Was a surprise to me as well. That were quite some amount of missions and I didn't expect a whole new planet and really high-stakes stuff. Good ending, more than what I expected. Great game
The ER Small Laser is definitely an unsung star of Clans (especially with research upgrades and pilot range). I was feeling very emotionally-supported when using a Nova with twelve of them, the spare weight going into armoring it like an Assault Mech.
@andrewmiddleton3487 Been running a similar build myself. Almost heat neutral with how I'm cycling small lasers intermittently with medium lasers. Alpha strikes only when I'm below 50% heat
Been using a newer Nova build with an additional LRM10 in the left torso with 2 tons of ammo, 4 ER Mediums, and 8 ER Smalls. Overall the LRM by itself is heat negative, doesn't do tons of damage but is great at pestering targets as they get within laser range.
I got a Demo of Mech:2 Mercs in My Voodoo 1 Vid Card Box. After that I was hooked. Played in Voodoos 3dFX in DOS . DX5 hadn't been released yet and Voodoo wa ahead of everyone else for a long time.
My introduction to mechwarrior was mechwarrior 4 and the mechassault games, roughly at the same time. That said, I never expected the kit fox to become one of my all time favorite mechs because of MW5 clans, but considering I preferred lights in MW5 mercs, I'm very happy with this turn of events. A UAC10 with twin ER medium and twin ER small lasers on such a small frame has been a blast to play with!
It was a nice surprise to not explode or melt into a pile of glowing myomer whenever I did an alpha strike. It’s a downright nasty flanker that’s really tough.
I actually got into Mechwarrior with MW2 in a kind of roundabout way. There was this arcade in San Diego called Virtual World that had these pods you'd go into with full cockpit setups, radar and all that stuff, and it was very immersive. You paid like 8 bucks a match (ugh!) and kinda hung out in the lobby between matches. I wasn't very good, but it got me to upgrade my PC to play MW 2 (and learn about 3d graphics cards. Heh!) Battletech is definitely one of my favorite universes and the clans are my favorite part of it. No matter how goofy they are. I'm looking forward to checking this game out as soon as I can afford it. Thanks for the review, it's always nice to hear from someone who's steeped in it. :)
When you first meet the corsair is when i fell in love with this game. My entire squad was wiped except for 1 mech with no weapons against a critically damaged corsair with 2/3 of it's weapons. I thought it was over, so i decided to try use my higher speed to just dodge it's shots and ram it and go out fighting. To my surprise, it actually worked and i finished off the corsair.
This game has been a blast, despite its flaws. I most certainly know the pain of not being sure if it's just poor optimization or my 5 year old machine just hitting the end of its ropes. And that was really my only complaint. The performance issues were mostly ignorable, and if I can tolerate it for Pokémon, I can for Mechwarrior. You nailed it with the weapons, though. I especially love Pulse Lasers in this game, that sound effect is perfection All in all, I'd give it a solid 7.5 out of 10. Pretty good. But most certainly flawed.
Back in the early 90s every once in a while my dad would bring home his computer from work. He had the 1st mechwarrior on ms dos. (I bet i could still remember the commands to get it to launch.) I was too young to understand the story or how to progress, but i had no problem getting pilots and running missions. Once mechwarrior 2 came out it wasnt hard to convince him to buy it for our home computer. We even picked up a sidewinder pro joystick for it. Definitely one of those games you remember how you felt when you played it. And while the mech start up sequence has been re-used since....they all leave out the planet, temperature,...."atmosphere...hostile"
I would love me a Wars of Reaving DLC where I get to squash Blood Spirits and Steel Vipers as a Star Adder. For "super unlikely wishful thinking" DLC, maybe a _"what if Star Adders were allowed to invade?"_ alternate timeline, imagine the utter shock of IS forces expecting them to be honorable and predictable like the other Clans, only for you to take the non-obvious path and flank their would-be ambush positions and call for counter-battery on their artillery.
Kindred Spirit. Clan Star Adder is an extremely underrated faction in the Battletech Universe. It's a real shame that Catalyst has chosen to forget about the home world clans.
@@ryanh7844 Indeed, they are the wisest and smartest of the Clans, and unlike Wolf, they managed to be that way without relying on sheer plot armor and writer fiat, making them much more likeable and able to be taken seriously.
I'd love to see another clan's side of things as well, it seems like a good way forward. For me the life of this game is going to depend on the cadence of releases.
The balance of the game, not to mention that it's a mechwarrior game and not battletech, is vastly different than what battle value was built for, so I don't think that would have made any more sense than tonnage.
Early 90's. Local small town Mall. Waldenbooks. Box set of a game I'd never ueard of. Battletech. Looked freaking awesome. Got it for xmas. Been hooked ever since! Those plastics were ky first minis. 💕
@@EricDKaufman I think some kind of infinite loop bug occurred and there was a hardware fault in my hard drive that made it impossible to reinstall Windows. It kind of took me by surprise.
You could play as an Elemental in MW2: Mercs with a secret unlock. It was insane how fragile they are, but you could zoom and jump all over the place. As for your note about machine guns being loud on the Timber Wolf... to be fair, they are mounted right below and aside of your cockpit. They would be loud. The missile pods (while mounted "closely" on the shoulders) are contained and aren't supersonic, meaning they won't create a sonic boom when launched (like the bullets of a machine gun do). Like in most modern jets, the most you hear is a distant "woosh" and feel the missile leaving more than hear it.
You are right about the mission length. The last Turtle Bay mission for instance is a kick in the nuts. You just can't hold off four lances and a Dropship and not get mauled. I failed 5 times then switched to story for that mission.
MW2:Mercs was my first PC game, befor SimCity even! So I have tons of love for the series. Im picking this game up on steam today. Hopefully I can find some people on discord to play it with after I run thru it solo. I just wish they added thermal vision.
I found out that the performance issues don't need necessarily have to do with having a weak computer. The game suddenly decides to drop the frame rate, because reasons. When the frame rate drops to bottom just restart the game and often suddenly everything goes smooth ... or it crashes. It seems to be a an Unreal 5 issue not even a PGI problem, but I suspect the game fills the video memory of the card over time and does not release it properly. Also a tip: Set the optimization level to balanced or even performance. Helps wonderrs
For what it's worth, both Mechassault games had Elementals you could pilot. In the first game they were TINY and the claw was basically useless, but they were very fun to play around in. In the second game, they were considerably larger and the claw was somewhat functional, though using it on mechs was kinda weird. Instead of latching onto them and blasting/tearing off bits of armor, it initiated a "hacking" mini game which was contested by the pilot. Winning this game triggered the auto-eject system of the mech, whereas losing killed the Elemental. While this made the suits WAY more dangerous than in the original game, it just wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped.
Only problem I'm running into in MW5 Clans is that I can't invert the X Axis on my HOTAS setup. Clicking the box doesn't save your changes after applying. Others on steam are having the same problem with the Y Axis.
I've been more than happy with my playthrough so far. I'm a Spheroid at heart, and hope a later DLC lets me use the "C", "IIC", and maybe even vintage Star League Hardware.
I do wish we had more mechs but it feels very lore accurate for frontline Stars to only use Omni mechs this early in the invasion. I do wish there were a more detailed walkthrough of research and all the various points and resources at the start. But overall 9/10 slagged Panther mechs.
I've been trying out the game on the Xbox One through the Game Pass and Cloud Gaming... This experience has me wanting to treat myself to the newest Xbox rather than play through Cloud Gaming again.
The game seems really well done. Only real issue I see is considering the Smoke Jags basically were so vicious and warlike as to have no ally clans, and even have a fellow clan pile driver them into Operation Bulldog after they retreated from Tukayyid, I feel like only Perez radiates appropriate levels of aggression such a culture would create. The rest seem kind of like quasi-emo kids that found their way into the drama club.
I feel the lore is respected for the most part, I finished the Turtle bay arc of the campaign, and they didn't mince just how much of an atrocity it truly was. That being said, I did notice a few errors in the voice acting, notably a moment of chatter where Ezra asks Naomi if she thinks there are any Elstars in their unit. First off, yes, you do have a *Ristar,* Jayden would probably be considered one for making star commander right out of training. Secondly, while Elstars are a thing, they are a clan phenotype that doesn't exist until the Dark Age, and even then, they are rare.
There are issues with the multiplayer you may not be aware of yet. After nonhost players repair(or at least i have experienced) the UI mostly disappears. Loosing the mini map my weapon loadout status and ammo counts after repairing in a repiar bay in he field can be costly.
The mech lab is really bad. Regardless of being able to navigate it or not, it's extremely limiting. The boss battles are definitely dumb. And I've had some crashing issues. Apart from this though it's a lot of fun and the story line is so fun and interesting to be a part of
I was about to rant about the lack of the Ebon Jaguar, buuut then I checked the date. 3049. So yeah, pretty rare mech in the invasion given that it would only have been in production for around 3 years by Tukayyid.
Overall, loving the game so far, even with the odd decisions and performance issues. My machine's also about 4 years old now so you're not alone in there. I definitely feel the tech walls closing in on me again after having been unhindered for a while. I feel you on the boss battles, too. The first one to roll up had me scratching my head like "Wait a minute... Where's my pulse blade and why can I not slide around on my heels?" If you know, you know. There's some other stuff from Mercs / MWO that I wish had carried over, like the means to control weapon grouping and chain fire / group fire with the keyboard. The UI to tweak weapon groups and chain fire in mission gets crowded after more than a few weapons and it definitely had me a bit miffed on more than one occasion. Definitely feels like a downgrade there, but that's also something of a nitpick. Maybe they'll patch it in later on. Glad to hear even a die hard Mechwarrior fan is liking how Clans came out - I've had couple people express gripes coz "Mechwarrior 4 did it better" - a comparison I refuse to make a comment on because I never played MW4. Being a part of the 'new' generation of Battletech fans is tough sometimes coz it feels like I'm playing catch up with everyone else and there are some experiences I simply will never have because their time has passed.
I would like to look forward to Clan Nova Cat DLC when they once sided with Smoked Jags, later turned against Smoked Jags when they chose to side with the Spheroids & the 2nd Star League
You are *SO WRONG.* Clan Nova Cat and Clan Smoke Jaguar always hated each other. That's why IlKhan Ulric Kerensky (a Warden) assigned them both to the same Invasion Corridor, to slow down the invasion. He did the same with the Jade Falcons and the Steel Vipers.
Yeah I wouldn’t consider myself new to the series but I only “figured” out how to unlock the other pods when I started the turtle bay mission which means non of my light mechs have them unlocked
I had fun with this. I have Gamepass so I didn't need to buy it. The first day or 2 the game ran a little bad but can definitely see it run a lot smoother now. I like it much better than 5 Mercs since there's no humongous map with infinite routes to take, the missions were just stale and got boring quickly. 5 Clans is great but I feel like with the Armored Core game that came out earlier this year the scale of these behemoth machines of war is downscaled
Invokes the same sort of connection as MW2. You just booted me of the fence. It might just be the grey beard now, but I struggle to feel that with modern extra polished titles. I quite literally played MW2 to the death of the family’s 486dx2. I’ll be buying MW5 Clans for sure now.. Cheers
I loved the game. I agree some missions were too long. Any mission where you are just begging for it to be over needs to be cut down. Like the "kill the escaping clan mechs" map could die in a fire. It didn't help that I was driving the Executioner and I would occasionally SPRINT with ALT and then send a command with "F4" only to have my game close and my progress lost. That only happened...twice...in that one mission. Other gripe, I loved the armor/crit space mechanic... But some mechs have fixed equipment that prevented any modification to armor... I am looking at you, Warhawk. Last... The teammate AI still sucks. They had years to add jump jet and masc used... My dream of 4 Executioners running, jumping, and smashing through the world will have to wait for MechWarrior 6 or 7.
I have to push back against the claim of game looking good, because even on max settings I've been seeing a lot of problems. A number of particle effects, especially water, missile explosions, and smoke, look like stock assets that don't have any depth, and the sand blowing around on Santander looks like a smear effect rather than actual clouds of sand. A lot of terrain elements were low-poly models with muddy textures and mismatched resolutions for texturing on different elements: I'm on Santander as I'm writing this, looking at the ground the sand looks like it has 4K textures, some rocks are 1080p and others look like they're 240p that didn't load in correctly. Foliage is also inconsistent, with some items being animated and others aren't, and the items that are animated don't have realistic motion: I'm staring at a grass tuft moving like the blades are made of jelly. The 'Mechs often have stuttery animations, and still lack inverse kinematics so they float over uneven terrain. In cutscenes the character's facial animations are extremely bad, where lip movements don't sync to their speech, their upper lips seem to have muscle and will move unnaturally, and their heads vibrate a lot for no reason, as if they just plugged the voice recordings into some AI software and let it do the heavy lifting. I've also seen some weirdly inappropriate facial expressions. All together this game is downright hideous, like it would have looked bad on last generation hardware, the same way Mercs was criticized for looking dated.
I must say, MW5: Clans has a bit of an uphill battle being a sequel/spin-off of MW5: Mercenaries, while also ditching the free-roaming mercenary mode of the previous game. A lot of players got accustomed to it and a linear campaign will feel like a downgrade, especially with limited roster when compared to a fairly huge selections available in MW5: Mercenaries. And don't get me wrong. It makes sense that there is more linear approach but it really makes the game feel like a glorified expansion pack at this stage - and for 50 bucks... that is a bit of a steep price.
How would you do a Sand Box of Clans? The Economy, Research,tech and Culture is very Different. The Clan is Groupthink VS the IS which is based on individualism?
Liner campaign thats fine whatever not single mech i actually like now thats a problem not that mwo is doing much better only clan mechs i actually like there are the vapor and incubus
@@roboparks I never said it would be viable. BUT it is an uphill battle against what came before - it pits an inherently finite experience of the linear campaign against the possibility to mess around and play infinitely. And that is not a competition a linear mode is going to win, unless the campaign is ROCK SOLID and long. Both games bear the name of Mercharrior 5 - and this game became associated with open-style campaign. It is quite logical that linear campaign will be seen by plenty of people as the downgrade - especially considering that you get plenty of fun and exotic clan mechs to mess around with, but you are inherently limited by mission design.
So, are there only 16 playable Mechs? Any ability to pilot any of the Inner Sphere Mechs? MW5 had a huge roster of playable Mechs. I get that we aren’t mercs in this game, but would be nice to have a large selection of Mechs. Is there a free for all mode that opens things up to more mech selection?
I wanted to like this game. Really did. A consistent graphics driver-related crash during a mid-mission cutscene made that impossible. Hopefully it gets fixed later on, but I got a refund.
@@MechanicalFrog Happened both before and after the hotfix, and before and after a graphics driver update. Considering that the crash took the graphics driver and OS down with it, I'll hold off until PGI's had more time to patch, or possibly until after I build a new PC.
The hot patches really fixed up a lot of the frame hitching and that was my major complaint. Outside that I have really enjoyed it. My only other gripe is why can't they do a COMPLETE Mechwarrior experience, Campaign with PVP modes.
I dont find the mech choices to be limiting for me. It has the same amount of mech (give or take 1-2) that vengence had, which had enough for a diverse playstyle for the game that it was. Clans also includes my favourite mechs for each weight class so... its not like I was gonna run another mech anyway :D
Love the review: personally I will wait for some dlc's just so much missing to me rn... and yes, I'd rather experience it on comstar or house side of the invasion.. but well you cant have everything(especially not a clps and null sig system in a video game of Mechwarrior).
Disappointed with the finale. The Battle of Luthien was supposed to be the climax. Everything had been excellent in building up to that point. And then you basically getting sidelined during the climax. I sincerely thought the trial of grievance was the second to last mission, something to give you a little breather doing a narrative heavy one-on-one fight before the big battle. Maybe the game engine has limitations, but I was really expecting a large scale engagement, like in MW4 mercs when you had to destroy an Overlord with dozens of mechs on either side, or that final mission where you had to take over a base defended by lots and lots of enemy combatants. Anyway thanks for playing. It was disappointing not to actually be part of the Battle of Luthien.
No elementals is unforgivable. I haven't been able to play much of the campaign yet. I play with my flight sim setup and this is currently impossible with PGIs poor joystick support and related bugs. If I can trick battlefield 2042 into letting me fly helicopters with a joystick and collective, I should be able to get it working in Mechwarrior. Right now Mercs with mods is still my recommended game.
It's a fantastic game overall, but my one major gripe outside of what you listed is the npc pilot ai. The enemies seem to just......bum rush? no tactics or use of cover at all in a lot of larger fights. And i swear to god theres a line somewhere in the starmate ai code that goes some like "if in players line of sight: then stop" 😑
Where is the extra digital content in collectors edition? I bought my game through Epic, and if its the extra add on stuff, it gives me an error. Mech 5 mercs has it in the game folders.
All of these games are in the style of a FPS, as in the crosshairs govern movement, perspective, and firing, and that’s more or less it. But in the tabletop, you can fire at multiple targets at the same time. I guess a mech cockpit would have some kind of touchscreen multi target select, weapon distribution between these targets, and firing in a more sophisticated manner that could be more realistic. What extra hardware, etc, would you need to create a more involved gaming experience in this way?
Something like a dual flightstick setup is the first thing to come to mind. Each stick controlling one arms movement. I mean, ideally, a custom vr-style control system that holds your arms in a similar way to the individual mech chassis and allow movements that the mech could make. The touchscreen designation system would make the game ludicrously heavy on micromanagement, and also preclude pilot skill for aiming.
My biggest issue with the game is how the Smoke Jags are written. The major events are correct, but the individual Jaguars are far too Un-Jaguare-Like. They aren't Un-Clan-Like, but they're about 200% too mellow to be Jags. It's like a Sibko from another Clan accidentally wandered into a Jaguar staging area, and got the 'ol Fallout "Private where is your power armor!?" treatment.
Clearly I hadn't reached the final planet in the game before this review went live. Ignore that part about Luthien DLC...
Defence of Luthien - Best part in MW2: Mercinaries and BT2 - Crecent Hawks Revenge.
Was a surprise to me as well. That were quite some amount of missions and I didn't expect a whole new planet and really high-stakes stuff. Good ending, more than what I expected. Great game
God I miss games like mech commander and the two crescent hawks games
I would love to see Tukkyaid as a DLC. As either ComGuard or the Clans (both, maybe?) would be awesome to bust skulls under or against Focht.
@@CSSstravag sign me up!!!
Ah, yes. Books. The Lostech of the 21st century.
Gone but only mostly forgotten.
At the time I recall there being PC game shelfs. Belief I played it after installing it from floppy disks. And, yes, PC gamer mag.
Honestly, those wasted science points feel on brand for Smoked Jaguar. Too busy stuffing science caste nerds into lockers where they belong.
UGH, makes me feel old. I played BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception when it first came out. Oof.
The ER Small Laser is definitely an unsung star of Clans (especially with research upgrades and pilot range). I was feeling very emotionally-supported when using a Nova with twelve of them, the spare weight going into armoring it like an Assault Mech.
I like the 8 small pulse laser + 4 ER medium Nova. I have heavier mechs, but none of them core or head cap things as quickly as that one does.
@andrewmiddleton3487 Been running a similar build myself. Almost heat neutral with how I'm cycling small lasers intermittently with medium lasers. Alpha strikes only when I'm below 50% heat
I was playing the same build with pulse lasers but I like the 8 small 4 medium gonna try that.
Been using a newer Nova build with an additional LRM10 in the left torso with 2 tons of ammo, 4 ER Mediums, and 8 ER Smalls.
Overall the LRM by itself is heat negative, doesn't do tons of damage but is great at pestering targets as they get within laser range.
The 12 Slaser Nova with full ER Laser research can basically down an Atlas in two salvos while remaining mostly fine on heat. It's absurd.
My Grandma had MW2 on her computer. That was my introduction to the universe.
@ObiwanNekody it came free with some versions
My friend dad taught me about MechWarrior 2 he was Kell hounds fan.
I got a Demo of Mech:2 Mercs in My Voodoo 1 Vid Card Box. After that I was hooked. Played in Voodoos 3dFX in DOS . DX5 hadn't been released yet and Voodoo wa ahead of everyone else for a long time.
@@ObiwanNekody Holy Shit. That makes me feel old.
Haha....my grand ms had mw2. Man being 40 is real lol
As a Periphery player I am more than happy to see the Clans and the Combine ripping each other to shreds.
On the first DCMS planet now and just unlocked my fave mech THE MAD DOG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gonna go wreck some shit up now son THIS GAME IS AWESOME
11:18 Discount Dan would be more than happy to help you find that Ebon Jaguar you crave. Remember, he will always take your money.
My introduction to mechwarrior was mechwarrior 4 and the mechassault games, roughly at the same time. That said, I never expected the kit fox to become one of my all time favorite mechs because of MW5 clans, but considering I preferred lights in MW5 mercs, I'm very happy with this turn of events. A UAC10 with twin ER medium and twin ER small lasers on such a small frame has been a blast to play with!
@@sylphanscribe6492 mech assault and lone wolf were pure gold on the OG xbox
Mechwarrior 2...the reason I STILL pilot a Nova Prime without complaining about the heat.
6 Medium Pulse Lasers on the Nova works pretty well too.
It was a nice surprise to not explode or melt into a pile of glowing myomer whenever I did an alpha strike. It’s a downright nasty flanker that’s really tough.
@@MechanicalFrogThat would be the Nova S, another brilliant offering. I've said before that I prefer the Prime, H, and S variants.
I'm running the S variant well past when I should be. I've got madcats in my star but the pew pew brrrrrtttt keeps killing it.
@Sethry406 I ran the Nova for the full game of MW2, so running the Nova S for a long period in MW5:C sounds completely plausible.
Good luck, trothkin.
Great tips and review! Crashes, bugs, and performance aside, it's a ton of fun.
I actually got into Mechwarrior with MW2 in a kind of roundabout way. There was this arcade in San Diego called Virtual World that had these pods you'd go into with full cockpit setups, radar and all that stuff, and it was very immersive. You paid like 8 bucks a match (ugh!) and kinda hung out in the lobby between matches. I wasn't very good, but it got me to upgrade my PC to play MW 2 (and learn about 3d graphics cards. Heh!)
Battletech is definitely one of my favorite universes and the clans are my favorite part of it. No matter how goofy they are. I'm looking forward to checking this game out as soon as I can afford it.
Thanks for the review, it's always nice to hear from someone who's steeped in it. :)
I need to see a Firemoth again! I want that wacky armed speed machine. I want to flank and backstab and run circles around locusts!
When you first meet the corsair is when i fell in love with this game. My entire squad was wiped except for 1 mech with no weapons against a critically damaged corsair with 2/3 of it's weapons. I thought it was over, so i decided to try use my higher speed to just dodge it's shots and ram it and go out fighting. To my surprise, it actually worked and i finished off the corsair.
This game has been a blast, despite its flaws. I most certainly know the pain of not being sure if it's just poor optimization or my 5 year old machine just hitting the end of its ropes.
And that was really my only complaint. The performance issues were mostly ignorable, and if I can tolerate it for Pokémon, I can for Mechwarrior.
You nailed it with the weapons, though. I especially love Pulse Lasers in this game, that sound effect is perfection
All in all, I'd give it a solid 7.5 out of 10. Pretty good. But most certainly flawed.
Glad to see I'm not the outlier with the ancient machine.
@@MechanicalFrog You are most certainly not no, lol. I desperately need to upgrade my GPU
@@MechanicalFrogYou are not. I'm sitting here wondering if my hand-me-down rig with a Radeon RX580 will even run it.
Back in the early 90s every once in a while my dad would bring home his computer from work. He had the 1st mechwarrior on ms dos. (I bet i could still remember the commands to get it to launch.) I was too young to understand the story or how to progress, but i had no problem getting pilots and running missions. Once mechwarrior 2 came out it wasnt hard to convince him to buy it for our home computer. We even picked up a sidewinder pro joystick for it. Definitely one of those games you remember how you felt when you played it. And while the mech start up sequence has been re-used since....they all leave out the planet, temperature,...."atmosphere...hostile"
I would love me a Wars of Reaving DLC where I get to squash Blood Spirits and Steel Vipers as a Star Adder.
For "super unlikely wishful thinking" DLC, maybe a _"what if Star Adders were allowed to invade?"_ alternate timeline, imagine the utter shock of IS forces expecting them to be honorable and predictable like the other Clans, only for you to take the non-obvious path and flank their would-be ambush positions and call for counter-battery on their artillery.
Kindred Spirit. Clan Star Adder is an extremely underrated faction in the Battletech Universe. It's a real shame that Catalyst has chosen to forget about the home world clans.
@@ryanh7844 Indeed, they are the wisest and smartest of the Clans, and unlike Wolf, they managed to be that way without relying on sheer plot armor and writer fiat, making them much more likeable and able to be taken seriously.
this game is a wonderful breath of fresh air, we finally have a Mechwarrior campaign after more than 10 years
For I just need PGI to fix the crashing error and I'll be happy! Glad to hear you enjoyed it frog, I'll be there soon!
Hopefully, it's something they can get sorted out. Thanks for watching!
@@MechanicalFrog They're talking to AMD i guess so fingers crossed :)
I'd love to see another clan's side of things as well, it seems like a good way forward. For me the life of this game is going to depend on the cadence of releases.
My only complaint is they determine lance size by tonnage and not battle value.
But yes, 1995 MW2: Mercenaries was how I got started.
Several missions I ended up running four heavies and a light just to squeak in. Seems like a silly restriction, though I know it's for balance.
The balance of the game, not to mention that it's a mechwarrior game and not battletech, is vastly different than what battle value was built for, so I don't think that would have made any more sense than tonnage.
@@LupusGr3y Adding to that battle value is an abstract out of universe measurement. It would feel wrong in MechWarrior.
Early 90's. Local small town Mall. Waldenbooks. Box set of a game I'd never ueard of. Battletech. Looked freaking awesome. Got it for xmas. Been hooked ever since! Those plastics were ky first minis. 💕
Really wish we'd get a mission editor. It's one of the things I've always felt Mechwarrior was desperately missing.
0:35 Me too, brother!
5:52 My PC is 2014 vintage, with a minor ram and ssd upgrade. I’m not playing this game anytime soon as a result, LoL
Same, but on the upside, I wanted to upgrade my PC sooner or later anyway and by that time, I'll get MW5:C with all the DLCs nicely bundled, I guess.
@@h.a.9880 That is the silver lining.
yeah i let the Mechwarrior 5 title fool me. mercenaries runs fine, clans cant even boot a mission. glad it was on game pass.
My computer committed suicide while playing MegaMek about 45 minutes before Clans released. Hope it is amazing on the new computer I am building! 😂
Oh no...
How does that even happen?
@@EricDKaufman I think some kind of infinite loop bug occurred and there was a hardware fault in my hard drive that made it impossible to reinstall Windows. It kind of took me by surprise.
If I get to see Wolcott and Luthien in this, I'll be exceedingly happy.
You get to see one of those places and hear about the other.
"Why do we love mechwarrior 5: clans"
Mostly.
One does hope they get to Tukayyid. Dinju Pass with these graphics would be amazing.
It's not called MW5: Smoke Kittens, thank god, so we might see other clan(s) in the future DLCs.
Oh teenage MechFrog, I remember the days of Mechwarrior 1. The environment was flat planes, reminds me of the first Tron movie.
The disappearance of the concept of "bookstores" and "books" sounds suspiciously like a ComStar roustabout of shenanigans.
I like the boss fights
I think they bring variety to mission setup
You could play as an Elemental in MW2: Mercs with a secret unlock. It was insane how fragile they are, but you could zoom and jump all over the place.
As for your note about machine guns being loud on the Timber Wolf... to be fair, they are mounted right below and aside of your cockpit. They would be loud. The missile pods (while mounted "closely" on the shoulders) are contained and aren't supersonic, meaning they won't create a sonic boom when launched (like the bullets of a machine gun do). Like in most modern jets, the most you hear is a distant "woosh" and feel the missile leaving more than hear it.
Mechwarrior 1hits a bit different these days, the graphics were crap but it was amazing. I still fondly remember that game!
You are right about the mission length. The last Turtle Bay mission for instance is a kick in the nuts. You just can't hold off four lances and a Dropship and not get mauled. I failed 5 times then switched to story for that mission.
I've got my fingers crossed for that Tukayyid DLC... can't wait to see a bunch obnoxious Clanners get owned by Space AT&T
Yes mate, im afraid we are old now.
Cant be helped, just embraced.
Even old mechwarriors can earn glory...
Truth.
Honestly, with Titanfall 1 and 2 as a blueprint, an Elemental focused Battletech video game would be pretty damn cool.
Kinda a thing in MechWarrior living Legends. Though Living Legends is a unofficial mod of Crysis Wars.
MW2:Mercs was my first PC game, befor SimCity even! So I have tons of love for the series. Im picking this game up on steam today. Hopefully I can find some people on discord to play it with after I run thru it solo. I just wish they added thermal vision.
I found out that the performance issues don't need necessarily have to do with having a weak computer. The game suddenly decides to drop the frame rate, because reasons. When the frame rate drops to bottom just restart the game and often suddenly everything goes smooth ... or it crashes. It seems to be a an Unreal 5 issue not even a PGI problem, but I suspect the game fills the video memory of the card over time and does not release it properly.
Also a tip: Set the optimization level to balanced or even performance. Helps wonderrs
I am excited. Going to get my copy this coming week .
Enjoy! I had a great time with it.
Counting hours till Wednesday's payday. So long as there are no surprise bills, I will get the game then
For what it's worth, both Mechassault games had Elementals you could pilot. In the first game they were TINY and the claw was basically useless, but they were very fun to play around in.
In the second game, they were considerably larger and the claw was somewhat functional, though using it on mechs was kinda weird. Instead of latching onto them and blasting/tearing off bits of armor, it initiated a "hacking" mini game which was contested by the pilot. Winning this game triggered the auto-eject system of the mech, whereas losing killed the Elemental. While this made the suits WAY more dangerous than in the original game, it just wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped.
That '80s 'stache is enough to make me go Warden just so I can roll with the classiest people in the entire game.
Only problem I'm running into in MW5 Clans is that I can't invert the X Axis on my HOTAS setup. Clicking the box doesn't save your changes after applying. Others on steam are having the same problem with the Y Axis.
Shucks. Hopefully it's on the list of fixes soon.
I've been more than happy with my playthrough so far. I'm a Spheroid at heart, and hope a later DLC lets me use the "C", "IIC", and maybe even vintage Star League Hardware.
That'd be a nice addition to the game.
Really thoughtful, well-done.
Thank ya.
There is an option in the command wheel that says abilities. I finished the game and still have no idea what it does.
I'd imagine the same as in Mercs i.e enabling MASC etc
For Smoke Jaguar and Terra!!
Seylah!
Thank you sharing your thoughts
You're welcome!
I do wish we had more mechs but it feels very lore accurate for frontline Stars to only use Omni mechs this early in the invasion. I do wish there were a more detailed walkthrough of research and all the various points and resources at the start. But overall 9/10 slagged Panther mechs.
I've been trying out the game on the Xbox One through the Game Pass and Cloud Gaming... This experience has me wanting to treat myself to the newest Xbox rather than play through Cloud Gaming again.
I did the same thing…it surprisingly played better than I thought it would but it really made me want to finally move on and upgrade to a new system
1:01 Lostech Analog Data Cashes
The game seems really well done. Only real issue I see is considering the Smoke Jags basically were so vicious and warlike as to have no ally clans, and even have a fellow clan pile driver them into Operation Bulldog after they retreated from Tukayyid, I feel like only Perez radiates appropriate levels of aggression such a culture would create. The rest seem kind of like quasi-emo kids that found their way into the drama club.
Number 1 request is solid shot ammo for LBX autocannons.
I remember watching my dad playing MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries back in the mid 90's
I feel the lore is respected for the most part, I finished the Turtle bay arc of the campaign, and they didn't mince just how much of an atrocity it truly was. That being said, I did notice a few errors in the voice acting, notably a moment of chatter where Ezra asks Naomi if she thinks there are any Elstars in their unit.
First off, yes, you do have a *Ristar,* Jayden would probably be considered one for making star commander right out of training. Secondly, while Elstars are a thing, they are a clan phenotype that doesn't exist until the Dark Age, and even then, they are rare.
I have been enjoying it. I hope PGI keeps adding more content for this game. Certainly makes my machine run hard.
There are issues with the multiplayer you may not be aware of yet. After nonhost players repair(or at least i have experienced) the UI mostly disappears. Loosing the mini map my weapon loadout status and ammo counts after repairing in a repiar bay in he field can be costly.
maybe I'm just weird but I would still love a "wire frame" mode for the mechs, just for the fun of it.
It would be cool if they added a Nova Cat and Steel Viper DLC.
while they're a bit simplified compared the the MechWarrior series, both Mech Assault games on the OG Xbox allowed you to pilot elementals
We definitely need a HBS Battletech sequel. Get them another shot at knocking it out of the park.
The mech lab is really bad. Regardless of being able to navigate it or not, it's extremely limiting. The boss battles are definitely dumb. And I've had some crashing issues. Apart from this though it's a lot of fun and the story line is so fun and interesting to be a part of
Also as a machine gun fanboy I love the new machine gun audio
I was about to rant about the lack of the Ebon Jaguar, buuut then I checked the date. 3049. So yeah, pretty rare mech in the invasion given that it would only have been in production for around 3 years by Tukayyid.
The game finishes on Luthien, which was the EJ's first official appearance. I'm pretty let down that it didn't make it into the game.
@@MechanicalFrog I am too, but it's not as bad as I first thought
Wake me up when Pandora, Tycross and or Wolcott comes up.
Well, Wolcott is mentioned in this game, but you don't get to go fight in it.
@@MechanicalFrog Lol thats the DLC I'm waiting for. Btw nice video.
Funny thing those book stores. Around my parts that is where you get the Battletech books and figures.
The best part of MW2 mercs was all the mechs. This game should have more mechs and MW5 mercs should have way more.
Overall, loving the game so far, even with the odd decisions and performance issues. My machine's also about 4 years old now so you're not alone in there. I definitely feel the tech walls closing in on me again after having been unhindered for a while. I feel you on the boss battles, too. The first one to roll up had me scratching my head like "Wait a minute... Where's my pulse blade and why can I not slide around on my heels?" If you know, you know.
There's some other stuff from Mercs / MWO that I wish had carried over, like the means to control weapon grouping and chain fire / group fire with the keyboard. The UI to tweak weapon groups and chain fire in mission gets crowded after more than a few weapons and it definitely had me a bit miffed on more than one occasion. Definitely feels like a downgrade there, but that's also something of a nitpick. Maybe they'll patch it in later on.
Glad to hear even a die hard Mechwarrior fan is liking how Clans came out - I've had couple people express gripes coz "Mechwarrior 4 did it better" - a comparison I refuse to make a comment on because I never played MW4. Being a part of the 'new' generation of Battletech fans is tough sometimes coz it feels like I'm playing catch up with everyone else and there are some experiences I simply will never have because their time has passed.
I would like to look forward to Clan Nova Cat DLC when they once sided with Smoked Jags, later turned against Smoked Jags when they chose to side with the Spheroids & the 2nd Star League
You are *SO WRONG.* Clan Nova Cat and Clan Smoke Jaguar always hated each other. That's why IlKhan Ulric Kerensky (a Warden) assigned them both to the same Invasion Corridor, to slow down the invasion. He did the same with the Jade Falcons and the Steel Vipers.
The instantly started fighting each other, when Nova Cats got into the Inner Sphere. There was no siding with Smoked Jaguars.
There was a Mech warrior game for the OG Xbox that you played in a Toad for a few missions
Yeah I wouldn’t consider myself new to the series but I only “figured” out how to unlock the other pods when I started the turtle bay mission which means non of my light mechs have them unlocked
Oops.
@@MechanicalFrog yeh oh well just means I get to start over again. Which I must say Im pretty ok with that
Loving it so far the boss fights feel kinda like mech assault. So much better day 1 than mercs and I can’t wait to see the dlc.
Was really hoping for a bigger roster as well, I need my Marauder fix to crush the filthy freeborns with rapid clan ppc fire 😩
excellent review
I had fun with this. I have Gamepass so I didn't need to buy it. The first day or 2 the game ran a little bad but can definitely see it run a lot smoother now. I like it much better than 5 Mercs since there's no humongous map with infinite routes to take, the missions were just stale and got boring quickly. 5 Clans is great but I feel like with the Armored Core game that came out earlier this year the scale of these behemoth machines of war is downscaled
Invokes the same sort of connection as MW2.
You just booted me of the fence. It might just be the grey beard now, but I struggle to feel that with modern extra polished titles.
I quite literally played MW2 to the death of the family’s 486dx2.
I’ll be buying MW5 Clans for sure now..
Cheers
I loved the game.
I agree some missions were too long. Any mission where you are just begging for it to be over needs to be cut down.
Like the "kill the escaping clan mechs" map could die in a fire. It didn't help that I was driving the Executioner and I would occasionally SPRINT with ALT and then send a command with "F4" only to have my game close and my progress lost. That only happened...twice...in that one mission.
Other gripe, I loved the armor/crit space mechanic... But some mechs have fixed equipment that prevented any modification to armor... I am looking at you, Warhawk.
Last... The teammate AI still sucks. They had years to add jump jet and masc used... My dream of 4 Executioners running, jumping, and smashing through the world will have to wait for MechWarrior 6 or 7.
I have to push back against the claim of game looking good, because even on max settings I've been seeing a lot of problems. A number of particle effects, especially water, missile explosions, and smoke, look like stock assets that don't have any depth, and the sand blowing around on Santander looks like a smear effect rather than actual clouds of sand. A lot of terrain elements were low-poly models with muddy textures and mismatched resolutions for texturing on different elements: I'm on Santander as I'm writing this, looking at the ground the sand looks like it has 4K textures, some rocks are 1080p and others look like they're 240p that didn't load in correctly. Foliage is also inconsistent, with some items being animated and others aren't, and the items that are animated don't have realistic motion: I'm staring at a grass tuft moving like the blades are made of jelly. The 'Mechs often have stuttery animations, and still lack inverse kinematics so they float over uneven terrain. In cutscenes the character's facial animations are extremely bad, where lip movements don't sync to their speech, their upper lips seem to have muscle and will move unnaturally, and their heads vibrate a lot for no reason, as if they just plugged the voice recordings into some AI software and let it do the heavy lifting. I've also seen some weirdly inappropriate facial expressions. All together this game is downright hideous, like it would have looked bad on last generation hardware, the same way Mercs was criticized for looking dated.
I must say, MW5: Clans has a bit of an uphill battle being a sequel/spin-off of MW5: Mercenaries, while also ditching the free-roaming mercenary mode of the previous game.
A lot of players got accustomed to it and a linear campaign will feel like a downgrade, especially with limited roster when compared to a fairly huge selections available in MW5: Mercenaries. And don't get me wrong. It makes sense that there is more linear approach but it really makes the game feel like a glorified expansion pack at this stage - and for 50 bucks... that is a bit of a steep price.
I appreciate that fans of mechwarrior now have an option of the open-ended play of Mercs and the narrative of MW5:Clans
How would you do a Sand Box of Clans? The Economy, Research,tech and Culture is very Different. The Clan is Groupthink VS the IS which is based on individualism?
Liner campaign thats fine whatever not single mech i actually like now thats a problem not that mwo is doing much better only clan mechs i actually like there are the vapor and incubus
@@roboparks I never said it would be viable.
BUT it is an uphill battle against what came before - it pits an inherently finite experience of the linear campaign against the possibility to mess around and play infinitely.
And that is not a competition a linear mode is going to win, unless the campaign is ROCK SOLID and long.
Both games bear the name of Mercharrior 5 - and this game became associated with open-style campaign.
It is quite logical that linear campaign will be seen by plenty of people as the downgrade - especially considering that you get plenty of fun and exotic clan mechs to mess around with, but you are inherently limited by mission design.
@@hideshisface1886 It could be viable. Just not with UE5
So, are there only 16 playable Mechs? Any ability to pilot any of the Inner Sphere Mechs? MW5 had a huge roster of playable Mechs. I get that we aren’t mercs in this game, but would be nice to have a large selection of Mechs.
Is there a free for all mode that opens things up to more mech selection?
I wanted to like this game. Really did.
A consistent graphics driver-related crash during a mid-mission cutscene made that impossible. Hopefully it gets fixed later on, but I got a refund.
That's a bummer to hear. Was this before or after the hot-fix patch that went up day 2?
@@MechanicalFrog Happened both before and after the hotfix, and before and after a graphics driver update. Considering that the crash took the graphics driver and OS down with it, I'll hold off until PGI's had more time to patch, or possibly until after I build a new PC.
I really want to play as a COMGUARD Merc but that's my take.
Happy you could enjoy the game im going to wait until it has mech i actually enjoy playing
Is there any Sea Fox/Diamond Shark content in the game?
The hot patches really fixed up a lot of the frame hitching and that was my major complaint. Outside that I have really enjoyed it. My only other gripe is why can't they do a COMPLETE Mechwarrior experience, Campaign with PVP modes.
I dont find the mech choices to be limiting for me. It has the same amount of mech (give or take 1-2) that vengence had, which had enough for a diverse playstyle for the game that it was. Clans also includes my favourite mechs for each weight class so... its not like I was gonna run another mech anyway :D
Love the review: personally I will wait for some dlc's just so much missing to me rn... and yes, I'd rather experience it on comstar or house side of the invasion.. but well you cant have everything(especially not a clps and null sig system in a video game of Mechwarrior).
Disappointed with the finale.
The Battle of Luthien was supposed to be the climax. Everything had been excellent in building up to that point. And then you basically getting sidelined during the climax.
I sincerely thought the trial of grievance was the second to last mission, something to give you a little breather doing a narrative heavy one-on-one fight before the big battle.
Maybe the game engine has limitations, but I was really expecting a large scale engagement, like in MW4 mercs when you had to destroy an Overlord with dozens of mechs on either side, or that final mission where you had to take over a base defended by lots and lots of enemy combatants.
Anyway thanks for playing. It was disappointing not to actually be part of the Battle of Luthien.
The MW2 disk could be used as a CD for the BGM
No elementals is unforgivable. I haven't been able to play much of the campaign yet. I play with my flight sim setup and this is currently impossible with PGIs poor joystick support and related bugs. If I can trick battlefield 2042 into letting me fly helicopters with a joystick and collective, I should be able to get it working in Mechwarrior. Right now Mercs with mods is still my recommended game.
Middle mouse button brings up a command tray? ...well that started with AutoDesk software, funnily enough...
Oh Autodesk... I miss you... not really.
Been in EVE online for? ever?
It's a fantastic game overall, but my one major gripe outside of what you listed is the npc pilot ai. The enemies seem to just......bum rush? no tactics or use of cover at all in a lot of larger fights. And i swear to god theres a line somewhere in the starmate ai code that goes some like "if in players line of sight: then stop" 😑
Fair critique.
life is cheap, battlemechs cost kerenskies
K-Bucks Vs C-Bills LOL
Tukayyid would be awesome if you could play as any of the clans or ComStar, get the experience from both sides.
Where is the extra digital content in collectors edition? I bought my game through Epic, and if its the extra add on stuff, it gives me an error. Mech 5 mercs has it in the game folders.
It's an option off the main menu.
@@MechanicalFrog nope dont see it anywhere. got a screen shot of it?
Solid review.
Thanks!
All of these games are in the style of a FPS, as in the crosshairs govern movement, perspective, and firing, and that’s more or less it. But in the tabletop, you can fire at multiple targets at the same time. I guess a mech cockpit would have some kind of touchscreen multi target select, weapon distribution between these targets, and firing in a more sophisticated manner that could be more realistic. What extra hardware, etc, would you need to create a more involved gaming experience in this way?
Something like a dual flightstick setup is the first thing to come to mind. Each stick controlling one arms movement. I mean, ideally, a custom vr-style control system that holds your arms in a similar way to the individual mech chassis and allow movements that the mech could make.
The touchscreen designation system would make the game ludicrously heavy on micromanagement, and also preclude pilot skill for aiming.
Trackir and/or VR support would be nice. Controlling the torso weapons with the sticks and the arm weapons would track to your headlook.
A bit of a shame that you are forced to play the prime variants before you can unlock some of the other variants.
After one mission, you can very quickly unlock several of the others.
My biggest issue with the game is how the Smoke Jags are written. The major events are correct, but the individual Jaguars are far too Un-Jaguare-Like. They aren't Un-Clan-Like, but they're about 200% too mellow to be Jags. It's like a Sibko from another Clan accidentally wandered into a Jaguar staging area, and got the 'ol Fallout "Private where is your power armor!?" treatment.
A fair critique.
How do you get the access to the soundtrack and artwork?! I can't find it anywhere.
from the ingame menu on the title screen. its a shame that it isnt seperate from the game