Early last week, gaming outlets published reviews of MechWarrior 5: Clans. Polygon wasn’t one of them, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t give it a try. Over the past few months, I’ve run into some hardware issues with my scratched and battered gaming laptop. While not unexpected, it is very inconvenient when working to a deadline. But this is how sausages are made on this side of the internet, and these things happen.
That’s why I’ve held back on my sharpest criticism of the game since its release. For example, I can’t decide if the horrible movement of the character’s lips and teeth when chewing lines is my problem or the developer’s. The same goes for screen tearing, low frame rates, and general poor performance in games on personal devices before launch. Things are getting a lot better for me at the moment, but the movie’s audio often lags far behind the audio during cutscenes. However, when it comes to gameplay, the day one patch seems to have reinforced the most obvious issue I had with the client.
Still, some parts still feel strange to me. It’s almost as incongruous as when I first mentioned it back in 2020 at the launch of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries and its DLC. Specifically, the AI MechWarriors in this game are really bad at being MechWarriors.
In my experience, friendly AI (meaning the other members of the five clan stars you fight with from the start of the game) is of little help when virtual shit hits the fan. I was tired of watching them wander into my line of fire and end up getting hit by stray bullets from Gauss rifles. Sometimes the AI character driving my missile boat will run screaming into close quarters combat with a flamethrower before firing off a long-range volley. When things actually start, it looks more like a group of heavily armed kids playing post-apocalyptic soccer than a post-human cadre of genetically engineered super soldiers. They continue to escape from the severely injured mech and flee into orbit, dooming me to perform the same mission over and over again. There’s no way to even save your progress in the middle of a mission, so forcing a save is completely off the table.
So even on the game’s lowest difficulty setting, I found myself restarting and running a mission two, three, four more times before feeling sick and walking away. So last week, I called up a few friends, set up the game as a free download through my Xbox Game Pass subscription, and, along with a team of three actual humans, set the game to the “standard” difficulty setting. I tried it.
What followed was an hour of truly amazing action.
What followed was an hour of truly amazing action. We were defeating the enemy, crushing all resistance in front of us, and seemed to be doing it well. But more importantly, I noticed that games started telling more challenging, action-packed stories. I was finally able to take the time to enjoy it.
Up until that point in MechWarrior 5: Clans, almost all of my time was spent micromanaging my AI teammates, pressing the fire button on enemies, and hoping for the best. That’s because the game’s tactical command system is very limited. In this game, there is no way to change the tactical posture of your allies, for example between attacking or defending. You also cannot specify which weapon to use or at what range to engage the enemy in a given situation. This has been a key feature of both BattleTech and MechWarrior since their inception on tabletops in the 1980s. Instead, players are left with limited options. You can tell your allies where to stand and whether to shoot or not shoot a target. That’s it.
But last night was different. Polygon’s Alice Giovane was able to land shots with pinpoint accuracy from inside a direct-hitting mech. When she needed to disable the most destructive enemy weapons within range, she did it expertly. Then, when her own main weapons system was disabled by enemy fire, she closed in with devastating ballistic machine gun fire, allowing her to change tactics on the fly. Meanwhile, me and another friend lay at the enemy’s feet, avoiding friendly fire attacks on Alice thanks to careful communication.
Image: Piranha Game
Later, after my own primary weapon went offline, that same friend came to my rescue with melee attacks, leveling enemy mechs with shoulder slams like a 40-ton linebacker. .
The game has not only become easier, but also more cinematic. I could finally see the well-crafted terrain in the background without a stupid scrum of childish AI clogging up the foreground. It freed me from the momentary fear of watching my team get chewed to pieces and allowed me to observe the tactics the enemy AI was using to advance the fight. Now that I have some free time, I’m finally able to appreciate just how epic the scope and scale of MechWarrior 5: Clans is. It’s leaps and bounds better than MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries.
But this isn’t a perfect multiplayer game. For example, there’s no integrated voice chat, so you’ll have to do that yourself. To play cross-platform, you must use a Nintendo Switch-style friend code. Also, only the host can advance the story of their copy of the game. Everyone else is along for the ride.
But I guarantee you the ride will be even more enjoyable if you have some humans by your side. Whether this heavy caveat is worth the $49.99 asking price is up to you, but if you have an Xbox Game Pass subscription, there’s a multiplayer experience here that you won’t want to miss.
MechWarrior 5: Clans was released on October 16th on PC as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles. This game was previewed on Windows PC using a pre-release download code provided by Piranha Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, but Vox Media may earn a commission on products purchased through affiliate links. Additional information about Polygon’s Ethics Policy can be found here.
