After putting a fair time into attempting to play this game, I have to say this game is too unforgiving for new players that want to learn to play the game today. New players will find themselves in matches that have been playing for some time. This results in them having unlocked skills that can take some time to get. While there is a match making system I can not say this system is effective as I often feel outclassed with games that I actually do ok feeling too infequent. As a fan of MW2-4 I love Mechwarrior but this game is frustrating to me. I can imagine it would be worse for those that have no clue when it comes to certain game aspects.

MWO is F2P: I can honestly say that players that pay will not kill you soley because they have paid money. The money spent allows players to own more mechs, earn resources/exp faster and buy cosmetic items. I would recommend anyone interested in this game to try before looking to spend money. If you like the game there are 4 steam packs that allow you to grind faster once you find a class style that you enjoy.

There are positive aspects to this game such as the complexity and potential for group tatics but in random matches you may not often find this. You may lose when you should be pushing forward when other times you should employ other tatics. Perhaps playing with several friends and work together will help you fare better.

You are a bipedal tank:
--- Your torso moves separate from legs, and some Mechs have Jump Jets, which allow short flight depending on the number of JJ's equipped.

This is a team game:
--- Stay with the pack, especially when you first start. Don't be the only Mech the enemy sees.

One Life to Live:
In standard "Quick Play" game you drop in one Mech, after you die, you will have to wait until that game is finished before you can play that Mech again. In Faction Play (Clan Warfare) you get to drop with 4 Mechs.

This is a "slow" paced shooter:
--- Movement and turn speeds are based on the Mech you are in, not the speed you set your mouse to.

Variation:
---The speed difference alone between the fastest and slowest Mech is over 100kph, leading to huge variations in play style. Aside from this, Lasers, Ballistics/PPCs, Long Range Missiles (LRMs), and Short Range Missiles (SRMs) all have different methods to success.

Location based damage:
--- If you "spray and pray", you will get damage in, but fail to kill your opponent. Targeting vital spots is key to putting the enemy down. Let your lasers burn the whole duration into your opponent to get full damage. The opposite is true if you are getting shot, make sure to turn your torso to spread damage.

Heat management is very important:
--- Almost all weapons create heat on use, and if not managed will put you into a shutdown state, or if you override the shutdown, do extreme internal damage.

Customization:
--- Setting your Mech up with weapons and armor of your choosing is the one of the best parts of the game, but you don't get to do that until you buy your own Mech. This does not mean you have to spend real money however, as they give you large bonuses for the first 20 or so matches. Do make your first choice wisely, the forums are a good place to get suggestions.

Cost:
--- You can get a lot out of this game for free. The way you earn money (C-bills) to buy Mechs is by playing more matches, so I can't really consider it a grind. You do need to have Mech Bays in order to buy Mechs however, and these cost MC, which is real money currency. If you are patient PGI does give away MC and Mech Bays during special events for participation, and task competition. Some Mechs, called Hero Mechs can only be purchased with MC, the only thing that makes them worthwhile is a bonus to C-bill earning, otherwise they are mostly just novelty paint, on a somewhat unique loadout, however never really better than what you can buy normally. If you do want to spend money, I suggest buying MC in a quantity that gets a good discount and buying Mech Bays when they go on sale.


Competitive:
--- The Match Maker works fairly well, though it is population dependent. If you are new, you will start at the bottom "Tier" which is 5. As you move up, not only does individual skill ramp up, but so does group cooperation.

NGNG has a good youtube channel if you want to see some gameplay.

Always press R
Turn off arm lock and throttle decay when you learn how to walk.
Press X to stop.
Use arrows and right control to assign weapon groups.
«CLAN» doesn't mean «unit of players» in this game, it's lore stuff, google for «Battletech clans» (you will also find out why 90% of players have Kerensky in their nicknames).
Ammo can explode. Except Gauss ammo. Other equipment doesn't explode. Except Gauss rifle.
You can switch ECM modes with J button.
Pegular PPC doesn't deal any damage in range below 90 meters.
You will get banned for mentioning Hitler. 40 years old men playing this game don't get jokes.
Hold alt while entering 3rd peson mode to keep minimap active.
And don't forget to add smurfy mechlab and Sarna to your bookmarks.

Now you can robot.

Soon I'm sure you'll see a flood of reviews, highlighting the best and worst MechWarrior and Pirrana Games has to offer. On one hand, you'll have people who have played this game for three years and have never had a problem with it. On the other, you'll have people who have felt burned, rightfully so, and still have residual resentment for it. I want to be a slightly more moderate voice, and try my best to review the game as I see it.

I want to start, by saying I find the game fun, and I've been playing it on and off for three years. It's a very niche game, even if it didn't have giant stompy robots which is a niche genre all itself, it's "a thinking man's shooter" which takes a more slow, methodical approach to First Person Shooters. Because of this, it offers a very unique experience which, if you like that sort of thing like I do, it's very hard to find another game that quite scratches the same itch.

The game is Free to Play in the same sort of way that Ketchup is a vegetable, it's technically accurate for some value of the term. For the most part, at it's best, the game is Pay2NotGrind and Pay4Vanity. At it's worst, however, you have things like the Stalker Hero "Misery," a $30 dollar reasonably solid 'meta' mech that is only available with cash money.

Which is actually the real bulk of the problem, the pricing for the game is very, very high for very little. You can take a look for yourself at the "DLC" on this page - each of those Performance Packs are for two mechs, which - minus a boost to the earnable in-game currency - are identical to their earnable with in-game currency counterparts. I'm sure you'll hear about the $500 gold mech packages they offered a year ago, ( technically, still are offering from a year ago ) but that really is a extreme, argueably not entirely PGIs fault since they were still under IGP at the time, and I'd like to believe everyone involved has learned their lession and will never do anything like it again ( although, like I said, the offer is still available. ) The more consistant reality of it is somewhere around $20-30 for a mech, which is still fairly high.

The good news is, for the most part, nearly all mechs become available with the earnable in-game currency some months after they're released to people who first "pre-ordered" the mechs in early access packs, and after they're released to people for cash money. ( Pay2NotWait? ) Usually this isn't a problem although sometimes the mechs are slightly to very OP and unbalance things, making the game unfun for anyone who didn't pre-order. The only real exception to this are "Hero" mechs which normally are slightly underpowered but gimmicky varriants of a mech, sometimes with ties into lore, but generally aren't the best version of any mech. Usually. There are exceptions.

A lot of the residual resentment I mentioned earlier stems from the previous tendency to remain close-lipped about the direction the game was going, to ignore any real community feedback, and a very slow development cycle. Most of these have been improved upon since PGI got out from under IGPs thumb - Development has severely picked up pace and new things besides mech packs have been added to the game fairly frequently. PGI is much more open about what they're doing / what direction they want to move the game into. Feedback from what I've seen is still somewhat spotty, although from my understanding they decided to not go through with "ghost damage," a mechanic that was nearly universally hated - where in the past they would have just gone through and added it anyway ( looking at you 3rd Person and Ghost Heat ) - so, I suppose that too is improving.

Overall, since I need to select Yes or No to "Do you recommend this game?" I have to say no.

I like the game, I find it fun, but that doens't make it a good game by default. Between shaking off the ghost of IGP past, elements from three years ago which still feel unfinished ( mostly looking at Community Warfare here, which while "still in beta" has been worked on since launch ) and a high cost of premium elements ... It's just not a good game for the everyman.

Added onto the fact that even if this game was perfect, it would still be kind of a niche game - and some people would just not be able to get into it - it makes those flaws even more hard to overlook when considering a binary "Yes or No" answer.

I would, however, suggest that if you think you might be able to get into it - to at least give it a try and find out. Don't spend any money on it until you're sure you like it, but if you do - like I said, it's a fairly unique experience and hard to find games quite like it.

Small, Edit :

Everything up until this point is aimed for potential new players, not members of the prexisting userbase. I don't need to explain what's good or bad with the game to you, you already know and have your own opinions, and that's fine, you're more then welcome to make your own review or tell me what you agree or disagree about mine - conversation is good.

But, this, and only this is specifically for the prexisting userbase - I understand you like this game, I understand being critical of things you enjoy can be hard, but be a little respectful, would you? If you're so concerned about one negative review turning people away then how do you think they're going to react when they read the comment section?

New to the game

I definitly recommend this game.
This game is so much fun that i have to do my first review on it! :)

Pros(good):
-Gameplay experience is outstanding. It's probs because I'm playing on a high end computer so if you have one of these, the game will run flawless for you.
-Graphics is up to a really good standard, it you want to be picky, the only thing it's laking in is that your surroundings isnt really real enough-not including the fact that you nock trees down when walking through them because thats including real features
-able to customize the weapons,skins,engine,armour and skills of your mechs, skills is more for your piloting of the mech
-when you start, you get a lot of bills (which is the mechwarrior earnable currency) which quckly gets you what ever mech you want early, just make sure you save up
-There are trial mechs for you that rotate all the time so you can try out different mech styles

There arn't any major cons but there are some minior ones(not so good)
-it's sort of a unnecessarily hard grind but it's kinda not there when your have so much fun on the game
-no close combat action because mech warrior is more a fps with mechs
-It's a little pay to win but this is not a big factor due to the fact that they have trial mechs that you can use until the rotation of the trial mech change. this trial mechs can have some of the strongest battle configurations.
If you played League of Legends, the trial system is basicly the same as that

Please give me a thumbs up if this review is helpful in anyway, please do because this is my first review

New player here.

I really enjoy this game and don't really see whats up with the stream of bad reviews rolling in.

Use your head, play it safe and you'll make it, most of the time. This is not so much a game you can jump into and be good at. It seems like these days that's all people want out of a game, an easy, instant gratification game. You have to put some work into your play's in order to win here.

Its free, give it a shot.

My first day in MWO.
I had no clue what I was doing
I wondered why there were 7 different buttons to "shoot"
I kept walking backwards
I was an absolute noob
I still am an absolute noob

It was all worth it though, because I got raged at by some australian blokes who actually typed in their accents, punctuation and all.

7.8/10 would be called a ♥♥♥♥♥ucking wallaby again.

Edit:
There seem to be a lot of people who are eager to downvote reviews for no reason.
I'm up for criticism, so if you find my review to be not helpful, let me know why.

The Thing:
Since it's release I've been coming back to this game and it will very likely remain one of my all time favorites
Don't let my relatively low play time on Steam fool you. I've been playing this game for a long time before it was on Steam. [hipster]And obviously before it was cool.[/hipster]

The thing I probably like most about it is it's complexity. It is indeed a rather complex game and it requires time to learn and overcome. If you prefer a more casual approach to a game similar (similar, not the same!) to this, I'd recommend Robocraft.
(EDIT: I do not recommend Robocraft anymore!)
But this here is Robocraft for grown-ups, for people with fully developed breasts and beards.
I'm serious. You will have to invest time into this game for it to be good. And, if you do, it's going to be really good, that much I can tell you.

What to expect:

• Very tactical and very team-oriented games of 12 versus 12 giant robots from the future, armed to the teeth.
  
  
• Mostly extremely customizable mech-loadouts (depending on faction).
  Any mech plays differently, some of them fundamentally differently. Even a single mech can play very differently, if you just change the weapons.
  Do you like to let rockets rain down on your enemies from 1000 meters away? Or do you want to do sustained damage with lasers over medium distances? Maybe you like to just go in and brawl face to face with short range missiles. Maybe you feel like a supporter and want to help your mates by providing visuals on enemies for your team to lock on.
  
  
• The four weight classes (light, medium, heavy, assault) are very distinct from one another.
  Lights, for instance, are able to easily outmaneuver the rather cumbersome assault mechs. But lights also have very little armor and, of course, not as much firepower as the bigger ones.
  Medium mechs feel like a good allround-weight class, probably best to start with.
  Heavies to me are, well, heavier mediums. That's not meant to sound derogatory. After all, heavies are heavier than mediums, because they have more room for armor and weapons. They're probably as good of a weight class to start out with as mediums.
  
  
• Within the game itself there's both a casual approach, as well as a more competetive player base.
  You can drop (your mech gets deployed by a dropship) in games alone with other loners, who might play well as a team or mess up completely, because they're bad at communicating. These drops are referred to as PUG-drops (Pick Up Group). Or you can form a group of up to 12 players and drop with them.
  There's faction play, where units (basically the name for the guys with tags in front of their names, in other games usually called 'clans') come together to fight for star systems. They can control star systems and have to defend them against other units, or they will lose control over them.
  There's also a lot of people role playing, who enjoy lore-based... stuff. I mean, lore-based things, you get the idea. Duels between two mechs for instance, with important things like, I don't know, honor and ♥♥♥♥. Read the books.
  
  
• The devs are cool and nice and react and interact and everything. They stream on Twitch on a regular basis where you can watch them work on new content and watch them just generally be in touch with their player base.
  
  
• The devs also reward players for playing. There's been customer appreciation reward programs. Within these you'd receive rewards varying from C-Bill-rewards (C-Bills are the ingame currency you earn by playing) just for playing the game. Plus, if you've decided to put money into the game and buy MC (the ingame currency bought for $$$) or one of their mech packs, you usually get a whole bunch of other things (including MECHS!) for free.
  
  
• This game has one of the most mature player bases I know. People usually are more respectful and more helpful. After all, there's a high likelihood of them having fully developed breasts and beards.
  You can easily drop into a game at any time, ask for new friends and what you get is people who want to marry you. There's also a looking for group function in the main menu. This way you can easily group up with strangers from all over the world. It's like OKcupid, but with giant stomping robots, war and explosions. What more could you wish for?

There are a few things that shouldn't go unmentioned, though:

• In the beginning, meaning for your first 25 matches, you will receive very high C-Bill rewards. Same goes for completing the tutorial, which you should play in any case. You'll have a few million C-Bills after completing those first matches and the tutorial. After this, however, progress will be much slower.
  You have to be aware that sometimes earning C-Bills feels like grinding. Other times it's a lot of fun, because it just happens while playing. After all, there's a certain satisfaction to melting through your enemies' armor and soldering off their arms to cripple their firepower. I mean it. This is something I haven't experienced in any other game so far.
  
  
• It is after your 25 first matches and after the completion of the tutorial when you should start looking for which mech you want to buy first. For this you'll have to read into the meta a little, at least that's what I'd recommend. There are some helpful videos on the Tubes of You, too.
  Search for mechs that are good, avoid mechs that really are bad (not many, but they do exist at the moment).
  And if at first you don't like the mech you purchased, don't worry. It might just take some time to get used to it and figure out the way it's played best. This really does take some time with any mech, especially if you're just starting out. So take your time, don't get frustrated too easily.
  If after a while you still don't like your first mech, try different builds on it. If you still don't like it, try a mech of another weight class.
  
  
• You will have to use trial mechs for your first games. These mechs are being interchanged every now and then, so people can try out different ones.
  There are 4 mechs free to use in every weight class. 2 of each belong to one of the two factions: The Inner Sphere or the invading Clans.
  
  
• The game is not pay to win.
  Yes, certain mechs are only available for MC. But they are not superior. Some (few!) of them happen to be within higher tiers of the current meta, but they are surrounded and outnumbered by mechs for C-Bills. Others are only available for real $$$ over a period of time, before getting released for the purchase with C-Bills.
  Some of the things you can buy for MC include premium time and cosmetic items, such as paint jobs for your mech or cockpit items.
  By the way, there are lots of events that let you earn cosmetic items, mech bays or even mechs, simply by participating.
  
  
• You will need free mech bays in order to park new mechs.
  In the beginning you have a few free mech bays. Once they are full, you obviously need new ones. Mech bays can only be bought for MC OR have to be earned by participating in events. If you really, really don't want to invest any money whatsoever in this game, you can do so. But then you should make sure to participate in most of the events. Otherwise you won't have enough free bays to park your mechs at some point.

tl;dr
Wow. This was a long review.
Unfortunately there is no way for me make this short. It is a complex game that deserves a long review. I recommend you read the whole thing.
Ultimately I recommend you play the game.

Being a mechwarrior since 1995 and MWO player since beta, with over 500hrs actual playtime on the battlefields plus around 400hrs more in the mechlab and over 500€ spent in mech packs and MC, I guess I can proudly call myself a mechwarrior veteran.

Even this game has nothing much left to do with the former serie except the lore itself and its technichal gameset, I can still say that MWO is the best free-to-play game on the market, next to Planetside 2 and War Thunder.
Overall it wins mostly because of its community. Really, the community is massive. You dont get that often in the F2P era...

Pros:
+ hundreds of different mechs
+ all highly customizable
+ complex loadout editor/mechlab
+ multiple classes/roles to play
+ events with free stuff every week
+ big legit, active and nice community
+ both competitive and lore friendly
+ leagues
+ a lot of different factions to fight for
+ 4 gamemmodes
+ decent amount of maps
+ runs smooth and stable
+ thousands of units to play with
+ voice chat
+ frequent updates (yes they work on it 24/7!)
+ tiers

Cons:
- tiers
- time and money consuming (as all F2P titles)
- steep learning curve
- unforgiving gameplay
- "sometimes" frustrating
- minor bugs
- no AI (yet!)
- still no coop (but announced for 2016)
- some mechs can only bought with real money
(they are not better or something - NO PAY TO WIN HERE!)
- too few maps imo
- THE META!

Pro Tips:
- look at the map constantly
- find allies, stick together
- make friends, join a unit
- don't be a ♥♥♥♥, no place for Rambos
- read about the lore, know the enemy
- get used to die asap
- get better and stronger, gg


(Please dont expect a new mechwarrior game...this one is a competitive version of it! You can not compare both.)

gl hf 07
[DUDE]Nam Neckcrit

Let me preface this by saying I am still playing MWO, off and on, and will continue playing it because it does enough things right to be a worthwhile game. If you don't care about the background skip to the pros and cons!

Keep in mind when reading MWO Steam reviews that there is a huge community schism regarding MWO. Many old players (sometimes called 'Islanders') are justifyably frustrated by PGI's handling of the game. Others (the 'white-knights') believe that the game is finally in a good place and is getting better, and that PGI is therefore forgiven for past transgressions. Most probably fall somewhere in-between. I would like to imagine I fall somewhere into the third camp.

Now for the bad news. As many things as MechWarrior Online does right, there are still so many things wrong with it I cannot in good conscience recommend it to new players.

I will skip the diatribe about PGI's terrible history with community relations (I was a Legendary Founder which means I paid way too much money during alpha for a product that fell short of almost all of its design goals) and focus on the pros and cons of the game as it stands now. Other reviews adequately cover the game's rocky history.

-Very graphically appealing
-Sound is immersive
-Combat feels visceral and intense. Inflicting and recieving damage involves a lot of sparks, explosions and camera shake
-Battlemechs have never felt stompier!
-Matches are generally fast and tight
-Weapons feel thematic (Lasers travel instantaneously and 'burn' for an extended duration, missiles are fired in swarms, ballistics throw sparks on impact and cause the victim's cockpit to jerk)
-Is fairly simple to learn and play without lacking strategic depth
-Teamwork is paramount and rewarded through play
-The community can be great
-A number of people have correctly pointed out that new players get a number of c-bill injections to help them outfit their first mech or two. It's a nice touch, as long as new players are careful about what they spend this cash on

-The grind is obscene. There are people who will tell you otherwise. They play a lot more than you and have the skills, equipment and chassis to rack up those c-bills. As a new player, you won't have this luxury, so expect an uphill battle to afford even one properly equipped chassis with double heat sinks, endo-steel structure, an engine that doesn't suck and a loadout that won't overheat after one alpha this isn't entirely true anymore, new players will likely be able to afford their first chassis relatively quickly but will suffer from a rapid dropoff of income once their rookie bonus runs out
-Related to the above, PGI prices content like mechs higher than any other F2P game I've ever played. Hearthstone and League of Legends both require far less time and money to 'max out' an account on, and many complain about the grind in those games
-The metagame is somewhat rigid and PGI hasn't done a great job of balancing it
-There is a serious lack of variety in terms of maps and modes - while it is not as bad as it used to be pretty much there are only two things to do, competitive community warfare matches (meh) and random queue brawls (this is almost all of what you'll be doing)
-Grind
-New players aren't given any freebies, they have to play with garbage trial mechs that use stock configurations from the tabletop game until they can afford to invest in one of their own It has been brought to my attention this is no longer the case. The trial mechs are far better designed than they used to be, I might even pilot a few tonight!
-While the bonus cash for new accounts is nice, the falloff afterwards can be pretty staggering. Especially since you still need to skill 3 variants of a mech in order to unlock the elite skills
-Lack of variety is crippling to any long term enjoyment from this game. You will VERY quickly memorize the map pool and even if you are one of those crazies who enjoys community warfare you'll find the only novelty in the game comes from the new overpriced chassis they churn out.
-Few game modes
-The community can suck
-Did I mention the grind?

I usually don't review games on steam, but I felt compelled to in this case. MWO is very close to being the great game it always had the potential to be, but PGI needs to seriously reconsider their pricing model as well as the pacing of in-game rewards if they don't want to drive away most of their new Steam players.

As a prospective player, my recommendation would be that you play the game and find out for yourself. It costs you nothing but the time it takes to download and play it, so unless you're an impulsive spender it can't really hurt to see if it appeals to you. There isn't really anything else like it on the market.

Edit: for those who don't understand why I gave this game a negative review despite its merits, there is no option between 'recommend' or 'not recommend'. For the time being my opinion leans towards the latter.

Edit 2: I pretty much ditched this game entirely shortly after writing this review. At least at the time PGI's energies were almost entirely spent on dishing out new chassis they could sell and the myriad problems with the game appeared to have mostly fallen by the wayside. As such take anything I've written here with a grain of salt as it may be out of date. Probably not though, knowing PGI.