Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus was a brilliant tactical turn based strategy game that really gave the cogboys a chance to shine, while having brilliant gameplay and storytelling, not to mention amazing music and voice acting to go along with excellent visuals. When a sequel was announced that was going to expand on the game and bring in more factions, like the Leagues of Votann into the narrative, I was excited. The prospect of playable Necrons was also enticing, especially for how it would work with the systems set up in the first game.
Well, I wanted to love Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II. Really, I did.
There were great ideas in Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II, especially with the shift from what was essentially a dungeon crawler that used turn based strategy battles. There was a certain feeling of roughness to it, and a certain, for lack of a better word, griminess that made it feel great. Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II is definitely bigger and more polished, but might be a bit too polished for its own good.
Unlike the first game, Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II is based around a full planetary conflict between the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Necrons, and a big selling point was that you could choose to play as the Necron faction. This is definitely a high point as it is a great perspective flip and not only lets you get to enjoy playing as the Necron, but also gives you a very different view of the Imperium and Mechanicus’s forces. Plus there is the addition of the Leagues of Votann as an NPC faction that adds much to the narrative.
One thing that immediately stood out was how the combat is overhauled to give cover more importance, while positioning takes more time. It feels epic at first, but soon begins to slow things down much more than you would expect. While the Mechanicus and Necrons definitely play differently, and offer a lot of variety in that regard, both have a sense of slowness that ends up pushing you into the same strategy over and over, and removing any sense of experimentation and planning that went into the gameplay for Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus.
This sense of simplifying the gameplay too much also factors into the new mechanic of planetary management. Managing massive territories and keeping track of all your conflicts sounds enticing, but it is a bit of a letdown in the end, because there is no real sense of urgency from this part of the game. If anything, it feels like a brief section you do in between battles, rather than offering anything new.
In fact, the missions in general feel much less compelling than the first game, and I ended up getting bored at points. Black Library author Ben Counter is involved again in Mechanicus II and the story is decent, especially the depiction of the Votann, but it just is not enough to keep me compelled, although a DLC that adds the Votann as a playable faction would be interesting. What really hurts Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II though, is the performance of the game on PC, which is the version I played for review.
Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II is very poorly optimized for PC and there are so many bugs and glitches. This is not just a case of what kind of PC I am personally using, as even players with high end PCs are reporting the same issue. The stuttering, frame drops, bad frame pacing and poor performance are a deal breaker, and I genuinely got frustrated the more I played, although I kept trying to play through the experience.
There is also the issue with the voice acting that is terrible and something I switched off as soon as I could. This is surprising, considering how this was handled in the first game, but Mechanicus II just fumbled the ball somehow when processing the voice acting, and to be honest, it fumbled the sound in general. This was such a disappointment, especially when considering the amazing audio and music in the first game.
Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II just feels like a game that wants to surpass its predecessor, but was both too ambitious, but also too insistent on playing things safe. When combined with the poor PC optimization, I just had too many problems to enjoy the experience. The foundation is here for something great, it definitely has the Warhammer 40 000 spirit and narrative flavour and it has great ideas. It just failed to pull off these ideas, and falls short of what its predecessor managed to do.
I cannot recommend Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II, especially not on PC, just yet. It feels incomplete and yet I am hopeful that the developers can turn this around and make Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II the epic sequel it should have been. But for now, Warhammer 40 000: Mechanicus II just missed the mark completely.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided