MechWarrior 5: Clans Steam Charts & Stats

More of this please. One of the weak points of this franchise has been the story which is a bit disappointing considering the mountains of lore in the Battletech IP. This game definitely addressed that, though it's still pretty linear with a singular late-game choice for the 2 different endings. It was a good use of the "scene/sequel" story telling technique. They could have probably done a little more to develop the character's motivations and emotional states for the late-game decision. To me, a little tweaking would have made them emotionally land better. The gameplay is fun and the cut scene graphics are top notch. Not sure what's going on with the mod scene. There's hundreds of mods out there for M5: Mercenaries, but this game only has like 3. I'm not sure if there's just no mod support, but I enjoy using mods for replayability. I did miss the ability to salvage mechs and travel around like you could in M5: Mercenaries. You pretty much only have clan mechs and clan tech available to you, and aside from playing simulations, your next mission was always the next one in the story. There are no optional side missions that can give you a special benefit if you do it, but you don't have to if you don't want to. I did not run into any major bugs. My personal opinion is that I'd like to see the weapons be more destructive. I think laser beams should create plumes of smoke on impact. It's vaporizing and overheating metal, there should be a lot of smoke. I'd like to see shockwaves when the missiles explode. I'd like to see knockdowns, though I know they're a lot of animation work. All in all, it's my most favorite Mech Warrior game so far. All the others entries, I enjoyed playing but I couldn't tell you a thing about their plots.

Verdict: BUY Summary: MechWarrior 5: Clans has excellent gameplay, a good story and some of the most impressive cutscenes in recent memory. It is worth full price for the 25 hours or so campaign, which can be played solo or in co-op with a maximum of 5 players, Unlike the sandbox of its predecessor MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, Clans has a lineair story-driven campaign culminating in a highly impactful choice near the end of the game, leading several possible endings told through the last couple of missions. The story and characters are quite good and true to the decades of established lore in this franchise. Mech combat is slower than in many other Mech games with a long time-to-kill, with combat focussing on stipping the enemy 'Mech of its critical components leading to a more strategic gameplay which I personally really enjoy. Your own star of 5 BattleMechs are highly customizable, with many possible loadouts available as presets and with the option to manually tinker you death machines to your heart's content. All in all, MW5: Clans is a great game. My only gripe is that I wish there was even more of it, which is as good a compliment as any I guess.

Sorry guys while its not the worst game its just such a massive step backwards for game play and options... Also the story is very "modern" Like I knew no matter what playing smoke kittykat that it would end uh... badly. But its just another "are we the baddies" story. I know its not quite lore accurate but a more MW5 like mode would be nice. Bring the number of planets down to just the war course but still let you have a little more control than you do. Hell give me a 20 dollar DLC that just lets me merge MW5 and this so I don't have to rely on mods to stay up-to-date... TLDR: Wait for heavy discount and only if you are a fan of the franchise.

This game sounded cool but it does nothing to bring a new person into the mechwarrior universe. You're expected to know what the clans are and why they're doing what they are. You're expected to know how to fight in a mech. The tutorialization is barebones beyond "heres how you move and shoot" nothing about tactics or how and why to equip your mechs with what equipment. The characters in the cutscenes are all uncanny valley. and the missions felt pretty lack luster other than one kind of stealth mission.

It's a storied version of Mercenaries. Great right? Nope. As always it pushes you very fast to progress into bigger and bigger Mechs. Without a group of friends, you have to always be cramming the biggest tonnage you can find. How does the game reward you for this? Throw more and more and more enemies at you. I finally unlocked the biggest Mech. The Dire Wolf. Of course the next mission, before I can even unlock a new load out, is one where speed is a factor. Just has I unlocked the slowest Mech. And this is just normal difficulty. I'm a fan of the tabletop, and that is the only reason I wanted to finish this game. Of which I still haven't since its release because it is a slog. In fact, I read through the last set of missions online. Screw it, I'm not gonna bother finishing it.

You know what? I didn't have high hopes for this title, as MW5: Mercenaries set the bar kind of high with all the mods out there. But at least I hoped for a nice look and feel and a decent story. This is more like guided gameplay, no choices at all (neither story-like nor in missions). The Mech upgrades are shit, the Pilot upgrades are shit as well (pre-determined which pilot is strong with what weapons). Running around in the Mechs doesn't feel like heavy weight at all. All that running, turning and jumping around. MW5: Mercenaries didn't do a perfect job there either but at least it felt a little heavier. And now to the worst part - the HUD inside the Mechs. What the hell? It's like I'm not allowed to see the actual maps, everything is covered in some information and there is not a single option in the menu to disable HUD elements or make them transparent at least. Please get back to Mercenaries and improve upon that in the future.

The concept is really good for MechWarrior, but the optimization is horrendously bad. I have a higher end PC and it runs like dog sh!t no matter how i change the settings. I hope they run an optimization patch and I might change my review. However, for now, I don't recommend it in it's current state.

The campaign has been solid so far. You have to go in understanding that Clans was never going to be as dynamic as Mercs. It follows a specific group of heroes within Smoke Jaguar, as they execute the most historically significant invasion in BattleTech history. That said, the mechanics of salvage, research, repairs and upgrades as well as the advancement of each MechWarrior is well conceived. The systems involved are just deep enough to appreciate, and the Mech lab takes full advantage of the modular nature of OmniMechs. I think Clans acquits itself well for what it is. I certainly recommend it to anyone who cares about the rich history of the setting. Who doesn't want to command a star of mysterious "alien" Mechs into the Inner Sphere, with all the superior firepower at your disposal? No matter what you came for, the ride will definitely be worthwhile.

Pros: - Story. - Cut scenes are really cool! - You can play clan mechs. - Beautiful maps. - Automated repair bays. - Interesting missions with laser sensors. - Cockpit interface looks better than in MWO! Especially MASC. Cons: - The game often crashes - You can't restart mission with coop teammates! You should load saved game and invite people back again! - Choosing a pilot for invited coop players is just sadistic UX. - Early maps looks better than late ones. - You can take ammo crate and it will fulfil entire team ammo immediately. Are you serious? - [spoiler] When you choose to leave Smoke Jaguars, you can't use Inner Sphere mechs! [/spoiler] - Physics (especially weapons) much worse than in Mercenaries! - Market is almost useless. Missions are not forcing you to change the configuration of your mechs. - Too much money you have. - The components market doesn't remember what you bought last time, so you have to constantly scroll to the SRM ammo for example. - Small 40T enemy mechs with elite tag can take 6-10 volleys from several assault mechs in close combat and stay alive. Usually Elite is about pilots, not mech armour capacity. - Bots are really idiotically stupid. They're using AC vs ranged targets and air strike units, they use AC very rarely. Bots are shooting LRM 20 on small tanks instead of important targets. - A lots of annoying story dialogs in battle you can't skip. We have great cut scenes, we have detailed briefings! and... characters are talking all the time during a battle and even when teammate mech is blowing. Honestly, we still spend more time in Mercenaries 5!

MechWarrior 5: Clans is the sequel to MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, and features a more story driven campaign focused on the clan invasion of the Inner Sphere, with the player taking on the role of a clan Smoke Jaguar battlemech pilot. I’m a long time fan of this franchise, having previously played MechWarrior 2,3,4,5: Mercenaries and MW Online, as well as the strategy games MechCommander 1,2, and Battletech. [h1]Gameplay (Medium quality)[/h1] • While Clans has several flaws when compared to other MechWarrior games, the underlying combat mechanics do still provide some entertainment, because the feeling of being in the cockpit and fighting against other mechs is almost always enjoyable. • One significant difference in Clans is that you’ll have an extra team mate during combat. This is because the clans usually operate in stars of five mechs, compared to the Inner Sphere’s four mech lances. • One of the most important parts of any MechWarrior game is the ability to customise your mech by changing your loadout. Each mech chassis has hardpoints where you can equip various laser, missile, or ballistic weapons, which have different stats for damage, range, and heat. Increasing armour will allow your mech to survive more damage. Equipping heat sinks will allow the mech to cool down faster, which is important because if the mech overheats, your weapons will be temporarily disabled. And you’ll need to bring ammo for missile and ballistic weapons. But everything has a weight, and each mech has a maximum tonnage limit, so you’ll need to decide what to prioritise. • Customising your mech is done between missions in the mechlab. However, this redesign feels like a downgrade compared to other games. Once you get used to it, its still got most of the functionality you’d expect, but it just suffers from poor presentation. The biggest problem is that you can’t simply drag and drop components to a location while viewing the whole mech. Instead, you have to zoom in to each location before you can customise, which leads to constantly zooming in and out between the right and left arms, right and left torso, centre torso, head, and right and left legs. Its just a lot of extra clicking, which makes the process feel annoying. • Another thing that I don’t like is that we can’t strip out jump jets. I read that its because of lore reasons relating to the clan mechs. But this is always the first thing I do when I acquire a new mech in the other games. Jump jets are very rarely useful, and I’d prefer to use that tonnage for extra armour or heat sinks, especially because the mission design always requires the player to fight against a ridiculous number of enemies. • I actually counted the enemies during one mission which took me multiple attempts on medium difficulty. My 240 ton star had to fight against 29 mechs totalling 1215 tons, plus 21 aircraft and 5 tanks. The player is similarly outnumbered in most other missions, and while I didn’t suffer too many more defeats, I was often hanging on at the end, with severely damaged mechs and maybe a couple of pilots ejected. Sometimes you’ll have the assistance of friendly mechs, and sometimes you’ll find mid-mission repair bays, but never enough to repair all 5 mechs in your star. • Thankfully, your starmate AI is quite good. Sure, I’ve seen them occasionally get stuck on the scenery. But for the most part, they’ll fight effectively and deal a good amount of damage and get kills without me having to constantly micro manage them (other than occasionally ordering them all to focus fire on an enemy heavy/assault mech), which allowed me to concentrate on what I was doing. Each pilot will gain XP to level up certain abilities, which means you can then put them in mechs which have been customised with weapon types that they specialise in. • Mission design also feels very linear. There aren’t any big open maps that let you approach objectives from different directions. Many of them feel like we’re just advancing along a wide corridor in between mountains, or worse, an arbitrary “out of bounds” border, which means that if we stray too far from the current objective, the mission will fail. Mission objectives are usually just “move to waypoint marker and kill all the enemies”. The campaign itself is also mostly linear, as it follows the story. You’ll sometimes be able to choose which order to perform 2-3 missions, but you won’t be travelling to different planets whenever you want. • Unlike other MW games, new mechs aren’t acquired from post mission salvage, you unlock them by levelling up your character. You’ll get a new mech at every level, in ascending order of tonnage, and it seemed to always take me 2 missions to earn a level up. Its not necessarily a problem, but it just kind of feels a bit boring, like levelling up a free to play shooter battle pass. In other games, it feels exciting to acquire a heavy or assault mech early, but that’s not possible here. [h1]Story (Medium quality)[/h1] • Quite well written. Gives the feeling of taking part in a big war, while certain events feel like we’re actually the bad guys. As most of the other games are focused on the Inner Sphere houses, its interesting to learn more about the clan politics. • Your starmates appear in several cutscenes and have frequent mid-mission dialogue. They’re mostly likeable, although their personalities fit into common roles, such as the hothead and the new recruit. But at least this is an improvement over other games where your pilots aren’t involved in the story at all. • Voice acting is average quality. Sometimes the actors put the emphasis on the wrong word in a sentence, which sounds a bit wierd. [h1]Technical (Low quality)[/h1] • It took me 28 hours to complete the story campaign, although it should have only been 27 hours. The game crashed literally moments before completing the final mission, twice, and because there are no mid mission checkpoints, I had to play through that whole mission three times to actually complete the game. • Controls are fully rebindable and work great with mouse and keyboard. • My PC is more powerful than the recommended spec shown on the store page (RTX 3080, i7-12700K, 32GB DDR4), but I had significant performance issues which suggest the game is poorly optimised. • With most graphics settings on high and DLSS set to performance at 1440p, I had 60 FPS in most of the early missions, but later missions would often drop into the 40s, or sometimes even lower, possibly because of the larger urban environments. • I also suffered from frequent stutters / split second freezes, which happened multiple times in every mission. I tried changing various settings, but nothing helped. • Targetting reticule / other HUD elements in the centre of the screen are too big, with no way to customise. Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t properly see what I was shooting at. Just compare the screenshots on the store pages for Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries and Clans, and you’ll see what I mean. • Menus feel unfinished and missing basic functionality. There’s more than one screen that says things are sorted alphabetically, but there’s no way to sort them any other way. You can’t sort mechs by ascending or descending tonnage, which is the most obvious thing you’d ever want to do in a MW game. • If you lose internet connection while playing, a message pops up on screen requiring you to click dismiss, but the game doesn’t pause. There is no reason for this to happen while playing in single player. [h1]Recommendation[/h1] Existing fans of the franchise should find some enjoyment while playing MechWarrior 5: Clans, but will probably also feel frustrated by several elements of game design and technical performance. New players should start with either MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries or Battletech, which are both superior in every way, and then consider buying Clans if you want more.