console player.

If you're like me and have more than a little familiarity with the Battletech universe, you'll likely be a bit disappointed with the setting. Maybe I just have a soft spot for the Jihad or Dark Age, but man, I have zero interest in more Succession Wars content. Given all the new toys to play with, more varied units, and tiers of tech that are even introduced with the Clan Invasion, I can't help to be a bit salty when the new games keep focusing on the older time periods instead of what I find more interesting.

In the end, I'm sure this comes off as more negative than I'm intending. While there are a lot of issues, the game is fun if you like large, more western-style mechs. Don't come into this expecting a $60 AAA game or super fast Japanese mecha and you'll have a good time. I'll probably remember something I wanted to include, but more or less, that's all I have to say on this game. If I want to mess around with big robots, I'll reinstall Battletech with BEX or BTA instead.

OFFICIAL RATING:

C

Buy if you're interested in the genre.

Shout out to the Zeus, most fun I had was piloting that as a long range cavalry mech with LRM 20 and an ER PPC, even if it really isn't as useful as other assault mechs. Second place goes to my Black Knight.