BattleTech for PC review: A fantastic game buried beneath a blanket of bugs

BattleTech is 1 of the oldest franchises in gaming, with its roots in the original BattleTech tabletop role-playing game (RPG). Titles like MechWarrior and MechAssault accept adapted the universe to the shooter genres, but none of the franchise'due south video games have been similar to the tabletop version. With the latest game on PC, BattleTech, that changes.

Featuring turn-based, tactical gameplay, and a strong narrative, BattleTech ticks all the boxes for it to exist a strong addition to the franchise information technology shares a name with. However, it's plagued with functioning problems, and getting the game to run smoothly is incommunicable.

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Story: Pb your faction beyond a war-torn galaxy

Set in 2035, BattleTech sees y'all play equally the leader of a mercenary faction that fights for 1 of the warlords vying for control across the universe. Your grouping'south ultimate motivation — honor, profit, or power — is completely upwards to you to decide, and your crew will follow you through anything and everything to see your goals accomplished. The coiffure members themselves are the best part of this story; each one genuinely feels similar a person, and interacting with them in dialogue is a treat.

Seeing a narrative worth anything in a strategy game is a huge positive, considering in most cases, whatever writing is at that place is just a simplistic and lazy justification for y'all to blow things upward. This story isn't amazing, only it's expert, and BattleTech should be commended for its efforts in this regard.

Gameplay: Then, four mechs walk into a battlefield...

In BattleTech, you appoint in two dissimilar modes of play. Primarily, you control a lance of four mechs in a war zone in guild to destroy enemy units. Secondarily, you manage your faction, using the money you earn in missions to pay maintenance costs and to upgrade things. The management part of the game is rather superficial and there's not much depth to it, but that'southward OK considering the majority of your fourth dimension will be spent in combat scenarios.

That is where BattleTech becomes truly engaging. Every turn, you accept to position your mechs, acquire a firing solution on enemies, and choose which weapon to use against them. In that location are plenty of different weapons and armors to put on your mechs (you lot tin can obtain them prior to battle) and each one has advantages and disadvantages to things similar impairment, accuracy, and more than. The terrain is a large factor; units that are barely peeking above a hill will be protected past the natural cover.

This is only the tip of the iceberg of different things that influence combat; everything from estrus generation to damage done to mech "body parts" can have massive effects. Learning how to keep track of all of this and employ that agreement to your reward is where BattleTech is at its all-time.

Performance: Unacceptable by today'south standards

As excellent as the remainder of the game is, BattleTech largely fails when it comes to how the game runs. My game crashed a total of 3 times during my playthrough, and almost every action I took led to the game either dropping frames or freezing for several seconds. Loading screens besides tin can continue for minutes, and it's incredibly frustrating to desire to play the game then desperately but struggle to do so.

BattleTech for PC decision

BattleTech's actual content is superb, but it'southward impossible to ignore the fact that trying to make it play well on my high-end PC was an absolute task. If the game was more than polished, I would give BattleTech a full bespeak higher in my score. You may desire to wait for some patches to come out earlier picking it up.

Pros:

Excellent gameplay.
Surprisingly great story.
Solid presentation.

Cons:

Incredibly disappointing performance issues.

BattleTech is available now on Steam for $39.99.

Come across on Steam

This review was conducted on a PC, using a copy provided by the publisher.

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