izigame.me

MW5: Clans is a great game, albeit with some issues.


If you don't want to read the TL:DR: Having completed the game, if you are a fan of Battletech, or love Sim games with stompy robots, its a buy. If you aren't, it's probably worth a buy on sale or a look at on Game Pass.

From here on in there will be some spoilers in sections

The Good.

The story is fantastic on the whole. It is faithful to the lore and, while it might be predictable in places for fans of the setting, it had mostly good passing, with an emotional story with ups and downs, as well as good moments of character growth.

The mechs are all fantastic and fun, with a good mix of mechs (with the notable exception of the 90 ton mark, why was the Kingfisher missed?) that had a good mix of omnipods that give each chassis.

Weapons feel impactful, autocannons have heft, and when fired in UAC bursts you get a nice visual recoil effect, ER lasers feel like they should and PPC’s have a satisfying smash and a sound that makes you really feel like you are sending celestial lightning to smite your enemies down range.

Speaking of audio, the sfx and music are on point and the voice acting is above average for a video game, not quite reaching the heights of say BG3, but serviceable enough that they never feel grating and the game has enough chatter to remind you that there are people involved in your world without the constant chatter that gets old in many other similar titles.

The Middle

The Graphics can only really be described as serviceable, meeting minimal expectations. I have a middling machine (a 7800x3d and a 3070) but at times there were random frame drops and big dips in fps, so much so that at times it really broke the immersion of a fast paced battles.

There also seems to be some word issues with mech rendering. I am speculating but its seems like the game does not fully render animations of mech far from your view, likely in an effort to improve overall performance, and while welcome, you can often see this when zooming in. Sometimes enemy mech just wont move smoothly for a good few seconds, making targeting specific parts of mech hard, before fulling loading and becoming smooth again.

Staying on visuals, there are time’s where locations just look stunning. You have these moments where you think to yourself, I could really just get out of this mech and build a cabin here and hide forever. However, just as many times the locals just feel boring, and, especially in the middle of the campaign, you start to get board of boxed in valleys and can predict where enemy mechs are going to spawn.

Lastly, and this might be pedantic, but pulse lasers just feel and sound like they are from star trek. It totally feels alien to the more hard sci-fi that is Battletech. Honestly they were done much better in MW Online and it seems really strange that they would change them in this way.

The Bad.

There is no way around it, the out of mission ui is just bad.

There is no way to reference a lot of stats you really WANT to be able to see. This results in a lot of flipping back and forward between menus to find the information you are looking for and then having to commit that to memory.

The best example of this is your AI pilots. They each have their own specializations. Like one might be better with ballistics, while another might be better with missiles. The problem is there is no way to see what each pilot is good at inside the mech bay, where you customize your mechs, which causes you to constantly save what you are currently doing (and spend your money to do so) to check on your pilots stats, then go back in to the mech bay to continue your customization. With some things being several menus deep sometimes it feels like you are spending as much time in menu hell as you are on the battlefield.

AI pilots, man the AI pilots. I have no idea why they conga line behind you half the time, and have the situational awareness of rocks. They often walk right into your fire, or back into you. God forbid you give them a command to use a repair bay or move to a location. This really stings because it was a notable issue with MW5: Mercs. This should have been an area marked for improvement and being the single player story driven game that it is I’m not sure that the modding support will be there to fix an issue like this in a meaningful timeframe.

There are also subtle moments that really take you out of the immersion. There are certain buildings that you come to know just have mechs hidden inside them, and that when you reach a trigger you will spawn them in. Destroyed mechs also just melt away into the ground after you finish the encounter they were in, and when you see it you just can't unsee it.

There are also crashes. The game seems to crash to desktop a decent amount, and considering there are no in mission saves, even for the longer ones. It's just criminal. It's also hilariously easy to crash the game in the mech bay. Just try putting a component that takes up 2 slots just above another component.

Another issue is the mid game. The level design of the later half of the 2nd chapter is repetitive. You often do what you’ve already done several time (the big ones being the “boss” battles with dropships and Sokols)

Also the last chapter feels short (even though the battle of Luthian in the lore happens over around 24 hours, the game does not give you a good sense of the chaotic and fast paced nature of the conflict and sometimes feel rushed while other times it feels like you are on holiday)

Major spoilers are ahead here, so if you don't want to read them, skip this part.

There is also a major whole in the story. At the end of the Courchevel you are offered a choice, either side with Ezra and leave the Smoke Jaguars to join the Wolfs Dragoons, or side with Mia and stay with the Smoke Jaguars. This seems like a meaningful choice, and while I played through both choices, the natural choice, and the one I sided with on my first play though was Ezra. This path is the one I feel is the “canonical” choice, the lead up in the story makes you WANT to leave the Jaguars and ends with a really satisfying ending. Its well rounded and has an emotional end. It adds to the lore and setting.

However the Mia ending feels…. Odd. That is to say, the story builds to the moment of choice by heavily leaning toward you feeling like the right choice is to leave. If you choose to stay and side with Mia, it's like a flip is switched in the PC. You suddenly become ok with the bad things happening around and through you. I THINK the intent here is that Mia wants to change the Smoke Jaguars from within, but she has the least amount of development by far and at no point do we get any kind of confirmation until the very end of the game. The choice should have been to side with Mia and challenge Perez for command, starting that change before Luthian. This would have led to the defeat at Luthian to have more meaning, allowing the PC to advance even further up the ranks post battle and starting to fulfill that calling to change the Jaguars from within.


With all that said though, I had a really fun time with MW5: Clans and look forward to the continuing of the story with new DLC.