Info about BATTLETECH: Official game description: From original BATTLETECH/MechWarrior creator Jordan Weisman and the developers of the award-winning Shadowrun Returns series comes the next-generation of turn-based tactical 'Mech combat. The year is 3025 and the galaxy is trapped in a cycle of perpetual war, fought by noble houses with enormous, mechanized combat vehicles called BattleMechs. Take command of your own mercenary outfit of 'Mechs and the MechWarriors that pilot them, struggling to stay afloat as you find yourself drawn into a brutal interstellar civil war. Upgrade your starfaring base of operations, negotiate mercenary contracts with feudal lords, repair and maintain your stable of aging BattleMechs, and execute devastating combat tactics to defeat your enemies on the battlefield. COMMAND A SQUAD OF 'MECHS IN TURN-BASED COMBAT ---------------------------------------------- Deploy over 30 BattleMechs in a wide variety of combinations. Use terrain, positioning, weapon selection and special abilities to outmaneuver and outplay your opponents. MANAGE YOUR MERCENARY COMPANY ----------------------------- Recruit, customize, and develop unique MechWarriors. Improve and customize your dropship. As a Mercenary, travel a wide stretch of space, taking missions and managing your reputation with a variety of noble houses and local factions. TAKE PART IN A DESPERATE CIVIL WAR ---------------------------------- Immerse yourself in the story of a violently deposed ruler, waging a brutal war to take back her throne with the support of your ragtag mercenary company. CUSTOMIZE YOUR 'MECHS --------------------- Use your MechLab to maintain and upgrade your units, replacing damaged weapon systems with battlefield salvage taken from fallen foes. PVP MULTIPLAYER & SKIRMISH MODE ------------------------------- Customize a Lance of 'Mechs and MechWarriors to go head-to-head with your friends, compete against opponents online, or jump into single-player skirmish mode to test your strategies against the AI. Release date: Apr 24, 2018 Categories: Turn-based Strategy, Tactical Combat, Squad Management, Mercenary Management, Mech Customization, Salvaging Gameplay, Mod Support, Campaign - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: No data - Playtime Metrics: No data - Time-to-fun: No data - Player Archetypes: No data Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - High replayability and longevity (weight 0.95): The game’s customization, mods, and campaign structure encourage multiple playthroughs. Players report sinking 100+ hours into the experience, especially with mods. - Faithful Battletech universe adaptation (weight 0.71): The game captures the essence of the Battletech tabletop experience, appealing to fans with its lore, mech designs, and tactical depth. It’s considered the best digital adaptation of the franchise. - Engaging mercenary company management (weight 0.7): The blend of tactical combat and mercenary company management (e.g., resource allocation, pilot recruitment) adds a layer of RPG depth and long-term engagement to the gameplay loop. - DLCs add meaningful content (weight 0.64): The DLCs are noted for providing unique missions, environments, and mechs, extending the base game’s value without feeling essential. They enhance variety and replayability. - Strong story and campaign design (weight 0.5): The main campaign is praised for its engaging narrative, political intrigue, and tutorial-like progression. It serves as a satisfying introduction to the game’s mechanics and lore. - Turn-based tactical strategy excellence (weight 0.44): The turn-based combat system is lauded for its depth, strategic planning, and accessibility, drawing comparisons to XCOM and Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s a standout in the mech strategy genre. - Polished visuals and audio (weight 0.16): Despite being dated, the game’s graphics, animations, and sound design are consistently praised for their quality and immersion, contributing to the overall experience. - Well-balanced difficulty and pacing (weight 0.15): The game’s difficulty curve is well-tuned, offering a challenging but fair experience. Customizable difficulty settings and balanced early-game maps cater to both newcomers and veterans. - Career mode enhances sandbox play (weight 0.15): The career mode transitions into a free-roaming sandbox after the campaign, adding replayability with diverse missions, open-world exploration, and strategic depth. Common complaints: - Slow and clunky combat mechanics (weight 0.68): Players consistently report that combat feels slow, repetitive, and lacks impact. Turn-based mechanics, long animations, and forced enemy turns contribute to a tedious experience, especially in larger battles. - Repetitive mission design (weight 0.45): Missions lack variety, with repetitive objectives and procedurally generated content feeling unpolished. High mission reset rates due to unlucky outcomes add to the frustration. - Limited mech customization options (weight 0.37): Players express dissatisfaction with preset mech configurations, lack of meaningful upgrades, and AI limitations. The inability to fully customize mechs reduces strategic depth and replayability. - Expensive and lacking DLC (weight 0.37): DLC content is perceived as overpriced and insufficient to justify the cost. Players feel the base game is incomplete without additional purchases, which may also disrupt balance. - AI limitations and dumb tactics (weight 0.33): The AI is criticized for lacking strategic depth, often resorting to simple charge tactics. Poor decision-making and lack of adaptability reduce the challenge and enjoyment. - Broken or lacking multiplayer (weight 0.14): Multiplayer modes are either non-functional, unplayable, or lack meaningful content. Players express disappointment in the absence of co-op or PvE survival modes. - Inconsistent weapon accuracy (weight 0.14): High miss rates despite favorable hit probabilities and inconsistent weapon performance frustrate players. Random pilot deaths due to poor accuracy mechanics add to the frustration. - Poor in-game tutorials (weight 0.12): Tutorials fail to explain core mechanics clearly, leaving players confused about turn order, actions, and restrictions. Early-game frustration is exacerbated by unclear instructions. - Lack of developer support (weight 0.09): Players express disappointment in the lack of ongoing development, updates, or sequels. The game feels abandoned, with no active developer involvement. - Base game limitations (weight 0.09): The base game is criticized for becoming too easy once mechanics are mastered, with a grueling meta-game that removes player choice and fun. It is seen as only moderately solid. - Lack of content and world depth (weight 0.07): Players feel the game lacks unique content, with an empty world and limited options compared to other games in the franchise. More official content is desired. Gameplay feedback: - Turn-based tactical combat (weight 0.86): The game features turn-based strategy gameplay with mechs, emphasizing positioning, cover, and tactical decision-making. Mechanics are inspired by tabletop Battletech and XCOM, requiring players to manage heat, stability, and line of sight. - Salvaging and progression (weight 0.61): Post-battle salvaging allows players to collect mech parts and rebuild their arsenal. This ties into progression, as players unlock stronger mechs and equipment over time. - Robust mod support (weight 0.51): The game supports extensive modding, including total conversion mods (e.g., RogueTech, BTA3062) that add new mechs, equipment, and gameplay mechanics. Mods significantly enhance replayability and customization. - Mercenary campaign and management (weight 0.45): Players command a mercenary company, managing finances, contracts, pilot hiring, and mech repairs. The campaign includes story missions, procedurally generated side missions, and open-ended progression. - Heat and accuracy mechanics (weight 0.34): Heat management is critical to combat, with overheating limiting weapon use. Accuracy mechanics include hit probabilities and random chance, which can lead to high miss rates despite favorable odds. - Board game-inspired mechanics (weight 0.34): The game adapts tabletop Battletech rules, including location-based damage, armor systems, and tactical positioning. Mechanics are simplified for digital play but retain a miniatures-game feel. - Mission variety and rewards (weight 0.29): Missions include objectives like assassination, escort, and base destruction, with rewards such as reputation, money, and mech parts. Difficulty scales with enemy tonnage and player skill, though some missions lack mech-type requirements. - AI and difficulty balancing (weight 0.18): AI behavior includes tactical positioning and scaling difficulty, with enemies often outmatching the player in tonnage. Some players note inconsistencies, such as stock mechs or long-range accuracy issues. Performance notes: - Poor performance optimization (weight 0.26): The game suffers from performance issues, including low FPS, jittery performance, and slow mech movements. Optimization is particularly poor on older hardware or non-Intel Macs. - Frequent crashes and instability (weight 0.2): Players report frequent crashes, freezes, and launching issues, particularly on lower-end systems or when using mods. Some crashes are mitigated by mods, but stability remains a major concern. - Long load times (weight 0.12): Players experience excessively long load times during gameplay, especially at launch or during the tutorial. This issue is consistent across multiple reports. - Compatibility and platform issues (weight 0.1): The game has significant compatibility problems with M1 Macs, non-Intel Macs, and Linux via Proton. Mac users report bugs and optimization issues. - Memory leaks and resource issues (weight 0.08): Memory leaks, particularly tied to the Unity engine, require frequent restarts and impact performance. Mods like RoguTech exacerbate resource demands. - Stable on modern hardware (weight 0.07): While the game struggles on older systems, it runs smoothly on modern rigs with decent PC requirements, showing stability in optimized environments. - Audio and synchronization bugs (weight 0.06): Players report audio stuttering, desynchronization between audio and video, and input lag, which detract from the immersive experience. - Campaign mode unplayable (weight 0.04): The campaign mode is reported as unplayable due to technical issues, including infinite loading screens and bugs that disrupt progression. Recommendations: - Must-play for mech/tactics fans (weight 0.65): The game is highly recommended for fans of turn-based strategy, mech warfare, and franchises like *Battletech*, *X-COM*, and *Front Mission*. It appeals to those who enjoy deep tactical planning and customization. - Recommended at discount (weight 0.53): While the game is praised for its quality, many suggest purchasing it on sale or at a lower price point, particularly for those outside the core fanbase. - Respects tabletop roots (weight 0.45): The game is praised for faithfully adapting the *Battletech* tabletop experience, making it a great entry point for fans of the franchise or newcomers to the genre. - Niche appeal (weight 0.42): The game is highly recommended for its target audience but may not appeal to those outside the turn-based strategy or mech combat niche. - Strong value with mods (weight 0.36): The game offers excellent value, especially when paired with mods like *BTA 3062* or *RogueTech*, which extend replayability and depth. Many recommend playing vanilla first before modding. - Steep learning curve (weight 0.09): New players may find the game challenging due to its complexity and difficulty. It’s ideal for those who enjoy strategic depth but may frustrate casual players. - Boycott due to developer (weight 0.04): A subset of reviews advises against purchasing the game due to dissatisfaction with the developer’s (Paradox) business practices or lack of support. - Avoid if opposed to grind (weight 0.03): Some players suggest using money cheats to skip repetitive grinding and focus on experimentation with mech loadouts, indicating the grind may detract from enjoyment. Other player notes: - Strong modding support and community (weight 0.09): The game features robust modding support, including modpacks, and a vibrant modding community. Players also use mods to customize emotional aspects like voice acting. - Mixed opinions on game size (weight 0.05): Players describe the game size as either 'old-fashioned' or 'workable,' indicating varied perceptions of its scope or design. Some may find it outdated, while others appreciate its manageability. - Cross-platform save transfer issues (weight 0.03): Players report problems transferring save files between platforms, which could disrupt gameplay continuity. This technical issue may frustrate users who play on multiple devices. - Lore consistency praised (weight 0.03): Players appreciate the consistency of the game's lore, particularly regarding periphery house creation. This suggests a well-developed and immersive world-building effort. - Language accessibility via patch (weight 0.02): A Spanish language patch is available, improving accessibility for non-English speakers. This feature is noted but not widely discussed, suggesting it may be a niche benefit. - DLC pricing concerns (weight 0.02): Mentions of DLC pricing suggest some players may find the additional content expensive. However, the feedback is limited, so this may not be a widespread issue. Emotions: - Satisfaction (weight 0.18): Players experience satisfaction primarily due to the game's deep strategic mechanics, faithful adaptation of the Battletech tabletop experience, and high replayability. The turn-based combat, mech customization, and mod support (e.g., BTA3062) enhance the tactical depth and longevity of the game, making it feel rewarding and worth the investment. - Frustration (weight 0.17): Frustration stems from technical issues like poor optimization, frequent crashes, and memory leaks, as well as gameplay mechanics such as arbitrary difficulty, high miss rates, and clunky UI/UX. Players also express dissatisfaction with repetitive missions, unfair AI behavior, and bugs that disrupt progression or ruin campaigns. - Excitement (weight 0.1): Excitement is driven by the game's nostalgic yet modern take on Battletech, the sheer variety of weapons and mech customization, and the transformative impact of mods like RogueTech. Players enjoy the tactical depth, explosive combat, and the potential for discovering new strategies or loadouts, which keep the experience fresh and engaging. - Disappointment (weight 0.09): Disappointment arises from unmet expectations regarding visuals, story depth, and gameplay variety. Players criticize the lack of developer support, missing content (e.g., Clans), and performance issues that hinder enjoyment. The game's slow pacing, repetitive missions, and failure to fully capture the tabletop experience also contribute to this sentiment. - Enjoyment (weight 0.08): Players derive enjoyment from the game's tactical gameplay loop, mech customization, and the immersive Battletech universe. The turn-based combat, strategic depth, and modding community enhance the experience, making it fun and addictive, especially for those familiar with the franchise or tabletop rules. - Enthusiasm (weight 0.06): Enthusiasm is fueled by the game's strategic combat, modding potential, and replayability. Players praise the campaign, career mode, and expansions like BEX and BTA, which add depth and variety. The strong modding community and personal attachment to the Battletech lore further amplify this emotion. - Nostalgia (weight 0.05): Nostalgia is evoked by the game's faithfulness to the Battletech tabletop experience, reminiscent of playing with miniatures or earlier Mechwarrior titles. Longtime fans appreciate the turn-based approach, lore, and mechanics that harken back to the franchise's roots, making it a comforting and familiar experience. - Appreciation (weight 0.05): Players appreciate the game's faithful adaptation of the Battletech universe, detailed mechanics, and mod support. The art style, combat options, and modding community are praised for enhancing the experience, while the developers' passion and production quality are recognized for delivering a solid foundation for the franchise. - Admiration (weight 0.03): Admiration is directed toward the game's depth, quality, and mod ecosystem, particularly with mods like RogueTech. Players highlight the tactical strategy, lack of grinding, and high production values, often describing the game as a masterpiece or gem within the genre.}