I haven't gotten too far in this DLC (or the rest of the story, truth be told), but I really have been enjoying the Rival Mercenaries and working with the Bounty Hunter. And also, I picked it up when it were on sale for $5.
The rival mercenaries, despite being a relatively small part of the pack, are also my favorite part of this DLC. I think you definitely made a good decision by grabbing this on sale.
Just searching RU-vid for DLC breakdowns as I get into 5 during the spring sale and your vids are by far the best. Wish you had vids for the rest of the DLC. Hope you start uploading again.
Hi! first off great vid! love the way you approach making vids. keep going! would love to see a bit more of a breakdown of how coop works, things you can and cant do etc as there isnt really anything out there detailing this that i can see. new player here and looking forward to blowing shit up!
Thank you so much! I hadn't considered doing a co-op breakdown before even though a lot of my footage shows me playing with friends. There are definitely a few hurdles to overcome when playing with friends, but I would say it is definitely worth it to stomp around with a lance of pals. I'll think about how I could explain that in greater detail, perhaps in its own short video.
My issue with the merc companies is that they don't have their own camos, in the very same DLC that introduced those bloodpact camos you get from completing the Bounty Hunter quests.
I agree that the AI "improvements" didn't seem to change much. I forgot to mention the perk loss issue, but all in all I'm just happy about the extra mech slots.
dude your reviews are awesome. rofl im having fun watching this. and now i want MW5. Been playing the latest Battletech and loving it so far. Im new to RU-vid blogging, but trying it myself. Must be the fact that I played MW2 for so many years as a kid. I think people forget that the storyline of MW2 was Meh too, but totally fun. also, I was too young back then too understand what a Meh story was. Its the game play that counts. Even though I missed release, I think this game received less credit that it deserved.
I honestly hate artilery, I cant use anything that goes slower than 64 or it just goes to the scrap heap and things are on every mission after difficulty 35. The missions also have 4 mechs with a 250 tonnage cap fight 450+ tonns of equiptment and more than half the enemy mechs will be ac10 urbies so no good salvage. It is a big diaspointment.
To all you Battletech/Mechwarrior fans out there, I found out something ABSOLUTELY fascinating re: its history. In the documentary 'Lostech: The BattleTech Center: 30 Years of Heavy Metal Mayhem', here on RU-vid, it's revealed that the entire Boardgame & RPG-system, was not the original goal! The original plan was to make the Battletech Center Simulation Pods FIRST. Back in 1980, they were inspired by a Naval Sailing simulator & thought they could do the same thing with Giant Robots at a fraction of the cost. (Which they DID accomplish, costing just over $1,000,000 instead of the $50,000,000 the Navy spent.) But to help fund that, they created the PnP games so many of us know & love. Crazy, Eh?
When I read this I immediately remembered reading an earlier comment about a guy who started with a 2hour game with his friends in the mid 80s, and how he mentioned his experience with the capsule being the best until VR - I copied this story to comment to him to show him, but I looked at the pic and it's the same guy hah! That's interesting I never would have known that!
@@Rodelero LOL Yep. That would be Me. ^_^ No problem. I still think that the standard conception of PnP Game First, SimPods Second being backwards, is so interesting it *should* be spread around the fandom.
I had an infiltration mission with a 400 ton limit as one of a multi mission contract. So I went in with the Steiner scout lance. Stealth is optional! And did those Capellans look surprised as I turned the whole place into a parking lot. And I scouted out everything they had, including four or five lances of reinforcements.
My Curriculum Vitae- I started playing the original board game in 1985 (At the age of 14), shortly after the switch from 'Battledroids'. The largest fight my friends & I ever had was 36 mechs on a side (not counting the Aerotech Fighters). Running the first movement phase took 2hrs. As soon as the RPG 'Mechwarrior' came out, we jumped on that & would have campaigns off and on for the next decade. As a Teenager, I have to admit, the House History books they released were the FIRST History books I actually read. I read them all. ^_^ I played the original 1989 'Mechwarrior' game by Activision & LOVED it. The game looked great for the time (Though I didn't find out until many, many years later that it was also adapted for the SNES!) When the Battletech Center opened at North Pier in Chicago, we raced down from Waukesha, Wisconsin to dump as much money into it as we could. Though even by the standards of the time the Graphics weren't amazing, playing with friends in your own simulator pod was an experience hard to describe. Once the Pod closed around you, it gave a sense of immersion not equaled until the VR games of recent years. I played all the subsequent 'Mechwarrior' games, 2, 3 & 4, but 'Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries' remained my favorite for many years. Until Now. I THOUGHT that Harebrained Scheme's 2018 'Battletech' might take that slot, but an Obtuse A.I. lackluster missions & the 'Political Messaging' turned me off. However, intrigued by the thought of another 'MW- Mercenaries' game being released after nearly 25 years, I decided to take a chance on it. I was not disappointed. To be honest, while I freely admit the game is FAR from perfect, I got immersed in the world of Mechwarrior once more in a way I thought I never would again. I honestly don't understand why the game was disliked as much as it was. For the aspects of the Battletech Universe that it deals with, it deals with them quite well. As a Pipe Dream, I imagine that one day they'll use the core game engine to flesh this out with a full-fledged RPG AND bring the lost & lonely 'Aerotech' game into the fold. Imagine racing from your dropship to attack an Enemy's Dropship & fighters, then switching to your team on the ground to deal with the consequences. Eh, probably won't happen, but the Game Universe deserves that kind of love.
Thank you for sharing, reading this is a capture in time for a 36 year old like me, who grew up with Win98 and MechCommander as my first, then a knock off MechWarrior Earthsiege (sp?) Or maybe another universe, then went back for Mech 2 and the rest was history. But MechCommander was my first foray.
@@Rodelero If you've played MW5 & enjoy it, let me know if you're up for Multiplayer. In my opinion it's even better in Co-Op, as RPG's like 'Baldur's Gate' & the new 'Warhammer 40k- Rogue Trader.' are.
Yeah, good times in the 80's. My first foray with BattleTech started with The Crescent Hawk's Revenge on my 486SX in the 90's. Harebrain Scheme turn me off with their woke pronouns option. One of the developer look woke too. They have this look to them. I enjoy having unlimited money in any game. That's my only cheating that I do. Don't care for mods.
@@TrumpIsrael2024 Some games need mods badly. Others don't. The Internet sadly, has done more damage than any single other factor when it comes to games being released in a playable state. 'Fix it after release' is a mantra that never should have arisen. As far as Harebrain's 'Battletech' being Culturally Marxist, not a surprise for the era, especially post-Gamergate. What *did* surprise me was the Creators of the original game saying that Battletech was, 'always woke'. Again, as someone who was deeply involved in the RPG & Boardgame since the 80's, either the creators were just lying, to garner Virtue Signal points, or lying to THEMSELVES. Neither is good.
Dude I just found your channel and I'm glad I stumbled across it! Your energy is great and your information is very helpful! I would be interested to see your take on "Mechwarrior Online" or the turn based strategy game "Battletech" :)
We have no idea if this is actually the case, but Rise of Rasalhague turns out to be the last DLC for MechWarrior 5 before the developer moves onto other things, what would you think?
I wouldn't have been happy if this were the final DLC for MW5. There's just not enough in Rise to make for a good send off to the game as a whole. Fortunately the devs announced The Dragons Gambit. It promises to be the largest DLC campaign yet (With 15 missions) and It will be adding the Longbow mech chassis.
@@ElphBoyK I'm glad that PGI is still putting out DLCs for MW5. The Dragon's Gambit one looks to be promising. But the Longbow, while classic and one of the original "Unseen" 'Mechs, seems to be a bit "been there, done that" in that we already have Archers and Stalkers for missile-based fire support 'Mechs. Why not other classic 'Mechs that are supposed to be commonplace throughout the Inner Sphere from the late Third Succession War and onwards, like the Wasp and Stinger?
Finally getting a chance to play MW5 & I do really like the addition of tge other merc outfits & the Bounty Hunter as there is so much lore on groups like the Wolf's Dragoons, Eridani Lighthorse & Kell Hounds to name just a few. It makes me want to go pick a fight with the Dragoons & get a MAD II or snag a Wolverine from the Kell Hounds. I really like the Rasalhague/Ghost Bear Dominion so am curious to play their campaign.
I would love to see the devs make a clan invasion DLC. Every new expansion has brought us closer to the invasion date so I remain hopeful for now. It might be a while before we see Rasalhague and Ghost bear form the dominion though. I don't think that happens until way after the events we're playing through right now.
The Ghost Bear Dominion doesn't form until much later after the Clan Invasion. The Clan Invasion itself is likely to be the focus of MechWarrior 6, if that ever comes out. At least now you can play through the Rise of Rasalhague DLC.
@@ElphBoyK I thought the word on the street is that PGI wants to make the Clan Invasion its own game, most likely in MechWarrior 6 if they can still use the license by then.
Great review! I bought the game for my son when it was released on PS5 (when MW2 came out that was the carmtalyst for my first gaming computer). I bought all the DLC except for Call to Arms (missed that somehow), but only last week made time to sit down & play more than instant action or the tutorial. As a MW OG I love the Warhammer so when I reached rank 7, & that little Canopian bribes me with a Warhammer on the otherside of the IS I started to make a B line for it (those Canopians sure know their way to my heart!). Well at rank 7 & as you move westward in the story life sure gets interesting as the difficulty really, really ramped up. Now just trying to decide if Call to Arms is worth $8. I generally prefer my giant stompy robots to blast away but Classic tabletop BT really has me appreciating melee despite being a Clanner sympathizer.
The annoying AI that stands in front of you is not exactly because of the AI, but the Lance formation being a Diamond, with two of your lancemates stood in front of you to your left and right. If you are on console then all you can do is try to manipulate the lance positioning with torso turning (Or just commit to having your lance being more like mobile cover for you) For PC, thankfully there are mods for formations (I use the mod 'FormationChanger') to stop the AI using this impractical formation, and has some nice options for formations that you can change in-mission
That makes a lot of sense. The modding community for this game has been fantastic. It's a shame that the devs don't really outsource because the ability to change formations should be in the base game.
@@ElphBoyK The ability to change your unit's formation has been in MW games ever since MW2, for Blake's/Kerensky's sake! Not that it was that useful in the MW2 trilogy in my experience.
Americans, if a Corsair is a Corsair and horsehair is horsehair and a crosshair is a crosshair and air is air then why is a lair a “layer”? And to just Kyle Again I couldn’t believe this was your first effort! It was slick and humorous and well put together. Sometimes I think perfectly great youtubers are successful or not at the random whim of some mysterious part of the RU-vid algorithm. Or maybe God gets angry at Americans for pronouncing lair as layer? I’m totally kidding. You’re great.
Nice review! Something that might be fun is to go back and play a bit of each MechWarrior title starting with MW1. You'll probably need DosBox or something, but it would be nice to see how the computer games evolved over the years. Especially since you know the lore so well.
I did this myself recently. The Mech 2 series is the easiest to get going followed by Mech 4. Mech 3 is a pretty daunting voyage to get up and running but it is doable. Not sure that I would bother though, tbh, Mechwarrior 4 Mercenaries is still probably the most accessible and playable of all those titles.
I like the idea! It would be really cool to take a look at how far the games have come over the years. If memory serves, then the first MW game came out in 1989 so we would be looking at over 3 decades of evolution. It would also give me an opportunity to talk about some of the spin offs of the series. I know the recent-ish turn based Battletech game had some good press, but I also have some fond memories of the RTS mech commander series. I don't know when I would have the chance to look at such things, but this idea is definitely going on the list. Thank you!
@@MadmanMcNabb Thanks for bringing this up. Admittedly, I'm not particularly good at making old games work on modern hardware. The only game I've tried so far was Shogo Mobile Armor Division and I could only get that working thanks to a steam port plus a super helpful set of guides put out by the community.
@@ElphBoyK Yes, the first MW game came out in 1989 and was similar in some ways to MW5. Some things you could do in MW1 that you can't in MW5 are drinking in local bars, or buying 'Mechs at a low price and selling them elsewhere to make a profit, and a more interactive Mercenary Contract negotiation process. I guess game development priorities have come a long way since 1989, huh?
You're looking at the jumpship edition, right? If so, then that should net you the base game, Heroes of the Inner Sphere, and Legend of the Kestral Lancers. Honestly, that's a pretty good amount of content for $60. The only major downside i can think of is that Playstation isn't a fan of mods, so you'll be limited to official content only.
Hopefully they eventually do a "1st Somerset Strikers" dlc pack in homage to the Battletech animated series, where they show the start of the Clan Invasion and give us access to the Axman (still have my action figure with Adam Steiner from when I was a kid).
