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Tradition is the face of MechWarrior 5: Clans, as much as any machine. Even battle-scarred and painted with new camo, you can see the shape of those BattleTech bones. Distinguishing itself from Armored Core and the like thanks to its crunchier, more methodical gameplay, Clans introduces these familiar bots to a new age and new audience. It also ditches the procedural gameplay of Mercenaries for a handcrafted narrative. Though it still suffers from some of the franchise’s lingering flaws, Clans delivers the best MechWarrior experience yet.
MechWarrior 5: Clans Review
MechWarrior 5: Clans puts you in control of a five-person Star of pilots. As up-and-coming warriors in Clan Smoke Jaguar, you and your Clan comrades will blaze a mostly linear path of robot destruction. Lasting a few dozen hours (depending on thoroughness and skill), the campaign keeps the narrative front and center, as you take your custom war machine on a variety of missions. Assaults, hostage rescues, stealth infiltrations, and guard duty are only some of the tasks you’ll undertake in Smoke Jaguar’s name.
Story: A Starring Role
BattleTech and MechWarrior fiction often revolve around the Great Houses. These icons of sci-fi feudalism wield tremendous power within the Inner Sphere, but beyond the intergalactic borders of controlled space, another power grows. The Clans have a story of their own, and it’s every bit as bloody and convoluted as actual military history. The Clans form a militaristic warrior society in which Bloodnames, Trials of Refusal, and other customs shape everything. For all the talk of honor and standing, however, Clanner politics are a bloodthirsty affair.
Gone are the four-person Lances of the Inner Sphere. In their place, you command a five-person Star, composed of some of the Smoke Jaguar’s best and brightest warriors. They’re raw, ambitious, shortsighted, and brave: the perfect instrument for Smoke Jaguar’s jingoism and Piranha Games’s narrative. The Clan Invasion of 3049 is a germinal event in BattleTech‘s tabletop lore, but the lore typically frames Smoke Jaguar and other Clans as bad guys of a kind. MechWarrior is a shades-of-gray universe, and Smoke Jaguar is a shade at least as dark as the Great Houses.
MechWarrior 5: Clans puts far more emphasis on storytelling than Mercenaries. Plentiful cutscenes and omnipresent mid-mission radio chatter tell a tale of militarism, colonization, and the birth of new societies on the galactic fringe. These themes are popular territory for thoughtful mech games, and violent conquest is taken for granted by Jayden, Liam, and their Star comrades, at least at first. MechWarrior is the perfect setting to take an actual position beyond the “green light for government violence” action game default, but Clans fumbles that opportunity.
Seeing the Clan Invasion through the eyes of Jayden and Smoke Jaguar, I feel more invested in every mission. Every hostage rescued, stockpile destroyed, and pirate overthrown feels more personal and significant than they did in Mercenaries. The voice actors, however, spend most missions chewing the scenery over your comms channel, making the whole thing feel like G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero. It’s sometimes cheesy and often over the top, but it’s the most fun and engaging storytelling that MechWarrior‘s ever had.
Gameplay: The Weight of War
MechWarrior 5: Clans is about huge robots that can shred tanks like steel-flavored parmesan. It takes methodical mech warfare as seriously as Steel Batallion ever did, with an emphasis on positioning, sight lines, and terrain cover. On the easiest difficulty, you can hop into the pilot’s seat and melt waves of tanks, turrets, and rival mechs with little thought. Turn it up, however, and every decision matters. Infinite ammo energy weapons overheat, but you can trudge into the nearest river to cool them. Kinetic weapons, meanwhile, require you to carry ammo, increasing your mech’s tonnage and occupying valuable hardpoints.
The focus here isn’t difficult boss battles but rather strategic field engagements. One mission, you’ll guide your Star through a ravine, avoiding patrolling pirates while you surveil the civilian homesteads they’ve captured. The next, you’ll blast your way into fortified compounds, hacking turrets, scanning ammo caches, and turning your Flamers against helicopters and other base defenses. Mission variety is solid, and diverse biomes, weather patterns, enemies, and objectives keep battles fresh. Overall, the campaign is a significant improvement over Mercenaries.
You can cripple and destroy individual mech components, turning battles into brutal wars of attrition. Should you target the opponent’s core, going for an early kill but exposing yourself to deadly counterfire? Perhaps you’ll melt your enemies’ legs or shoot their arms off instead, hobbling Light mechs or depriving Assault types of their firepower. MechWarrior 5: Clans makes mechs feel like the armored units they are: slow, deadly, and inevitable. As much as I love the aerial acrobatics and boost blitzing of Armored Core, MechWarrior‘s more grounded combat scratches an itch that FromSoftware hasn’t yet.
You can swap freely between a 3rd person and first-person cockpit view, but there’s a perspective that’s even more impactful. The battlegrid grants you a top-down view of the battlefield, allowing you to command your forces the way you would in an RTS. A convenient radial menu offers access to the same commands, and I preferred the immersion of my Stormcrow’s cockpit overall. That said, the battlegrid is a great tool for newcomers and series veterans alike, helping you keep control when everything descends into fire and chaos.
Meta progression is a big part of your journey through Clans. New mech types and camo patterns are far from the only unlockables though. Every pilot has skills you can upgrade (improving stats such as acceleration, turn rate, and evasion), and your scientists can research tech improvements (improving your DPS, cooling rates, and more). You can even have your pilots specialize in different mech types, gaining XP faster when piloting a certain size class (or even one particular model). Unfortunately, the huge number of upgrades means most offer only minor buffs (+5% cooling efficiency here, +5% Flamer damage there).
Superior Clan tech means OmniPods. You can customize these versatile mechs to a higher degree than IS machines, swapping weapon types and sizes, shouldering additional ammo, and packing on (or stripping off) armor. Balancing tonnage, heat, and ammo reserves creates a satisfying balancing act. It also prevents you from bringing five Heavies to kick dirt in the Great Houses’s eyes for 30 hours straight. I love the customization. I wish the UI did a better job of presenting all the relevant info, however. Outfittings can be daunting.
Graphics & Audio: Burnt, Bombed, and Blasted
Through the muffling layers of steel and circuitry encapsulating your cockpit, the boom of the Shadow Cat’s footsteps reverberates like silk-wrapped thunder. Power lines and concrete barricades turn to powder beneath you as you crest the hill with your Star and gaze down upon the enemy compound. There’s a roar as rockets launch to your left and right, painting gray streaks across the sky, and then your Gauss booms out. The air is still ringing when the shot connects, blasting an artillery mech’s arm into vapor and slag.
Clans captures the vibe of fighting in an armored division better than most actual tank games. Unity’s pulling its weight with striking deserts and rivers, and the mechs themselves are as lovingly modeled as any Exosuit. Clan and IS mechs don’t much resemble one another, and Piranha does a great job at selling the power at your fingertips. You can distinguish Clan mechs from Mercenaries ones by sound alone, a massive testament to the talents of the audio team. MechWarrior 5: Clans might have my favorite SFX of any mech game.
Characters are much more of a mixed bag. There’s a stiffness to the facial mocap, undermining otherwise emotional moments. A far larger problem is the mixed delivery. Some blame lies with the writers for lines that strain for emotional weight or thematic resonance that they haven’t earned. Some blame lies with the voice actors for taking naturalistic dialogue and cranking the Narratively Important NPC dial to 11. Either way, the core problem is the same. Clans is really, really trying (which is great), and it shows (not great).
The handcrafted levels of Clans continue to impress, especially compared to the randomized battlefields of Mercenaries. The placement of outposts, cliffs, and rivers isn’t just more thoughtful and balanced here; it’s also more artful. Incinerate my Stormcrow with lasers and let those crackling emerald beams send me to Terra. I’m happier dying in Clans than I ever was in MechWarrior 2, the last game to put the Clans centerstage.
Conclusion: Battles Worth Fighting
I experienced few glitches and no crashes during my time with the game, although my RTX 3080 couldn’t spare me from low frame rates on some maps. MechWarrior 5: Clans sometimes undermines itself in its efforts to deliver something new, but it does deliver something new. It’s teething, but if the franchise ever hopes to get real narrative fangs, it needs games this bold. Whether you’re playing M+K or HOTAS, with classic controls or modern ones, Clans delivers some of the best and grittiest mech gameplay around. You can make Smoke Jaguar proud on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Review copy provided by Publisher.
MechWarrior 5: Clans Review (PC Reviewed)
MechWarrior 5: Clans trades the random missions of Mercenaries for a handcrafted campaign delivering high customization and tense strategic battles
Pros
- High customization
- Fantastic SFX
- Great level design
Cons
- Underwhelming narrative
- Inconsistent voice acting
- Frame rate issues
