He mage leader if you see this. Did you try out the kestrel lancers dlc for mechwarrior 5 mercs? It was my favorite design wise form maps to dialog. Along with objectives. Clans feels really held back I know Russ bullock has said he wants to streamline the mechlab and people do defend him for that. But the fun part is digging in and modding out your mechs just like in battle tech. I really liked your review thank you for your honest take.
I agree with a lot of these points. I felt like the weight limit should have impacted honor. Maybe an 'optimal' or 'cut-down' value and if you go under it, it's bonus honor and less honor to go over it. Similarly, I felt like the pirates were VERY well-armed compared to what they should have been lore-wise, and also completely lacking the 'doo-doo in the pants' moments we see when the clans first arrive, and people don't know who or what they are. I think Tex made a great comment about how rumors spread about invincible mechs, etc. Additionally, the idea of conflicted Jaguars is interesting. Obviously lore-fans will talk about Trent, but Trent only became how he was after several events. To see a bunch of essentially green warriors even have these questions was a bit off.
Personally Im of the opinion is that a predisposition to questioning authority was accidentally put in their "half aborted batch". It's just that clan smoke kitty drank the Kool-Aid so hard that they probably viewed bringing this particular stock of warriors into their "great reclamation" as a non problem. After all there's no way that they could have been in the wrong, right?
I don't really buy it smoke jaguar are not nice getting busted down to star colonel feels like the punishment is for the political fallout cause clan wolf just bid away the warships and called them weak reminder on wolcott as a matter of course that required no judge no jury no hearing with the khan the commander was executed and the kuritans casually asked if they wanted his bloodline wiped that is clan smoke jaguars standard operating procedure
Overall the missions against the pirates were too draggy and frankly mocking to the clans. In reality the planet would have been glasses after the 1st ambush where they blew up the dropships. Maybe a mission performed to save some civvies but I doubt it and I still struggle to understand how valasek escaped on a dropship from a system where the entire smoked jaguar fleet was stationed.
This. It would have been way more interesting if they just presented clan culture, *especially Smoke Jaguars,* as downright alien with their way of life. Like a Mechwarrior equivalent of _The Northman._ Lost my interest when just a few minutes in and all the vibe I'm getting is _stricter inner sphere with odd grammar hangups._
Gundam: Requiem for a Vengeance: Introvert Gen Alpha child murders and haunts an entire army. Mechwarrior 5 Clans: Whiny Teens become hardened combat veterans.
To be fair that army killed like half of humanity less than a year ago from where Requiem for Vengeance happens in the Gundam timeline. So that Alpha child was entittled to be even more murdery and haunting. I found it funny how the show didn't address that little fact one bit.
@@Alpha_Digamma The show is from the perspectives of Zeon soldiers later in the war. Less about how and why the war started and more about the desperate survival o af retreating and broken Zeon Army.
If Perez had ordered every MechWarrior, Elemental, and Freeborn infantryman in his Cluster to go down to the surface of Turtle Bay and kill every man, woman, and child by hand, he would still be in command.
It wouldn't matter because he would have died at the upcoming battles against the Inner Sphere because COMSTAR would have already leaked details on him.
@mikecampos1193 Most likely, but then Clan Wolf wouldn't have been given the opportunity to bid away their warships, causing the other Clans to follow suit. It was only a matter of time before Smoke Jaguar used them. If not at Turtle Bay, then it may have been Tukayyid.
@@terrinils3165 ehh I feel like comstar would just nuke em it's not they don't have the missiles or just send in a drone battleship they have those too so I feel like that wouldn't have gone well for the clanners
@marley7868 Then the Great Houses will know that ComStar has WarShips and an arsenal of nukes. The one thing that united the Inner Sphere was the Clan threat. If ComStar declares all out war and pushes the Clans back, then they become the biggest threat to the Great Houses.
I 100% the whole game. Got every achievement, got all the mech chassis maxed, got both endings and got all optional mission objectives done in simpod. If im being honest, i prefer mw5 mercs. Now im not a battletech lore buff, so im kinda ignorant on clan customs (but i gotta agree, the clan ending with mia just felt better. more in character, at least to me.) But my biggest gripe is the lack of replay ability. What do you have once the game is done? Once all missions are beaten and the game is through, what do you have? Simpod. Thats it. At least mw5 mercs let you go anywhere and shoot anything. I truly believe they (pgi i mean) should have added some form of sandbox or something for us to fool around in. I did everything in like 35 ish hours. Now im back on mw5 mercs modded. It just feels like a dlc wrapped up and presented to us as a game. But i at least gave it a go. And i prefer mercs more. But thats just my 2 cents
@777dragonborn I didn't mind it to much myself (not saying it was good, just saying I didn't mind it) but I honestly kinda hated the mechlab/omnipod stuff more. Maybe because I'm so used to yaml, but it just felt so barebones and honestly, kinda incomplete.
@@JawsTheHungryShark even compared to vanilla mercs mech bays it feels limiting i couldn't figure it out and was essentially limited to a bunch of preset loadouts
Absolutely pissed all over Smoke Jaguar lore, chars act like edgy millennials trying to be serious. No way of actually adhering to Clan lore like the batchal - there should be a way to get more honor the more underweight your Star is. Would really have liked to have seen Elementals in the game, and Nova Stars as a result. Its a reasonable attempt at a Clan Invasion era game, nothing more.
very fair review: its definatly something I am gonna look at after a month or so and once I see what the modders do for MW5 and what they are thinking about doing with clans if anything
From what I'm hearing, just yoink the models and import them into MW5. Throw PGI a bone, whether they deserve it or not, and say you need MW5C to use those models in Mercs.
The biggest problem with this game Lore Wise is that they decided to make the Smoke Jaguars the protagonists, but almost none of the characters in the game act like actual Smoke Jaguars. Smoke Jaguars entire schtick is being overly aggressive militarist who regularly commit War Crimes that gets them berated by their fellow clans. Making the main characters look and act like stereotypical Zoomers with poorly written banter just makes it feel like a badly written fanfic.
That’s what I’m saying, I kept thinking why the hell they would care about freeborn civilians on an enemy planet when they’re notorious for even treating their own castes outside of the warrior caste like trash
@@metal_black_x9828Yep said the same and had some woman claim I didn't know the lore and that if fit Clan Smoke Jaguar. I mean I'm no lore buff, but what she said was ludicrously wrong.
war crimes don't exist, in a modern person's eyes any killing is a crime, your abrahamic talmudist Dagon christian indoctrination, so no you cannot commit a crime in war if killing at all is a crime. Morals are fake
18:45 It's weird because late in M5Mercs, they literally switched the tonnage limit to a (massively punishing) overtonnage penalty, not a hard block. So they already have exactly the mechanic you want.
10:07 - What... "Guilt tripping themselves over an atrocity." Meanwhile, me, casually, happily, and regularly taking in urban(read: civilian targets) demolition contracts. Because getting paid to stomp over and crash through structures like the Kool-Aid man, is so damn fun. Somehow, MY mercenary outfit in MW5 is more brutal and cold than *CLAN SMOKE JAGUAR?*
96% attrition rate in your training is not conducive to fighting a protracted war. I guess the Clans didn't read their military history, e.g. IJN pilot training in WWII.
it's not conducive to having a tallent pool either as improvment is outright forbidden for most of there applicants and since you made the training it also makes you more rigid since it's incredibly deadly and you design ed it to work one way
Your assessment on the lore perfectly fits what I've been saying about it. It just ain't Clan Smoke Jaguar, to me the Battletech Cartoon did a better representation of a Crusader Clan. And yeah I've said the same thing, if it was Clan Wolf or Clan Ghost bear it would have made a little more sense(and even those Clans have a ruthlessness about them) On other note, I'm tired of this lame trope of the Characters having to be "relatable". Relatable to who?, those who aren't fans of the Battletech lore?
7:04 I mean it was also in the sources that he got challenged for his job and bussed down to a Star colonel after losing a duel. So there was some internal disagreement on the action. Not on exactly moral grounds but on failure grounds. Complete inability to control a mere riot.
@@marley7868that’s exactly why. He wants bussed down because he did it, he was bussed down because it made Smoke Jaguar look bad and gave Clan Wolf the ability to remove warships as a weapon of war which even the SaKhan looks more pissed about than him killing the Kuritans.
As someone who completed the game, the game can be better. I agreed a lot in the video, like the tonnage as mentioned in the video. Like for goodness sake, just increase the reward if there is a warning that says "Significant low tonnage" and said "You will get more reward if you do so". Also the final mission in my eyes can be bullshit with no meta mechs (If you played it, you know which one) Also I really hate the 2nd Act boss battle and then scan it after my star just got killed while two fucking dropships landed with mechs. I just gone cheese on them, three Nova prime... In conclusion, I felt mixed on the game, I do enjoy the game because I played mercenaries but it can be done better. Also, I feel I will not recommend this game to new players since it feels like you need to play MW5 first. I'm looking forward what modders can do with this game, because I really enjoyed YAML mods in Mercenaries
Heh, I knew they'd make Sarah Weaver an cringy girlboss and that the protagonists would be morally good Smoke Jags suffering from Drizzt syndrome. Also, where is Lincoln Osis? I think I'll get it once the price goes down to 20 €.
@@DIEGhostfish That is fun to watch flail around angrily whenever anything doesn't go her way, knowing she'll get what's coming to her not so far down the line
I can get behind the idea of, say, a Star of Smoke Jaguars that are more restrained and less aggressive as their peers and being looked down upon because of it, given highly dangerous missions to 'prove their honor'. If they wanted to play more 'good guy' Clanners they should have gone with Clans Wolf of Ghost Bear.
I did enjoy it, and think it’s okay. I would say wait for it to go on sale, or yeah, I got it on Game Pass and that is proving to be a great investment.
I agree that the Smoke Jaguar ending feels more satisfying to watch than the Wolf’s Dragoons ending. The voice acting feels so much more visceral and emotional, and the dialogue also improves significantly. In the end, Jayden finally secures a place of significance in his Clan, but he may have had to sacrifice too much of himself to do it; and on some level, I think that Jayden knows that too. But oddly enough, I find that much more satisfying than the good guy ending depicted in the other path, which feels like an ending that was tacked on for people who don’t like playing the bad guys.
A couple of days late, but Ea-Nasir is pronounced eh-ah nah-seer (hard to tell without an accent over the A, but I digress). Also, he died as a bad copper merchant and un-clan-like twat should: Particle cannon to the face. Thanks for the review. I only got to see a bit of your streams and Razor's first one thus far. The thing that bugged me right off the bat was the Trial of Position. Not even Smoke Jaguar was foolish enough to hand a cadet a heavy omnimech. and here we have a cadet in a Summoner, fighting a Mad Dog immediately.
Khan Weaver/Deborah or whatever her name is, was hands down the most cringy part of the game. They tried to give her such gravitas and passion and instead she came across as the worst girl boss ever. I skipped every scene with her.
Realistically it's going to be a few years before I play this, but after watching a few LP's I thought her and her subordinate Galaxy Commander (or whatever she was) both frequently sounded more like text-to-speech programs than actual human actors.
This felt more like an introduction to the clans from a Clanner trying not to sound like the bad guy to the Inner Sphere. All the main plot points and recognisable quirks, none of the fluff and inner workings of the clans.
Honestly I would have liked it a bit more if the Turtle Bay event was shown as more as the fractures in between the mechwarrior and naval commands of clan leadership, because it absolutely exists. One of them thinks that they pilot the greatest pinnacle of technology and are gods of battle, and the other one knows that the only reason why that technology exists is it because what they're in charge of is too effective at reducing everything not in space.
3:00 thank you someone gets it, couldn't describe the SJ and how the clans operate any better. The story that was presented to use would have made much more sense if it was Clan Wolf or a clan that has crusader and warden elements so you could see there was discord. Some people are saying "but, but look at Trent not everything is generals, there's individuals as well". Yes Trent did turn, but that was eventually and after going through some crazy stuff at Tukayyid and poor political manoeuvring but other people. I think they tried to make it seem that this was a defective batch of recruits and not completely SJ like by the way of the intro cutscene, but like it's stated in this video most of this stuff is breed/trained out of you by the time your sibko is ready to take their first trial of position. Also i think the reason they went with Smoke Jaguar is one there's a great set piece moment "Turtle Bay" (well technically two but we'll get to that) and 2 they can insert a branching ending (stay with SJ or become a WD) and fight for either side on Luthien. It's the only reason why i think they chose SJ plus not really documented in extreme detail their invasion of IS with Beta galaxy so they could slip the player nicely into it. 16:30 oh my god yes that felt like a final level mission (and you're only a lvl 5 player), there were way too many mechs for you to deal with at that point in time, or they should have given you more friendly mechs to up the stack or give the feel that you were pushing hard to recapture the prince.
These college fratboy equivalents are the last SURVIVORS of their sibko of a 100.... thats how grueling and brutal their training regime is, and they act like a bunch of angsty californian beach f-boys. Was sweet baby inc. involved? Or is this just the minimal viable characterisation of PGI? XD Guess im going back to my island...
I think I mostly agree with the review. I didn't know much about the lore of the settings going in so the story had to stand on what it presented to me, which it did an okay job at doing. Alot of the same problems as Mercs and the new features not doing much to alleviate the issues. The faces here were so weird and unnatural at times that it really brought me out on most of those otherwise great cutscenes. I also choose the Mia side and was pretty satisfied with the ending, it felt like the character actually grew out of their teenage phase so that was pretty neat.
There were two missions in particular that I hated. Coucheval, where you have to hunt down the stolen Clan 'mechs, and the second Union Dropship. I hate the Sokol and Gazelle, but I do enjoy slaughtering my way through Kuritans... My first playthrough was at 24 hours, and thanks to a manual save, I beat the other ending at 40.
TL:DR its an alright game but my "didn't like" is longer for a reason. parts I liked: -The story wasn't that bad IMO, certainly a step up from Mercs. I liked witnessing Turtle Bay which I credit as what lost the clans the invasion with the following political fallout. -Omni-pod swapping was pretty cool to really tailor your mechs to do different things. Felt like mech legos -Weapons felt alright: ballistics were punchy enough, lasers screeched through the air, missiles sounded and look good. -Sound track returned to almost techno-orchestral at parts with some metal thrown in for flavor -You do get to fight / fight along side the Kell Hounds and the Wolf's Dragoons which I thought was a nice touch since Hans did send them to bail Theodore out -They comment on "new" IS mech designs and just laugh at them +10 clanner swag -We get a message from Kerensky himself so for SLDF fan boys like myself that was cool Parts I didn't like: -Voice acting was very stiff and wooden, I don't fault the group of voice actors who were told to never use a contraction, I get lore reasons but damn their job was hard wit the material given -Menus that lead to menus that lead to menus that lead to menus -They are absolutly going to make me pay for Tukayyid and that makes me big mad -general performance is pretty crap -Allied AI is absolutely inexcusably stupid, the best example I can give is their refusal to jump down a 10ft slope and instead going all the way around a crater to regroup with me -Scanner mode is not utilized enough, could have had collectables or black box recordings of the people you killed and how the people they killing and ruling over do not in fact see the jags as living up to Kerensky's honorable and knightly reputation (listening to them makes some of your star turn soft which would prompt their defection instead of it seaming like a last minute thing) -the top down view was not utilized enough, AI should have taken over your pilot seat when you enter it and you go full RTS mode while in it -Once again you there is no command to order my star/lance to repair, instead I still have to swap to them and go through the full animation before I then swap to another to repeat -Kerensky was NOT voiced by George Ledoux (watch his version of Kerensky's "Hidden Hope" speech its fantastic I promise) -Once again I can not command 2 lances or stars like I could all the way back in MW4 Mercs, seriously wtf -Once again the only scaling difficulty is is throwing MORE braindead enemies at you. I ran the numbers as well and you kill the 5th ALAG to the last man no less than 4 times and I'm meant to believe that they somehow smuggled their way onto a BLOCKADED world with that kind of manpower and resources. Also why can I not use their scanner mode to look inside the industrial mech's mechbays and see if there are ALAG mechs hiding in them for ambush. That would have been a very clever use of it but what ever.
Okay, one point. There is a command for your Star to repair. You go into Tactical Map. Pick the guy you want to repair. Right click on the repair station. Then select the next guy, right click on another repair station. This is 100% in the game, I've been using it day one.
@@nemamiah7832even more you can look at a rapair bay and just command all to use them and usually the most damaged of them will automatically use whichever ones nearest first.
Its really nice to finally find a review that criticizes the story. It seems like a lot of people are so excited about having a narrative driven mechwarrior game that they didn't bother to care about if the narrative was even good. I dont know that much about the lore but i immediately noticed that the cast was made up of a diverse group of people who all talk about their feelings and have edgy haircuts. It seems like pgi was trying to make a video game that fits in with other modern games instead of trying to stand out by making a mechwarrior game.
I actually thought the Union class dropship mission was pretty easy. It was memorable, for sure. I use jump jets to approach the launch base from a different direction, and used my lance to screen me while I killed the "starting up" mechs. Lots of stuff going on, and one of my lance mates bought the farm in the final fight with the Union class, but I didn't have to repeat it.
Do you think there is a possibility of sandbox mode like Mercenaries? That would be the only reason I buy it, and I've been playing tabletop Battletech since the 80's so I love the setting but not the narrative modes
Unclanny but effective story, great work, Piranha I ended up understanding that Piranha had the choice of making the young characters very Smoke Jaguars, or make them a bad batch of misfits to make them more relatable. As simple and generic as it may seem to lore enthusiasts, I liked the story. Within clans there must be a wide variety of people like in any human collective. Even these misfits may happen. It works as far as it attracts new fans to the franchise.
@@ElGreco15Pure combat effectiveness. They may have been cringe, but they are also mighty survivors. They also never dealt with the freeborn castes until the Year of Peace, and went directly from Trainee to Destined Liberators without years of civil service. The Year of Peace is a major turning point in their characterization because they end up forced to deal with the civvies
MW 4 Mercs was peak, change my mind. Watching your live play vid (yeah I watched the whole thing) my initial thoughts were "why are wolves skinned as SJ? Halo 2 cut scenes look better. And that my analog toilet has better ally AI" lol. Glad to hear there was some redeeming parts in the story later on, and I get that they wanted to make SJ more appealing and not make people feel like they're forced to play "the bad guy" but with good storytelling they could still make it lore accurate and embrace SJ being heartless killers.
I opted to refund this although I'll probably pick it up when it's on sale down the road. My main reason for refunding was due to the performance issues currently plaguing the game, perhaps it's faulty memory but I don't recall MW5: Mercs suffering the same performance issues at launch. I'm also hoping that by the time I pick it up the modders may have improved things somewhat. The criticisms regarding voice acting, story etc, from my brief time with it I did find it a little grating but I'm still willing to give it a shot once issues have been addressed.
About what i think has well but some of the cut scenes where the camera is focused on the characters mouth and the mouth animations are exaggerated like watching a old samarii move dubbed in English the on screen actor says a paragraph but the English dub is “no”
I will be honest. This could been good if you where the lead of the clan. Building up bases on planets. Managing the wars on top of doing the war. Like this could been cool to have a grand strategy aspect on top of the normal Mercwarrior 5 gameplay.
OK, so now that I've gotten a bit farther into the campaign, I can say I'm OK with how they designed the mech lab. I get it. The first thing I suggest people do after the first mission is unlock missile boat omnipods for every mech lol. I was able to unlock 4 out of the 5 after what I believe was the first mission. Then I unlocked the last one I wanted after the second mission. It was the ppc one. There's only one that comes with it I believe. I was having trouble with the second mission, kept losing a mech, so I loaded the autos Ave after the first mission and went into the mech bay and started configuring for missile boats. Missile boats are hyped for a reason. Every starter mech has a missile boat omnipod except 1 I believe, but thats OK because that one has a ppc omnipod. After switching omnipods and going with what I knew, I got through the mission without losing a mech or even a component on expert. Im also focusing on learning the controls and being more tactical and precise in my movements and strategy. God I love Mechwarrior lol.
I liked the story, acting and gameplay. So much that I'm already on my 3rd playthrough having gotten both endings. I also mostly used stock omnipods. Also the boss battle prepatch were miserable. They had like a million HP and completely unbalanced. They fixed that now. I will say the star mates walking into your line of fire is rather infuriating, it's almost if they're doing it on purpose. The mech lab is fine once you get a hang of it. It is jarring at first though.
I'll stick with my percieved bad contrarian opinion, but I think MW5 Mercenaries OST as well as the one for Heros of the InnerSphere and FRR are high up there. With how many source books and stories in general, its surprising they cannot get the Clan speak correct.
i will stick with modded mw5:mercs. Would have been so much better if Piranha just made a DLC... and fix the AI for solaris battles so they dont just stand there and wait for you to attack first.
What is a 5.0 for you mage? As id say thats a game running as expected but nothing else. Like this tittle. However IDK by it being a sequal of a franchize and other points against it its probly more a 4.0 or 4.5
A 5/10 for me is a game that functions and has no outstanding qualities, good or bad. It just exists. This game has a few things it does well, which keeps it above a 5, but it has too much wrong with it to get to a 7.
The characters talk like it's some kind of cringe high school movie. Instead of blood thristy, true born warriors that would blast through women and children to get the mission done.
Okay I wanted to finish the video first before saying anything. I agree with just about most of what was said, but I do wish to add a few things here. 1. I don't like how they handled the clanners. Playing as the clans should be fun, yes your the bad guys but that can still be fun to play as. You're a genetically bred super soldier, indoctrinated into a highly militerized and tribal society. Based on the books ive read from the POV of the clans, this should have been over the top awesome, playing as a battle hungry clan mechwarriors. For anyone reading this, l implore you to look up the Mechwarrior online steam launch trailer and listen to that opening narration by clan jade falcon (best clan btw). That hype, that energy the narration builds up, that vibe of being the decendents of kerensky, ready to bring about veagence on the great houses, is not here. The clanners you play as, are boring. And thats a tragedy. 2.That tac map rts mechanic could only work if it actually paused the game, keeping it in real time was a rather dumb decision. It has potential. 3.I was mixed about this game, mostly cause the main faction you fight against, the Draconis Combine, are my bois. (Sorry mage leader, my loyalty is to house Kurita). aside from that, not much else to say. Great video
Ewwww, Clanners... Unless I can snag their Mechs then I'd tolerate it... But at the same time... It's Smoke Jaguar... Also, don't try and screw with the Combine! At least let me chose to be a Wolf so I can relieve the Bears from their invasion in unfair occupation of the FRR while freeing the FFR from the clans. Yeah, I'd be that Clanner that hunts other Clanners to keep the Inner sphere safe from the more evil clans.
I felt the early missions were more well done mid area dropped off some then picked up the last couple. There was even a 'stealth" mission.... at least they tried.
For a game that’s supposed to be focused on a story driven campaign, they could’ve (and should’ve) made those facial animations their main priority. Ugh, horrible. And boss fight?? Oh come on. And even tho I’m close to the finish line on completion, I’m looking forward to get back into Mercenaries and just play some good ol missions. Maybe in a future DLC, Clans might offer similar missions gameplay.
I have to say I disagree with your character assessments. Hear me out, to accurately portray your idea of the Smoke Jaguars, all of the characters would be like Todd from Soldier, or Jason Scott Lee's character. No emotion other than rage and murder. That is like saying every Jade Falcon is Joanna or Malvina Hazen. That ignores characters like Peri, Adain, and Horse. Smoke Jaguar had Trent who was a very decent character morally, and even Paul Moon who was the frothing sociopath you think all clanners are, turned into the custos eventually. Playing an emotionless terminator with no thought between missions other than how can we kill more between killing would make the whole clan useless as not only a plot device but why bother playing them? Just use robots if that is how they all are. I understand why you would have characters that display more range of emotions because you can then relate to them. When you are writing a story, the bad guys are always easy to just Stormtrooper. No character, no personality, just evil and they kill, that would be too easy. I'm glad they branched out and gave us a new look at the generic bad clan. I personally would rather it have been Jade Falcon but thats me. Maybe they can do another version where they redo the classic MW2 with this level of detail. That would be my wish. Other than that difference of opinion, I mostly enjoyed it and I will be buying any other add on's they might put out. My entertainment bar is low so everything else I liked. I especially liked how they changed out some of the weapon effects. It made me love new Mechs I never cared about in the past which to me is like getting a fresh introduction to the game again.
Yeah, I'm in agreement with you on the characterisation, and it definitely feels more in line with how Pardoe was shaping the last of the Smoke Jaguar survivors as opposed to just tarring them with the generic bad guy brush and leaving it at that.
This is exactly my thoughts. I never liked the campaigns so Mercenary never bothered me with its lackluster offerings. While this campaign is better (production wise not with story) i still hate it for nearly every reason stated in this video mission are slogging attritions, which reduces the mech game to 'max tonnage max firepower' which i hate. I played on easy mode and it was still a grinding slog. The mech selection i pitiful and the mechs are near meaningless because you are forced to max your stars tonnage for each fight. In mercenaries you had to earn your mechs, either find a shop and get enough scratch to buy them, or get lucky with salvage. In Clans...you unlock them.....and there easy to get cause theres little to spend money on, and you just sell your lighter mechs cause your never gonna use them again. the mech lab...i didn't even bother. I went to strip my jumpjets to add more armor and weapons...it wouldn't let me. so i never bothered with it and just stuck with the preset ominipods...which made me not care even more. Also on console Clans is worse then mercenaries. The command lance options are in a circile, but you have to press the up arrow key to confirm a command after scrolling with your joystick to select it...its tripped my up many times. and the weapons....they took away a button to "swap to another weapons group" essentially two sets of weapons buttons....but few mechs have enough weapons to warrant that. so i have to actually open up to control scheme and rebind my buttons to make it workable for me....which must be done in combat where as you could pause the game to do it in mercenaries...also i never touched the battlegrid system except by accident, scanner mode was annoying And whats my reward for completing the campaign? ...nothing....no career mode or sandbox.....if i was still eligible for a refund i'd get one
I don't know how they managed to make Mech customization so clunky. MechWarrior 4 solved that 20 years ago! All they had to do is copy that and I would be a very happy man.
Well this has been a disappointing thing to hear lore wise. I can't help but feel like you called it with them trying to be safe edgy "You'll totally be one of the bad guys, but you'll get an opportunity at redemption by becoming a part of the Dragoons and being an example for all!". This is a setting built on human flaws and hubris, the good stands out because the bad contrasts it in a stark fashion, trying to soften the edges of what the Clans are takes the bite out of either going with the warcrimes or deciding to go against the grain. If they'd wanted to introduce a reason for your character to betray the Jaguars and have it be a meaningful choice, why wasn't there more subterfuge and politicking that screws over your character, an internal power struggle within your Star? Give them a cause that makes sense for a Clanner to want vengeance or seek glory through different means. It'd make for an interesting story at least and could still show that for all the Clans are supposedly united in their goals, they still have failings that create problems within the group.
"Generic male model #17" - never has the clan's genetic program ever been so well described before.
They have interesting flaws! Their rigid warrior's code often betrays them!
/s
"Minmaxing my mechs" - now your playing with Battletech!
@@kennethellis2666 lol sure Jan.
He mage leader if you see this. Did you try out the kestrel lancers dlc for mechwarrior 5 mercs? It was my favorite design wise form maps to dialog. Along with objectives.
Clans feels really held back I know Russ bullock has said he wants to streamline the mechlab and people do defend him for that. But the fun part is digging in and modding out your mechs just like in battle tech. I really liked your review thank you for your honest take.
I agree with a lot of these points. I felt like the weight limit should have impacted honor. Maybe an 'optimal' or 'cut-down' value and if you go under it, it's bonus honor and less honor to go over it. Similarly, I felt like the pirates were VERY well-armed compared to what they should have been lore-wise, and also completely lacking the 'doo-doo in the pants' moments we see when the clans first arrive, and people don't know who or what they are. I think Tex made a great comment about how rumors spread about invincible mechs, etc. Additionally, the idea of conflicted Jaguars is interesting. Obviously lore-fans will talk about Trent, but Trent only became how he was after several events. To see a bunch of essentially green warriors even have these questions was a bit off.
Personally Im of the opinion is that a predisposition to questioning authority was accidentally put in their "half aborted batch". It's just that clan smoke kitty drank the Kool-Aid so hard that they probably viewed bringing this particular stock of warriors into their "great reclamation" as a non problem. After all there's no way that they could have been in the wrong, right?
Pirates have impossible amount of Ravens.
I don't really buy it smoke jaguar are not nice getting busted down to star colonel feels like the punishment is for the political fallout cause clan wolf just bid away the warships and called them weak reminder on wolcott as a matter of course that required no judge no jury no hearing with the khan the commander was executed and the kuritans casually asked if they wanted his bloodline wiped that is clan smoke jaguars standard operating procedure
Overall the missions against the pirates were too draggy and frankly mocking to the clans. In reality the planet would have been glasses after the 1st ambush where they blew up the dropships. Maybe a mission performed to save some civvies but I doubt it and I still struggle to understand how valasek escaped on a dropship from a system where the entire smoked jaguar fleet was stationed.
@@HalIOfFameri think canonically he does escape, plus space is big
I really wanted the full blown clan psychopaths. It was disappointing that the story didn't go that way.
This. It would have been way more interesting if they just presented clan culture, *especially Smoke Jaguars,* as downright alien with their way of life. Like a Mechwarrior equivalent of _The Northman._ Lost my interest when just a few minutes in and all the vibe I'm getting is _stricter inner sphere with odd grammar hangups._
Clan Fluffy Kitten was an incredible introduction to the Clans for anyone completely unfamiliar with the lore. "By Kerensky!"
The Omni Mechlab made me want to die
Gundam: Requiem for a Vengeance: Introvert Gen Alpha child murders and haunts an entire army.
Mechwarrior 5 Clans: Whiny Teens become hardened combat veterans.
To be fair that army killed like half of humanity less than a year ago from where Requiem for Vengeance happens in the Gundam timeline. So that Alpha child was entittled to be even more murdery and haunting. I found it funny how the show didn't address that little fact one bit.
@@Alpha_Digamma The show is from the perspectives of Zeon soldiers later in the war. Less about how and why the war started and more about the desperate survival o af retreating and broken Zeon Army.
If Perez had ordered every MechWarrior, Elemental, and Freeborn infantryman in his Cluster to go down to the surface of Turtle Bay and kill every man, woman, and child by hand, he would still be in command.
It wouldn't matter because he would have died at the upcoming battles against the Inner Sphere because COMSTAR would have already leaked details on him.
@mikecampos1193 Most likely, but then Clan Wolf wouldn't have been given the opportunity to bid away their warships, causing the other Clans to follow suit. It was only a matter of time before Smoke Jaguar used them. If not at Turtle Bay, then it may have been Tukayyid.
No one accuses the Jags of being wise.
@@terrinils3165 ehh I feel like comstar would just nuke em it's not they don't have the missiles or just send in a drone battleship they have those too so I feel like that wouldn't have gone well for the clanners
@marley7868 Then the Great Houses will know that ComStar has WarShips and an arsenal of nukes. The one thing that united the Inner Sphere was the Clan threat. If ComStar declares all out war and pushes the Clans back, then they become the biggest threat to the Great Houses.
I 100% the whole game. Got every achievement, got all the mech chassis maxed, got both endings and got all optional mission objectives done in simpod.
If im being honest, i prefer mw5 mercs. Now im not a battletech lore buff, so im kinda ignorant on clan customs (but i gotta agree, the clan ending with mia just felt better. more in character, at least to me.) But my biggest gripe is the lack of replay ability.
What do you have once the game is done? Once all missions are beaten and the game is through, what do you have? Simpod. Thats it.
At least mw5 mercs let you go anywhere and shoot anything. I truly believe they (pgi i mean) should have added some form of sandbox or something for us to fool around in.
I did everything in like 35 ish hours. Now im back on mw5 mercs modded. It just feels like a dlc wrapped up and presented to us as a game.
But i at least gave it a go. And i prefer mercs more. But thats just my 2 cents
Mercs was better gameplay wise , the clanners mech repair bay is terrible.
@777dragonborn I didn't mind it to much myself (not saying it was good, just saying I didn't mind it) but I honestly kinda hated the mechlab/omnipod stuff more. Maybe because I'm so used to yaml, but it just felt so barebones and honestly, kinda incomplete.
@@JawsTheHungryShark even compared to vanilla mercs mech bays it feels limiting
i couldn't figure it out and was essentially limited to a bunch of preset loadouts
Absolutely pissed all over Smoke Jaguar lore, chars act like edgy millennials trying to be serious. No way of actually adhering to Clan lore like the batchal - there should be a way to get more honor the more underweight your Star is. Would really have liked to have seen Elementals in the game, and Nova Stars as a result. Its a reasonable attempt at a Clan Invasion era game, nothing more.
I find myself under a lot. Because I didn't have access to heavy for a while. Spent my honor on techs.
very fair review: its definatly something I am gonna look at after a month or so and once I see what the modders do for MW5 and what they are thinking about doing with clans if anything
From what I'm hearing, just yoink the models and import them into MW5. Throw PGI a bone, whether they deserve it or not, and say you need MW5C to use those models in Mercs.
The game looks like something an overworked modder would make for mercenaries except still only in beta.
The biggest problem with this game Lore Wise is that they decided to make the Smoke Jaguars the protagonists, but almost none of the characters in the game act like actual Smoke Jaguars.
Smoke Jaguars entire schtick is being overly aggressive militarist who regularly commit War Crimes that gets them berated by their fellow clans. Making the main characters look and act like stereotypical Zoomers with poorly written banter just makes it feel like a badly written fanfic.
That’s what I’m saying, I kept thinking why the hell they would care about freeborn civilians on an enemy planet when they’re notorious for even treating their own castes outside of the warrior caste like trash
@@metal_black_x9828Yep said the same and had some woman claim I didn't know the lore and that if fit Clan Smoke Jaguar. I mean I'm no lore buff, but what she said was ludicrously wrong.
war crimes don't exist, in a modern person's eyes any killing is a crime, your abrahamic talmudist Dagon christian indoctrination, so no you cannot commit a crime in war if killing at all is a crime. Morals are fake
18:45 It's weird because late in M5Mercs, they literally switched the tonnage limit to a (massively punishing) overtonnage penalty, not a hard block. So they already have exactly the mechanic you want.
I'm gonna say it. It's MECHASSAULT CLANS
Fair
Ehhh not really.
When are we going to get a Battletech/MechWarrior game that you can actually play the battle of Tukayyid? That would be amazing.
10:07 - What...
"Guilt tripping themselves over an atrocity." Meanwhile, me, casually, happily, and regularly taking in urban(read: civilian targets) demolition contracts. Because getting paid to stomp over and crash through structures like the Kool-Aid man, is so damn fun. Somehow, MY mercenary outfit in MW5 is more brutal and cold than *CLAN SMOKE JAGUAR?*
I KNOW RIGHT?!
I like that Hunt Showdown burn. Oof. What a disaster. I'm not sure many people got it, but nothing is more awful than that UI.
96% attrition rate in your training is not conducive to fighting a protracted war. I guess the Clans didn't read their military history, e.g. IJN pilot training in WWII.
it's not conducive to having a tallent pool either as improvment is outright forbidden for most of there applicants and since you made the training it also makes you more rigid since it's incredibly deadly and you design ed it to work one way
I'm probably going to wait this one out. In the meantime, I going to see how to get co-op to work on MW4.
A comprehensive review without dragging or getting stuck on any one thing. I like your style, and I hope to see more stuff like this in the future.
Your assessment on the lore perfectly fits what I've been saying about it. It just ain't Clan Smoke Jaguar, to me the Battletech Cartoon did a better representation of a Crusader Clan. And yeah I've said the same thing, if it was Clan Wolf or Clan Ghost bear it would have made a little more sense(and even those Clans have a ruthlessness about them)
On other note, I'm tired of this lame trope of the Characters having to be "relatable". Relatable to who?, those who aren't fans of the Battletech lore?
Good video! That's a good idea that they could've had a bidding mechanic for what you could bring on missions.
7:04 I mean it was also in the sources that he got challenged for his job and bussed down to a Star colonel after losing a duel. So there was some internal disagreement on the action. Not on exactly moral grounds but on failure grounds. Complete inability to control a mere riot.
feels more like he was punished because there was political fallout to me
@@marley7868that’s exactly why. He wants bussed down because he did it, he was bussed down because it made Smoke Jaguar look bad and gave Clan Wolf the ability to remove warships as a weapon of war which even the SaKhan looks more pissed about than him killing the Kuritans.
As someone who completed the game, the game can be better. I agreed a lot in the video, like the tonnage as mentioned in the video. Like for goodness sake, just increase the reward if there is a warning that says "Significant low tonnage" and said "You will get more reward if you do so". Also the final mission in my eyes can be bullshit with no meta mechs (If you played it, you know which one)
Also I really hate the 2nd Act boss battle and then scan it after my star just got killed while two fucking dropships landed with mechs. I just gone cheese on them, three Nova prime...
In conclusion, I felt mixed on the game, I do enjoy the game because I played mercenaries but it can be done better. Also, I feel I will not recommend this game to new players since it feels like you need to play MW5 first. I'm looking forward what modders can do with this game, because I really enjoyed YAML mods in Mercenaries
In summary: looks pretty, and it's standalone MW5 DLC.
my thoughts exactly
Heh, I knew they'd make Sarah Weaver an cringy girlboss and that the protagonists would be morally good Smoke Jags suffering from Drizzt syndrome. Also, where is Lincoln Osis?
I think I'll get it once the price goes down to 20 €.
@Fenris86 Sarah Weaver ahould be a *terrifying* girlboss.
@@DIEGhostfish That is fun to watch flail around angrily whenever anything doesn't go her way, knowing she'll get what's coming to her not so far down the line
@@thattigercat She's not the right kind of angry.
I can get behind the idea of, say, a Star of Smoke Jaguars that are more restrained and less aggressive as their peers and being looked down upon because of it, given highly dangerous missions to 'prove their honor'.
If they wanted to play more 'good guy' Clanners they should have gone with Clans Wolf of Ghost Bear.
They should've at least let us have the IIC mechs.
playing this with the German dub just hits different 😉
I did enjoy it, and think it’s okay. I would say wait for it to go on sale, or yeah, I got it on Game Pass and that is proving to be a great investment.
I agree that the Smoke Jaguar ending feels more satisfying to watch than the Wolf’s Dragoons ending. The voice acting feels so much more visceral and emotional, and the dialogue also improves significantly. In the end, Jayden finally secures a place of significance in his Clan, but he may have had to sacrifice too much of himself to do it; and on some level, I think that Jayden knows that too. But oddly enough, I find that much more satisfying than the good guy ending depicted in the other path, which feels like an ending that was tacked on for people who don’t like playing the bad guys.
A couple of days late, but Ea-Nasir is pronounced eh-ah nah-seer (hard to tell without an accent over the A, but I digress). Also, he died as a bad copper merchant and un-clan-like twat should: Particle cannon to the face.
Thanks for the review. I only got to see a bit of your streams and Razor's first one thus far. The thing that bugged me right off the bat was the Trial of Position. Not even Smoke Jaguar was foolish enough to hand a cadet a heavy omnimech. and here we have a cadet in a Summoner, fighting a Mad Dog immediately.
I was worried this would be woke. Thanks for confirming that.
Khan Weaver/Deborah or whatever her name is, was hands down the most cringy part of the game. They tried to give her such gravitas and passion and instead she came across as the worst girl boss ever. I skipped every scene with her.
I think the issue is the voice actor was literally just reading the lines and could barely care.
Realistically it's going to be a few years before I play this, but after watching a few LP's I thought her and her subordinate Galaxy Commander (or whatever she was) both frequently sounded more like text-to-speech programs than actual human actors.
This felt more like an introduction to the clans from a Clanner trying not to sound like the bad guy to the Inner Sphere.
All the main plot points and recognisable quirks, none of the fluff and inner workings of the clans.
Man, you just don't make enough videos. This was fire!
I wasn't expecting a Transformers clip in this video
Love that movie
Honestly I would have liked it a bit more if the Turtle Bay event was shown as more as the fractures in between the mechwarrior and naval commands of clan leadership, because it absolutely exists.
One of them thinks that they pilot the greatest pinnacle of technology and are gods of battle, and the other one knows that the only reason why that technology exists is it because what they're in charge of is too effective at reducing everything not in space.
the map view is ok if youre familiar with the mission, and by ok i mean for setting up your own ambush
3:00 thank you someone gets it, couldn't describe the SJ and how the clans operate any better. The story that was presented to use would have made much more sense if it was Clan Wolf or a clan that has crusader and warden elements so you could see there was discord. Some people are saying "but, but look at Trent not everything is generals, there's individuals as well". Yes Trent did turn, but that was eventually and after going through some crazy stuff at Tukayyid and poor political manoeuvring but other people.
I think they tried to make it seem that this was a defective batch of recruits and not completely SJ like by the way of the intro cutscene, but like it's stated in this video most of this stuff is breed/trained out of you by the time your sibko is ready to take their first trial of position.
Also i think the reason they went with Smoke Jaguar is one there's a great set piece moment "Turtle Bay" (well technically two but we'll get to that) and 2 they can insert a branching ending (stay with SJ or become a WD) and fight for either side on Luthien. It's the only reason why i think they chose SJ plus not really documented in extreme detail their invasion of IS with Beta galaxy so they could slip the player nicely into it.
16:30 oh my god yes that felt like a final level mission (and you're only a lvl 5 player), there were way too many mechs for you to deal with at that point in time, or they should have given you more friendly mechs to up the stack or give the feel that you were pushing hard to recapture the prince.
These college fratboy equivalents are the last SURVIVORS of their sibko of a 100.... thats how grueling and brutal their training regime is, and they act like a bunch of angsty californian beach f-boys. Was sweet baby inc. involved? Or is this just the minimal viable characterisation of PGI? XD Guess im going back to my island...
I think I mostly agree with the review. I didn't know much about the lore of the settings going in so the story had to stand on what it presented to me, which it did an okay job at doing. Alot of the same problems as Mercs and the new features not doing much to alleviate the issues. The faces here were so weird and unnatural at times that it really brought me out on most of those otherwise great cutscenes. I also choose the Mia side and was pretty satisfied with the ending, it felt like the character actually grew out of their teenage phase so that was pretty neat.
Been waiting for this. Will edit with thoughts after watching. TY ML!
There were two missions in particular that I hated. Coucheval, where you have to hunt down the stolen Clan 'mechs, and the second Union Dropship. I hate the Sokol and Gazelle, but I do enjoy slaughtering my way through Kuritans...
My first playthrough was at 24 hours, and thanks to a manual save, I beat the other ending at 40.
I heard a reviewer sayn he found the cutscenes so cringe that he just ended up skipping them , and ignoring the story totally
TL:DR its an alright game but my "didn't like" is longer for a reason.
parts I liked:
-The story wasn't that bad IMO, certainly a step up from Mercs. I liked witnessing Turtle Bay which I credit as what lost the clans the invasion with the following political fallout.
-Omni-pod swapping was pretty cool to really tailor your mechs to do different things. Felt like mech legos
-Weapons felt alright: ballistics were punchy enough, lasers screeched through the air, missiles sounded and look good.
-Sound track returned to almost techno-orchestral at parts with some metal thrown in for flavor
-You do get to fight / fight along side the Kell Hounds and the Wolf's Dragoons which I thought was a nice touch since Hans did send them to bail Theodore out
-They comment on "new" IS mech designs and just laugh at them +10 clanner swag
-We get a message from Kerensky himself so for SLDF fan boys like myself that was cool
Parts I didn't like:
-Voice acting was very stiff and wooden, I don't fault the group of voice actors who were told to never use a contraction, I get lore reasons but damn their job was hard wit the material given
-Menus that lead to menus that lead to menus that lead to menus
-They are absolutly going to make me pay for Tukayyid and that makes me big mad
-general performance is pretty crap
-Allied AI is absolutely inexcusably stupid, the best example I can give is their refusal to jump down a 10ft slope and instead going all the way around a crater to regroup with me
-Scanner mode is not utilized enough, could have had collectables or black box recordings of the people you killed and how the people they killing and ruling over do not in fact see the jags as living up to Kerensky's honorable and knightly reputation (listening to them makes some of your star turn soft which would prompt their defection instead of it seaming like a last minute thing)
-the top down view was not utilized enough, AI should have taken over your pilot seat when you enter it and you go full RTS mode while in it
-Once again you there is no command to order my star/lance to repair, instead I still have to swap to them and go through the full animation before I then swap to another to repeat
-Kerensky was NOT voiced by George Ledoux (watch his version of Kerensky's "Hidden Hope" speech its fantastic I promise)
-Once again I can not command 2 lances or stars like I could all the way back in MW4 Mercs, seriously wtf
-Once again the only scaling difficulty is is throwing MORE braindead enemies at you. I ran the numbers as well and you kill the 5th ALAG to the last man no less than 4 times and I'm meant to believe that they somehow smuggled their way onto a BLOCKADED world with that kind of manpower and resources. Also why can I not use their scanner mode to look inside the industrial mech's mechbays and see if there are ALAG mechs hiding in them for ambush. That would have been a very clever use of it but what ever.
Okay, one point.
There is a command for your Star to repair. You go into Tactical Map. Pick the guy you want to repair. Right click on the repair station. Then select the next guy, right click on another repair station. This is 100% in the game, I've been using it day one.
@@nemamiah7832even more you can look at a rapair bay and just command all to use them and usually the most damaged of them will automatically use whichever ones nearest first.
@@nemamiah7832 well thank you I didn't see that
Its really nice to finally find a review that criticizes the story. It seems like a lot of people are so excited about having a narrative driven mechwarrior game that they didn't bother to care about if the narrative was even good. I dont know that much about the lore but i immediately noticed that the cast was made up of a diverse group of people who all talk about their feelings and have edgy haircuts. It seems like pgi was trying to make a video game that fits in with other modern games instead of trying to stand out by making a mechwarrior game.
I actually thought the Union class dropship mission was pretty easy. It was memorable, for sure. I use jump jets to approach the launch base from a different direction, and used my lance to screen me while I killed the "starting up" mechs. Lots of stuff going on, and one of my lance mates bought the farm in the final fight with the Union class, but I didn't have to repeat it.
First
Dezgra.
I dont think that works on your own vidya
In true Smoke Jaguar fashion
@@dayaninikhaton Hush
Do you think there is a possibility of sandbox mode like Mercenaries? That would be the only reason I buy it, and I've been playing tabletop Battletech since the 80's so I love the setting but not the narrative modes
Wait, its a standalone game?!
Yes, it is.
Great review and not done yet but you did it justice :P
Pgi continues to stumble with single player gameplay
In fairness to the unrepairable parts, there were things that were hard wired into the base chassis on omnis
What did you say about Sigourney Weaver?!
Unclanny but effective story, great work, Piranha
I ended up understanding that Piranha had the choice of making the young characters very Smoke Jaguars, or make them a bad batch of misfits to make them more relatable. As simple and generic as it may seem to lore enthusiasts, I liked the story.
Within clans there must be a wide variety of people like in any human collective. Even these misfits may happen. It works as far as it attracts new fans to the franchise.
The real question there is how did these eugenics vat babies slip through all the scrutiny still being so Clan Ghost Bear?
@@ElGreco15 Scrutiny requires respurces. A series of events always cause outliers.
@@ElGreco15Pure combat effectiveness. They may have been cringe, but they are also mighty survivors. They also never dealt with the freeborn castes until the Year of Peace, and went directly from Trainee to Destined Liberators without years of civil service.
The Year of Peace is a major turning point in their characterization because they end up forced to deal with the civvies
MW 4 Mercs was peak, change my mind.
Watching your live play vid (yeah I watched the whole thing) my initial thoughts were "why are wolves skinned as SJ? Halo 2 cut scenes look better. And that my analog toilet has better ally AI" lol.
Glad to hear there was some redeeming parts in the story later on, and I get that they wanted to make SJ more appealing and not make people feel like they're forced to play "the bad guy" but with good storytelling they could still make it lore accurate and embrace SJ being heartless killers.
I smell the stench of Sweet Baby...in this...
That's reaching.
I opted to refund this although I'll probably pick it up when it's on sale down the road. My main reason for refunding was due to the performance issues currently plaguing the game, perhaps it's faulty memory but I don't recall MW5: Mercs suffering the same performance issues at launch. I'm also hoping that by the time I pick it up the modders may have improved things somewhat.
The criticisms regarding voice acting, story etc, from my brief time with it I did find it a little grating but I'm still willing to give it a shot once issues have been addressed.
Having it be still be Mechwarrior 5 may be related to PGI's license for the IP expiring soon. Mechwarrior 3 got the same treatment back in the day.
I didn't use PPCs. I used Large Pulse Lasers, medium pulse lasers, streak srm 4s and lbs 20 solid slug for the last fight
I just used medium pulse lasers and Shreked everything in one or two shots, the most OP weapon in dps and heat efficiency bar none.
Yeah, definitely waiting for a sale.
Goddamn knew they were going to chicken out on letting the jags be jags. Cowards.
About what i think has well but some of the cut scenes where the camera is focused on the characters mouth and the mouth animations are exaggerated like watching a old samarii move dubbed in English the on screen actor says a paragraph but the English dub is “no”
I think the lip movements were done by AI and tweaked by hand. They're hardcore in the uncanny valley.
I will be honest. This could been good if you where the lead of the clan. Building up bases on planets. Managing the wars on top of doing the war. Like this could been cool to have a grand strategy aspect on top of the normal Mercwarrior 5 gameplay.
OK, so now that I've gotten a bit farther into the campaign, I can say I'm OK with how they designed the mech lab. I get it. The first thing I suggest people do after the first mission is unlock missile boat omnipods for every mech lol. I was able to unlock 4 out of the 5 after what I believe was the first mission. Then I unlocked the last one I wanted after the second mission. It was the ppc one. There's only one that comes with it I believe. I was having trouble with the second mission, kept losing a mech, so I loaded the autos Ave after the first mission and went into the mech bay and started configuring for missile boats. Missile boats are hyped for a reason. Every starter mech has a missile boat omnipod except 1 I believe, but thats OK because that one has a ppc omnipod. After switching omnipods and going with what I knew, I got through the mission without losing a mech or even a component on expert. Im also focusing on learning the controls and being more tactical and precise in my movements and strategy. God I love Mechwarrior lol.
I liked the story, acting and gameplay. So much that I'm already on my 3rd playthrough having gotten both endings. I also mostly used stock omnipods. Also the boss battle prepatch were miserable. They had like a million HP and completely unbalanced. They fixed that now. I will say the star mates walking into your line of fire is rather infuriating, it's almost if they're doing it on purpose. The mech lab is fine once you get a hang of it. It is jarring at first though.
Nice of you to let us know when you were done with spoilers for a game we still might play.
Part 2 starts at 13:30 by the way.
Nevermind, thanks for saving me fifty bucks.
I'll stick with my percieved bad contrarian opinion, but I think MW5 Mercenaries OST as well as the one for Heros of the InnerSphere and FRR are high up there.
With how many source books and stories in general, its surprising they cannot get the Clan speak correct.
They nearly lost me in the intro cut scene: when the Clanner described their mission to retake the IS as "divine."
The whole concept isn't clanlike.
i will stick with modded mw5:mercs. Would have been so much better if Piranha just made a DLC... and fix the AI for solaris battles so they dont just stand there and wait for you to attack first.
Wait its not a dlc?
Thank you for the review, well done
I'll probably wait to see what mods come out, then grab it on sale.
I really hate how mechs look like paper boxes with the lack of mass and scale. Can you remember the epic Mechwarrior 5 trailer?
"indoctrinated tube grown monstrosities..."🤣🤣🤣
Should be a COMGUARD section where you're joining them for revenge but that would take better writing.
What is a 5.0 for you mage? As id say thats a game running as expected but nothing else. Like this tittle.
However IDK by it being a sequal of a franchize and other points against it its probly more a 4.0 or 4.5
A 5/10 for me is a game that functions and has no outstanding qualities, good or bad. It just exists. This game has a few things it does well, which keeps it above a 5, but it has too much wrong with it to get to a 7.
Ok well I’ll just wait a bit before I get this for them to patch it and get it during a steam sale
armored core 3 music, hell yeah
The characters talk like it's some kind of cringe high school movie. Instead of blood thristy, true born warriors that would blast through women and children to get the mission done.
Okay I wanted to finish the video first before saying anything. I agree with just about most of what was said, but I do wish to add a few things here.
1. I don't like how they handled the clanners. Playing as the clans should be fun, yes your the bad guys but that can still be fun to play as. You're a genetically bred super soldier, indoctrinated into a highly militerized and tribal society. Based on the books ive read from the POV of the clans, this should have been over the top awesome, playing as a battle hungry clan mechwarriors. For anyone reading this, l implore you to look up the Mechwarrior online steam launch trailer and listen to that opening narration by clan jade falcon (best clan btw). That hype, that energy the narration builds up, that vibe of being the decendents of kerensky, ready to bring about veagence on the great houses, is not here. The clanners you play as, are boring. And thats a tragedy.
2.That tac map rts mechanic could only work if it actually paused the game, keeping it in real time was a rather dumb decision. It has potential.
3.I was mixed about this game, mostly cause the main faction you fight against, the Draconis Combine, are my bois. (Sorry mage leader, my loyalty is to house Kurita).
aside from that, not much else to say. Great video
"aHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH... Star Commander..."
missed opportunity with bidding on tonnage another would have been used elementals for stealth or info gathering
Honestly Mechwarrior series peaked with Mechwarrior 4 Vengeance and Overlord mission in Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries.
I guess I'll stick with MW5 Mercs. I don't think I could stomach the way its setup.
Ewwww, Clanners... Unless I can snag their Mechs then I'd tolerate it... But at the same time... It's Smoke Jaguar... Also, don't try and screw with the Combine! At least let me chose to be a Wolf so I can relieve the Bears from their invasion in unfair occupation of the FRR while freeing the FFR from the clans. Yeah, I'd be that Clanner that hunts other Clanners to keep the Inner sphere safe from the more evil clans.
I felt the early missions were more well done mid area dropped off some then picked up the last couple. There was even a 'stealth" mission.... at least they tried.
Went right back to modded MW5 mercs, was fun while it lasted but has no replayability to me.
It's the Dark Souls II of Mechwarrior games.
Yep as always le evil hwit man and good brownoid
For a game that’s supposed to be focused on a story driven campaign, they could’ve (and should’ve) made those facial animations their main priority. Ugh, horrible.
And boss fight?? Oh come on. And even tho I’m close to the finish line on completion, I’m looking forward to get back into Mercenaries and just play some good ol missions. Maybe in a future DLC, Clans might offer similar missions gameplay.
What's the last music track at the end?
I have to say I disagree with your character assessments. Hear me out, to accurately portray your idea of the Smoke Jaguars, all of the characters would be like Todd from Soldier, or Jason Scott Lee's character. No emotion other than rage and murder. That is like saying every Jade Falcon is Joanna or Malvina Hazen. That ignores characters like Peri, Adain, and Horse. Smoke Jaguar had Trent who was a very decent character morally, and even Paul Moon who was the frothing sociopath you think all clanners are, turned into the custos eventually. Playing an emotionless terminator with no thought between missions other than how can we kill more between killing would make the whole clan useless as not only a plot device but why bother playing them? Just use robots if that is how they all are. I understand why you would have characters that display more range of emotions because you can then relate to them. When you are writing a story, the bad guys are always easy to just Stormtrooper. No character, no personality, just evil and they kill, that would be too easy. I'm glad they branched out and gave us a new look at the generic bad clan. I personally would rather it have been Jade Falcon but thats me. Maybe they can do another version where they redo the classic MW2 with this level of detail. That would be my wish. Other than that difference of opinion, I mostly enjoyed it and I will be buying any other add on's they might put out. My entertainment bar is low so everything else I liked. I especially liked how they changed out some of the weapon effects. It made me love new Mechs I never cared about in the past which to me is like getting a fresh introduction to the game again.
Yeah, I'm in agreement with you on the characterisation, and it definitely feels more in line with how Pardoe was shaping the last of the Smoke Jaguar survivors as opposed to just tarring them with the generic bad guy brush and leaving it at that.
This is exactly my thoughts. I never liked the campaigns so Mercenary never bothered me with its lackluster offerings. While this campaign is better (production wise not with story) i still hate it for nearly every reason stated in this video
mission are slogging attritions, which reduces the mech game to 'max tonnage max firepower' which i hate. I played on easy mode and it was still a grinding slog. The mech selection i pitiful and the mechs are near meaningless because you are forced to max your stars tonnage for each fight. In mercenaries you had to earn your mechs, either find a shop and get enough scratch to buy them, or get lucky with salvage. In Clans...you unlock them.....and there easy to get cause theres little to spend money on, and you just sell your lighter mechs cause your never gonna use them again.
the mech lab...i didn't even bother. I went to strip my jumpjets to add more armor and weapons...it wouldn't let me. so i never bothered with it and just stuck with the preset ominipods...which made me not care even more. Also on console Clans is worse then mercenaries. The command lance options are in a circile, but you have to press the up arrow key to confirm a command after scrolling with your joystick to select it...its tripped my up many times. and the weapons....they took away a button to "swap to another weapons group" essentially two sets of weapons buttons....but few mechs have enough weapons to warrant that. so i have to actually open up to control scheme and rebind my buttons to make it workable for me....which must be done in combat where as you could pause the game to do it in mercenaries...also i never touched the battlegrid system except by accident, scanner mode was annoying
And whats my reward for completing the campaign? ...nothing....no career mode or sandbox.....if i was still eligible for a refund i'd get one
Can’t wait for tukkayyid…
There are some exceptions on leaving behind lighter mechs, if you leave behind a mad cat for a man o war i will make fun of you
Tried it, hated it. Back to Solaris arena for me. Should have been an add on where we fight off the clans. Glad I paid nothing for the "experience ".
So its a get it on sale game if one wants it. Got it.
I don't know how they managed to make Mech customization so clunky. MechWarrior 4 solved that 20 years ago! All they had to do is copy that and I would be a very happy man.
Well this has been a disappointing thing to hear lore wise. I can't help but feel like you called it with them trying to be safe edgy "You'll totally be one of the bad guys, but you'll get an opportunity at redemption by becoming a part of the Dragoons and being an example for all!". This is a setting built on human flaws and hubris, the good stands out because the bad contrasts it in a stark fashion, trying to soften the edges of what the Clans are takes the bite out of either going with the warcrimes or deciding to go against the grain.
If they'd wanted to introduce a reason for your character to betray the Jaguars and have it be a meaningful choice, why wasn't there more subterfuge and politicking that screws over your character, an internal power struggle within your Star? Give them a cause that makes sense for a Clanner to want vengeance or seek glory through different means. It'd make for an interesting story at least and could still show that for all the Clans are supposedly united in their goals, they still have failings that create problems within the group.
think I'll stick with mechwarrior 4 mercs for now