I’m a big turn-based strategy guy, and I love gigantic battling mechs (like Gundam). So, when I heard that there was a game on Steam that combined the two, I couldn’t resist! After playing it for a bit, well, you’ll have to stay tuned for what I think of the game. Just know that I’ll keep my massive mech fandom out of my review and will be as fair and unbiased as possible.

About BATTLETECH

Like I said, this game is a turn-based strategy (or TBS, for short) game that’s based off a tabletop game of the same name. It features a team of customizable mech mercenaries battling it out against other factions in space to reclaim a lost throne. If there were any game to compare this to it’d have to be XCom, since it’s one of the most, if not the most, popular TBS games released. Harebrained Schemes developed BATTLETECH and released on April 24th, 2018. It was led by Jordan Weisman, who created the BATTLETECH board game. Development for this game started sometime in early-2015, and its announcement was revealed on Kickstarter in September 2015. The game was a massive success on Kickstarter: meeting its $250,000 goal in just one hour and closing out with a pledged amount of $2,785,537.

The studio initially planned to release this game in early 2017, but after delays in development - Harebrained Schemes had to push it off until 2018. However, within that time period, the studio partnered with Paradox Interactive for assistance in publishing the game. Paradox was able to provide monetary, localization, and marketing support for the game. At the time of release, BATTLETECH was met with positive reception - maintaining a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam based off of over 6,900 reviews.

BATTLETECH STORY:

One against an Army? No problem...Just kidding.

The year is set in 3025: when humans have expanded throughout the universe. A surprise attack was launched on your home. After an intense battle to try and thwart the invasion, you’re saved by a group of mercenaries, but you realize that both your mentor and the princess lost their lives. Years later, you end up becoming the leader of the same group of mercenaries that saved you. After a few non-coincidental missions, you find out that the princess is alive and preparing for a counter attack. What you do and how you proceed with this knowledge is up to you because the game opens the story up for you - it’s a choose your own adventure.

BATTLETECH Gameplay:

Ready to lead your army to victory or the graveyard?

You get to equip four mechs that will be piloted by your mercenaries with weapons ranging from light machines guns to long-range missiles. There are three types of mechs ranging from heavy, medium, and light; these mechs all specialize in different things - spanning from firepower to movement. The weapon diversity isn’t that exciting, but the way you utilize the combination of these weapons is what’s really fun. The more missions you take on, the more parts you can scavenge to either acquire more mechs or more weapons. Along with building up your arsenal, you get to develop your pilots too. As they complete missions, they gain skill points that you can assign to different skills to increase their accuracy, melee damage, movement, defense, etc.

Your team is deployed to a map that is divided in a grid-format where you and the enemy take turns strategically issuing commands to your units (use skills, gain high ground advantage, hunker down, etc). Players have to be very careful, though because if a mech goes down, then there is a very high chance that the pilot will die, as well. In these regards, it seems very similar to XCom, but it’s the combat that really differentiates the series (keep on reading for that piece).In between all this combat, you have to maintain your crew and the ship, along with keeping good relationships with factions. So, you can’t just take on missions to progress the story; sometimes you need to take on missions to pay for mercenary salaries, maintenance, medicine, and build facilities on the ship. These developments also take time to build, so between traveling to different star systems for missions, your developments will be working in the background until complete. It’s a nice healthy balance to keep gamers engaged with the story, but also allow them some sort of freedom with how they manage their crew.

Roll out!!

BATTLETECH Combat:

Seriously, high ground wins in every game

This is where the game either really shines or completely falls flat for players. As with all XCom-like games, there will always be a risk in every move you make - but sometimes that risk can be rather...frustrating - to say the least. Let me explain: in BATTLETECH’s combat system, mech health is split into specific parts (head, arms, legs, torso, etc), and in order to down a pilot you can do one of three things:

Destroy all of its parts

Take out the head

Destroy a leg - effectively rendering it useless

But when luck strikes you in the wrong way and the enemy one-shots a pilot that you’ve been training for so long with a lucky hit to the head...well, I don’t even want to play anymore. And believe me, it is pretty hard to down a mech, so losing a pilot in the early stages will make the mission that much more difficult. Aside from that one aggravating characteristic of this game, the game’s combat system takes a lot of strategy due to the terrain and something called the heat system: firing weapons or using your jetpacks all generate heat. Some weapons generate more heat than others, but in turn, are a lot more powerful. If you overheat a mech, it will shut down until you restore it in the following turn - however, enemies can now target whichever part of the mech they want, and it’ll take more damage (please don’t go for the head).

You can minimize the heat utilization by equipping heat sinks, but that takes up space where ammo, weapons, or jetpacks could be. The heat system of this game allows for different variations of play.I, for one, have quite a lot of fun equipping one heavy mech in my party with the strongest weapons and overheating that mech to deal a metric ton of damage to my enemy. Althoug that might not be the best way to play the game because the more damage your units end up taking, the longer it will take for them to recover, leaving you either shorthanded or making you run to the bank to hire a new mercenary.

BATTLETECH Quest/Mission System:

Oh, the places you'll go

The missions in this game either progress the main storyline or increases reputation with specific factions. Since this is a team of mercenaries, these missions will either pay with salvage opportunities, money, or a combination of both that you can decide before the mission begins. The amount of rewards depends on the difficulty of the mission - rated out of five stars. The main story missions are generally more difficult than the rest, at around 4 stars on average, so sometimes it’s best to take on a few easy missions in an attempt to gather some more powerful weapons, different types of mechs, or get more money.But that’s really all there is to side missions, and that’s an issue I have with BATTLETECH’s mission system - it doesn’t seem rewarding enough to have high reputation with factions. In fact, it shouldn’t even be possible to have high reputation with all factions since not all of them are on good terms. Sure, you get discounts from factions for having a high reputation with them, but eventually, you’ll have so much money that the discounts become negligible.I really wish this game had concrete advantages and punishing consequences for having good reputations with specific factions. One improvement would be banning travel to a specific star system because of a high reputation with an opposing faction. It just doesn’t seem dynamic enough at the moment.

BATTLETECH Developer:

Harebrained Schemes develop the game. I haven’t experienced any bugs during my playthrough, but there is a thread on the Steam community page for the game:

https://community.BATTLETECHgame.com/forums/threads/8692

Thankfully, it looks like the developers listen to the community because Harebrained Schemes just released an update last month that fixed a majority of the bugs listed on that thread. They even mapped out a post-launch roadmap for where they plan to take BATTLETECH too. The game is still pretty new, so we don't know how consistent these updates will be, but for their first few months of release - they’ve been very communicative and transparent.

BATTLETECH graphics:

Neon Green and Bright Orange - It looks more like an EDM rave than a robot battle

Because an independent company developed this game, the graphics aren’t cutting edge, but it doesn’t look bad by any means. The details on the mechs are probably the most detailed in the game. The lasers and explosions are rather lackluster - the beams are just straight lines, and explosions look a bit like red-orange cauliflower if I’m being frank. I knew what I was getting into, to be fair - I wanted a game that had a more complex system than XCom - something that Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle did amazingly, to everyone’s surprise (even XCom’s developers).

If you’re looking for a beautiful TBS game, I wouldn’t be able to recommend this game at all - go back to XCom or pick up Mario + Rabbids Kingdom (which I’m sure you haven’t picked up because it’s heavily underrated) if you have a Switch.

BATTLETECH Price:

BATTLETECH was released for the Windows and Mac OS, with a Linux version in development. The game currently costs $40 on Steam, but you can generally find it cheaper on other reputable sites like Green Man Gaming, for around $25. I personally wouldn’t pay full price for this game since there are so many amazing games for $40, but I think the sale price at around $25 is great. In a day and age where microtransactions are so prevalent, it’s nice to see that you get all of BATTLETECH for your initial payment.

Final Verdict:

Let’s summarize what I liked and disliked about this game:

Pros:

• Very strategic combat system - you really need good unit placement and a cohesive plan before you take on missions.
• Choose your own adventure storylines with multiple endings, allows for high replayability.
• Weapon systems allow for different styles of play because of the customizability.
• It doesn’t need that much graphical power, unlike XCom.
• A good middle ground when it comes to price when on sale.

Cons:

• There is a lot for the developers to work on: namely, the lackluster impact of factions.
• The combat can be very frustrating due to the insane variation of luck. I get that most, if not all, TBS games have this luck element, but it can be excruciatingly worse in this game. Think about missing a 95% shot on XCom 2, but a worse feeling.
• Even at $25, there are other good options for cheaper (i.e. Into the Breach).
• Graphics could do better - I get that the appeal of this game isn’t graphics, but for some players, it’s a deal breaker.

This all being said, I give BATTLETECH a solid 7 out of 10. If you’re a fan of TBS games like me, definitely give this a shot - I think it’s a good take on the genre. There are some glaring issues, but the overall experience you get for the game is still a positive one. However, I would not pick this game up at full price, especially with XCom 2: War of The Chosen at the same price and Into the Breach at around $15.

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