Recent reviews by Mode_

I've not played a game that had me on the edge of my seat and filled with dread like this game had me.

Very enjoyable game!

I don't think I've felt so conflicted about a game before. I grew up playing Mechwarrior 4: Vengence and Mercenaries and never enjoyed Mechwarrior Online.

The good:
The base gameplay, blowing stuff up in while piloting a big stompy mech, is _very_ fun.

The bad:
A lot of game design decisions leave me baffled:

• mission tonnage limits,
  
• repetitive and useless traveling animations,
  
• obtrusive subtitles and overly talkative allies and enemies,
  
• no assisted zoom mechanic,
  
• the arm-aim breaks away from the torso-aim at any speed,
  
• poor salvage mechanics,
  
• bad path-finding algorithms for AI in battles as well as in the starmap,
  
• bad AI (enemy mechs only YOLO charge or stand around in the open, friendly mechs hardly shoot or miss most of the time),
  
• exceedingly limited information gathering range in the starmap,
  
• ridiculous amounts of screen-shake from nearby orbital cannons firing,
  
• poor performance (low fps and responsiveness)

Like MWO but not as badly, the mechs feels like they are skating around the environment.
The movement animations often don't match the mech speed.
The stomp-speed in the cockpit does not match the stomp-speed in third-person.
The voice acting in the base game is wanting, but good in the DLCs.
The writing in the base game is atrocious.

• The story feels like an initial draft.
  
• There is no sense of urgency or danger when friendlies and enemies talk while trying to kill each other.
  
• Ridiculous and annoying dialogue.

The writing and sound design are significantly worse than the 2017 gameplay preview.
Several of the mission environments look horrible, most of them from DLCs.

Overall, I recommend the game, as the base gameplay is very fun, but there are a lot of little things that detract from the experience for me. It is nice, however, that the game has mod support as almost all of the baffling design decisions can be fixed with mods. I'd suggest picking it up on sale if you're at all interested in the genre or setting.

Great game to pop open on occasion with friends. It has plenty to unlock and do, and loses the grind-y feel after getting the initial promotions.

Very compelling characters and stories, save for the occasional awkward bits pushing you to finish the main story. Highly recommended, especially if you come in with reasonable expectations.