--- THE GOOD ---
- The game is enormous. If you want value for money, you cannot go wrong with this. It's not one of those crappy modern games that takes someone around 4 or 5 hours to complete. For reference, I've got just over 100 hours played, and only now have a full lance / team of assault mechs (Yeah I know, I'm a bit slow on this game. More on that in a bit).
- Amazing variety of mechs, which all have variants, each with their own weapons loadouts / set ups. One could have a setup for more long range combat, others can be more oriented towards close quarters brawling. So there's likely a mech for everyone. And it's great fun to play around with this.
Some mechs can be tailored for certain mission types too. For example, on Assassination missions, I find it good fun to bombard enemies from afar with mechs like the iconic Catapult, and have one or two heavies for backup. It's also handy to have jump jets, because it opens up new gameplay options.
On the other hand, if you like to run & and gun / hit 'n run, you could try faster mechs with less armour and weapons on them for quick Raids or Demolition contracts.
And contrary to that, you can use heavies & assault mechs where you're basically giant tanks or artillery platforms on legs. Make no mistake though, depending on the difficulty level - usually indicated by tonnage limit on a contract – you might think that using 4 beastly mechs means that you can just steam roll an enemy. But think again. Because the game always has a way of chucking a fly in the ointment, or a "monkey in the wrench", so that you may just end up with some badly damaged mechs by the end of a mission if you're careless.
But I like that, it's a good kind of uncertainty where you rarely feel overpowered.
- Fun co-op. Works well most of the time, because you can coordinate and plan various tactics and strategies. I've not had many problems with connecting, but did have an issue where my friend kept being chucked into spectator mode. Not sure why, but it oddly just went away.
Quick gripe about co-op though, is that when anyone's a guest in another person's game, they can't earn any C-Bills(in game currency) or salvage.
It would have been fantastic if the C-Bills or salvage you earn at the end of a co-op mission could be given to each person to take back to their games, same for salvage. This would definitely be welcomed and appreciated in a future game update.
- Really love the vibe of the game, including the retro synthy main menu theme. Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries was my introduction to mech games WAY back, because I was late to the PC games party, and I loved it. But due to the 4th game being so iconic, this game had some sizeable boots to fill. And dare I say it, it's done it rather well.
- Sound effects are superb. The escalating, out of control whirring of a gunship coming down after you laser them out of the sky, followed by a crisp boom when they impact the ground never gets old.
One minor gripe I'll add though; the pounding of the footsteps of each mech are basically the same, rather than being a colossal thump when in heavier mechs and a little bump in lighter ones.
- The maps and visuals are really immersive and detailed considering the sheer vastness of the game. The graphical settings are all set to high at 1080p, but I don't have an RTX video card so no ray tracing for me. But it still looks sweet
