So, I bought Battletech.
So there goes what non-writing free time I was going to have. Heh.
The good?
It's a Battletech game, set in the Inner Sphere era, which I'm most familiar with. I understood how the Clans era had some foreshadowing, but I just didn't really buy it. And it wasn't as fun for me as the Inner Sphere era.
It's turn based, so I don't need a high Twitch stat or Compartmentalized Mind to manage all of the units in real time.
The bad?
Oh for the love of all that is good, just let me save at any time. Not just in combat, not just when you want to, not after 10 minutes of cutscenes. Just let me save. Some grownups play for 20 minutes before leaving for work and can't just stick it out while your NPC wants to talk to me. I'll turn it off and redo the mission. You've been warned!
But fun, yeah.
I can understand not being able to save mid-cutscenes, but then there shouldn't be cutscenes //in// //the// //middle// //of// //a// //freaking// //mission//!
ReplyDeleteIf there are, game needs to either auto-save right before the cut, or the cutscene needs to 2 minutes or less. There oughta be a law...
It seems to be mostly story missions that do that. The first real non-NPE mission was really tiresome after a while, as I sat through NPC after NPC talking to each other and thinking, geez, I have to leave for work soon . . .
DeleteI took advantage of the sale too, and I'm enjoying it very much. I'm actually sort of glad they don't have a Save Anytime feature, because I'd be tempted to reload and play turns, let alone missions, over and over to get a better outcome.
ReplyDeleteBut the slow loading times even with a PC that exceeds the recommended specs (and an SSD) baffles me.
You can save every turn if you like.
DeleteIt's just hard to finish a "story" mission and then have to sit through a long cutscene. Sometimes I have a hard stop on gaming.
Mine ran a bit slow until I changed my laptop from the usual "Silent" mode to "Performance" mode (and it's faster but a bit loud in "Turbo.") But I have an ASUS TUF Gaming laptop, yours might not be so easy to tweak.
Dangit. I wish you hadn't pointed that out to me. :D I've only finished the first "real" mission and didn't really go look after the commencement.
DeleteI have an ASUS TUF Gaming motherboard but I haven't overclocked the processor or anything. Maybe I just expect things to load in a second or two.
Sorry about that!
DeleteI'd say that I redid the first mission a few times as a true tutorial. I just didn't know how to use things like brace, melee attack, determining accuracy before committing to a move, etc. After that, it's been all straight through.
Some missions have been total walkovers. One had a single light mech try to take on my 3 medium mechs and a light mech. Seriously? A single light mech attacking a lance? So, that ended badly and I took it as salvage. (Shrug)
I didn't overclock my processor. The "Armoury Crate" application on my laptop lets me choose a profile. "Turbo" is one of them, and it maxes out GPU and CPU performance plus cooling at a cost in noise reduction and battery life. I usually run it silent, which chooses noise reduction above all, cooling and battery life next, and GPU and CPU performance least of all. Using it to write, web browse, etc. doesn't require a fraction of the processor power it has . . . and the fans are pretty noisy.
When you finish the story (or get tired of it as I did), I'd suggest grabbing the Roguetech mod. It's super detailed with lots of the newer weapons from the BT universe. It's got a bit of a difficulty curve, but it is also super fun.
ReplyDeleteI'll take a look. The brief glance I took at a wiki for it had a bewildering amount of mechs and gear I don't recognize at all. I'll have to save that for when the nostalgia wears off from old-school-ish Battletech.
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