Played around 5h. Steam reviews complain about bugs, but surprisingly I didn't encounter any, except one, where starting up the game didn't connect to Paradox account and the save files wouldn't show. Worked after game restart, but doesn't bode well.
Overall presentation is lacking. Music is nice, although monotonous, with tracks sounding overly stretched. Visuals are mediocre at best, and I have them all maxed out. UI tries to look slick, but ergonomically fails with stupidities like colours picked in sliders, and typically for Paradox games, various information bits are squeezed all over the place, varying from side tabs to tooltips. Contextual dialogue tooltips from Tyranny(?) are also here. 3d graphics, aside mechs, lack polish and detail, to the point that building models have textures looking like Front Mission 4 back in 2003. Mechs are slightly better, although game seems to be lacking any antialiasing whatsoever, so edges on everything are rough and pixelated @1080p. Colour palette is oversaturated, but I’ll try to pimp it up with ReShade later.
Character creation has some background fluff options, and it actually popped up in a dialogue, but didn't seem influential. Portraits are somewhat customizable, and I didn't find them overly ugly as some people claim, but that's because they're in line with generally lacklustre graphics. You can pick your pronoun, but it seems pointless simply allowing the choice of male or female portrait.
Character development consists of 4 skills valued 1-10. Most individual values provide minor passive bonus like +2,5% accuracy per point, levels 5 & 8 provide predefined trait, eg. Gunnery 5 gives Multi-Target. Successive levels cost more XP. Incredibly shallow, and probably the most disappointing part of the game for me.
Combat mechanics seem solid, but there are some issues. Every turn consists of 5 initiative phases, with said initiative affected by vehicle tonnage, pilot skills and status effects. Within a phase all factions take alternating turns, where any vehicle with given initiative can be chosen to move or wait to next phase. Unit move is pretty much 2AP, meaning move/jump + shoot or sprint. Melee combat is initiated through movement not attack, forcing it to take place from the nearest hex. Damage is directional and applied to specific mech parts. Buildings are destructible, forests provide cover, water reduces heat, and specific battlefields provide various modifiers like heat sink effectiveness. There’s a pilot morale factor, but it’s mostly used in a weird way – as a point pool for special abilities.
Combat presentation is murky and lacks some basic functionalities like turning the camera around with mouse buttons, cancelling move order before rotation is chosen in a convenient way, or closing unit information panels. Range feedback is non-existent aside from simple line of fire marker – there are no weapon overlays for player mechs, let alone enemy units.
Combat flow is extremely sluggish. Similarly to the last Space Hulk remake, every action is awfully slow while it plays it’s animation at a glacial pace, and there is no way to change the speed nor cancel it. Action camera pops up from time to time trying to alleviate the issue somewhat, and it’s frequency can be tweaked, but it doesn’t really help much.
Mech customization is mostly satisfactory. Aside from the stupid fact, that mech upkeep is independent of its tonnage, everything costs time and/or money, even adding and removing parts. That fact, while reasonable, also makes management somewhat cumbersome, because parts can’t just be stripped off all units and then reshuffled freely. Parts can be salvaged or bought and store availability depends on star system. Component placement on mechs is limited by tonnage, slots and pylon types. Engines can’t be changed (I think).
With the little time I played, the plot, while generic (blah blah betrayal) has been entertaining so far, and interestingly enough, the first “opponent” are the international banks, to whom the player company owes its debts. I didn’t feel like SJW agenda is being pushed upon me in dialogue, although Magistracy of Canopus seems to be mentioned more often than it deserves.
