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From Armored Core and Evangelion to Steel Batallion and Gundam, there’s a bipedal war machine for every taste. Eschewing the flighty, anime-inspired combat of Daemon X Machina and the like, MechWarrior 5: Clans offers a weighty, tactical take. Stomping around in an upright tank and demolishing barricades with your body is quintessential MechWarrior. Here it’s on glorious display. Clans honors the franchise’s legacy the way its five-person Star of mech pilots honors Clan Jaguar. Here’s how the newest installment in the MechWarrior franchise is shaping up.
Weapon Group Locked
Don’t let the name fool you: MechWarrior 5: Clans is not a DLC for MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. They’re separate branches on the same giant robot tree. Clans is a standalone game with its own story. After playing through two acts of the 25-30ish hour campaign, there’s a lot to love about Clan Smoke Jaguar’s advancement within the Inner Sphere. MechWarrior has a ton of lore, but most of has remained the stuff of novels and other media until now. Clans changes that with plentiful mo-capped cinematics and a focus on telling a good story (as well as melting mechs to slag).
MechWarrior is known for its intense, first-person cockpit view, awash with ammo counts, cooldown bars, and flashing indicators. Clans introduces another option: the battlegrid. You can swap to this top-down perspective of the battlefield at any time, allowing you to command your five-person Star from a new perspective. Ordering your units around like 40k minis feels natural and smooth. If you’d prefer to stay in the pilot’s seat, however, a radial command menu offers all the same functionality. It’s a system that offers a new tactical layer without sacrificing the game’s grit, and I’m here for it.
Research, Build, Destroy
With modern and classic control options and a top-down battlegrid just a button press away, Clans might be the most accessible MechWarrior yet. That doesn’t mean Piranha has sacrificed depth. With weapons to buy, mechs to unlock, pilot skills to level, decals, meta progression, and dozens of individual stats, it’s a theorycrafter’s dream. Tune a Viper into a jumpy machine gunner to blitz the enemy line or hoist a 12-ton Gauss Rifle to melt tanks from 600m. Expansive battlefields and varied terrain mean there are always several paths to giant robot supremacy.
Clans makes great use of Unreal Engine 5, with stompy SFX, screen shake, and environmental destruction, but you don’t have to watch the fireworks alone. Friends are expendable on the fields of war, but Clans supports five-player cross-play co-op on PlayStation 5,
