MechWarrior 5: Clans

AD 3049. Almost fifteen hundred light years from Terra, the self-exiled Clans, heirs to the fallen Star League, live lives of ritualistic combat and the pursuit of honour. The arrival of an exploration vessel from the Inner Sphere shocks the Clans, who hold themselves to be technologically superior and safe from the constant infighting of the Sphere. Faced with the threat of the Inner Sphere powers discovering the Clan homeworlds and attacking, the Clans resolve to strike first, launching a massive invasion of the Inner Sphere which throws the Lyran Commonwealth, Free Rasalhague Republic and Draconis Combine into chaos.

Clan Smoke Jaguar is assigned the task of sweeping through the lightly-settled Periphery and then driving hard into the Draconis Combine. Their first target is the independent world of Santander's Bay, followed by the Combine world of Courchevel and then a determined strike on Luthien, the Draconis capital. A newly-assembled Star (five-mech unit) under the command of Jayden is tasked with helping the Smoke Jaguars seek victory...but their leaders' utter ruthlessness, indifference to civilian casualties and seeking honour only when convenient to them leads Jayden and some under his command to question what they are fighting for.

Five years ago, Piranha Games released MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries, a freeform game where you gained command of a detachment of BattleMechs (big stompy robots) and a starship, and guided them to fame and fortune through a mixture of procedurally-generated missions, handcrafted jobs and a lengthy story campaign. The game was released in an iffy state but was rapidly fixed and then expanded through six DLC campaigns to become a very solid game of stompy robot fun in the BattleTech universe, augmented further by a very healthy modding scene. Whilst the game was very solid, its grindy, freeform nature came in for some criticism, so Piranha decided to address that with a new game with a much more focused, narrative approach.

MechWarrior 5: Clans depicts the full-scale invasion of the Inner Sphere by the Clans, arguably the biggest and most consequential event in all of BattleTech lore. BattleTech games are largely set either in the pre-Clan period, which focuses on political intrigue and conflict between the five Inner Sphere powers, or the post-Clan period when the Inner Sphere's rearranged borders and polities are trying to adapt to the Clans' arrival. By depicting the invasion on-screen for the first time (it has been depicted before in Michael A. Stackpole's splendid novels), Piranha are answering the wishes of a lot of die-hard BattleTech / MechWarrior fans.

The invasion is straightforward enough - these bonkers semi-Klingons from elsewhere in the galaxy are trying to invade Earth (sorry, Terra)! - and takes place early enough in the timeline that newcomers won't be lost either. And it's an interesting stroke on Piranha's part to not only have the players fighting for the Clans (the "bad guys" of this story, but only very relatively compared to the ruthless realpolitik-governed Inner Sphere), but arguably the least-pleasant Clan of them all, Smoke Jaguar.

Extensive cutscenes introduce the plot and cast of characters. You get to know your starmates through surprisingly polished and extensive cutscenes, as well as in-battle banter. As usual in these games (forget the number, this is actually the eighth mainline game in the series, not counting expansions), you can customise your mechs before battle, maybe choosing to switch to different models and then choosing weapons loadouts. If you're fighting on a hot desert world, you may want to ditch those lasers for cooler autocannons, but if you're in an arctic environment, you can go hogwild with the pew-pew. You can also choose how much armour you want your mech to carry, and if you want a cool jump jet or not. Outfitting your mech is supposedly made easier by the presence of Omni-pods which have preset loadouts; in practice I found these mostly useless, and tinkering with the loadouts more directly was often more effective. Newcomers who don't know their PPCs from UACs may find the default loadout for each mission to be perfectly fine and stick with that.

You then hit the battlefield and have to achieve objectives, which are usually some variation of "go here and kill all the things," although occasional pursuit, rescue and defence missions liven things up. When battle is joined and lasers and missiles fly, the results are a splendid feast for the eyes, enhanced by the switch to Unreal Engine 5 for this excursion. Not only do you have to pilot your own mech in battle (from either first or third person), but you can also direct your starmates to hold particular areas of the battlefield, target your opponent or follow you. You can also switch to an overhead battlemap for more granular control of the battlefield, briefy turning the game into an RTS (and makes the heart pang for a new MechCommander game), although in practice I found controlling the battle from this viewpoint to be more confusing than from the cockpit.

The game is linear, but at several moments you have a large choice of different missions to select, which you can approach sensibly (do the missions in escalating order of difficulty) or not (do the toughest missions first to accrue the most honour and resources). There is also a big decision you make towards the end of the game which completely changes the final few missions. But the whole point of Clans is to offer a more curated, story-driven experience with memorable characters; if you want the freeform open-world approach, then MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (or the classic turn-based tactics game BattleTech) is the place to go.

The cutscenes and story are both surprisingly enjoyable. There's little surprising here, the fact that you're playing for the bad guys and become increasingly aware of how evil they are as the game continues makes things fairly predictable, but it's all executed with enough panache and character you can bear the unoriginality. Your five starmates all have their own personality and attitude to things (although I confess I found Ezra and Liam to be a bit interchangeable), and their disagreements are useful in shaping your own attitude to the Clans. The supporting cast are splendid, with a special mention reserved for Cordera Perez, your commanding officer, who is both a spectacularly unrepentant arsehole and has the most outstanding "total dickhead" voice performance I have heard in many years. I am disappointed we don't see more of the famous lore characters, like Leo Showers, the supreme commander of the Smoke Jaguars, who gets a memorable cutscene near the start but otherwise doesn't show up again.

The game is also surprisingly meaty. Normally a game like this - story focus, linear campaign missions - would top out at 10 hours, maybe 15, but MechWarrior 5: Clans lasts around 30 hours of stompy mech action, more if you replay the game to see the alternate ending. This length does mean the game occasionally struggles to keep things fresh - the "shock plot twist" of a late-arriving, heavily armed dropship you have to disarm under heavy fire is used a few times too many - but the campaign moving on between several different planets, the supporting cast changing (as this is a war, and people die) and the story of the war taking several unexpected turns keeps things ticking over nicely. There are several brutal difficulty spikes which may frustrate players, but the ability to switch difficulty levels if a mission is particularly kicking your arse means you can usually find a way of getting past them.

MechWarrior 5: Clans (****½) is a splendidly enjoyable slice of fun. You stomp around in robots blowing things up, against the backdrop of an epic space opera saga which is well-told. The strategy command element adds depth to the game, and you can go down a deep rabbit hole of mech customisation options if you want, to optimise your combat experience. Hopefully Piranha can match the generous DLC they provided for Mercenaries to expand on the war, maybe giving you the opportunity to play for other Clans or maybe crossing over with Mercenaries with a freeform mode. MechWarrior 5: Clans is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, as well as via the Xbox Game Pass service.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Franchise Familiariser: BattleTech (2023 update)

There has been a recent surge of interest in BattleTech, the venerable franchise about people piloting giant robots and trying to beat up or destroy other giant robots, all in a well-realised setting (think of Pacific Rim meets Game of Thrones and you're halfway there). The science fiction tabletop wargame is now one of the best-selling in its field, and more people are trying it out thanks to recent successful video games and Kickstarters for the wargame.

There’s more interest in the franchise than there has been in maybe a decade, but what to do if you’re intrigued but have no idea what it’s all about? Time for a Franchise Familiariser course!

(A previous version of this article was published in 2018.)

The second edition of BattleTech and the first to use that name, released in 1985.

The Basics

BattleTech (and its related brand, MechWarrior) – neither to be confused with Robotech – is a franchise that merges elements of space opera, feudalism and military science fiction, all influenced and inspired (at least early on) by Japanese manga and anime. It was originally created as a tabletop wargame, followed by a pen-and-paper RPG, but gained its greatest exposure through video games and a lengthy series of novels. A short-run animated series which ran for half a season in 1994.

BattleTech was created by Jordan Weisman and L. Ross Babock III for FASA Corporation in 1984 as a tabletop wargame. The original idea had been to create a wargame using large, human-piloted robots known as BattleMechs or ‘mechs. Originally called BattleDroids, the game had to change its name after a few months due to a copyright claim by Lucasfilm (who claimed that they had copyrighted “droids” as part of their Star Wars franchise, a questionable tactic but one that FASA did not have the legal firepower to fend off). A companion tabletop roleplaying game, MechWarrior, was published in 1986. The first BattleTech video games, The Crescent Hawk’s Inception and The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge, were released in 1988 and 1990 respectively.

The franchise received a significant boost in popularity, however, through the MechWarrior video game series. The original MechWarrior (1989) was well-received but it was MechWarrior 2 (1995) that took the series to new heights. Released at exactly the right moment to capitalise on the 3D gaming craze and more powerful PCs, the game was a huge success. It was followed by MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries (1996), MechWarrior 3 (1999), MechWarrior 4: Vengeance (2000), MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries (2002), MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (2019) and MechWarrior 5: Clans (2024).

In 2001 FASA almost went bust and sold the BattleTech and MechWarrior properties to WizKids. In 2003 WizKids was bought by Topps but continued to release new material under the WizKids name. They have also provided companies such as FanPro and Catalyst Games with licences. Since 2007, Catalyst Game Labs has been releasing new versions of the classic wargame and the roleplaying game, whilst Piranha Studios and Harebrained Schemes have released new video games.

In 2018 the franchise had one of the biggest boosts to its popularity from the extremely successful turn-based strategy game BattleTech from Harebrained Schemes, overseen by franchise creator Jordan Weisman. The game sold millions of copies and produced several expansions. A sequel to the game was proposed in 2023 but it's unclear if that project is moving forwards.

2018-19 was dubbed the “year of BattleTech”, with two new video games (BattleTech from Harebrained and MechWarrior 5 from Piranha) and a refreshed version of the wargame from Catalyst. Since this time the franchise has maintained its franchise, producing add-ons for both video games and more wargaming material, as well as a new tabletop RPG, MechWarrior: Destiny.

MUCH MORE AFTER THE JUMP

MECHWARRIOR 5: CLANS announced

Piranha Games have announced that MechWarrior 5: Clans is in development, targeting a 2024 release date. The game is a stand-alone companion title to MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries (2019).

Unlike the open-world Mercenaries, Clans is a linear game featuring sequential missions. Set several years after the end of Mercenaries' last expansion, Rise of Rasalhague, the new title sees the Inner Sphere invaded by the Clans, a number of small but powerful factions who fled the Inner Sphere centuries ago. The Clans field more sophisticated technology and weaponry than the Inner Sphere and believe they have a destiny to reconstruct the Star League, the mighty interstellar empire whose collapse led to the current era.

The player is a MechWarrior belonging to Clan Smoke Jaguar who climbs the ranks during the Clan Invasion of the Inner Sphere, particularly Smoke Jaguar's invasion of the Draconis Combine. Intriguingly, previous BattleTech lore had established the Smoke Jaguars as villains, or at least somewhat villainous, suggesting this new game will have you playing the bad guys, or it might attempt to fill in more detail and colour to the faction. The game will see you commanding a five-Mech unit as the war grinds on. If you want to catch up on a guide to the franchise's lore, I have you covered here.

The game does not require MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries to play or run. Mercenaries fans do have some more content incoming, though, as Piranha will release The Dragon's Gambit later on this month, a 15-mission DLC which sees the player's mercenary company allying with the Draconis Combine during the Fourth Succession War.

New MECHWARRIOR video game in development

Piranah Games are developing a new MechWarrior video game. The news, rumoured for some time, came out during an interview between Piranah Games President Russ Bullock and the NoGutsNoGalaxy podcast.

Piranah have worked on video game incarnations of the BattleTech franchise for the past decade, having released the multiplayer MechWarrior Online in 2012 and the singleplayer MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries in 2019. They also provided some support, including mech models, for the 2018 turn-based strategy game BattleTech from Harebrained Schemes.

The new game will be a single-player title with a co-op mode (similar to MechWarrior 5), and will not be an update or sequel to MechWarrior Online. Curiously, Bullock declined to refer to it as MechWarrior 6, and said the new game will be a stand-alone title aimed at PC, Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5.

Piranah also revealed that their current video game licence runs until 2025 and will require renewal after that point. If the licence is renewed, they want to make MechWarrior Online 2, using a superior engine and improved visuals.

The BattleTech tabletop miniatures game has enjoyed massive success in the last few years, becoming one of the biggest-selling SFF wargames. This has, in part, been propelled by strong (and long-lasting) sales of both BattleTech and MechWarrior 5. MechWarrior 5 has seen three expansions released: Heroes of the Inner Sphere (2021), Legend of the Kestrel Lancers (2021) and Call to Arms (2022). A fourth expansion, Rise of Rasalhague, will be released on 26 January.

More news on the new MechWarrior game will reportedly be released in the autumn.

BATTLETECH reclaims its place as one of the biggest SFF wargames in the world

Venerable SF miniatures title BattleTech has reasserted its position as one of the most popular tabletop wargames around. Catalyst Game Studios have confirmed they have shipped over 9 million miniatures since relaunching the line back in 2015, most of that since they revamped the two core game box sets in 2018.

BattleTech started life in 1984 as a tabletop wargame created by Jordan Weisman and L. Ross Babock III for their company, FASA Corporation. The game was originally called BattleDroids and used mecha designs from various Japanese animated shows under licence, but legal brushes with George Lucas and the various American distributors of those shows (mainly Harmony Gold) saw them rename the game to BattleTech and redesign many of their mechs. The franchise was initially a cult success, but exploded in popularity at the end of the 1980s and through the 1990s thanks to a series of excellently-received video games, including MechWarrior 2 and MechCommander, and a millions-selling line of novels by authors including Michael Stackpole.

The franchise went through a lean period between 2001, when FASA effectively collapsed, and 2007 when Catalyst Games Labs picked up the licence. Since then, CGL has gradually guided the success to greater success. An influx of new fans came in with the superb 2018 turn-based strategy game BattleTech and its definitive Mercenary Collection repackaging. The 2019 real-time action game MechWarrior 5 was slower off the blocks due to bugs and a lack of early content, but has picked up steam tremendously thanks to a console release and no less than four major expansions, the latest of which is out this month, and increased rumours of a sequel. MechWarrior Online (2013), although showing its age, still has a healthy monthly player count.

BattleTech may also be benefitting from economics: the game revolves around the deployment of relatively small numbers of "lances," four-mech squads, which are far easier and far cheaper to collect and paint compared to, say, the equivalent Warhammer 40,000 armies. The BattleTech boxed sets are surprisingly cheap compared to competitors, and the sheer weight and backstory of the game's lore is impressive.

Catalyst confirm that they have sold over 160,000 copies of the BattleTech: A Game of Armored Combat core set and the Beginner Box "quickie" set since 2018. They have further expanded the game via Kickstarter-led products, like the Clan Invasion and Alpha Strike boxed sets, and will launch a new Mercenaries boxed set later this year.

MECHWARRIOR 5 to get surprise second expansion next week

In a surprising move, Piranha Games have announced a second expansion to MechWarrior 5, their real-time mech simulator in the BattleTech universe.

There is supposed to be a video here. If you can't see it, go to the bottom of the screen and click "switch to web version."

The original game dropped in December 2019 as an Epic Store exclusive on PC. In May 2021 it launched on Steam, GoG and the Xbox console range, alongside a first expansion called Heroes of the Inner Sphere. This relaunch, helped by almost a year and a half of bug-crunching and revisions, seems to have given the game a new lease of life.

The second expansion, Legend of the Kestrel Lancers, is set during the Fourth Succession War, a major event in the history of the BattleTech universe. This war, lasting from 3028 to 3030, sees the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth join forces to launch a massive surprise attack on their mutual enemies, the Capellan Confederation, Draconis Combine and Free Worlds League, after an attempted assassination attempt of the Federated Suns' leader. In the fiction - explored in the Warrior Trilogy by Michael A. Stackpole - this war becomes a major turning point in the history of the BattleTech universe, paving the way for the union of the Federated Suns and Lyran Commonwealth into a superpower.

The expansion will allow your mercenary company to join forces with the Kestrel Lancers, a veteran unit in the Federated Suns military, in a new story campaign. The expansion also adds multiple new biomes, including jungles, deserts and a new megacity style of map, with completely destructible buildings. Melee combat has been added (yes, you can now punch other giant robots in the face, or nearest comparable feature), and in the single-player campaign you can now hot-switch between the four 'Mechs in your lance rather than just being stuck in one. There will also be UI improvements.

Legend of the Kestrel Lancers launches on 23 September, or less than a week from today.

Wertzone Classics: BattleTech: Mercenary Collection

AD 3022. The Inner Sphere of human space is embroiled in the closing stages of the Third Succession War, a series of conflicts between the Great Houses for power and territory. Largely unaffected by the conflict is the Aurigan Coalition, a minor power among the Periphery States which has flourished under the rule of House Arano. Lady Kamea Arano is about to take her place as the head of the house when her uncle launches a brutal coup. Kamea disappears and one of her guardians, a MechWarrior of impressive skill, is rescued by a band of mercenaries. Three years later Kamea re-emerges with an offer to her former allies to help her reclaim her throne.

Originally released in 2018, BattleTech is a turn-based strategy game set in the shared BattleTech and MechWarrior universe. That universe began as a tabletop wargame but expanded into board games, novels, video games and even a short-lived animated series. Created by Harebrained Schemes and with the original BattleTech co-creator Jordan Weisman in charge of development, it was the first BattleTech video game that got close to the franchise's original roots.

It was reasonably successful, and has since been re-released with its three expansions (Flashpoint, Urban Warfare and Heavy Metal) included. So the question is it worthwhile picking up the game with these additions included? My original 2018 review of BattleTech can be found here.

To recap, the game has you playing a MechWarrior, the pilot of a BattleMech, a massive, building-sized walking death machine. MechWarriors are the elite troops of the 31st Century, a time period when five great powers and numerous smaller ones and mercenaries fight for control of the Inner Sphere, the vast region of space claimed by humanity (there are no aliens in the BattleTech universe). Over the course of a lengthy story-driven campaign, interspersed with huge numbers of side-missions and procedurally-generated jobs, you build up a mercenary company from scratch, hiring pilots, training their skills, buying or salvaging more BattleMechs, equipping them and fighting in detailed, tactically tense engagements on a variety of planets. The game contains a number of interesting, interlocking systems which gives rise to an immense amount of satisfying player choice, realised via chunky, engaging combat missions. The game is effectively XCOM: Pacific Rim, and is every bit as fun and compelling as that sounds.

The original game did have problems, though, with too-long animations and a difficulty curve that was less of a curve and more of a barbed-wire wall, with occasional spikes making progress difficult without a lot of tedious grinding.

The Mercenary Collection, via the three expansions included within, immediately eliminates these problems via a host of new features. The most notable is that the game's engine has been reworked and a number of new options presented, which dramatically speed up gameplay by allowing you to skip more tedious animations or remove mid-battle animated sequences altogether. There is a more granular difficulty setting for those who find the game too much of a cakewalk or too tough. There are more mid-game special events to liven things up, and the DLC missions and features integrate into the campaign, giving you a greater variety of maps to fight on, as well as more mechs and weapons to deploy in battle.

The game also gives you the opportunity to start in "Career Mode," which jettisons the storyline altogether in favour of a new setup with you taking on the task of setting up your mercenary company from scratch and guiding them across the Rimward Periphery without any story material to worry about. This mode is fun for veteran players who know what they are doing, as they can immediately access some of the DLC material that is otherwise gated until you finish the campaign. For newcomers I'd recommend following the story, which does a better job of managing the difficulty curve of the game.

The first DLC, Flashpoint, adds a number of new story-based mini-campaigns (aka flashpoints) to the game. These campaigns have their own stories, characters and twists and turns, and can give you a lot of rewards and experience. There's some fun elements in these missions, and they add a fairly large number of handcrafted missions which relieve the occasional grind of procedurally-generated, somewhat bland missions. However, the flashpoints oddly don't trigger until you've finished the story campaign, which oddly leaves you too heavily levelled for the low-level flashpoints (which will become a cakewalk). The flashpoints are best experienced in Career Mode, but the tougher missions do have some twists that may check even experienced MechWarriors, such as missions that force the player to use Light or Medium 'Mechs, forcing them to leave the Assaults at home.

The second DLC, Urban Warfare, introduces the new city environment which is a huge amount of fun to play in. Skyscrapers break sightlines, and jump jet-equipped 'Mechs can suddenly find themselves with a lot more tactical options than before (though also run the risk of the building they are standing on being shot out from under them). Ten more flashpoints are added with interesting new storylines.

The third DLC, Heavy Metal, adds multiple new BattleMechs, including the mobile artillery Bullshark 'Mech, and tons of new weapons, including the COIL laser which can make Light 'Mechs much more formidable weapons platforms. The expansion also features a new story campaign that ultimately pits the player's company in the middle of a showdown between two of the BattleTech universe's most formidable warriors, the Bounty Hunter and the Black Widow.

These expansions add a lot more content and variety to the game and, like the Enemy Within expansion for XCOM: Enemy Unknown or the War of the Chosen expansion for XCOM 2, they improve on the original game as well, taking something that was already very solid and making it richer, more interesting and more compelling. This version of the game also allows for much greater modding capability, and the mods available via Nexus are impressive, with some extending the game's setting to incorporate the entire Inner Sphere and extending the timeline to bring in those old BattleTech favourite antagonists, the Clans.

BattleTech: Mercenary Collection (*****) is, at least for now, the definitive version of the BattleTech experience and an outstandingly rich, turn-based strategy game. It is available on PC now (and is currently on a reasonably generous deal on Steam).

Warrior: Coupé by Michael A. Stackpole

The Inner Sphere has erupted in the Fourth Succession War. The forces of the Federated Suns have launched a devastating assault on the Capellan Confederation in reprisal for an attempt to assassinate the ruling prince, whilst the Federation's allies in the Lyran Commonwealth have launched spoiling raids to stop the Draconis Combine and Free Worlds League from coming to the Confederation's aid. Whilst Capella's defences crumble and recalcitrant member worlds take advantage of the chaos to declare independence, Chancellor Maximilian Liao has developed plans for a bold strike far behind the lines to halt the offensive in its tracks, but endanger the entire economic future of the Inner Sphere in the process. Whilst the Federation rallies scratch units to fight a final, desperate battle, the Kell Hounds and the Genyosha agree to an honourable duel to end their long-running feud.

Following up on the events of En Garde and Riposte, Coupe concludes the events of Micheal A. Stackpole's Warrior Trilogy. The first major "core" work in the BattleTech universe, this trilogy redraws the borders of the five major powers and advances the timeline through the first major military conflict to take place during the setting's "present day" timeframe. Stackpole is juggling a lot of factions, characters and stories here, as he has throughout the entire trilogy, and manages the admirable job of retaining a core focus whilst also telling an epic story on an enormous scale.

It's also a book with a lot of variety in the storytelling: Andrew Redburn and his mercenaries fighting on the front line, Justin Xiang walking a political tightrope at the heart of the Confederation's intelligence network, Prince Hanse Davion having to retain sympathy and support whilst he undertakes an effective war of aggression, the struggles of the Genyosha as they debate their loyalty to the sometimes-duplicitous House Kurita with the demands of honour, and Morgan Hasek-Davion's struggles to balance his desire to fight on the front lines with the needs of his family, to which he is the only heir.

Stackpole orchestrates this enormous story with impressive grace, knowing when to focus on a storyline and when to back away. There is still too much story here for one volume or even one trilogy, and other books and authors fill in some details which are skipped over here: Robert Charrette's Heir to the Dragon explains why Theodore Kurita is suddenly such a big deal, for example, whilst the hard-to-find Wolves on the Border explains why Wolf's Dragoons have such a hate-on for the Draconis Combine, enough for the highly-reputed honourable company to betray their former employers and plunge their border into chaos (the Dragoons themselves have some oddities which aren't fully explained until Stackpole's subsequent Blood of Kerensky trilogy). This is both a way of letting other stories get filled in whilst making people buy more BattleTech books, which was a great idea for the publisher in 1989 but is not as effective in 2021, when many of those other books are unavailable.

There are other weaknesses: a few characters are killed off whom I think we were supposed to feel quite bad about, but because they only got a fairly nominal amount of development through these three very busy-but-short novels, these don't always land very well. There's a few eyebrow-raising coincidences, and the whole thing is of course old-fashioned space opera pulp, which some may feel has dated more badly than others. Fortunately, this novel increases its predecessor's achievements in rolling back the stereotypes and increasing the complexity and nuance of the factions.

Overall, Warrior: Coupe (***½) matches its predecessors in being a solid novel which delivers on political intrigue, splendid action sequences and fun characters. It is available now in the UK and USA.

Warrior: Riposte by Michael A. Stackpole

3028. The Inner Sphere has been rocked by the news that Prince Hanse Davion, ruler of the Federated Suns, is to wed Melissa Steiner, the Archon-Designate and heir to the Lyran Commonwealth. This union will unite almost half of the human race under one banner. The Draconis Combine, the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation are opposed to the union but, after a failed assassination attempt on Melissa's life risks open war, seem powerless to stop it. As the governments of humanity gather on Terra for the wedding of the century, former enemies find themselves united in common cause as they begin to realise that ComStar, the priesthood-conglomerate that rules humanity's homeworld, has been keeping a dark secret from them...

Picking up after the events of En Garde, Riposte continues Michael A. Stackpole's Warrior Trilogy. Set in the BattleTech universe - think Game of Thrones meets Pacific Rim - this trilogy is a wildly ambitious work which sets to tell the stories of both individuals and cultures clashing a thousand years in the future, when wars are fought with building-sized robotic war machines called BattleMechs. En Garde was a fun but extremely busy novel which had more storylines and character arcs going on than most thousand-page epic fantasies, making for a novel with a cracking pace but on occasion could feel rushed,

Riposte calms down that pace and has a bit more time to smell the roses. There's still a lot going on but it's mostly a continuation of the first book's storylines rather than introducing new ones, allowing the story to breathe a lot more.

The book is divided into two general sections. The first section, before the wedding, is mostly setup as we rejoin the characters. The Kell Hounds mercenary group are recovering from the tough battle they fought in the first volume, Andrew Redburn's meteoric career rise is continuing and Justin Xiang (formerly Allard) has been recruited to serve in the Capellan Confederation's intelligence division, where he now directly contests the plans of his father, the Federated Suns' intelligence chief. This section is low on action but high on intrigue, and is mostly well-handled.

The wedding is the centrepiece of the novel and shows how you can use a wedding in an SF novel to completely upend the balance of power in a story without murdering everyone present (cough). The wedding arguably remains the most notable gamechanging moment in the BattleTech universe (or maybe the second, after the events covered in the subsequent Blood of Kerensky trilogy), even being live-reenacted at GenCon 1988 as a clever way of kicking off the BattleTech miniatures battle tournament. It's a fun scene which, oddly, we don't get to see the full events of, with Stackpole choosing to cut away at the key moment to events elsewhere and we only see the aftermath in flashback, which is mildly disappointing. It does make the second part of the novel much more of an all-out war novel, with major characters in action on the front and setting things up for the concluding part of the trilogy.

Some of the weaknesses of the first novel remain - the book veers at times towards melodrama and pulp, entertainingly realised but old-fashioned by today's standards - but others are solved. The first novel made it appear that Houses Steiner and Davion (based on European powers) were the "good guys" and Houses Liao and Kurita (based on Asian powers) were the "bad guys" (House Marik continues to mostly be ignored at this stage), This book throws that into considerable doubt and makes the setting more morally grey across the board, which is more interesting, and instead encourages readers to sympathise with individual characters rather than their polities. Another weakness is that some key characters from Book 1, most notably Melissa Steiner, all but vanish in this second volume, making their storylines feel curtailed.

Still, Warrior: Riposte (***½) is a fun action-SF novel set in a well-realised universe of giant stompy mechs fighting other giant stompy mechs. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

Warrior: En Garde by Michael A. Stackpole

The year 3027. Three hundred years ago, the great Star League, which united all the worlds of humanity in a peaceful, golden age of technology, fell into ruin. From the chaos emerged the five Successor States: the Lyran Commonwealth, the Draconis Combine, the Federated Suns, the Free Worlds League and the Capellan Confederation, each ruled by a Great House. At the centre of them all and controlling ancient, holy Terra is ComStar, a mercantile consortium turned religious institution and the arbiters of interstellar communications. Political intrigue is rife, and warfare is conducted by vast, towering war machines called BattleMechs. The period of chaos known as the Third Succession War has come to an end and the Great Houses are rebuilding, but stability is no guarantee of safety. The Allard family, in noble service to House Davion of the Federated Suns, is placed in the centre of huge events when one scion is disgraced and sent into exile on the game world of Solaris VII and another joins the legendary mercenary army known as the Kell Hounds.

BattleTech is the franchise that stubbornly won't die. Starting life in 1984 as a tabletop miniatures game, it quickly spun off a series of over one hundred novels and more than a dozen popular video games (most famously, the MechWarrior and MechCommander series) before petering out in the late 2000s after an ill-advised reboot (the Dark Age setting). After a few years in the doldrums, it suddenly spun back into life with a new edition of the tabletop game and two well-received video games: 2018's turn-based BattleTech and 2019's real-time simulator MechWarrior 5 (which is getting a wider release this month on Steam and Xbox). Capitalising on the moment, franchise-holders Catalyst Game Labs have started making the immense backlog of novels available again vie ebook and Amazon's print-on-demand service.

Arguably the best-known and regarded of the BattleTech authors is Michael A. Stackpole, whom in later years would gain much greater fame and success as a Star Wars author (particularly of the X-Wing series, alongside the late, great Aaron Allston). Stackpole has built a career on writing fast-paced but also character-based military SF and fantasy. Like Dan Abnett (his Warhammer 40,000 counterpart, or the nearest equivalent), Stackpole knows that writing good military SF isn't just about the action and explosions, but creating interesting characters and telling the story through their eyes.

En Garde, the first book in the Warrior Trilogy, was the fifth-published novel in the BattleTech line but is widely regarded as the best novel to start with. The earlier books were published when the details of the setting were still being worked out and are prone to bouts of early-installment weirdness (CW: TVTropes link). They were also not as well-written as Stackpole's work, and tended to be smaller in scale. In contrast, En Garde is a book at times so epic it becomes dizzying.

The novel packs more storylines and characters into its modest 320 pages than some 1,000-page epic fantasy novels. At the start of the book it appears that we'll be following Justin Allard as he tries to clear his name after being wrongfully exiled as a traitor. However, Allard's experiences rapidly turn him into an apparently rage-fuelled antihero as he murders and backstabs his way through the crime-ridden underbelly of the gladiatorial world of Solaris VII. His much more sympathetic brother Daniel, a member of the Kell Hounds, finds himself on the front lines when his mercenary company is targeted for extermination by the ruthless intelligence agency of the Draconis Combine. Elsewhere, very high-level political intrigue unfolds when Princess Melissa Steiner of the Lyran Commonwealth has to travel incognito to the Federated Suns to discuss an alliance with Prince Hanse Davion, a prospect bitterly opposed by the other three Great Houses and many factions within their own empires. Yet another subplot follows a dishonored MechWarrior of the Draconis Combine who is offered the chance at redemption by forming and training an elite new military cadre (a fascinating idea which, unfortunately, mostly happens off-page). On top of all that, there is a framing story revolving around the priest-businessmen of ComStar, who preach neutrality and serving all of mankind's needs but, predictably, are up to their elbows in everyone else's business and trying to pull everyone's strings.

Stuffed to the gills with political intrigue and crunchy, mech-on-mech action, En Garde moves fast. As Stackpole's first novel and written under an unholy deadline (the entire trilogy, totalling north of 300,000 words, was written in under ten months), the novel lacks the polish of his later works. There's a noted prevalence of exclamation marks, especially in Justin's storyline: Justin is a big fan of making threatening speeches to his enemies, which are sometimes icily effective and sometimes feel like a five-year-old on the playground explaining why he's so tough and about as intimidating. Dialogue favours exposition, which is often clunky but at least does a good job of explaining what the hell is going on. I do feel like an appendix of in-universe terms and maybe some head-of-chapter preambles explaining the factions (like those in Frank Herbert's Dune) could have been a more elegant way of getting this information across to the audience, rather than a few too many "As you already know but I will explain anyway..." style conversations.

But Stackpole makes many of the characters complex and interesting: Gray Noton is initially presented as an antagonist but becomes a much richer character as the novel progresses, whilst expertly flipping Justin's storyline from a predictable "clearing his name" narrative to a more elemental story of utter vengeance makes for a much more morally murky storyline. A few characters do get short shrift, but hopefully they will rise more to the fore in the succeeding volumes of the trilogy.

There are a couple of other issues stemming from the background material more than Stackpole's writing. The Capellan Confederation and Draconis Combine are fairly obviously based on China and Japan, and a few wince-inducing stereotypes ensue, such as House Kurita's warriors being obsessed with honour, relaxing in tea houses and sometimes inexplicably wielding katanas against enemies with assault rifles. To be fair this actually plays a key role in the storyline, with Justin's half-Capellan heritage marking him out for racist abuse, but it's unsurprising that later iterations of the BattleTech franchise beat a retreat from these kind of stereotypes, with the Confederation and Combine receiving a great deal more nuance. It doesn't help that they are presented as the "bad guys" at this stage, whilst Houses Davion and Steiner, more Anglo-American in inspiration, are the "good guys." Very fortunately, Stackpole upends this idea as soon as the very next book in favour of the setting's more familiar equal-opportunities moral murkiness, with all the factions having good and bad elements to them.

Warrior: En Garde (***½) is a slightly dated but still readable slice of pulp military SF, with interesting characters and a fascinating universe (very much Game of Thrones meets Pacific Rim, with a light dusting of Dune). Some clumsy exposition and iffy dialogue are offset by a relentlessly readable pace and some very enjoyable action set-pieces. The novel is available now in the UK and USA.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries

AD 3015. The Inner Sphere is gripped by the Third Succession War, with the great powers clashing for control of human space. With the regular armies of the Great Houses stretched, it's a time of opportunity for mercenary companies to make money and gain a reputation for themselves.

Is there much more we can ask from video games than the ability to jump in a giant robot and use the giant robot to destroy other giant robots and occasionally just smash up a city for the sheer hell of it? It could be argued not, and, since 1989, the MechWarrior series of video games has satisfied that urge in a very enjoyable manner.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is the first single-player game in the series since 2002 and makes a ton of concessions for new players. It is set earlier in the timeline than any previous game and does not require foreknowledge of the wider BattleTech franchise. However, if you played the outstanding 2018 turn-based strategy game BattleTech (to which this is a real-time companion), you'll find a lot here that's familiar in terms of mechs, terminology, equipment and even UI, especially the menus and the systems for outfitting your mechs. MechWarrior 5 is also somewhat more forgiving than its brutally tough cousin, despite also being a lot more hectic.

MechWarrior 5 consists of two game modes. The first has you on board a Leopard dropship, where your mechs and mechwarriors are based. You can wander around the ship in first-person and explore the ship and inspect your mechs at the correct scale, which is very impressive. For certain campaign missions and story moments, you can also wander up to characters to engage in conversations which further the story. Using menus you can also select your next mission, move the ship to another system and engage in equipment and mech purchase, maintenance and selling. You can also hire and fire pilots or review your progress so far. This is similar to the metagame in BattleTech, although the ability to actually walk around the ship is cool for a bit; it later becomes a bit pointless and you can do everything through menus instead. There's also much less character here. In BattleTech you could talk to characters, even upgrade the social features of the ship to make your pilots happier. In MechWarrior 5 there's somewhat less to do other than selecting missions and maintaining your war machine.

Once you arrive at a star system with contracts available, you can choose which mission to take and then engage in negotiations with the faction in question. You can discuss pay for the mission, how much salvage you can claim and insurance for mech damage. There's some gambling here, since salvaging an enemy mech could net you several times the pay for the mission, but that only applies if you can disable an enemy mech without blowing its reactor, so upping the hard cash reward for the mission might be preferable. The more jobs you do for a faction, the more negotiating points you can get as your standing with them improves. However, sometimes a faction may direct you into combat against another faction, resulting in a corresponding drop in reputation with that faction, which might become a problem later on when you need that faction to give you more jobs. This system is fun and makes choosing which missions to take on and who to appease and who to annoy a rewarding and interesting system of choices.

Once a mission is locked in, the Leopard lands and deploys your lance of mechs into real-time combat: you can bring up to three fellow mechs into combat with you, which can be controlled by AI or other human players of your choosing. Sometimes the dropship dumps you straight into a mass firefight (with the dropship laying down impressive volumes of covering fire) but more often it drops you outside a combat zone and you have to head in, perhaps using the terrain for cover, going the long way around to take the enemy by surprise or just charging in all guns blazing.

Combat is fast, furious and frantic, but you have a good amount of feedback thanks to a radar and robust damage report models for your mechs plus the enemy and allied troops. You can be more tactical and hold back with a sniper mech to attack from a distance with gauss guns and long-range missiles, perhaps directing your more brawler-focused allies into close combat, or vice versa. Like a good space or air combat game, the game mixes real-time action and a more strategic element of commanding allies; MechWarrior 2 (the game that popularised the franchise) was consciously echoing contemporaries X-Wing and Wing Commander but in a giant robot, and MechWarrior 5 feels like a solid upgrade of that, feeling like a contemporary of Ace Combat 7 and Star Wars: Squadrons (but still in a giant robot). Combat is something the game nails very satisfyingly, which is important as you're going to be doing a hell of a lot of it.

The game provides context for what you're doing through three tiers of missions. The first is story missions, which propel the game's main storyline forward. The storyline isn't fantastic (and certainly not as good as BattleTech's) but it does have some solid voice acting from Elias Toufexis  (Adam Jensen from the Deus Ex franchise) and it does have some excellently-designed mission setpieces. These missions are triggered intermittently when you gain reputation levels. There are 15 such levels in the game and you gain rep from completing jobs for factions. Once you get to a new level, new story missions appear and you can get those underway.

The second tier of mission is quests, marked on the map by yellow circles. These are, effectively, side-quests with their own storyline and characters, along with unique dialogue, with quite large reputation and cash rewards. These questlines take you back and forth across an entire warzone with twists and turns in the story, and sometimes the ability to switch sides and work for the opposition who may contact you with a much better offer. Quests are not necessary to proceed, but bulk out the game in terms of giving you meaningful stuff to do.

The lowest tier are procedurally-generated missions which are simply infinite in number, randomly generating rewards, opposition and terrain and throwing you into battle. These missions are good for picking up salvage, cash and grinding smaller amounts of reputation, though for those who want to make faster progress, quests are a better bet.

These combine into a fairly compelling experience: you do missions to increase reputation, salvage and cash; you spend those resources to improve your pilots, mechs and equipment; and then you unlock the next part of the story and move on. You can complete MechWarrior 5 in around 30 hours (roughly half the length of a BattleTech campaign) but also expand it out for much longer than that as you track down rare mechs and equipment and exhaustively try to complete every quest chain in the game.

So, with great combat, the ability to co-op every single mission and solid upgrading and loot mechanics, it'd be easy to recommend the game unambiguously. However, there are a fair few problems with the game. None of these are massive by themselves but the accumulated array of them can be fairly vexing.

The first is how fresh enemy mechs are spawned mid-mission. Originally they appeared out of nowhere way too close to your lance, resulting in damage and mission losses for no apparent reason. Patches improved this by making the enemy appear a lot further away, but it's still a disconcerting experience that feels a bit weird. 

The second is that your radar works in the weirdest way imaginable, with it working based on line of sight. So you have to see something before your radar can lock on, with enemy mechs vanishing from view if they just pass behind a boulder for a few seconds. Even worse is the low range of your radar, with you sometimes able to see a bunch of enemy mechs a couple of kilometres away and even hit them with dumb-fire weapons (like gauss guns and plasma cannons), but not able to actually lock onto them with missiles until they're much closer. This is all pretty dumb, and a let-down on how radar worked in BattleTech, where you could use sensor abilities to target enemies from much further away and you could also use telemetry feeds, so one scout mech on a recon mission could allow all your troops to lock on from much further away.

The third is that AI in general could be a bit stronger. The enemy default stance is to bum-rush you, sometimes allowing you to wipe out what would be a formidable enemy force because their light mechs outrun their heavier support, allowing you to destroy them piecemeal as they arrive. Enemy AI also seems reluctant to use long-range weapons or jump jets. Allied AI can also be ropey, particularly in base defence missions where you allies sometimes careen through allied structures without a care in the world (resulting in amusing screams of rage from your employers) and happily discharge their plasma cannons and missiles at the enemy even if you're standing right in front of them (which can be fatal).

These problems are annoying and frustrating but - very happily - they've also mostly been fixed by MechWarrior 5's outstanding modding community. As I related previously, I installed a number of mods which fixed almost all of the above problems instantly. Better Spawns removes random mech spawns altogether and replaces them with an enemy dropship arriving and dropping the mechs manually. The AI fix mods make both allied and enemy AI much stronger, so your allies stop shooting you and blowing up allied bases and the enemy will use missiles and jumpjets from time to time. The 3D Hud dramatically improves weapons and damage feedback. Max Tonnage removes the very arbitrary-feeling weight limits on missions that feels nonsensical (given that enemy spawns seem to be based on your tonnage, this doesn't make the game a cakewalk either), and the JumpShip Animation dramatically speeds up the game by removing unskippable cut scenes. The only outstanding problem is the radar, which apparently will be addressed in the forthcoming expansions.

Without the mods, MechWarrior 5 (***½) is a great game beset by annoyances. With those mods, MechWarrior 5 (****½) becomes a rich, compelling game experience mixing fun mech management with satisfying, crunchy combat.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is available right now on PC via Epic Game Store, which easily allows for modding, and on the Xbox Game Pass, which very much does not. The game will launch on Steam on 27 May alongside a new expansion, Heroes of the Inner Sphere, and an Xbox One/Series X version of the game.

Modding MechWarrior

I am currently several dozen hours into playing MechWarrior 5. It's a fun, hugely enjoyable action game where you sit in a giant robot and blow up other giant robots, buildings, vehicles and sometimes just the scenery for the hell of it. It's also a game which is, putting it as charitably as possible, not out-of-the-box, fit-for-mass-consumption due to a combination of bugs and questionable game design choices. Fortunately, it's also a game that's hugely moddable and a large number of the problems have been fixed by the fans. So here's the roster of mods that I'm currently running to make the game more palatable.

Unless otherwise noted, these mods can be natively installed via the Epic Game Store's mod page and hopefully will be available via the Steam Workshop when the game launches on Steam in May.

3D HUD

The heads-up-display in MechWarrior 5 is functional but that's about the most that can be said for it, with information presented dryly as lines of text and bars in the corner of the screen. This mod re-imposes the HUD on your pilot's visor, giving you a nice 3D feeling to the display. It also dynamically puts your weapon information (ammo, temperature, range) on a circular view corresponding to the location of your weapon hardpoints, giving you much more intuitive information on what's happening to your mech at any given time. This dramatically improves information flow mid-battle. 

Better Performance - FPS Drop Fix

MechWarrior 5 has an odd thing where it generates the sound of your weapon firing from the animation rather than just playing the relevant audio files when you hit the fire button. This means the frames-per-second drops noticeably whenever you fire your weapon, and this drop gets worse over the course of a mission. This mod fixes the problem by removing the direct link between the weapon fire animation and sound effect, keeping performance steady.

Enemy Mech Availability Date Fix

One of the cooler things about MechWarior 5 is how the timeline advances as your play the game. The game starts in 3015 and the months and years advance - sometimes quite quickly - as you fly between star systems and engage in lengthy campaign missions. Political borders change in accordance with in-game history, and sometimes missions are generated based on timeline events. These stop in 3049; although you can continue to play, major events are no longer reflected. Long-term BattleTech and MechWarrior fans know that in 3050, a huge event takes place that the game can't take into account, though will likely form the basis of any future expansion or sequel. One problem with this is that the AI sometimes spawns mechs that are not correctly available until much later on. This mod fixes that and keeps everything era-appropriate, hopefully resulting in a more smoothly escalating difficulty level rather than huge spikes caused by the early appearance of an Atlas X (or something).

MW5 Mod Compatibility Pack

Pretty essential, this mod smooths out some minor problems in the base game and makes mods play nicely without one another.

Prime8's Distinct Weapon FX and Weather Improvement Mod

An aesthetic improvement that makes lasers, missiles and autocannon shots all "pop" better, greatly improving visual feedback and information, as well increasing the variety of weather conditions you'll encounter. Plus, they looks really cool.

Remove JumpShip Animation

Like it's near-neighbour BattleTech, MechWarrior 5 likes to play a lengthy, unskippable animation of your dropship docking with a jumpship and making an FTL jump to the next star system. Which is fine, but you only ever need to see it once. This mod disables the animation, greatly improving in-game speed. The dropship animation remains, since the game loads data on the new star system in the background, but that's much shorter and much less of an issue.

Max Tonnage

Found on the Nexus. The game has a variable maximum tonnage allowance on missions, so missions will force you to bring smaller, lighter mechs on low-difficulty missions and only allow you to field a full lance of Assault mechs on late-game, tough missions. Although understandable from a game balance POV, it's pretty nonsensical from a story and lore perspective. This mod resets the max tonnage for all missions to 400 tons, allowing you to deploy four of the heaviest mechs in the game (the King Crab and Atlas) with no issue. Just don't be surprised if low-difficulty missions now become a bit too easy.

TTRulez Enemy AI Mod

This essential mod fixes the enemy AI, making enemy mechs more likely to use long-range missiles, improved swarming tactics and enemy mechs with jump jets will actually now use them.

TTRulez Lancemate AI Mod

This essential mod fixes friendly AI, making allied mechs much less likely to trash the base you're supposed to be defending and more flexible in how they choose targets. Allied AI will also now use jump jets and other ancillary abilities.

Better Spawns

Found at Nexus. The most essential of all mods, this completely rewrites MechWarrior 5's dunderhead spawning system, which sometimes has enemy mechs and vehicles materialising 200 metres away behind a rock (or, in extreme cases, out of thin air). All enemy mechs and ground vehicles now have to be either on the map at the start of the game or be brought on via dropship, giving players more time to notice and react to their arrival. Enemy aircraft are prevented from spawning right on top of you. Vehicles arrive in lance-style groups rather than piecemeal, so present a greater challenge rather than rushing in one-by-one to be cut to pieces by focused fire from your forces. This mod increases the challenge by making enemies arrive more smartly and (in coordination with the Better AI mod) use better tactics, but also evens things out by giving you and your lance mates more time and ability to manage the battlefield.

With these mods installed, the quality of MechWarrior 5 abruptly increases from "okay" to "very good indeed," and I would not recommend playing the game without them.

BattleTech

AD 3022. The Inner Sphere of human space is embroiled in the closing stages of the Third Succession War, a series of conflicts between the Great Houses for power and territory. Largely unaffected by the conflict is the Aurigan Coalition, a minor power among the Periphery States which has flourished under the rule of House Arano. Lady Kamea Arano is about to take her place as the head of the house when her uncle launches a brutal coup. Kamea disappears and one of her guardians, a MechWarrior of impressive skill, is rescued by a band of mercenaries. Three years later Kamea re-emerges with an offer to her former allies to help her reclaim her throne.

BattleTech is a turn-based strategy game, set in the shared BattleTech and MechWarrior universe which has been home to a tabletop miniatures game, a roleplaying game and multiple video games for thirty-five years, as well as over a hundred novels and even a short-lived animated series in the 1990s. Produced by Harebrained Schemes, who previously created the three acclaimed Shadowrun Returns RPGs (Dead Man's Switch, Dragonfall and Hong Kong), and designed by Jordan Weisman, the original co-creator of the entire franchise, the game has arrived with a fair bit of hype and a (mostly) positive reception.

The game plays in a manner similar to the recent Firaxis XCOM games, with a strategic section between missions where you can re-arm and repair your forces, recruit new troops and upgrade your base; and the turn-based, tactical combat section of the game. The strategic section is set on board a spacecraft, initially the very cramped and awkward Leopard and later on the more impressive and spacious Argo. You can upgrade the Argo so it can hold more BattleMechs (building-sized humanoid death vehicles) and repair them more quickly, but you can also add what appear to be more frivolous additions such as as a zero-G swimming pool and a 3D entertainment system. These appear pointless but give your pilots additional Morale Points which they can spend in battle to pull off special moves; whether you agreed to host Burger Night might determine later on if your pilot can core-shot an Assault 'Mech that's just about to wipe out your team. You can also wander around the ship and talk to the crew, which is initially entertaining until you realise the crew's dialogue choices very, very rarely update with new information.

The game has a storyline which you can follow, but crucially you can go off-course at any time to pursue side-missions. The game procedurally generates missions which you can undertake for money, salvage and to gain experience for your MechWarriors. The game doesn't make it entirely clear that pursuing side-missions is not optional: if you just try to pursue the story missions one after another, you'll rapidly find the enemies escalating beyond your ability to handle. Taking time between story missions to do other jobs and improve your team is essential. Thanks to a handy starmap, you can visit several dozen systems spread between half a dozen or so factions, with jobs running from simple search-and-destroy missions to base defence to escort.

Once you've picked a mission, you can choose which 'Mechs to use and how to outfit them. The game's tutorials are extremely basic and don't do a great job of explaining 'Mech customisability. Each 'Mech design (there are 36 in the game, with a further 22  model variations) has different hardpoints for weapons, ammo and equipment, such as jump jets and heat sinks. Your weapon choice is key in the game, with Auto Cannons doing tremendous damage but also being incredibly large and heavy, and requiring a separate ammo feed. Long-range missiles can inflict small amounts of damage on enemies at extreme range, but of course hit them enough times with enough missiles and you can take them out before they even enter close-weapons range. Short-range missiles are far more powerful, but are only effective at short range. Laser and plasma weapons have impressive range and don't require ammo, but generate a lot of heat and aren't great at taking out armour. If you find you can't carry all the guns you want, you can make room by stripping off armour...which is great until you realise you've stripped off too much armour and now have a colossal walking arsenal of death which will drop dead if a fly sneezes at it.

This juggling of load-out options is tremendous fun, especially once you have a handle on what decisions will have the most noticeable impact on the battlefield and you can access to special weapons with bonus damage factors (identified by a "+" scene after their name), but again the game leaves a lot of this information unstated and you have to pick it up as you go along.

Once these decisions have been made the game switches to a 3D battlemap. Initially you can send your 'Mechs scurrying around simultaneously, but that ends when the enemy enters sensor range. At that point you can order your 'Mechs to take up new positions, seek cover in forests or behind hills, jump-jet up onto a handy mountain, use a sensor lock to identify the target (allowing you to rain long-range fire on them) or race into visual range and start the slugfest. Combat is turn-based, but is oddly based on mobility: how far your 'Mech moved before firing determines its Evasive skill, which the enemy must overcome before they can hit you. Taking down an enemy 'Mech can be accomplished by slugging away, or (if you have enough Morale Points) making called shots on particular parts of the enemy machine. Destroy the hard-to-hit cockpit and you can capture the enemy 'Mech intact, blow off its legs and you can take the torso off (and if you pick up more salvage from the same model later on, you can patch it back into service) and so on. Particularly entertaining is taking on an enemy 'Mech laden with cannons and missiles, as if you hit the part of the body where the ammo is stored you can set off a chain reaction and blow the whole 'Mech up.

As well as dealing with positioning, facing (if you take a lot of damage on one side of your 'Mech, you can spin around in the next round and present a different armour facing to the enemy) and weapons, you also have to manage heat. Relying on lasers and plasma weapons a lot generates a lot of heat. If you go over the heat threshold, the 'Mech will start heat damage; go too far over it and your 'Mech will shut down for a round, or (much more rarely) explode. As a result, judicious choices have to be made each round on what weapons to use on what targets (an optional ability allows your pilots to target multiple enemy 'Mechs in the same round of fire) and when running into a river to cool off is a good idea. Your 'Mechs' heat management is also impacted by the environment: polar missions will allow you to fire a lot more often before overheating, whilst for a desert mission you may want to ditch the energy weapons altogether in favour of cooler ballistics.

On top of that you also have stability to worry about: BattleMechs are top heavy and can be knocked over by ballistic and missile fire, or smacked over in melee combat (ah yes, 'Mechs can literally punch one another as well). Falling 'Mechs injure their pilots and become much more vulnerable to called shots.

The result is a constantly shifting, extremely fascinating game of rock-paper-scissors-plasma beam, one that you have to re-evaluate as the game continues. There's a lot to keep track of, but also a lot of fun ways of exploiting the rules to find the optimal set-up. On top of this there are your individual pilots or MechWarriors to look after. They gain experience between missions and this unlocks special abilities, as well as giving them better aim and defence. Sometimes you can win a mission, but you may have lost a favourite pilot and a hard-earned rare weapon in the process, and will have to choose between reloading or accepting the loss and carrying on.

Once you get to grips with this information - it sounds more daunting than it actually proves in-game - BattleTech sings. The customisability and character advancement becomes a compelling game in its own right, and the combat missions become great exercises in tactical skill. Like the XCOM games, BattleTech's systems are so well-designed that apparently insurmountable odds and unwinnable missions can often be overcome by stepping back and coming at the situation from a different angle. It's surprising how much of a difference a single weapon change, a single morale-boosted ability or a single change of 'Mech can make to a tricky battle.

The game could be a bit better in how all of this information is presented. The tutorials are exceptionally basic and the finer points of how the game works only emerge through playing. There are also a few minor technical issues: the time it takes to move between screens and menus is somewhat longer than it should be, and occasional visual bugs (such as the camera choosing to sit behind a mountain or tree rather when it should be showing an enemy 'Mech blowing up) irritate. Some reviewers have complained of the animations being a bit slower than they'd like. I didn't notice this myself, but there are menu options to fix this and even a few mods to speed things up if it becomes a major issue.

The game's biggest problem, ultimately, may also be seen as its greatest strength. Harebrained Schemes' previous project, the Shadowrun Returns trilogy, was excellent but criticised for the short length of each game, lack of optional side-content and lack of replayability. BattleTech certainly doesn't suffer from that, with an infinite number of procedurally-generated missions (soon to be expanded through DLC) and a truly vast number of options making each run through the game's story potentially very different. However, the game's reliance on these side-missions and the need to play them to get better equipment and skills - "grinding", to use the common parlance - threatens to make the game very repetitive. My initial run through the game lasted 54 hours, which is a huge amount of time to spend watching robots shoot other robots, and monotony occasionally threatened to set in during a mid-game period when I had to grind to get enough money and heavy 'Mechs to proceed to the next story mission.

But looking past that, the game is certainly rewarding, with a number of interesting systems to delve into and tweak. The graphics are decent (but not exceptional, belying the game's low budget), the sound is punchy and the music is excellent. The story is fairly standard but well-told with some great characters. Some of the story missions are exceptionally well-designed and fiendishly challenging as well. Best of all, the tactical combat and mercenary-management sides of the game come together to create something compelling, fresh and interesting, once you understand how it all works.

BattleTech (****) is available now for PC. Console versions may follow depending on the game's initial sales, and both free DLC and paid expansions on the way.