(side note: if someone could kindly point Alec from Rock, Paper, Scissors here, I'd appreciate it. I'm going to show him the proper way to write a review *smirk*)
tl;dr It's a good game, but not perfect.
Harebrained's Battletech is a computer adaptation of the board game Battletech (duh). They have added a whole new strategic layer and campaign to the tactical battles that are the heart of the board game. They've also expanded the RPG aspects of the board game making this more than just XCom with big, stompy robots.
Gameplay starts outside the well-trod galaxy of the original. This was almost certainly a brilliant move as it let them tell a new story without worrying about trampling over the existing Battletech lore. I suspect this move alone will save them many "ZOMG U SUCX BECUZ U FORGOT ABOUT...." posts. Instead we get a new little corner of the galaxy mostly away from the know politics of the Great Houses.
The game can in many ways be divided in half. You have your strategic/business game, and you have your tactical battles game.
The strategic side is very well done. You'll need to carefully manage your finances, and more importantly, time. You can fail the entire campaign by running out of money which is easy to do if you're spending all your time waiting on mech bays to refit and repairs mechs or pilots to recover in the medbay. You'll need to carefully choose missions that you think you can complete profitably, and negotiate contracts to decide if cash, salvage, or reputation will do you the most good in the long run.
Really, I have no complaints at all about this part of the game.
The tactical battles, though, are a mixed bag. The battle part is fantastic. It's an only slightly tweaked version of the board game, and that game has had many, many years of refinement to get right. So it's not particularly surprising that part works well.
It's also here where you get to find out how well you're doing on the strategic level. Did you think to put your tactician in a light mech so he can sensor lock targets? Do you maybe have a LRM-heavy mech to take advantage of those sensor locks. How about the differences between mechs. Are you going to go with a bit "heavier" light mech like the Panther and use it's PPC as a flanker, or maybe go with the Firestarter loaded up with flamers to shut down enemy mechs? Or maybe you skip light mechs altogether and just pile as much tonnage as you can into your lance in order to go toe to toe with the opfor.
Unfortunately, while the gameplay of tactical battles is solid, the presentation needs some tweaking. It's slow. Like glacial slow. Like a snail racing uphill through molasses while dragging a bus full of undead platypi slow. Your mechs walk slow. When they fire, each weapon fires one at a time, and if you are using missiles, it's even worse as each missile fires one at a time. The closeups and action shots are fun to watch...a few times, and then they start to get a bit old. And in missions where the opfor pours lots of mechs into a fight, you might as well grab a book to kill time between your moves. I get that developers and artists spent a lot of time creating the effects and animations, and I really enjoyed them at first. But please, oh please, give us an option to simultaneous fire all weapons, speed up mech walking (hell, teleport for all I care), and turn off all the extra animations if we want. Giving players more control over the experience is almost always a good idea, and would immediately improve the enjoyment of the game. Alternatively, add Steam Workshop to the game so that some modder out there can give us the Battletech version of XCom's Quit Wasting My Time mod.
The UI of the tactical battles needs tweaking. For the most part, all the information you could want is readily available. Movement is also easy, but facing isn't always. Sometimes when you move a mech, it can be hard to line up the view cone in the direction you want your mech facing because the cone is jumping 90 degrees at a time instead of the normal smooth motion it should always have.
The other challenge of the UI is changing your mind mid-move. If I start a move, then realize I cannot get line of sight on a target, it should be a simple matter to cancel the move before selecting the facing arc. It's not. It actually takes picking an entirely different action, then going back and picking move again, then moving to a better spot and locking in your target arc. Why not just default to right click undo at any point prior to attacking in battles?
It's also worth noting in tactical battles that sometimes your intel on mission difficulty was wrong. The game needs to better warn players about this. Yes, there are notes about sometimes it's a good idea to withdraw from a fight if it's going to end up costing more than you're getting paid. What's not mentioned is that sometimes you'll want to withdraw because that two-skull mission you thought you were getting actually has 3 lances of mechs, including a heavy or two, and they are going to roflstomp your one heavy, two mediums, and a light.
Overall, the game is fun. Both the strategic and tactical layers are fun. But right now, the tactical game drags because of slow, repetitive animations, and it suffers a bit from some UI quirks. Still, if you enjoy the Battletech board game, or you enjoy tactical combat games, you'll probably enjoy Harebrained's take on Battletech as well.
tl;dr It's a good game, but not perfect.
Harebrained's Battletech is a computer adaptation of the board game Battletech (duh). They have added a whole new strategic layer and campaign to the tactical battles that are the heart of the board game. They've also expanded the RPG aspects of the board game making this more than just XCom with big, stompy robots.
Gameplay starts outside the well-trod galaxy of the original. This was almost certainly a brilliant move as it let them tell a new story without worrying about trampling over the existing Battletech lore. I suspect this move alone will save them many "ZOMG U SUCX BECUZ U FORGOT ABOUT...." posts. Instead we get a new little corner of the galaxy mostly away from the know politics of the Great Houses.
The game can in many ways be divided in half. You have your strategic/business game, and you have your tactical battles game.
The strategic side is very well done. You'll need to carefully manage your finances, and more importantly, time. You can fail the entire campaign by running out of money which is easy to do if you're spending all your time waiting on mech bays to refit and repairs mechs or pilots to recover in the medbay. You'll need to carefully choose missions that you think you can complete profitably, and negotiate contracts to decide if cash, salvage, or reputation will do you the most good in the long run.
Really, I have no complaints at all about this part of the game.
The tactical battles, though, are a mixed bag. The battle part is fantastic. It's an only slightly tweaked version of the board game, and that game has had many, many years of refinement to get right. So it's not particularly surprising that part works well.
It's also here where you get to find out how well you're doing on the strategic level. Did you think to put your tactician in a light mech so he can sensor lock targets? Do you maybe have a LRM-heavy mech to take advantage of those sensor locks. How about the differences between mechs. Are you going to go with a bit "heavier" light mech like the Panther and use it's PPC as a flanker, or maybe go with the Firestarter loaded up with flamers to shut down enemy mechs? Or maybe you skip light mechs altogether and just pile as much tonnage as you can into your lance in order to go toe to toe with the opfor.
Unfortunately, while the gameplay of tactical battles is solid, the presentation needs some tweaking. It's slow. Like glacial slow. Like a snail racing uphill through molasses while dragging a bus full of undead platypi slow. Your mechs walk slow. When they fire, each weapon fires one at a time, and if you are using missiles, it's even worse as each missile fires one at a time. The closeups and action shots are fun to watch...a few times, and then they start to get a bit old. And in missions where the opfor pours lots of mechs into a fight, you might as well grab a book to kill time between your moves. I get that developers and artists spent a lot of time creating the effects and animations, and I really enjoyed them at first. But please, oh please, give us an option to simultaneous fire all weapons, speed up mech walking (hell, teleport for all I care), and turn off all the extra animations if we want. Giving players more control over the experience is almost always a good idea, and would immediately improve the enjoyment of the game. Alternatively, add Steam Workshop to the game so that some modder out there can give us the Battletech version of XCom's Quit Wasting My Time mod.
The UI of the tactical battles needs tweaking. For the most part, all the information you could want is readily available. Movement is also easy, but facing isn't always. Sometimes when you move a mech, it can be hard to line up the view cone in the direction you want your mech facing because the cone is jumping 90 degrees at a time instead of the normal smooth motion it should always have.
The other challenge of the UI is changing your mind mid-move. If I start a move, then realize I cannot get line of sight on a target, it should be a simple matter to cancel the move before selecting the facing arc. It's not. It actually takes picking an entirely different action, then going back and picking move again, then moving to a better spot and locking in your target arc. Why not just default to right click undo at any point prior to attacking in battles?
It's also worth noting in tactical battles that sometimes your intel on mission difficulty was wrong. The game needs to better warn players about this. Yes, there are notes about sometimes it's a good idea to withdraw from a fight if it's going to end up costing more than you're getting paid. What's not mentioned is that sometimes you'll want to withdraw because that two-skull mission you thought you were getting actually has 3 lances of mechs, including a heavy or two, and they are going to roflstomp your one heavy, two mediums, and a light.
Overall, the game is fun. Both the strategic and tactical layers are fun. But right now, the tactical game drags because of slow, repetitive animations, and it suffers a bit from some UI quirks. Still, if you enjoy the Battletech board game, or you enjoy tactical combat games, you'll probably enjoy Harebrained's take on Battletech as well.
