Early last week, gaming outlets around the world published their reviews of MechWarrior 5: Clansand while Polygon wasn't among them, it's not for lack of trying. Over the past few months I've run into some hardware difficulties thanks to my bruised and battered gaming laptop. Not unexpected, of course, but deeply inconvenient when working to a deadline. But that's how sausages are made on this side of the Internet, and these things happen.
For that reason, I have withheld my sharpest criticism of the game since its release. For example, I can't determine if the horrible movement of the character's lips and teeth while chewing his lines of dialogue is my problem or a developer's. The same goes for the screen tearing, low frame rate, and overall poor performance of the game on my personal device before release. As things stand now, things are going much better for me, although the cutscenes often lag far behind the audio in cutscenes. But in terms of gameplay, it seems that the day one patch fixed the most glaring issues I had with the client.
And yet, some of it still seems strange to me, almost as strange as the first time I mentioned it back in 2020 with the release of MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries…and again with its DLC. Specifically, the game's MechWarriors AI are really bad at being MechWarriors.
In my experience, the allied AI – that is, the other members of your Star Clan of five that you fight from the beginning of the game – are practically useless when the virtual shit hits the fanatic. I've grown tired of watching them enter my line of fire, only to receive a stray shot from a Gauss rifle. Occasionally, the AI character driving my missile boat will run screaming into close combat with a flamethrower before firing a single long-range salvo. When things really start, it seems more like a group of heavily armed kids playing post-apocalyptic soccer than a post-human group of genetically modified super soldiers. They continue to eject from their badly damaged mechs, escaping into orbit while condemning me to execute the same missions over and over again. There's not even a way to save your progress mid-mission, which leaves brute force saves completely off the table.
So, even on the game's lowest difficulty settings, I still find myself restarting and running missions two, three, four times, or more before quitting in irritation. So last week I called up some friends, set them up to download the game for free through their Xbox Game Pass subscriptions, and headed out with a team of three real humans to tackle the game's “normal” difficulty.
What followed was an hour of absolutely stunning action.
What followed was an hour of absolutely stunning action. We defeated the enemy, crushed every resistance that came our way, and looked good doing it. But most importantly, I found that the game began to tell a much more rewarding and action-packed story, a story that I could finally take the time to enjoy.
Until that moment in MechWarrior 5: Clansalmost all of my time had been spent micromanaging my AI teammates, pressing the shoot button on my enemy, and hoping for the best. This is because the game's tactical command system is extremely limited. The game doesn't offer you a way to change your ally's tactical stance between offensive or defensive, for example. It also doesn't allow you to dictate which weapons they use to engage the enemy in a given situation, or at what distances they use them, a key feature of both BattleTech and MechWarrior since their birth on the tabletop in the 1980s. Instead, players only have a limited set of options: you can tell your allies where to stand and you can tell them to shoot or not to shoot at your target. That's all.
But last night was different. From inside her direct-fire robot, Polygon's Alice Jovanée was able to fire shots with pinpoint accuracy. When we needed her to disable the most devastating enemy weapons at range, she did so expertly. Then, once his own primary weapons system was disabled by enemy fire, he was able to change his tactics on the fly by closing in with a devastating battery of ballistic machine guns. Meanwhile, another friend and I attacked the enemy's legs, all while avoiding hitting Alice with friendly fire thanks to careful communication.
Image: Piranha Games
Later, after my main weapon went offline, that same friend was able to come to my aid in melee, taking down an enemy robot with a shoulder blow like a 40-ton linebacker.
The game not only became easier, but it also became more cinematic. Without the stupid confusion of childish AI obstructing the foreground, I could finally see the well-designed terrain in the background. Freed from the constant terror of watching my team get eaten to pieces, I was able to observe the tactics the enemy AI was using to continue the fight. With a little breathing room, I was finally able to appreciate just how grand the scope and scale of MechWarrior 5: Clans it really is. It's leaps and bounds better than MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries.
However, this is not a perfect multiplayer game, far from it. For one thing, there's no built-in voice chat, so you're on your own for that. You'll need to use a Nintendo Switch-style friend code for cross-platform play. Additionally, only the host can advance the story of their own copy of the game. Everyone else just agrees.
But I assure you that that trip will be much more fun with a couple of humans by your side. Whether or not that important caveat is worth the $49.99 asking price is up to you, but if you have an Xbox Game Pass subscription, here's a multiplayer experience not to be missed.
MechWarrior 5: Clans It was released on October 16 for PC, as well as Xbox and PlayStation consoles. The 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, although Vox Media may earn commissions on products purchased through affiliate links. Additional information about Polygon's ethics policy can be found here.