MechWarrior: Won

As well as things went for most of this session.

Now that we've seen the limits of the gameplay, let's see how the story goes. Since I would prefer not constantly reloading my game in order to follow the plot correctly this time around, I'm going to use a hex editor to give myself a massive pile of money. With a billion dollars, there's not really much I can't do. Hopefully one of those things isn't solving the game.

Teenager trying too hard to look cool, random guy, woman who is about to seriously regret her career choices and the woman who was on last month's cover of Martian Vogue.

Fortunately, one of these things is giving me the opportunity to create a crack team...sorry, lance, of ace mech pilots. Pay no attention to their poor stats, this isn't the most important thing. What does is whether or not I can take out the enemy before they get destroyed.

Something I didn't realize the first time is that the game is outright shouting at you to go for Griez. The bartender who tells you who knows about the batskull unit icon? He tells you to go to Griez. I do the same journey I did before. One mission, go the Galedon V when it comes on the news, go to Land's End, meet with one of Griez men, go to Delacruz and meet with him, take his package to Dustball, then find out about the Stone Arrow ship, talk to the bartender, then head to Mosiro, get told that the captain, Kangaroo Jack, of the ship has a girl on Delacambre. This is where I got stuck.

Hey, I actually got the text this time.

This time, I strike a vein of pure gold. I don't meet with Jack's girl, but an agent of MIIO, Kearney who has also been monitoring the situation Vandenburg is trying to solve. Jack's ship was used to transport a renegade band of Wolf's Dragoons to Anderson's Moon. The symbol? A fake for the purposes of the story, in actuality, they wear a black spider. He's more than happy to bring me in to deal with Jack.

If this was a double cross, you'd think that he'd sic the cops on me.

Once I leave, I get the chance to follow a note the guy left, once I do so, I find Jack on the floor, dead, and a mystery person has a weapon on my back. This time, I'm given three choices. The correct is hide, because talking is suicidal and now is not yet the time to fight. For some reason. This of course, gives me another choice, as I discover that this guy is definitely the assassin, fight or run. I fight and graphically kill the guy. This actually pops up on the news later, but thankfully for me, they only suspect the owner of the business it took place at. Off-screen, Vandenburg asks Rowe about a "black widow" mercenary unit and I'm pointed at Proserpina.

These are actual characters in the tabletop game, whether that makes this choice easier or not is beyond me.

The Dragoons are in the bar, and after Vandenburg is done gawking at their pretty commander, engages in conversation with them with all the subtly of a brick to the face. She says they've never even heard of the place, and I'm given the option of accepting or challenging her story. I challenge, because there's a chance this might end up on the field of battle, but no, Vandenburg just gets his crap kicked in until another woman steps in and evens the odds. Tasha, as she introduces herself and after Vandenburg finishes gawking at her, explains that Kearney's isn't MIIO, he's ISF. Kurita and the Dragoons know nothing about Anderson's Moon. What I should be doing is heading after Matabushi, Incorporated. Why? Because she's MI6 and their her target now, too.

I mean, considering this game, I don't exactly have a choice but to head into the most obvious traps and I don't have any real reason to trust her either. Helping me out of a stupid situation is a pretty safe ploy to get me to do your dirty work. If I check the news, Rowe has sent me a message confirming that Kurita is backing Jarris and that I should recontact Kearney, who is at Albiero. Tasha, meanwhile sends me some messages that connect Matabushi to the assassination of Duke Vandenburg. Matabushi's HQ is at Albiero. This leaves me in a tricky situation, because Tasha is trying to get me to believe that everything I've been told up until now is an attempt to get me killed...but then again, Rowe doesn't seem to be doing a lot in terms of keeping things going back home. Even discounting that, it's really hard to ignore that Kearney sent me into an ambush.

The second I arrive on Albiero, it's readily apparent that something is about go down. Seven choppers arrive at a Kurita base of some kind...for some reason. This is so obviously a trap that even the narration exposes it. As a strange cargo is loaded into one of the choppers, another force guns down the troops at their base. I'm given the choice of doing nothing until I spot what seems to be Tasha again, ignoring the carnage to go after the craft with the cargo. I can follow her or stay down. Since I've already determined that Rowe is a double agent, I go after her.

This seems to be the correct choice. We get a description of the character catching it just as it flies off and find out that there are a lot more corpses inside. Kearney, it seems, is already inside, and he and Tasha are fighting. They spot Vandenburg, and I now have to chose which one I trust. This is actually a hard choice, if I didn't have the ability to reload. Going in, I was going to go for Tasha, even discounting Rowe, but gut reaction to the dialog? Kearny, the surprise strikes me as a hint he would be the right choice...except now that I think of it, why would he be surprised that she's accusing him of being an ISF agent if it was foundless?

Tasha turns out to be the choice I make and the correct choice. At this point, I check to see what the ISF and MI6 are in-universe. The ISF are the Kurita's intelligence service, and since Matabushi is a company in Kurita space, this plot would start getting very convoluted if the ISF were attacking them. MI6, or rather MIIO, is Davion's intelligence service. Funnily how an ounce of knowledge of the setting of the game makes this an entirely trivial choice.

She congratulates me for not being a complete and total dumbass. Since this is likely a secret mission, she tells me whatever it is I need to know. This was a lucky raid, since security was weak on this place, they managed to get away with what they stole. Gold bullion, cash that needs to be laundered, "lostech" and a large amount of computer files. In that computer file is the location of the group who destroyed Vandenburg's home, and where the chalice is. Not only is she giving me that, she's giving me 5 million. I just need to not say anything about what happened here at all or mention the existence of MI6. I don't know why that's so secret, but believe me, for something that would solve all my problems if I wasn't cheating for money.

Well, probably. At this point I discover absolutely everything has up until this point, been jerking Vandenburg around. Grig Griez is one of their agents, Jordon Rowe is, as if we couldn't figure that out by now. The chalice is being guarded by a special lance of mechs consisting of a "Warhammer" and four "Battlemasters" on Radstadt. Don't know what a Warhammer is, but I've bought a Battlemaster. I'm not looking forward to the fight.

At this point, let's talk about what it took to get here. It has been a little over a year and nearly 3 million in C-bills to do all this. That's 2 million you need to get in order to do this, and since there's at least one time limit going on here, you need to thread the needle very carefully. Remember, on a lot of these places, you get no ability to do missions, so ending up in an unwinnable situation is very likely. That said, some of the saves I got when I first found the game, the player didn't have any mechs. So, selling the main character's mech and then buying a new one once you get the 5 milllion is a possibility. Then you have about 9 missions to build up a force to take on the four Battlemasters. There's no getting a comparable force in time, Battlemasters are over 9 million and I've never seen a Warhammer. (My first screenshot was from a later time, this early it was more random mechs)

And while I have been purchasing more mechs and hiring people to pilot them, I've been remiss in getting them up to full strength. This is where that aspect where parts sometimes not being available gets annoying. Moreso because you can't just wait for a part to become available, you have to go to another place to hope you can get it. If you can't, well, you're going to have to go to the crew section and then disable that mech.

The two mechs on the ground to the right are mine.

My first fight with the big bad guys goes poorly. Very poorly. I'm really not sure what kind of strategy I should be doing here, so I end up doing an alpha strike on the Warhammer. Turns out it's one Warhammer and three Battlemasters. Dunno if that would be easier or harder if it was four Battlemasters, but either way, we get slaughtered. None of them are downed, and one of us is dead. What's worse is that I was going for the legs, Battlemasters are tricky to hit in the legs for some reason. This is what some might say is a bad sign.

There is in fact, an element of luck to this alpha strike. In that sometimes I can actually take out multiple guys and sometimes not. The facts remain, this strategy isn't working. What about if I try to ambush? There's an ambush option in the command screen. This goes worse, because one guys rushes off when they're in range and another just sort of runs. Kind of annoyed, but I can't blame him. This isn't going to work, I need better firepower.

And while the improvements characters get from fighting seems to be marginal at best, for my AI companions, marginal is better than nothing. So let's get into some regular missions. Honestly? The whole command system leaves a lot to be desired. I really think there should have been some ability to either select what your mechs do beforehand. If I have any chance of entering the fight as they do, I have to rush straight out and then open the command menu, or else pull them back so we don't all fall one by one.

At least, when there's an actual threat. Enemy AI, now that there are frequently four hostile mechs, isn't any smarter than friendly. We could be ganging up on one mech and they'd still sit if we were outside of their range. Of course, what works for you also works against you, like when you have to try to get three geniuses to try to do something that allows them to survive the mission.

We've built ourselves up into an average fighting force, the four of us. All of us are now in heavy mechs, two Warhammers, one Battlemaster and myself in a Rifleman. I've had it since I started building up a force, might actually be a medium. Might be crippling myself a little, but I've gotten used to the quirks of the thing, so we're all good. Probably. It's a comparable force nonetheless.

And I actually win. It's a hard faught battle, two friendlies get downed in the fighting, and another gets more damaged than it should in the home stretch because I can't really tell friend from foe in front of me. There really should be some sort of color to sort that. Still, I breath a sigh of relief when the last Battlemaster goes down and I have finally completed the game.

And there's another battle. See, sometimes the game puts you on missions with multiple parts. I've never won one, because I failed to see the point. The game is generous here. My friendly mechs are all in good enough shape to fight, there are three hostiles instead of four, and I can pick them off at my leisure. Yeah...

After I lose, I just hire another person, since someone died and just walk in and out of the mech repair place until my mechs are mostly functional. I don't need full force, right? Just enough to take out three mechs with a superior force. Yeah...except that now I have to completely redo the mission. The fight against four mechs. You might as well just reload, because in a practical game, you're getting one shot at this.

Note the yellow on the damage and weapons, that's how bad a shape they're in.

Since I didn't save quite before this, I end up doing a little more work, and end up with precisely a comparable force. One Warhammer, three Battlemasters. It's enough to take out the enemy force most of the time, but I still always fail at the second map no matter what strategy I take. Meaning I'm not doing enough in the first half of the mission to ensure I have enough for the second half. Probably.

The first strategy I do is use the ambush option near some rocks in the lower half of the map. Plenty of time to set it up, and then hopefully we'll be dealing with them more one at a time. I wasn't under the impression that this setting was going to do much more than give me the choice of battle, slightly further away from the usual setup and hopefully we could all attack at once. The only thing was, this causes my guys to circle around the place I selected. In the moment I realized they were doing that and not just trying to get to where I pointed, I understood why bad guys execute their underlings. When is there ever a situation where I'd need that? Not just in this game, just...period.

That said, when I do this properly, with a defend command rather than ambush, it works...about the same. That said, this does result in my successful final attempt. Less because I figure out a strategy for fighting with my lance and more because I'm fighting smarter. Everyone has been doing the same blunt strategy, including myself, even down to where we're aiming, the legs. If you look at the part of the GUI with the weapons, you'll see L, M and S, for the range. Since all mechs are roughly comparable, if I slowly back up while they're heading towards me, I can slowly snipe them. And rather than aiming for the legs, I aim for the head. This is considerably more effective.

The machineguns on this thing are very short-ranged, so short that there's no point in using them.

In the one time I make it through the second mission, this actually helps me a lot. My allies aren't here to help me fight, they're distractions while I blow up the enemy's cockpit. Even better, we're not actually fighting the whole force, just three of them, since there's a fourth hiding behind the base. We do the actual objective, walk up to the base. Victory.

I get a short exit text acknowledging my triumph and then the option to quit or to continue. Even in victory, you can still fight through the galaxy to your heart's content. Which would be a nice thought if I didn't just burn through my fighting force. You don't get money for winning here, and fixing four mechs which were likely practically scrapped is not going to be easy on your wallet.

I'm really not sure how you would be able to do this legitimately. As I said, this was a really close fight at the end, and that was with a comparable force. This is something you'd need about 40 million to get, and that's not taking into account repairing and then going off to the final battle. Sure, you can actually get Griez bounty if you go back to his planet, but that's still 2 million, which combined with what you get from a sold Jenner and the 5 million reward is still less than a quarter of that. I really don't know how that's even possible. Even giving myself a limitless amount of money somehow didn't guarantee my victory. That's impressive. This is definitely going to be interesting to rate.

This Session: 3 hours 15 minutes

Final Time: 6 hours 15 minutes