MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is a thrilling return to the BattleTech universe that delivers on its promise of mech combat and customization. I had an absolute blast playing through the game, sinking around 100 hours into the base game and its DLC, and coming out highly satisfied with the overall experience. However, as much as I enjoyed my time, there are some aspects of the game that could have been improved.

One of the game’s standout features is its mission length, with most missions clocking in at a satisfying 10-15 minutes. This pacing kept the action engaging and approachable, making it easy to dive in for quick sessions or spend hours chaining missions together. The customization system is another major highlight—being able to tweak and fine-tune your mechs to create devastating peak builds is immensely rewarding. Few things feel as satisfying as shredding enemies with a perfectly optimized mech, landing an alpha strike that instantly turns a target into slag.

The core combat experience is fantastic. The mix of destruction, strategy, and weighty mech movement hits all the right notes. It feels great to command a lance of mechs, watching your squad execute orders while tearing through enemies. The diversity in weapon systems and mech designs is a treat for fans of the BattleTech universe, though balance issues mean that some weapons and mechs significantly outshine others. This asymmetry, while occasionally frustrating, feels true to the lore of BattleTech.

Despite my enjoyment, procedural generation of missions occasionally led to frustrating experiences. Huge maps with objectives spaced far apart—or worse, long stretches of empty terrain—could drag down the pacing. The worst offenders were arena missions, where dual targets sometimes spawned over 3,000 meters apart, and the AI wouldn’t engage until you were within 400 meters. This meant long periods of just traveling from point A to point B, which felt like wasted time in an otherwise tightly paced game.

While the story was engaging, it didn’t quite reach its potential. The narrative provided a solid backbone for the gameplay, but a bit more depth, character development, and world-building would have elevated it further. It's not bad, but it leaves you wishing for more.

Despite its shortcomings, MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries is a fantastic experience for fans of mech combat and customization. The exhilarating combat, rewarding customization system, and solid mission design (most of the time) kept me hooked for 100 hours of gameplay. The balance issues in weapon systems and mechs, along with the occasional slog in procedural mission design, are small blemishes on an otherwise stellar game.

If you’re a fan of the BattleTech universe or mech combat in general, this game is absolutely worth your time.

9/10 I highly recommend
10/10 if you are an arcade military simulation sandbox fan...

This games requires 3 DLCs and 30+ mods to have decent AI, graphics and interesting content.

Even though, you need to spend many hours to understand how to customise your mechs and work around the games limitations.

I understand why people like this game, but personally I don't want to waste so much time in learning the mechanisms for what is in the end slow paced FPS.

just like HBS battletech, goes from good to amazin with mods

Classic Mechwarrior gameplay with a fun open universe twist. Build up your lance, run a mercenary company and theres a storyline you can follow too if you desire.

Really enjoyed playing this game, just built a new PC and loading to run it again to see if I enjoy it even more....

Great game for those who like MechWarrior and also the freedom to travel the galaxy and make their own lance. Mods are plentiful and replay is amazing as every playthrough can be completely different. I prefer this game over clans for the career mode alone. The fact friends and I can play multiple different "campaigns" through career mode and they are all differend makes replay so rewarding. Worth every $.

Much more true to BattleTech than MWO, but the game could use a little more work, as always! The original campaign is very immersing, though it does take a little longer in the *BattleTech Timeline* than it should. The devs probably thought the average player would complete this more quickly than what is actually possible, but it was great nonetheless. I've heard rumors that there isn't enough content, but so far I am satisfied, and will be purchasing the DLCs soon, so I guess I will find out if those rumors are true.

Apologies in advanced. I’m going to assume you know a bit about the BattleTech/MechWarrior IP so I’ll be using a lot of terms that aren’t exactly new player friendly.

I’m no filthy clanner (not yet anyway, I haven’t had time to play MW5:Clans) but what MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries offers is fun. I have been a recent convert of the MechWarrior/BattleTech games over the years. A couple of years ago I got into the HBS BattleTech game (great if you want something slower and more tactical) and more recently had given Mechwarrior a go. I’ve been hooked since. I’ve even found a few people who play the tabletop game… okay enough nerd ♥♥♥♥. Is MechWarrior 5 worth the purchase?

TLDR is YES. Great if you want to scratch that big fighting robots itch.

The long review of an answer is below:
Now, I don’t want to start the game with singing nonstop praises. I want to let you know what I personally did not enjoy as much. If you read the reviews on Steam, it boils down to a number of problems:
- Missions & Maps are repetitive and LIMITED (absolute lack of variety in the base game outside of the campaign). You’ll be fighting in the same boxy different colored terrain throughout the game. It really sucks.
- AI Companions are BRAIN Dead. Don’t rely on your allies being help. They’ll often wreck your mechs OR do absolutely nothing when you engage enemy lances, leaving you to soak up the hits and limp back to evac while they’re all healthy. They are good bullet sponges IF you know how to position them, but they don’t really help. The game encourages you to save scum quite often. If you don’t want to keep paying out of your pocket you’ll do this.
- Overworld is kind of bland. You get a spaceship with all of your mechs in a hanger bay but your immersion is ruined when you realize… It doesn’t add anything to the game other than show you the scale of your mechs. I wish there were more face-to-face interactions with your crew or you making improvements to your ship but you wont really get that. You get a few campaign related lines, but the only conversations you get with your crewmates is usually when you’re on a mission. Its not THAT kind of game unfortunately.
- This is more immersion breaking… two points: 1, mechs (despite being hulking giants of steel and death) move and turn quite fast. If you’re not used to that, it might break your immersion but that’s a lighter point and 2. On higher difficulties you just get waves after waves of enemies and combat can boil down to a slugfest with the other 3 lances that drop on you. If you want tactical, HBS Battletech might be up your alley.

The game’s core loop is fun. You’re a mechwarrior. You jump into the cockpit of a giant robot and kill things. You’ll be managing your growing merc company. Every 3 months you need to pay your upkeep. That number gets higher for every pilot and mech you have rostered. So expect to reach millions of C-bills as you grow your merc outfit. So you’re playing against your ever growing overhead and need to take missions that help pay for everything. Your missions can be from assassinations to base defense… The mission types are repetitive…. And sort of get better when you get the DLC (they add some variety to the mission types).

If you choose to do the campaign its a simple revenge plot. Your dad was killed and you’re trying to find the merc outfit who did it. Honestly was surprised at the length of this. With the other DLCs it adds a number of hours to the game, so you’ll be doing a lot if you decide you want to play it. You’ll be a part of Battletech’s historical moments, help St Ives establish itself, Fight for Rasalhague’s independence, be a mech gladiator. You can serve the great houses, independents or pirates in doing several missions. I played this game solo, but I can imagine that playing this with friends elevates the experience (and Star leagues better than the dumb AI lance-mates you get)

Now with that being said, here is what I liked about MechWarrior:
- In my currency this game comes out to about $11, cheaper than the $50 on launch (I wouldn’t pay for this at $50. That’s insane, don’t do that). Its cheap enough for you to get into, and if you want to spend on the DLCs you can. Just get them on sale ( I think it goes on sale routinely)
- The mech combat is fun. If you’re a fan of big stompy robots duking it out, then this is THE game to do it. Matches are short and sweet, the dopamine hit is just enough for you to keep going.
- It’s a great intro to the BT universe if you’re not willing to read up on every single aspect of the lore
- This game lets your mod the EVER LOVING ♥♥♥♥ out of it and this is where you’ll find the replay value.

Here’s where the fun begins. The game is pretty sandbox-y. You can choose to work for whoever; undertake whatever missions you need to get the better mechs and what not. You can customize every single mech you get. And if your mod your game… It becomes a different beast entirely.

It elevates it to GOD-tier repayable. You want more variety in your maps? There’s a mod for that. I have only clocked in 80 hours as of writing this… without mods. I recently installed a number of mods and my God… Does it elevate the experience. Something wrong with your mechs looking too clean? There’s a mod for that. Missing some quality-of-life bug fixes? There’s a mod for that. Now Mods don’t fix everything wrong with the base game, but you’ll be enjoying a number of quality of life improvements for sure. More mission types, more mechs, more variety. The fan driven content is insane and modders know what makes a good MechWarrior game. Want smarter allies? Mod. Want those allies to have a quirk when you hire them, ala-Darkest Dungeon? Yeah, mod. If you ever feel bored… I kid you not there’s a mod for your boredom.

So yeah, I’d recommend it. Base game is okay, but once you start modding it, you’ll have a hard time putting it down. With the DLC adding more mechs, mech variants and extended stories… You can easily lose hours. I absolutely would recommend this.

Great game. Need more content to expand the games horizon.

I love me some mech combat. Played thorough Clans and had to try this.