Mechwarrior 5: Clans review

pcgamer.com:

MechWarrior is back and going harder than ever with a completely standalone game confusingly titled MechWarrior 5: Clans, some five years after MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. Clans is a bold game that improves on the classic sim-lite action of MechWarrior by adding a more modern, story-driven framing—which succeeds at the cost of flexibility.

What is it? A new standalone game in the long-running stompy mech combat simulator
Expect to pay N/A
Developer Piranha Games Inc.
Publisher Piranha Games Inc.
Reviewed on Radeon RX 6800 XT, Ryzen 9 5900, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Unverified
Link: Official site

Clans' narrative-focused campaign lets you tweak and customize your assortment of mechs between missions which focus on skirmishes between your Star, or squad of five mechs, and the many, many enemies—mech and tank and aerospace—that you'll make along the way. You can bring up to four friends along on the linear campaign (for a total of five in co-op) as you seek to conquer human civilization—the massive and numerous neo-feudal Inner Sphere states—as the militaristic Clans, a warrior-ruled caste society that see themselves as the true inheritors of human history and the Inner Sphere states as tyrannical oppressors.

MechWarrior games have divided genre loyalties: They're shooting-first action games, and at the same time they're a simulator of a thing that doesn't exist. Clans walks this line pretty well, focusing on providing both in-depth classic simulator choices as well as streamlined modern options for controls and mech customization perfect for new learners. It even retains the kind of config files and precise tweaks that HOTAS-gripping mech jockeys like me love. Either way the sim heart still constrains and shapes the action, trying to be an honest representation of piloting a war machine weighing dozens of tons in the 31st century—a sci-fi setting that has 40 years of games and fiction behind it.

That setting matters more than before. MechWarrior 5: Clans does something