There are multiple layers in a clans battle. There's your actual movement, which you can get used to, with your legs moving in their own path as you rotate your torso. There's your squad and how it's deployed, which takes up a lot of your background thought cycles. And there's your mech, its heating levels, its armor status, its speed, and everything else you configure during customization.
Your enemies and your co-pilots are, well, pretty stupid. There's a good variety in what you face and what you need to do, but no one other than you on the field seems to have much of a sense of how verticality works or what's most important on the field at the moment. Once you accept that your squadmates are powerful fools, you'll learn to let go of your own mech a bit and spend more time pushing them around or jumping into their cockpits and taking control for a while.
The nature of the mechanical combat in these games didn't convince me, after half a dozen missions. On some level, it's interesting to juggle multiple weapons, position yourself with limited movement, and direct your teammates. I'm going slow and it feels like hard work, but I could go faster if I'd made a different decision during outfitting. I'd have to have someone else do the heavy lifting.
But it's also a crunchy simulation game, simulating machinery that doesn't actually exist. Everything that stands between you and your sense of combat capability is a choice made by the developers.
Guilt wick
Based on my conversations over time MechWarrior fans and reading a lot of positive reviews to find out if there is something wrong with me, I think MechWarrior 5: Clans It's a very juicy offering for mecha fans who have been hungry for something new (and especially something set in this Clans comeback period) for quite some time. I'm just not fascinated as a newcomer, and now I'm thinking about something like Armored Core VI It would be more my speed if I'm looking for rocking robots or possibly socks. I also didn't participate in the multiplayer at all, so my standard dismissal of the combatant AI would only half-apply there.
However, please tell me and the others how this game looks or plays for you. I was not bioengineered to MechWarrior (I mean, just look at how many contractions I use), but I can still appreciate that it looks pretty good for those that fit better in the chassis.