BattleTech

It’s quite funny to hear a revered game critic accuse the industry of collective amnesia and in the same breath pour scorn on nostalgia driven crowdfunding campaigns. It’s doubly amusing when said critic gushes over his own set of old classics and bemoans today’s preponderance to treating its audience with absurd levels of condescension. One suspects that without this longing for the triumphs of the past we’d be seeing more of X-Com Declassified and that wretched Syndicate shooter.

Great ideas tend not to go out of date, and today’s technological advances now allow for these ideas to find a greater expression and have their potential further realised. Big publishers have shown little inclination in this ambition so it falls on others to carry the torch, invariably independent developers who often struggle to get the necessary funding on their own.

The benefits however are self-evident; The Banner Saga, Darkest Dungeon, Pillars of Eternity and of course Shadowrun Returns are but a few examples of titles that would otherwise struggle to get to market. Battletech is but another to add to the list; bringing cerebral turn based gameplay to the world of interstellar mechanised warfare.

Battletech places you in a humanity long divorced from its ancestral home and now scattered among the stars within various factions, many warring for dominance over systems and resources. In one such corner of the galaxy rebellion has been ignited and the deposed now turn to your band of down and out mercenaries to help turn the tide.

There’s pedigree in the writing as seen with the excellent Shadowrun Returns trilogy so it’s slightly disappointing to see something of a downturn in quality here. It’s not awful, far from it in fact, but the dialogue feels a little too perfunctory given what the developer is capable of. None of the cast lingers long in the memory and they don’t really have the depth of personality needed to create an emotional connection. The love, as it were, is reserved for the game’s iron giants.

That said, a word of advice; if you find yourself without a budget to create any cut-scenes for your game then its time to get your artists out of their cages and put them to work. Battletech opens with the perfect example of how you can show off events with flair without crippling your finances. With only some rudimentary animations set to music the setup is established nicely with nary a word spoken. It’s an elegant approach and establishes something of theme for smarts and fiscal prudence, both of which being very much the name of the game here.

Despite the suggestion of big robot action, which it most certainly has, the actual key to success lies in your ability to manage the running of your mercenary company. Managing operating costs, repairs, refits, pilot salaries etc. you can almost smell the middle aged, fiscally responsible air of the Harebrained Schemes office as you go about your intergalactic bookkeeping. Each month heralds a new financial report and unless you’re in the black it’s game over.

Even in the heat of combat there is little time or patience afforded to those only interested in mindless heavy metal mayhem. Careful tactical thinking and forward planning are the demands for success where sloppy play is swiftly punished in a firestorm of lasers and lead. You only have control of 4 mechs at any given time and with the number of enemies often present it is almost always advisable to take the time to assess your options over simply charging in.

The level of depth is another factor in keeping the hyperactive riffraff away. Choices have to be made about which pilot to take, which mech they will pilot, how each mech is outfitted in which there are a dizzying number of potential permutations. Battles require you to take account of the planet’s atmosphere on your mechs, the terrain, the effective range of your weapons, sight lines, ammo, overheating. It’s a gloriously nerdy and agreeably unapologetic arrangement; more complex than X-Com but not quite the psychotic levels of minutiae found in Paradox’s more convoluted grand strategies.

Then again the mech customisation is almost fetishistic in its detail. Every design has a tonnage level which represents its weight, size and capacity to be fitted with armour, weapons and equipment. The rub is that for every giant laser you want to add a sacrifice has to be made in another area. Jump jets, heat sink modules all take up space, as does ammunition for your missiles so the balance between these elements is crucial to ensure you’re effective in combat. Armour is also fitted on the front and back so consideration has to be made about that too, for instance a sniper build likely has little use for rear armour given its position on the battlefield, whereas the more melee focused designs will most assuredly need that extra protection, but again, at what cost?

It makes for an interesting dilemma and forces you to think hard about what sort of team you want and what best suits the mission ahead. Certain missions require speed whilst others favour pure firepower and with each refit needing money and time to implement a varied arsenal is ideal but potential expensive to operate. Missions come in the form of contracts where you negotiate the rewards to favour either money, salvage such as mech parts and weapons, or reputation with the client faction. Taking on contracts often require you use up time travelling to the relevant system and each has its own difficulty rating based on the level of tonnage to be arrayed against you.

Once deployed gameplay shifts into a very familiar turned based system; while out of combat you are free to move until such time as contact is made with the enemy, at which point things shift into an initiative system whereby those units with the higher values move first. It’s a very recognisable system but where it splits off from some of its contemporaries is in the finer details of how damage is dealt and received.

Mechs are split into parts and each has its own armour and structure value, once the structure value is brought to zero the related part is destroyed. So be it a leg the mech will suffer risk of a knockdown, be it an arm they could lose weapon functionality. Once you add in the ability to make precision shots on specific areas you start to see the gameplay possibilities and the options available in dealing with specific threats.

What’s important though is that it works, and creates no small amount of tension as there’s no way to repair mid-mission. Every piece of armour is precious and makes victory all the more satisfying because of it. Then there are the simple joys of watching missiles slamming into enemies, lasers amputating arms and the always entertaining fist in the face. The ideas here are smart, well implemented and present a pretty robust test of one’s tactical prowess.

I had mentioned before about budgets and it's apparent that Battletech doesn’t quite have the resources it needs to make the most of the great design. Maps are not the most detailed or varied but it’s the mech animations and framerate that give the experience a slightly janky feel. We are talking about massive unwieldy robots sure but the jerky stops and starts can be jarring, especially when viewed through the game’s hit and miss cinematic camera. It doesn’t do anything to ruin the experience but rather it’s frustrating when everything else is so good. The menus likewise have this slightly amateurish quality that feels at odds with the quality of the gameplay. It is disappointing perhaps for it to lack quality visuals, but it’s gratifying to see a developer prioritise in the right areas.

Other reservations are the repetitive nature of the non-story missions and the time needed to grind up an effective team of pilots and mechs. This however is a symptom of what I imagine is the most divisive aspect of the game; the difficulty. As mentioned before there is a heavy emphasis on tactics but as the game is prone to throwing new mission objectives when you are completely unprepared for them it can feel unfair at times. I am certainly not the greatest admirer of the mission design that sets you a task then a new one once that’s done. Often these catch you off guard and out of position (which had me reaching for the load game button), yet it’s only a surprise once, and in practical terms merely serves to waste my time rather than supply a dynamic dimension to events, which I’m sure is the intention.

There are custom settings to alleviate this, such as greater rewards and fewer enemies in non-story missions but it’s only a partial mitigation. The key here is simply paying attention to all the different aspects of gameplay and mastering the intricacies of combat. Battletech is loath to pandering, which whilst certainly admirable in the current climate, has its consequences.

The whole experience therefore is very much akin to its mechanised menagerie; complex, not particularly attractive but effective where it counts. There is undoubted talent at work here and boundless potential for an expanded and refined sequel. Whether one comes or not Battletech remains a worthwhile achievement in its own right, placing depth and challenge before empty spectacle.