So, there’s a mission that straight up isn’t beatable as far as I can tell. Even on Story Mode.
You have to prevent stolen Clan Mechs from fleeing so they aren’t captured by whoever.
Only hitch is, if you pursue them directly and down them you’ll get absolutely shredded by their escorts. And if you pause pursuit to deal with the escorts they 100% will get away and you’ll fail the mission.
Also the controls are crap. And performance is iffy on Series S.
I’ve got a list of complaints but I’m jaded. It’s story-lite (maybe if you know nothing about Smoke Jaguar it sells), the combat isn’t as satisfying (for me), the mech lab is kind of a joke even when compared to vanilla, and a dozen menus with questionable options isn’t good. The graphics are pretty… but there’s just… inconsistencies in choices here.
The things that bother me the most at this particular moment being so far in the game are 1) These mechs are as tall as buildings. So why instead of trees, are we knocking down tall plants? Like literally, there’s maps with weeds as tall as you are that you walk through but it sounds like a tree is falling. 2) The mission parameters will say something most everyone ignores but my OCD ass. “We’ve arrived at the AO from the NorthWest” it says. But you land and you’re looking NorthWest… so you came from the SouthEast!
At the beginning you miss a bunch of these because it’s a lot and yeah I know I’m nitpicking. Just a thought stream here.
But there’s other stuff. 3) You get weird level ups all over the place and one of them is affinities in the barracks menu. You can choose a bunch but you can get one for each mech weight class that gives you a bonus. Ok, so there’s Light, Medium, and Heavy. No Assault. Huh? 4) The story hints repeatedly that your clan’s tech is miles better than the Inner Sphere and when I’m melting Battlemasters with my mediums I start to agree. So what does the Inner Sphere bring you for serious fights then?
Flying vehicles. I shit you not. Bullet sponge flying fortresses. Guess they should’a used these in some of their wars, huh?
But I think for me, the worst offender here is the fact that it’s named Mechwarrior 5: Clans. Five. Okay, that should mean that it’s somehow related to the other Mechwarrior 5 games right? MW5 Mercenaries’ story talks about a protagonist whose father is revealed to have been a spy for ‘somebody’ that lives outside the Inner Sphere. It’s not Clan Wolf, they’ve got their own thing going. You play the whole campaign, nothing is revealed, but there’s a trailer for MW5: Clans. Surely they’re gonna answer all our questions about who this guy was, right?
…two guesses. Completely different game, same name. I just don’t get it.
On the different game, same version number thing: That’s a tradition that dates to the mid-90’s with the 3 games published under the title Mechwarrior 2.
31st Century Combat was the first, it featured two campaigns from both sides of the Wolf/Jade Falcon Refusal War. Ghost Bear’s Legacy is also post-Clan invasion but largely to do with the Draconis Combine. MW2 Mercenaries is set pre-invasion up through the Battle of Luthien.
Mechwarrior 4 was fairly similar; Vengeance was a relatively small story set on Kentares IV (and its moon) and is kind of a microcosm of the FedCom Civil War. Black Knight does continue the bad ending of Vengeance, and MW4: Mercenaries is more broadly about the FedCom Civil War; most missions are either Davion or Steiner aligned though other units and factions appear (including the Jade Falcons and the Capellans). Kentares IV isn’t so much as mentioned.
This is something I don’t think any of the Mechwarrior games ever really brought to life because yes the Clans had outright superior weapons and the Inner Sphere to my knowledge never won a toe-to-toe fight during the invasion. Name one time an inner sphere lance stood against a Clan star in a fair fight and won. The clans ultimately lost because it turns out blitzkrieg is a dumber thing to base a religion around than the phone company. And it’s really difficult to build an action cockpit simulator game around that as a primary gameplay mechanic.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Wolcott did just this and turned the tide. The Battle of Tukayyid in particular?
And yeah the rest of your post is good… I guess I’m still just kinda confused why Piranha doesn’t really use the canon narrative to drive their stories. It raises the stakes in each game, which is great for player engagement.
Wolcott comes the closest as the Kuritans did actually answer the batchall and bid the fight, they played by the clan’s rules. They also presented the Genyosha as green troops instead of the elite force they were, and they dug traps, hid explosives and hung strips of metal from the trees in the swamp they were to fight in. I see it as reaching a similar place that the Lyrans did at Twycross, both took significant planning ahead to take advantage of prevailing conditions that reduced some of the clans’ technical advantages, both involved setting traps, and both still resulted in a lengthy and brutal knock down drag out fight.
As for Tukayyid, the clans lost at Tukayyid through a failure of doctrine. With the exception of the Wolves, the clans thought they were fighting a trial of possession. Comstar thought they were fighting a siege. Comstar was right.