MechWarrior 5: Clans Review (Xbox Series X)

STAFF REVIEW of MechWarrior 5: Clans (Xbox Series X)

Tuesday, November 19, 2024.
by Brent Roberts

MechWarrior games have been around for years, and the premise has always been similar where you pilot your massive mechanical death machine, take out enemies, secure areas and then extract and do it all over again. However, this time, there is a new way to experience a MechWarrior game, and in MechWarrior 5: Clans from developer Piranha Games, you get the ability to command your squad from above. While this new aspect is set to inject a new method of gameplay into the MechWarrior games, does it help this game stand out, or will we be ejecting our efforts into other games and leaving this one to rust? Let's find out.

In MechWarrior 5: Clans, you're thrust into a highly convoluted tale that spans other clans throughout the galaxy in an attempt to gain power and control. You play the role of Jayden who is the lead mech pilot for the latest recruit squad for the clan Smoke Jaguars. Throughout this story you will be introduced to characters and families that weave one of the most complex and confusing storylines you will experience in any game. That's not to say that there aren't quality moments. In fact, this game does offer some twists to the plot throughout the story that will help you better understand your position throughout this whole ordeal.

The story does though do a great job with even undercutting your own beliefs, and there were several times when I found myself asking if I was technically on the "right" side of things as the story was depicting some events that left me wondering just if the Smoke Jaguar clan had people's best interest truly at heart. The characters as well are somewhat developed, and while your focus is on Jayden, you get to experience what it's like in command of others and how their experiences intertwine with the story. There is one character though, Perez. This individual was done to near perfection as someone you love to "hate", who also happens to be your superior. There are a lot of underdeveloped aspects throughout the story and that's a shame because while the developers want to get you into the story, it's almost as like they try too hard, and in the end you'll find yourself not caring that much about the story and just proceeding right into the mission.

The missions for the story progress through several planets and each planet offers different environments, but ultimately in the end boil down to navigate through this pathway to an open combat area, kill everything, and continue onwards. You'll be going through this with every mission except one where you have to actually defend a base from being destroyed. These missions also contain boss fights that involve your squad teaming up to tackle massive vehicle bosses such as gunships, orbital carriers and more. Even though the missions are the same rinse and repeat formula but in different skins, which doesn't necessarily make it a bad thing.

The characters and environments of this story are presented in a hodgepodge of great, good and then outright bad graphical elements and you can clearly tell where the focus of the team was. The cinematics and the character modeling are done incredibly well, and you can see amazing facial detailing throughout every character. Hairs, scars, the irises of the eyes, all of it is done in a manner that is what I would call a new benchmark for cinematic character modeling. It honestly was so good it caught me by surprise. The rest, however, doesn't live up to the same quality. The mech designs are what we would expect from a MechWarrior game, however when the mech is damaged, there is little that will show you until you have most of your arm blown off or in more severe cases, lose both arms and be forced to either fight with any torso weapons you may have equipped, or rely solely on your team to carry you through.

The mechs themselves are adequate but not anything like you would expect from this generation's console games, and are quite a disappointment, but nothing as bad as the environment. Yes, the planets are unique and the levels provide different types of terrain, but the graphics for the environment, even though they are destructible, are remarkably generic at best and at times border on classic PS1 or dare I even go way further back to Atari days. These environments are very large, and I can understand that to give the whole thing "scale" to the mechs, but my word are they mediocre at best. I would gladly take shorter missions if that would allow them to provide a better visual environment to play in.

That's not the worst of it though. The sound is also a tale of good, bad, and ugly. The good is the weapon effects by a mile. Turning up the volume when you're firing a massive autocannon that is launching slugs, or when you unload a gauss cannon into an opponent mech's chest, your ears are treated to some insane carnage. And it's a good thing that happens to be true because the bad is the soundtrack. There is nothing that stands out as memorable and could be easily replaced by your favorite Spotify playlist for more enjoyment. Finally, the worst of it all. If the character modeling was incredible, the voice acting is hands down, the extreme total opposite of that. Remember Perez I talked about earlier? This character's voice is one example of the "over-acted" performances you get throughout the game. If you want the best experience, keep sound effects and subtitles on, and turn the music and voices off, then load up your favorite tunes for the moment and crank the cannon fire and have at it.

While in the settings you'll also get a feel for the gameplay of MechWarrior 5: Clans. First, you'll have to choose a control method: Classic or Modernized. Basically, the difference is with Modernized, when you turn the mech left and right, instead of just turning the torso you turn the entire mech and rely on your Right Stick to do your aiming. These MechWarrior games have always prided themselves on packing tons of weaponry into these mechanical devices, and to control all of them you'll have to maintain your weapon groups.

A weapon group is basically the weapons that fire when a certain button is pressed. It's not all straightforward though. Right Trigger will fire weapon groups 1 and 3 while Left Trigger will fire weapon groups 2 and 4. Weapon Groups 5 and 6 are controlled by the Left Bumper and the Right Bumper is how you select the weapon groups, 3, 4 and 6. So let's say you have a cannon on slot 2 and a laser on slot 4. You would press LT to fire the cannon and RB + LT to fire the laser. What weapons you decide to put into what groups is totally up to you, however you cannot change what groups are fired no matter the controller layout you select. Should you go with a mech that has jump jets equipped you can use the A button to hold and activate your jets. There is very, and I mean very, little control once you're airborne, but should you be moving at a quick pace and hold them down, you'll be able to cover great distances.

Your D-Pad will also become your best friend in the field because not only can you press Right on the D-Pad and go into cockpit view, but you can also press Down to enter scanning mode to see if there are resources you can scan for to collect. On top of that, you can press Up to issue commands to your troops such as form on you; and if you have a target selected by clicking in the LS, you will be able to issue commands such as attacking the target. This will be essential for your success given that there are times when you're hit with between 6-10 mechs in a battle against you, and turning your 5 characters against ome target will help make short work of any foe including bosses. If you don't however, they will go off and start attacking foes on their own, so it's up to you to lead your team.

Now we start to get into something that was MechWarrior 5: Clan's new feature and that is the new Battle Grid mode (hitting the Back button). When you do this you will get a map view from the top down of the level, and you'll be able to see targets and areas/items of interest. Here you will have several commands to navigate your team. Commands such as LB + X will add to queue, and RB + X removing from queue will honestly be rarely used. Pressing in the LS will toggle your team to hold their fire while pressing the RS will designate them to form back on you. You can use your D-Pad in this situation to select individual pilots in your team or press A to select them all and B to deselect them.

There are a couple major downfalls for this. First, you have to keep your troops relatively within line of sight so you can't just lead your team from the insertion point and let them do all the killing. This means your movement is very limited in this mode and you'll find yourself sending them out, and then playing catch up because while in this mode your character cannot move at all. This is the biggest oversight within the game and sadly it comes to their new innovation. So, you'll send your troops out, then follow behind, then again send your troops out, and then follow behind once again.

While the story is going to be advanced through Mission Central, there are other aspects of this game that offer MechWarrior 5: Clans a lot of depth, and that is with the mechs themselves and the maintenance and research behind them. Let's start with the Facilities. The first thing you'll come to is the Mech Bay. It's here you can assign, modify, and repair mechs under your command. This area has its own sort of ecosystem all in itself. Pressing X will put you into repair mode where you can assign technicians to fix your mech and increase the tech's efficiency. This can all be enhanced through the expenditure of the merit points you get when your character levels up to the max of 15. The more techs and efficient they are, the more damage they can repair in-between missions. By pressing the Start menu, you can also customize your technicians to focus on active mechs before working on stored mechs.

Within the Mech Bay you can also press the Y button to edit the camo, loadout (which can also be accessed by hitting the back button while in the Mech Bay), weapon groups, and view the mech info. When you head into the loadout this is where you'll be spoilt for choice when it comes to customization options and toys of destruction. When you're into your loadout you'll see that the various areas are broken down for you and they are: Right Leg, Left Leg, Right Torso, Left Torso, Center Torso, Right Arm, Left Arm and the Head. Based off your Omnipod for the mech, you can designate what type of weapons you'll be using from ballistic to energy to missiles. Certain Omnipods will allow you to swap energy weapons for ballistics and so on. Each weapon has its good and bad points.

For example, ballistic weapons will not generate a lot of heat but require your mech to carry ammo with it to load into the weapon. Should you run out of ammo then you're up the creek. The positive though is that since there is very little heat generated, the amount the weapon can fire consecutively is extremely high. Energy weapons will never run out of ammo so you never will have to carry ammo for them, however, they will generate quite a lot of heat and if your mech is overheated then you will lose the ability to use your weapons, target enemies, and more.

Should you want to change your Omnipod and go with a different loadout option, then you'll need to spend Mech XP which you gain by using the mech chassis in missions and completing various objectives such as get a certain amount of kills while using it or destroying certain number of vehicles etc. I found that a great way to quickly generate a ton of Mech XP is to literally equip everyone in your squad into the same mech.

Going into these slots in the loadout allows you to customize the build and offers a ton of options from firepower to sensors to heat reduction and more. You have to level up and unlock more options, but this allows you to customize every facet of your mech and truly make it how you would want to play. Light Run-and-Gun to heavy tanks with enough firepower to split a planet in half.

Next to the facilities is your Science Lab. In here you would explore new research upgrades to your weapons, equipment and chassis for your mechs. To do this you task scientists into researching upgrades for the mechs. Essentially the same methods you already experienced in the Mech Bay, but now all 'sciency'. When each mission is over, you'll tell your salvage crew to what to pick up from the fight. These items then become your foundation for starting up your research. Once you start your research, it'll go on while you move throughout other missions, and each mission allows for so much amount of research to be completed. To expedite this process, you can hire more scientists, upgrade your lab, or both. If you're in need of more resources, you can upgrade your salvage operations and take more elements.

These research upgrades cost varying amounts of either mech, weapon, equipment components, or a mixture of them. Some of these upgrades can range from cooldowns, damage improvement, and effect enhancements, to duration, speed, range and more. You'll see on the right-hand side your max salvage claim per mission (which you can upgrade), how many scientists you have, their amount of produced research per cycle and how many cycles your next mission will bring. Using this method, you can start to plan ahead and establish some goals that best fit your play style early on.

All of this research is broken down into three menus: Active Research which is what you currently have researching, Available Research so you can select what you wish to upgrade, and Completed Research where you can see what research has been finished and applied to your mechs. One tip to point out, the research is very particular. So for example, a weapon upgrade could be so specific that it only apply for gauss rifles, as opposed to something as generic as heat cooling. I personally upgraded my salvage operations first to give me the resources I needed to do the upgrades and then from there I would upgrade the Science Lab all the way so that whatever scientists I hired on were brought into a top tier lab. Ultimately at the end of the day, a fully maxed out lab will net you 600 components to salvage at the end of the missions, and with 25 scientists in a maxed-out lab you'll get 500 research per cycle and a minimum of 2,500 research per mission.

The chassis research is where the chassis that you select to send into the mission. These chassis then will earn Mech XP which is basically the currency that you will use to spend on upgrading the mech itself, from the chassis to research Omnipods and more, Mech XP is going to be the lifeline of your upgrade system. Once you use your Mech XP to upgrade your chassis, every time you use that chassis in the mission it will automatically have that upgrade permanently attached. Starting out you will have a very limited selection but as you unlock new chassis, they will also be eligible for upgrades with Mech XP. These upgrades are things such as top speed, acceleration, turning, torso angle and more, and consist of 5 levels of upgradability.

The last stop in the facilities is the marketplace. When you're here you can select from mechs, weapons, and equipment. Your budget is tracked using kerenskies which is the in-game currency collected at the end of each mission. In the Battlemech menu you can purchase unlocked mech chassis, sell mechs that you no longer use, or unlock new ones using the merit points mentioned earlier in the upgrading of your technicians in the Mech Bay or your scientists in your Science Lab. Each time you level up, not only will you get merit points, but you'll also unlock a new mech to purchase if you want to. These mechs are broken down into several groups: Light, Medium, Heavy, and Assault, and each one of them carry their own loadouts and stats so you can decide what mech in what class works out best for your play style. The weapons and equipment sections of the marketplace are very straightforward and allows you to purchase and sell all kinds of weaponry and secondary equipment that you may need. From particle cannons to laser targeting systems, heat sinks and more, these two options are where you'll spend your currency to really outfit your mechs.

Next up we have the Barracks, and this is where you will manage mech warriors in your star (group). As you go through missions you will unlock pilot XP and it's this they earn from missions that can be spent to increase their piloting skills. Upon reaching certain skill levels, the warriors will be able to unlock affinities which further increases their skill when piloting mechs by offering stackable XP boosts. So, you can have one affinity for let's say a Heavy Mech class that grants you a 1.1 XP boost, and you can combine that with a dedicated Heavy Mech chassis such as the Timberwolf that offers a 1.2 XP boost for a total of 2.3. You'll rapidly find that upgrading these abilities is VERY expensive, so use your points wisely. Within the Barracks you can also access a simpod to virtually replay past missions as well as other training.

MechWarrior 5: Clans is also cross platform so you can play co-op with friends since you have a group of 5 total. Joining up is relatively cumbersome and not very streamlined, but once connected each member can go into their own mech and customize it how they want. It should be noted that the guests use the "host's" resources such as merit points and in game currency, so make sure you discuss what is actually needed before just spending wildly. Once loaded, the group will have full autonomy to go where they want within the level and fight whatever targets they wish. When they leave, however, all their progress remains with your pilots that are currently in your star.

MechWarrior 5: Clans is a solid mech game that does have a lot of drawbacks. Yes, the story isn't the best, and yes the graphics outside of the cinematic characters leave a lot to be desired, and the sound outside of the weaponry should all be removed... But despite all of that going against it, I have to say that MechWarrior 5: Clans is a fairly enjoyable experience if you're into the genre. While priced now at $49.99, I can say that you should save your money and pick this up when it's on sale. There is a lot of room for growth with this game, and hopefully with some upgrades of its own and some fine tuning, this can become a truly sensational mech experience.

**MechWarrior 5: Clans was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Suggestions:
Simplify and improve the story and character development. Improve the graphics of the mechs and levels along with the musical score and the voice acting.

Overall: 7.5 / 10
Gameplay: 8.0 / 10
Visuals: 7.5 / 10
Sound: 7.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of MechWarrior 5: Clans (Xbox Series X)

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