I really like the Battletech universe, going back to when I was a kid. Mechwarrior 2 was one of those formative gaming experiences, and MW2 Mercenaries is one of the GOATs imo. Thats why it's such a bummer to say that this game blows.

It blows for a couple of reasons. The story sucks, the gameplay is broken, and the game has no respect for your time.

Lets talk story. Early in the game, you start working for this space princess and discover that her enemy has gulags. She gives this insane speech where she's talking about how she spent years hanging around in Cappellan palaces while her people died and she didn't pay any attention to them. Then everyone responds like 'wow, what a raw and heartfelt speech, this woman is a credit to her family of space kings.' It's surreal. Later on, someone blames her for sitting around doing nothing while his daughter was tortured to death. she sends you on a mission where she says 'he's right to be mad, i feel real bad about his dead son.' This character is just unbelievably selfish and unlikeable, to the point where she can't remember the gender of the dead kid, and the game just doesn't acknowledge it. You never get a chance to ditch her and work for her enemies, or even say 'wow, this awful lady is completely full of ♥♥♥♥.' you can only say 'you are truly noble, great lady' or 'you are truly noble, but i don't care, i just want money.' it's terrible writing. There's a lot of it in there, lazy speechifying, weird characters, nonsensical ideas; that's just an example.

Gameplay. My main beef with the gameplay is as follows: if you take any damage at all to your head component, your pilot is gonna get wounded and be out for weeks. This includes damage that doesn't penetrate armor. That means that if you get sprayed down with a machine gun or shot with srms, the odds of you taking a hit to the head that round are pretty high, and the two points of damage you take will incapacitate your pilot after the fight. three or four more rounds of that and your pilot is dead, having taken eight damage total to their 60 head armor. There are tanks that fire 30 srms at you at once. you're going to lose all your pilots fighting them. It's stupid and should have been noticed in playtesting; if your pilot only got wounded when the armor was stripped or when you took a head crit, this would be a reasonable mechanic.

No respect for your time: THIS GAME IS INCREDIBLY SLOW. For some idiotic reason they actually added a delay to firing, on purpose. So you choose to fire some missiles, autocannons, and lasers at an enemy. your mech marches over, turns towards the enemy, pauses for a second, fires missiles, pauses for a second, fires autocannons, pauses for a second, fires lasers. Then there's a cinematic where you zoom around watching the mechs get hit or something This is fine at first, you don't even notice. but this is a game where you're playing dozens of rounds, firing four times a round most of the time, and all your enemies are firing and pausing too. it's glacial. You can turn off the Blam Cam cinematic stuff but you can't turn off the pausing or some of the zooming and it's just horrendous.

There are also unskippable cutscenes every time you move to a different planet. You're moving between planets a lot this game, every couple of missions at least, and so there will be dozens of times where you will watch your ship fly into space, jump to lightspeed, appear near a jumpship, dock with the jumpship, which then jumps, then appears again, THEN JUMPS AGAIN IF ITS A MULTISYSTEM DROP, potentially multiple instances of this, then undocks with the jumpship and jumps away. every time this happens a minute of your life is gone, never to return. this cutscene never ever varies. Battletech, and by extension Harebrained Schemes, thinks your time has no value.

Basically what i'm saying is give this pile a wide berth.

I really like the Battletech universe, going back to when I was a kid. Mechwarrior 2 was one of those formative gaming experiences, and MW2 Mercenaries is one of the GOATs imo. Thats why it's such a bummer to say that this game blows. It blows for a couple of reasons. The story sucks, the gameplay is broken, and the game has no respect for your time. Lets talk story. Early in the game, you start working for this space princess and discover that her enemy has gulags. She gives this insane speech where she's talking about how she spent years hanging around in Cappellan palaces while her people died and she didn't pay any attention to them. Then everyone responds like 'wow, what a raw and heartfelt speech, this woman is a credit to her family of space kings.' It's surreal. Later on, someone blames her for sitting around doing nothing while his daughter was tortured to death. she sends you on a mission where she says 'he's right to be mad, i feel real bad about his dead son.' This character is just unbelievably selfish and unlikeable, to the point where she can't remember the gender of the dead kid, and the game just doesn't acknowledge it. You never get a chance to ditch her and work for her enemies, or even say 'wow, this awful lady is completely full of shit.' you can only say 'you are truly noble, great lady' or 'you are truly noble, but i don't care, i just want money.' it's terrible writing. There's a lot of it in there, lazy speechifying, weird characters, nonsensical ideas; that's just an example. Gameplay. My main beef with the gameplay is as follows: if you take any damage at all to your head component, your pilot is gonna get wounded and be out for weeks. This includes damage that doesn't penetrate armor. That means that if you get sprayed down with a machine gun or shot with srms, the odds of you taking a hit to the head that round are pretty high, and the two points of damage you take will incapacitate your pilot after the fight. three or four more rounds of that and your pilot is dead, having taken eight damage total to their 60 head armor. There are tanks that fire 30 srms at you at once. you're going to lose all your pilots fighting them. It's stupid and should have been noticed in playtesting; if your pilot only got wounded when the armor was stripped or when you took a head crit, this would be a reasonable mechanic. No respect for your time: THIS GAME IS INCREDIBLY SLOW. For some idiotic reason they actually added a delay to firing, on purpose. So you choose to fire some missiles, autocannons, and lasers at an enemy. your mech marches over, turns towards the enemy, pauses for a second, fires missiles, pauses for a second, fires autocannons, pauses for a second, fires lasers. Then there's a cinematic where you zoom around watching the mechs get hit or something This is fine at first, you don't even notice. but this is a game where you're playing dozens of rounds, firing four times a round most of the time, and all your enemies are firing and pausing too. it's glacial. You can turn off the Blam Cam cinematic stuff but you can't turn off the pausing or some of the zooming and it's just horrendous. There are also unskippable cutscenes every time you move to a different planet. You're moving between planets a lot this game, every couple of missions at least, and so there will be dozens of times where you will watch your ship fly into space, jump to lightspeed, appear near a jumpship, dock with the jumpship, which then jumps, then appears again, THEN JUMPS AGAIN IF ITS A MULTISYSTEM DROP, potentially multiple instances of this, then undocks with the jumpship and jumps away. every time this happens a minute of your life is gone, never to return. this cutscene never ever varies. Battletech, and by extension Harebrained Schemes, thinks your time has no value. Basically what i'm saying is give this pile a wide berth.