I want to recommend this.
The story is fun, and the clans are wonderfully naieve.

Ive played a lot of MW5: Mercs, and I have to say a lot of the features provided by mods (which are utterly essential for Mercs) are implemented here in a plausibly deniable way, which improves the game dramatically.
Scanning is an inventive mechanic, and they thankfully make use of features sadly neglected in Mercs (like repair bays).
However...

Firstly missions are utterly linear, you are told where to walk, and enemies are presented to you in an order you are supposed to kill them in, there is nowhere to explore, no freedom to plan.
Mobs just dont spawn until youre close enough, rendering long range combat largely irrelevant.
Mech progression is linear also, so you get mechs in the order you are given them so designing your star (team) is pretty dire: long range is pointless and you have only specific mechs to choose from in the weight range, even the pilot skills are fixed.

But the most egregious of flaws here is how unstable the game is, trying to play this with a friend and getting them connected is a constant chore, they frequently get kicked entering missions, and a couple of times we've had to load earlier saves to get around something unknown causing crashes to desktop. My system is new this year, 5090 and other specs to match, the flaws here are not with my system.

Then we go onto the bugs and flaws carried over from Mercs: Only player 1's (me) jumpjets work properly, other players sometimes loose the ability to lock on with missiles when entering missions, and whilst I realise this is not a new engine, and doesnt need to be, correcting mistakes like these should have been part of development or at least come before DLC.

I'm sad I cant play this through to completion, but the irritations are just too numerous when it works at all, just having to reload from saves hours old to get around crashes is enough to put me off, but lack of respect for multiplayer functionality and the utterly linear nature of this game, devoid of any strategy makes me want to go back and just play Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries with mods, because its just better, and I dont have to find work arounds for bugs that the modding community have fixed and/or didnt exist in the first place.

MechWarrior 5: Clans looks and sounds great, but once you get past the presentation the game has some serious problems that hold it back. Graphically it’s a solid update for the series and the sound design is excellent. On max settings it runs fine on my system (RTX 5060 Ti) and doesn’t even fully utilize the hardware. However, despite that headroom I still see occasional sluggishness and latency, suggesting the game isn’t well optimized.

The biggest issue is the AI. Enemy AI is extremely basic and often feels unintelligent. Instead of improving the AI, the developers seem to compensate by throwing large numbers of enemies at you. Missions frequently turn into a slog where you’re simply fighting waves of opponents rather than engaging in tactical mech combat. It starts to feel more like a horde shooter than a BattleTech game.

Your squadmates aren’t much better. The AI controlling your star is inconsistent and often frustrating. Commands don’t always work as expected, and your teammates frequently walk directly into your line of fire. They also miss shots constantly and struggle to finish enemies effectively. At times it feels like you’re fighting both the enemy and your own squad’s poor behavior.

Another frustration is the lack of meaningful control over your pilots. You can’t really shape their skill progression or playstyle. Each pilot essentially comes pre-assigned with certain strengths (ECM, lasers, missiles, etc.), and you’re forced to work around that rather than build a squad the way you want.

Mission design is also very linear compared to MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. Maps often funnel you through specific objectives with little freedom. Some mechanics feel unnecessarily restrictive as well. For example, scanning objectives prevent you from using weapons at the same time, which feels artificial and breaks immersion.

Difficulty balancing is another problem. Even on normal difficulty the game often overwhelms you with enemies, making it difficult to keep squadmates alive. Since the game only saves between missions or after cutscenes, a failure can mean replaying long sections from the start, which becomes frustrating quickly.

The story doesn’t help much either. The writing is weak and predictable, and the characters telegraph plot points well before they happen. The campaign becomes more about pushing through combat encounters than being invested in the narrative.

There are also stability issues. I’ve experienced random crashes, and the limited save system makes those crashes even more frustrating when progress is lost.

Finally, the DLC pricing feels steep at around $20 each, especially given the current state of the base game.

In short:
MechWarrior 5: Clans has strong visuals and sound, but weak AI, frustrating squad control, poor mission design, and technical issues make it hard to recommend.

If you’re a die-hard BattleTech or MechWarrior fan, you might still want to try it on a deep sale (under $20). Otherwise, you’re probably better off sticking with MechWarrior Online or other entries in the franchise.

Extremely buggy, and has not been fixed 18 months after launch. Probably never will.

Too bad, as the COOP game mode is very good!

- Game crashes a lot
- Guests get disconnected randomly on map start
- Generic connectivity issues between players; impossible to send/receive game invites