MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries - Ashes and Ascension

This review is based on finishing the Ashes and Ascensions missions on Matamoras, Jeanette and Hanover. The Bad: - The AI is still the AI. - You’ll need more mechs. The drop tonnage limit is lower so instead of bringing four assault mechs you should drop with three mechs: one assault and two heavy/medium mech or two assault with one heavy/medium. This will make missions easier, but with the faster pace of Bulldog badly damaged mechs will not be ready for the next mission, but probably the next following mission (if you are lucky). - In some situations, Clan reinforcements have five mechs. The Good: + No more ambush turrets: Beagle APs can detect hidden turrets for targeting and destruction as soon as they pop up. They are also slower to pop-up. + Mechs & Salvage: The salvage system seems to be better. If you are lucky, you can salvage a Supernova Clan assault mech early on. The Kraken Bane-1 can be great savage for UAC-2 BFs. The Hankyu ACH-C, Vixen INC-A and Hunchback IIC-A can be great for energy weapons. The Hunchback IIC-A also comes with 8 energy hardpoints total (3LT, 2CT, 2RT)! The headhunter mission can be great for picking up lots of salvage. + Red Loot: They are red loot caches. I found at least one per planet, usually in the last mission. The best reward so far has been the two Clan ATM-9. + Aim Stabilization has been included. Go to Settings>Gameplay to turn off reticle bobbing. Overall: I give it four out of five stars. A pretty good DLC for MW5 for those into the Battletech universe. The challenge curve can be steep if you are new to MW5 and want to jump in and fight the Clans for the meta mechs and weapons so watch streamers like TTB and Baradul to get a gist for the game first. If you pick up Ashes and Ascensions, support your favorite MW streamers by using their referral link.

MWO Founder - x5 Gold mech owner. Their best, and most challenging DLC yet. Alot of missions are actually hand crafted, full of dialogue. Mason has plenty of lines. Voice acting is great. Cinematics keep leaning in the right direction. It's great that you can jump right into these DLC's. But to get that difiniteve and rewarding 'completionist' feeling - you gotta do the campaign. And with that I really wish PGI would give the base, vanilla game one last refresh and bring it up to code with their later DLC's. It's not without it's flaws. AI got no improvements, due to the nature of these 'hand crafted' levels 'not' being an attrition shaft measureing contest, their ability to aimbot a beam laser will be present this time around. You'll still find yourself fighting some big mechs, however the majority of the game you'll see alot of faster lighter enemies. Fire Moth's are fricken' everywhere. I had the privelage to do a full DLC playthrough in time for A&A, and even with a semi-raced playthrough (was running out of time) I had quite the roster and this campaign still gave me a seriousl run for my money. I beat it though, home sweet home. I do critique that I don't need to be reported 'every' time I take out a mech that they made it out alive. The lines haven't really been expanded on, and I really wish they'd lighten up on the 'distortion' layer they put on OPFOR. Additions to the map, a way to give orders like in MWO has been something I've been hoping for. And different forms of arial support would be great in order to deal with more annoying 'optional objectives' that don't seem that optional (like artillery). Especially when your AI likes to stand around eating motar, walking by turrets whilst picking thier nose. Only 2 missions I kinda YAML'd my way out because they were a warzone & beachhead respectively. A little order66 cause im not in the mood to sell myself out over a tank so a fresh spawn of enemies can crush my objective. Aside from all that, and the sad must-have that YAML is, MW5 is now quite the full experince you could ask for from a Battletech game. Cry about the DLC and their prices, this game is quiet amazing now when you have everything. I have 5 gold mechs, so whats another $150.