Probably the best of the CDLCs. Only downside is that it should have been a base game DLC so it would be automatically integrated like Apex and Contact. Lots of great stuff for mission making though.

It's relatively short (I took my time with it and got all the upgrades and quests done in 6 hours) but they have a blueprint they could really expand on if they wanted to. It plays solidly and can be pretty creepy at times, I just wish it was a little more performance-friendly but my hardware is almost 10 years old so take that as you will.

mechanically simple yet intense, aesthetically questionable yet visually coherent. the menu music is atmospheric breakcore and the menu looks straight out of 2002. fast paced but still somehow goofy.

Recommendation is a tentative yes; the core of the game is solid but could really benefit from some updates that expand it.

*Core gameplay loop is established by the end of about 2 hours in, not much progression skill-wise or equipment-wise from there (some of the experimental weapon types only show up by the time you're entering your 3rd or 4th province but that's not too far in). I'm contesting my 5th province right now and so far it seems that everything I've seen so far is how it'll be going forward in the game; compare this to XCOM, basically the genre's gold standard, where you're getting new equipment and facing new units even like 3/4s through the campaign.
*Melee is a bit wonky, every time I've tried to use it the attacking mech ends up bonking into its target and stunning them both like some sort of slapstick comedy bit.
*UI needs some work (scrapping from mech build screen, actually telling you what a mech's total heat cap is, telling you more info/better contextualized info about weapon heat generation, icons being stylish but not necessarily intuitive)
*Pre-mission screen should let you choose where your mechs start
*events in the strategic overlay don't actually seem to matter all that much (until you get 3 home guard training requests in a row while trying to do guerilla runs in occupied territory)

there's more misc gripes but I think there's potential here. (also there's already mods for it since it was built ground-up with mod support)

I'll say up front, I adore this game's looks, UI, world, etc. - it's like the SCP Foundation if conceptualized by a AAA studio. The dealbreaker for me is how buggy it is. I've updated my drivers and everything, but the damn thing never runs for more than 10-20 minutes at a time before crashing. If I open the pause menu at all, it crashes. If I die, it will probably crash. I've been powering through it for around 7 hours at this point and I'll probably keep playing it but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is it annoying.

The animations are janky, the UI isn't the best, and the AI are stupid as hell, but it's the most extensive combat simulation I've ever played