A veteran of MechWarrior IV: Vengeance may perceive Mercenaries as more of the same, especially if he/she is a buff of the BattleTech franchise. After all, Mercenaries is an expansion, though it is a stand-alone game that does not require the original game.
Players familiar with the MechWarrior series would expect that with a subtitle of "Mercenaries", the game would have a story consisting of networked scenarios instead of a linear path of progression, and the player gets to select the path that would be trodden by his/her in-game avatar. As a trade-off, the player can expect the story to appear to lack an overarching plot, at least until enough scenarios have been played such that this becomes apparent.
(Of course, such a plot design may be somewhat acceptable as the protagonists are mercenaries, who are expected to be money-minded and not too bothered about the gist of the jobs that they undertake.)
These are not so with the second Mercenaries spin-off in the MechWarrior franchise. In this game, the overarching plot is apparent right from the start: the player takes on the role of the leader of a mercenary team, out for profit and fun from participating in a civil war between the Federated Commonwealth and the secessionist Lyran Alliance. However, as alluded to in the early parts of the single-player campaign through the more worldly members of the mercenary group, their continued involvement would eventually have them participating in and influencing the outcome of critical battles in the civil war.
To a discerning player, the story appears to be only there to give to the player what the war would give to the mercenaries: fun from participating in seemingly unrelated but otherwise exciting strings of battles. However, the progression of the story does impact the gameplay somewhat, as will be explained later.
The player starts the game with some funds and some starter Mechs, which are typically Light Mechs as these are canonically cheaper and more readily available than their heavier cousins. Likewise, the player only has access to the easiest of missions in the early parts of the campaign. Eventually, the player will gain enough money to obtain other Mechs and also enough reputation to undertake more dangerous missions.
The decisions of the player in the turns and twists of the story do carry some gameplay consequences, in the form of the Infamy and Fame mechanic. Generally, completing missions as they are supposed to be completed will result in an increase in Fame, which will unlock missions that promise glory in addition to monetary rewards. If the player causes a lot of collateral damage, e.g. collapsing buildings that are not the intended targets of the mission and killing vehicles that had been expressly marked as "civilian", his/her mercenary outfit will gain Infamy and unlock the nastier and more brutal missions instead.
This would seem to result in a positive feedback loop, causing the player to irreversibly stray towards either extreme with little recourse back towards the other direction. Fortunately, players who would rather be fence-sitters still have access to missions that are mandatory for completion; these can be completed for Fame points (though there are still opportunities for the player to gain Infamy points, if the missions have civilian assets that can be deliberately ruined). The Arena at the gladiatorial game-world of Solaris VII also offers matches that can be won for Fame.
However, it has to be mentioned here that the protagonist, who is a male person that goes by the call-sign "Spectre" (which can never be changed and is referred to in-game with voice-overs as well), is also a person that happens to never accept defeat. If the player fails a mission, he/she is immediately booted back to the auto-save created before the mission. If the player's Mech is destroyed, Spectre never ejects - despite the player's jamming away on the "Eject" button - and dies in his burning Mech, and then the game boots the player back to said auto-save.
This is a far cry from the first Mercenaries spin-off, which had the player continuing the game with the consequences from failing missions, either through failing objectives or having the player's Mech blown up (and the player ejecting automatically). This can be disappointing to fans of the first Mercenaries game.
The previous Mercenaries variant of MechWarrior has a very convoluted user interface, which uses a mixture of FMV screens and lists with reams of text. This gets even worse when the player goes into the specifics of customizing Mechs and choosing missions.
Fortunately, this Mercenaries variant has a much friendlier user interface, largely because it uses the very convenient and clean UI in MechWarrior IV: Vengeance. Of course, this also gives the impression that Mercenaries doesn't appear to have added onto what has been established in Vengeance. Practically, this would appear to be so: Mercenaries has implemented the changes to the UI included in updates since the release of Vengeance and also inserted extra tabs and lines to accommodate for some minor new features, but these are all there are. There is no complete overhaul, if one is looking for significant changes in the MechWarrior IV UI since its debut with Vengeance.
The load-out options for Mechs remained fundamentally the same, as a game that is based on the BattleTech franchise should be. Mechs can be fitted with weapons that are placed under several main categories, the amount of weaponry of which are dependent on the weight category of the Mech chases. Generally, the bigger Mechs can pack a lot more weaponry and armor and thus have longer staying power in a drawn-out battle, but the smaller ones generally have the benefit of being a lot nimbler and faster, which can just be as utilitarian.
However, it has to be mentioned here that Mercenaries include some new Mechs and changes to existing Mechs that can be devastating against the smaller of Mechs, thus causing some game imbalance.
For example, there is the Thanatos Heavy Mech, which now has a full 360-degree torso-rotation. This removes one of the tactics that Light and Heavy Mechs have against heavier Mechs, which is to use their greater maneuverability to stay out of the latter's arcs of fire. The Thanatos can still be defeated if ganged up upon, but a one-on-one duel with a lighter Mech is likely to end in disaster for the latter.
Another example is the Fafnir, a new Assault-category Mech. This Mech has massive Ballistic slots, allowing it to mount very powerful short- to medium-ranged Ballistic weaponry. When coupled with its high armor rating, this makes the Fafnir very difficult to defeat in close quarters environments, e.g. cities, especially with individual Mechs.
Indeed, the new additions to the game appear to suggest that the gameplay is team-oriented now, yet not every part of the game - single-player and multi-player - has the player fighting in a team. For example, there are parts of the campaign where the player can engage in duels held in arenas; there are rules that govern these, such as weight categories, but generally the player can pick the Mech that is used, and there is usually one that excels in duels and is likely to best any other Mech in aspects of fields of fire and maneuverability.
Multiplayer duels can have more rules to restrict the use of Mechs who have a significant advantage in duels, those these ultimately mean that fair dueling experiences are rather limited in variety.
Otherwise, the rest of the game seems to be best played with a mixture of Mechs, each complementing the others in terms of capabilities.
The armory of weapons that debuted in Vengeance has been updated to include guns that filled some tactical gaps in the various categories of weapons. For example, Gauss Rifle weaponry now has Heavy and Light variants; the Heavy ones are shorter-ranged, but pack massive one-hit punches that can knock limbs off very easily, while the Light variants are weapons with the longest range in the game (further than even LRMs), making them devastating sniping weapons.
Another set of notable examples of relatively new weapons are the Rotary Autocannons. These are essentially gigantic miniguns that can lay down a barrage of bullets better than the regular Autocannons ever could, thus giving Mechs a better chance against the tremendously increased presence of non-Mech enemies in the game, as well as gangs of Light Mechs (which can be devastating against slow Mechs that had been caught alone).
Money is the main resource that the player has in the campaign. Money is mainly earned through accomplishing missions, as well as selling any surplus salvage that the player may claim if the mission gives salvage rights (and most do) to wreckage that had been left behind due to the carnage.
Before explaining the mechanic of money further, it should be mentioned beforehand that the player's mercenary outfit has to arrive and base itself on the world that the mission to be undertaken is situated in. This world will have two main effects on the player's mercenary operations: the fees that the player has to pay upon arriving at the world, and the fees that have to be paid for staying on the world. (The latter are paid after every mission conducted on that world.)
Some worlds waiver one or both, such as Solaris VII, which welcomes mercenary visitors because it is both a game-world and the capital of mercenaries.
Returning to the mechanics of money, credits earned (through any means) are used to enact repairs on Mechs that may have been damaged and also purchase new hardware, either in the form of new weapons or new Mechs.
All these seem plausible from a fiscal point of view, but the game does take some liberties to reduce the burden of management on the player. The most apparent of these is the hiring of additional members for the outfit; the player only needs to pay the hiring fees for them. Any payment of allowances or salaries is not considered in the game, though the game did explain this away through a message from the mercenary outfit's tactical officer, who is also ad-hoc secretary and who mentioned that she will tend to the remuneration of the pilots through negotiations with their employers.
The expenditure of ammunition and the customizing of armor options for Mechs have been simplified. Every Ballistic or Missile weapon comes with a default amount for its payload of ammunition; increasing this payload costs money, while reducing it saves some money and space. The same applies to armor; even though a Mech comes with ferro-fibrous armor by default when it is obtained, every Mech also has default amounts of armor for the other two types. In other words, armor and ammunition can be obtained anywhere, as long as the player has the money to purchase additional amounts.
Canonically, not every world in the Battletech galaxy can supply armor and ammunition so freely – a point of fiction that the previous Mercenaries game considered.
While these designs may seem overly convenient to the point of dashing the player's sense of belief, they do reduce the long-term considerations of using Ballistic and Missile weapons versus Energy Weapons; in the previous Mercenaries game, Lasers and PPCs are better for the player's long-term logistics, because they do not need ammo. This gives the single-player campaign the same balancing between ammo-dependent weapons and energy weapons that the multiplayer segments and one-off single-player matches of the game get.
However, the game does stymie this convenience somewhat by requiring that the player pay the costs to repair damaged Mechs up-front before restoring the freedom to customize these aspects of the Mechs for further use in the single-player campaign.
While the availability of missions is dependent on the player's ratio between Fame and Infamy, the offerings by the markets for Mechs and Mech parts are not. As the campaign progresses, many Mechs are made available to the player, regardless of the player's moral compass.
However, the availability of nation-specific Mechs are dictated by the player's decisions to either help the Steiner House in their secession or the Davion House in keeping the Federated Commonwealth in one piece. For example, by completing certain Davion-affiliated missions, the player may gain access to sales of the Victor Assault Mech, one of the fastest Assault Mechs and one of very few with jump-jet capabilities.
Depending on the player's leanings towards either Davion or Steiner interests, or neither, the player may gain access to some or all of one faction's missions, but not all of both. These decisions will also lead to at least two of three endings, or all three, if the player had been fence-sitting.
There will not be any spoilers for these endings, but it has to be mentioned that these are few in number compared to those in MechWarrior 2: Mercenaries.
The Mechs that the player may be able to obtain in the single-player campaign are also dependent on the "sponsor" that the player chose for his/her fledgling mercenary group. These sponsors are more established mercenary groups, which fans of Battletech may recognize. Choosing them as sponsors will make available certain Mechs and weapons associated with them, such as the Dai-shi, a.k.a. the Dire Wolf, and Clan weaponry, which can be obtained by choosing the Wolf's Dragoons as the sponsor.
Although it is canonically described as a way that the more established mercenaries use to show appreciation for the entry of flesh blood into the mercenary business, this story element can feel tacked on, as it does little more than provide a bit of some backstory on the history of the established mercenary groups, which fans of Battletech would already know, and the unlocking of Mechs, all of which are available for play in modes other than the single-player campaign anyway.
The missions in the single-player campaign of Mercenaries are definitely a lot more varied than those in Vengeance, largely due to the constraint of the theme of rebellion in Vengeance (and Black Knight) having been removed. The theme of mercenary work allows the player to engage in many scenarios that can be performed while in one of the giant robots that are Mechs, though these typically involve destroying a lot of enemy hardware, either those that are set as targets through mission objectives or those that are sent after objectives that the player has to protect.
There are escort missions, convoy-interceptions, reconnaissance and surgical insertions to all-out assaults and siege break-outs. Of course, despite the variety, almost all of them will involve combat, moving from one point of the map to another to trigger various events, and staying at one point for some time to trigger other events; there is little that is essentially different from the action seen in Vengeance.
That is not to say that there hasn't been anything new or added to the gameplay. The combat is now enriched with the addition of new Mechs and weapons, resulting in new tactics and load-outs oriented around the use and countering of these – and not just in the single-player campaign.
However, the most important change is that there are plenty of new non-Mech enemies and allies to be had in the single-player campaign. For example, there are giant tanks known as Demolishers that can deal severe damage at close range with their Heavy Autocannons, and big gunships that can launch a surprising amount of missiles. Most of them are little match for a Mech of course, but there tend to be a lot more of them than enemy Mechs, and they have the benefit of never running out of ammo.
The new non-Mech war machines do not include only the mobile ones. There are huge, heavily-armed and -armored turrets to contend with, the most notable of which is the fearsome Redoubt that is practically a fortified and weaponized hill (though this one only appears much later in the campaign).
Therefore, it can be a disappointment that these non-Mech machines are not included in any official multiplayer mode, at least at the time of launch. The damage modeling that allows multiple body parts of Mechs to be separately and independently damaged is not extended to non-Mech models either, which merely get lifebars.
These non-Mech models can be encountered in the Instant Action mode, which allows the player to play individual missions of the single-player campaign independently of the others. This mode can be handy for players who want to practice for these missions, or just play them with favored Mech load-outs and combos of Mech squads without having the fiscal mechanics of the campaign weighing down on the player.
Multiplayer matches can have up to 24 players, and typically pit two teams against each other (at least by default). The official, default game modes include Battle, Team Battle and Mission, among others.
These game modes are very familiar not just to players who have played Vengeance, but also other games with the usual standard game modes. Battle is a deathmatch mode, while Team Battle is team deathmatch. Mission mode is more interesting than the aforementioned two, as it involves the completion of objectives, but generally it will likely involve more Mech-versus-Mech combat; the same can also be said of the other game modes.
Mercenaries have implemented requested improvements in the user interface for checking out multiplayer matches before joining them, such as the option to see whether match modifiers like heat management and/or unlimited ammo have been turned off or on. Of course, a harsh appraiser can argue that these should have been in the first MechWarrior IV game.
In the single-player game modes, the AI of non-player-controlled non-Mechs are mainly programmed to simply chase after their targets with little thought to the path that they may take, though ground-bound non-Mechs are smart enough to stay on the roads as long as they can for smooth travel. In contrast, the aerial ones are stupider, often making use of their flight capability to move in a straight line towards their targets. Turrets will always shoot and continue shooting at the first target that comes into their range.
In other words, there had been little change in the AI designs for non-Mechs.
The AI designs for computer-controlled Mechs are a lot more sophisticated, as to be expected, though veterans of MechWarrior IV would not see much in the way of improvement, because Mercenaries uses the updates to the AI since Vengeance; players who have not played any MechWarrior IV game since Vengeance will notice that there had been some improvements though, especially their decision-making in the use of weapons and approach patterns.
For example, AI-controlled Mechs are more conservative in placing shots even when many of their weapons are in range, e.g. they won't go for Alpha Strikes, especially as opening attacks. They are also more likely than ever to make use of high cover, such as buildings, to flank enemies with.
In the single-player campaign, the player gets to command up to 7 AI-controlled squadmates, depending on the mission prescriptions. They do a good job of following the player character's Mech around and keeping close for team coherence, but they generally move like rabble; there is not much that the player can do to have them move in a formation that is advantageous, e.g. having the toughest Mech in the gang taking point. In fact, the Mech that will always be at the front is the player character's, thus pretty much requiring the player to take the toughest Mech around. This can be rather restrictive on the player's preference for specific play-styles.
When battle commences, AI-controlled Mechs will often pick their own targets, though since Vengeance, they are more likely to pick common targets so as to concentrate their firepower. In the single-player campaign, the player can issue commands to squad-mates, largely to direct their collective firepower at a target of opportunity.
In multiplayer matches, teams can be populated with bots to fill out empty slots. These behave a lot like those in the single-player campaign, especially the ones in the Solaris VII arena games. Human players can still issue orders to them in the hope that they will hit the best enemy to attack at the moment, though they are a lot less responsive (but perhaps still certainly more reliable than human players).
Being another entry in the MechWarrior IV entry, Mercenaries uses the same game engine as Vengeance and Black Knight. It has been updated with frame rate improvements, more detailed textures and decals, more polygons for the models of existing objects in the game and some new particle effects for the new weapons. Otherwise, from a technical perspective, Mercenaries isn't really any better than Vengeance, and this does not bode well for the perception of the aging of the game engine.
The game makes up for that with increased variety in the map designs. Unlike the curiously very mountainous maps in the previous MechWarrior IV games, the maps in Mercenaries do not resort to natural walls to conveniently limit draw distances with, thanks to the optimization that has been done to the game engine. This means that there are a lot more open environments in Mercenaries, such as coastal areas (which can also accommodate naval vessels; these won't be elaborated as this would constitute a spoiler) and more expansive forests that are not interrupted with the odd mountain range or two.
The sound effects in Mercenaries have largely been ported over from the previous games. This creates the comfort of familiarity, though players who disliked certain noises would not be amused by the complete transfer. There are some new sound effects, but these are mainly for the new weapons in the game (though they do sound rather satisfying, such as the roar of the Rotary Autocannons).
The soundtracks have more new additions than the sound effects. A lot of the new soundtracks are heart-pounding rock and orchestral music that plays when battle commences, which is plenty fitting.
The voice-acting is the least good of the sound designs in Mercenaries, however. Much of the voice-acting in the game is campy, corny and/or bland. The worst of it belongs to the main protagonist of the story mode; Spectre has bland voice-over, whenever he does speak, which is (thankfully) little. The game attempts to cover this up by stating in his backstory that he has a calm and cool demeanour, but there is little else in his backstory to explain why, thus suggesting that his backstory design is little more than an audacious window-dressing for his lousy voice-over.
Most of the other voice-acting, such as that for squad mates and enemies that the player face in the single-player campaign, is more expressive, but many of them have both corny lines and groan-worthy voice-acting. The only ones worth listening to are status updates on the situation in the current mission being played, for these at least are voiced with proper urgency.
Like the previous games in the MechWarrior IV line, Mercenaries is accommodating of mods and Mech packs that add more models with their own slots to the game, which can be a relief to many who feared incompatibility issues. The new weapons may cause some of these third-party models to become a bit imbalanced once they are mounted with these, however.
In conclusion, when compared to the previous Mercenaries spin-off in the MechWarrior series, this one is a lot superior overall However, as an expansion to Vengeance, it is difficult to see it as more than a compilation of improvements that had been done to the coding of MechWarrior IV since then and an overhaul of the single-player mode, albeit a very good one.