Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries
Game Title: MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
Released: May 26, 2021
Game Length: 82 Hours
Grade: B-
Background
History: Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries came out in 2002. For years, things were rather quiet until they came out with a trailer for a reboot. Then they released a surprise - Mechwarrior Online in 2012. For years, Piranha Games released one mech after another with some content that supported multiplayer. When they released the trailer for Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries, I decided to go back in time and try Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries in 2016. Unfortunately, the test of time was not good as the poor AI and bad objectives left me quickly wanting to stop playing. Mods could have salvaged the game, but my enthusiasm towards the genre was pretty flimsy at the time. Then Battletech released in 2018, and I played that game for approximately 60 hours. I enjoyed the game so much that I didn't even bother making notes for a proper review. Unfortunately, I did not buy any of the add-ons that were tacked on for the following year. Then Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries released in 2019. This might be contradictory seeing the release date at the top of the screen. That's because it was originally an Epic Stores exclusive title. Seeing that I already played Battletech a year earlier, jumping into the universe again only a year later wasn't quite appealing to me at the time. EG7 acquires Piranha Games Inc in 2021 and decides to allocate their team to making more profits in Mechwarrior 5 by announcing Mechwarrior 5: Clans in 2023. Here it is 2024 and time to play the original game before the sequel.
Releases: When researching content for Mechwarrior 5, there is a surprising number of content packs released all the way up to the new release. Most of these offer mechs and campaign maps for the Inner Sphere Houses. The first one that released as the same time as the game for Steam brought forth the new career mode with 61 warzones, 34 industrial hubs, and 55 questlines (that allows you to import your progress from the original campaign). The following ones of Kestrel Lancers with artillery strikes, Call to Arms with melee weapons, Rasalhague with the bounty hunter system, Dragon's Gambit with new multiplayer features, and Solaris with new arena missions are all nice additions to the game. Unfortunately, player reactions are rather mixed. These missions only happen at a specific time, advances the timeline with forced traveling without the use of the starmap, and requires you to endure consecutive missions with little opportunity for repair. Negotiating for artillery strikes before a mission isn't quite resourceful of your points and playing through artillery bombardments can be quite frustrating when it comes to the Kestrel Lancer missions. While I enjoy new mechs like the Longbow in The Dragon's Gambit or other mercenaries appearing during a mission in Rise of Rasalhague, most of these add-ons feel like odd attempts to bring more variety to the same type of missions in the base game.
Controls
Options: While the game does supply you with a quick tutorial on how to fire your weapons and how to defeat your opponent, there are a number of things the game doesn't tell you. Just check out the manual. Pressing B (for battle grid) will bring up an overhead of your map. N toggles your night vision.
If you are a heathen and must play the game in 3rd person, you can
press the V button. At any time you are overheating, you can press the O
button to override shutdown as your internal parts burn up a little.
You can pause the game at any time and change your weapon
configurations. There are options to change what is fired to each number
key and activate chain firing so each weapon fires in consecutive
order. Since the release of Legend of the Kestrel Lancers, you can now switch to any mech in your lance
by pressing Y on your keyboard. The function keys will cover commands
for your lance: F1 for all or F2 - F4 for each pilot, then again F1 to
attack, F2 to form up, F3 to move to position, F4 to hold fire, and F5
to cancel.
The AI Situation
No Tactics: While it might be more entertaining to play with friends who can move and function all on their own, the positioning of the AI relies too much on your actions. Your friends will stick to you like glue. The three pilots you arrange will always maintain the same positions to your left, right, and behind you. You can't change your position, even when you switch to another mech. They, as well as your enemies, will match your speed almost perfectly. If they run into something, they will act like a GPS system in your car by spinning around a few times before recalculating a route. If your allies get out of position while you are backing up, they will literally turn their back to the enemy to get next to you. If you equip a mech with only long-range missiles, they will not gain some distance to fire them. If they lost a leg, they seem to still be able to match your speed. Do not jump over a cliff. Your teammates won't take the same risk and will run all the way around, sometimes through an enemy base, to get to where you landed. They don't seem to like using jump jets, chain fire, skirting the heat gauge when in combat, and get confused on what weapons to use when they have a variety to choose from on their mech.
Accuracy: Perhaps the most amusing part of the game is how the system determines when a pilot engages their target. Most of the time, they wait for you to target something. While the game does periodically reveal where all the enemies are on the map, your allies will never share target information with you. This is bad when you are the one carrying missiles (and doubly bad since you are the one in front of your allies). Enemies will always engage the one that is dealing them the most damage. There are a few exceptional missions where they are dumb enough to focus-fire on something as you tear apart their back. They do occasionally switch targets but don't normally go after the one that is hurting the most. They will sometimes aim for your head, use their arms for a melee strike if they get close enough, and shoot at the parts of your mech that contain the weapons, or worse the system that is interfering with their electronics, hurting them the most. This goes for both your allies and your enemies. Whether or not they actually hit their intended target depends on their pilot skill and how fast their mech is moving. The faster you are going, the less likely they are able to hit you. However, pilots seem to perform phenomenally well with the PPC and other long-range weapons. I've been shocked at the number of times a helicopter gets shot by one almost instantly after being targeted.
Setting
Timeline: For those familiar with the universe, the game starts in 3015. The appearance of mechs, weapons, and equipment will all correspond with their appropriate timestamps in the game. That means the appropriate Raven mechs that carry ECM in Liao space will not appear until around 3034. The game will provide creative ways to supply you with those exclusive items not normally found on the market through secret bases in campaign missions. They can supply you anywhere from old tech to rare mechs put on display in industrial hubs. The type of mechs that appear both on landscape and in the store depends entirely on the reputation of the area. The campaign of Reputation 15 can be potentially completed in 10 years by 3025. Travel between planets are roughly 10 days and increases by about 3 days if you choose to stop in any particular system. The actual date of the game will not progress beyond the arrival of the
clans in 3049. This allows you to indefinitely complete content in the
game regardless of their actual events according to the lore.
DLC: As you reach important dates in the lore, the game will prompt you with extended contracts that will start campaign missions with the bundles you purchased. Legend of the Kestral Lancers occurs in 3026 and again in 3028. Call to Arms can be started after 3026. Rise of Raslhague initiates in 3031 and again in 3033. The Dragon's Gambit starts in 3038 and Solaris Showdown starts in 3040. Heroes of the Inner Sphere has no start date and is always available. These missions will lock off the starmap, take you to far off systems, and have preset time periods between missions. You'll need to still pay your quarterly expenses despite the time jumps between missions. There is an option to advance the timeline without having to wait for the next event.
Gameplay
Reputation: Describing your reputation can be complicated as there is the main type that displays your difficulty level, your arena fame levels, bounty hunter rival intel, and the amount that defines your relationship with the various factions. Your difficulty level ranges from 5 to 100 (or Reputation 1 to 15) and signifies what missions become available. This also signifies your tonnage limit as Reputation 6 offers a total of 200 tons between four mechs, Reputation 10 allows 300 tons, and Reputation 13 jumps to the maximum 400 tons (since 100 tons is the maximum a mech can sustain). Arena and Bounty Hunter levels are self-explanatory where they provide bonuses at certain tiers after you participate in the activity a number of times. Your faction standing is highly dependent on the type of contracts you take in each system. You gain favor with the ones you help and lower the ones you compete against. Depending on your status, you will either increase or decrease the cost of items, the amount you receive when selling items, and the amount of negotiation points available per contract. You will notice that the campaign as well as your reputation will do an entire clockwise loop around the Inner Sphere by starting in Federated Suns (House Davion) and ending in Draconis Combine (House Kurita) space.
Mercenary Cost: There is a quarterly expense every 90 days that will deduct a certain amount of funds from your total amount of c-bills. This takes into consideration the salary of your pilots and the number of mechs you have available. You used to only be able to hold 12 of them until Rise of Rasalhague increased the amount of mech bays to 40. The cost for each mech bay runs you at around 250,000 which can total around 4,000,000 when you need enough to cycle through multiple missions. Repair bills can range from 250,000 for some simple repairs to about 2,000,000 when they have some missing limbs. Stripping all the armor off a mech can actually profit you about 30,000. Your mechanic will need some time repairing your mechs but does not repair them one at a time. Mechs can either be refit in industrial hubs or at an increase of both time & cost in conflicted areas. Ammunition used in battle is automatically restored at no cost. The time for upgrades only occur if a mech is not currently being repaired. There will be an expense for any sort of change whether it is moving a heat sink from your chest to your leg, changing a different quality weapon, or repairing armor. Perhaps the biggest problem in the game is how the mechanic will not inform you when they refuse to replace broken equipment if you do not have the exact type and quality in your inventory. You will only realize this after repairs are finished and their weapon is marked on the display screen. You can choose to instantly strip a mech of armor and equipment by placing it in cold storage. Beware as this process will also remove all upgrades. The cantina job for mechs does not care about their condition or if they are in cold storage.
Mech Refit: When you are previewing a mech, there are a number of options immediately available to you. You can choose to repair all (with the addition of Solaris Showdown), add maximum armor allowed without going over the tonnage limit, or strip everything off your mech. You will not be able to adjust your speed but you can add special melee equipment with Call of Arms or special equipment slots with Heroes of Inner Sphere. Once you choose to repair your mech, you are not able to make any more changes. You can rename your mech. You need to enter the menu to paint your mech and select the bar with his name at the top. When you obtain a mech, there is usually a default paint scheme applied depending on the circumstances of the mission. You can choose to change to any default pattern or apply certain colors that will display for each pattern. Once you find a pattern you like, you can also save the scheme to quickly add to other mechs you might obtain.
Equipment: Each mech has an assigned code-name that informs you the number and type of equipment you can slot. Each weapon has pros and cons, a set range, speed, consistency, and perks. Ballistas require ammunition, rips through buildings, and produces very little heat. Autocannons can come in standard, burst fire (reaches the target faster), rapid fire (less cooldown), rifle (long cooldown), and machine gun that is more effective tearing apart components when an enemy's armor has been ripped off. Lasers simply require you to maintain heat as they come in standard, short pulses, and binary (more heat). Heat Sinks (and even double heat sinks) can help reduce your heat. Missiles also require ammunition but can either come in short-range or long-range. Long-range missiles can "bend" towards a target that is locked when fired. Missiles can aim towards a target if you reacquire a lost lock but only if you fired with a lock. Periodic scan sweeps of the map do count and there are upgrades to maintain a lock even if you no longer have the target set on your reticle. Stream missiles will fire each one sequentially instead of all at once and Artemis helps pull missiles to a targeted component. Very rarely will you receive special equipment, especially in the early years, like ultra autocannons that allow you to fire again while it reloads with a chance of jamming, extended range (ER) lasers, and streak missiles that only fire but are guaranteed to hit your target after you lock onto your target. Mechs with arms will automatically have the ability to use them as a melee weapon, but special types can hold melee weapons such as blades, axes, or knuckles. Heroes of the Inner Sphere adds more types of equipment such as ECM (electronic countermeasures suite that hides your group's signature from being targeted without physical sight), BAP (Beacon Active Probe that extends the use of your range and lock systems), AMS (anti-missile system that shoots flak into the air to prevent being hit by missiles), and superchargers that temporarily increase your speed.
Missions
Bases: Most contracts will usually include a base of some kind on the map. If you are tasked to defend a base, enemies will appear in a number of waves (typically in the opposite end of where you are) and very slowly tear it apart. Your allies will do their utmost not to fire unless they are absolutely sure not to cause any damage on-site. If you are tasked to destroy a base, you will need to attack anything from giant buildings, protective walls, pipes, cars, and warehouses. Structures that aren't built like a wall will not collapse. They will only receive damage if you rip apart each of their sides. Any sort of small objects, warehouses, and even walls can collapse simply by running into them. Since an endless supply of enemies will pour in to intervene with your progress, clearing out a base quickly is of utmost importance. Assassination missions give you a few sites to explore until you find that lance with a special mech ready to throw insults at your arrival. A raid will have you retrieve items from a series of sites. A warzone gives you a place to sit tight and defeat a certain number of enemies before evacuating. If you are in need of a certain mech or defeat specific types of enemies for a bounty, you may choose to continue fighting for additional funds. Watch out for those contracts that will have consecutive missions on the same planet.
DLC: Legend of the Kestral Lances adds a number of variation scenarios such as Battlefield and Garrison Duty with additional defending mechs or Scorched Earth and Targeted Earth with a stronger opposing force. Heroes of the Inner Sphere adds Beachhead where you are typically bombarded with artillery strikes. Rise of Rasalhague adds Infiltration where you try to sneak in at multiple sites without the enemy sending out an alarm. You will want to command your lance to hold fire on these type of missions. Solaris Showdown, of course, adds the arena missions at industrial hubs. These scenarios seem to be rather finicky as they will send forth a trivial force of helicopters whenever you choose two mechs for a one mech match or a heavier mech (despite being offered a higher tonnage maximum) when the setting calls for a lighter one.
Transmissions: The ones that really stand out are the unique missions you encounter through a transmission. Some of these are labeled as High Reward Quests. These usually provide you a number of consecutive missions in a particular sector. You can usually tell when there is a lot of reading involved, the map has a very narrow path to follow, or there's some lengthy dialogue during a fight. While there are roughly 20 missions that follows your story, a number of missions will reflect some sort of major event in history. Some of these that stood out to me (whether they were good or bad) were Bring Her Home where a princess is more cunning than she appears and you do better in the final mission if you don't listen to your commander's recommendation, Hazing of the Weak where you chase after some heretics that got a hold of old tech on a lava planet where your allies will refuse to go up the spiral path, and The Conspirators where you are double-crossed to keep the guards preoccupied across a wide chasm as a group charges in to assassinate a well-known political figure. Crimson Crusade ultimately has you command a single mech under 50 tons (which the only mech I had less than 60 tons at the time was a Jenner), weave in and out taking down alarm towers, and then lure five mechs into an ambush. Unfortunately, there was a slight hiccup with the 5th mech not initially following me to the site. These type of missions make playing through the other repetitive scenarios worth it.
Music: As a quick side point, the music is pretty incredible. Even the song that plays while you are evaluating your options before a mission doesn't get repetitive or dull. Perhaps one of the most iconic songs, but not necessarily the best, comes from the expansion called The Coming Storm. The most surprising song perhaps has to be Judgement and Retribution when the chorus starts singing in the background.
Summary
Review: When Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries first released, there wasn't enough substance to keep me entertained. The AI was intolerable, there were only five mission types that boiled down to attacking things after finding a base, and there were maybe a couple dozen campaign missions that tied a flimsy story about losing your father. The game still offers you around 50 different types of mechs in the core experience, but the developers took years to incorporate gameplay mechanics that expanded the number of mechs you could maintain, allowed you to switch between your lance while on the field (or upon death), added melee combat, and fixed several technical issues that plagued the game. If you wanted to try out more locations, check out different types of missions, have additional activities that keep you busy exploring the universe, and be a part of major moments in history, then you had to buy each of the additional packs. $100 retail price might be a bit steep but 60% off from Good Old Games might make the game worth exploring.