BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Inception

I spent countless hours playing this game as a child. It has so much creativity and flexibility in the game compared to today's game.

Got into Battletech & Mechwarrior RPG table-top as a kid, and ended up getting this game when it came out. Was a bit disappointed with how it sort of bent the rules or just out-right did stuff that made no sense. EG: you could upgrade mechs to variants, but only one or two pre-canned ones the developers put in the game.. and some were super-awkward (like a Commando with massive amounts of lasers that was an over-heating nightmare).

Was also annoyed how items from the Mechwarrior table-top book that were designated as super rare were just easily bought at stores if you had the cash. (EG: vibro-blades, SRM launchers.. SRM launchers were supposed to be ultra-rare stuff leftover from Star League days, but you could just go to a shop and pay money to deck out your entire crew in them.. and heavy assault armors and other super-rare stuff like it was just everyday common stuff.)

The game has the possibility of you making it out without a mech early on, and if you did, you were sort of screwed. The only way to get a mech was to partake in the mech arena by renting a mech for astronomical amounts of cash.. and they'd toss you in an Urban Mech.. which you cuold use to blow out the side of the arena and try making a get-away.. which was near-impossible due to how slow it was.

If you had no mech, then you were a bit hosed when coming across random encounters, since any mech in the random encounter could blow your group to smithereens. But, even if you defeated them all (eg: you had SRM launchers), you'd never take out the mech to make it salvagable as a mech to use. So, it was just very one-sided in what you could do.

(spoiler alert!)
They also had one of your team-mates turn traitor.. and it was random. So, if it was one of the few people that could pilot a mech.. you ended up getting screwed and limited to only having 2 mech pilots instead of 3.

You could also cheese the game by simply investing in the stock market early on, and if you chose the correct stock then you were flush with cash for the entire game.. letting you deck out in super armor, SRM launchers, modifying all mechs to top-notch variants, etc early on and just steam-rolling the entire game.
(/spoiler alert)

The last part of the game.. they made the weird design decision to have it all be on-foot.. everyone gets out of their mechs and you're stuck wasting hours wandering through an underground Star League base trying to get to something your dad left you. "Wow, I get to wander through a lost Star League base!? AWESOME!" No. no it's not. It's just corridors and "go find the way to open this door" puzzles. Nothing much else to see or do.

Most of your play time will be spent trekking across the MASSIVE overworld map just trying to find the next town or what-not to go in and hope you can find a member of the team. And, while doing so, you get stuck with random encounters a la JRPG fashion that just catch you by surprise. While combat is fun, it gets old when you're just trying to go from point A to point B and accomplish things (especially if your mechs get trashed and you're struggling to make it to the next town to get repairs before you lose one of your mechs).

It was an ok game for it's time, but spent too much time focusing on foot-soldier combat and chasing your tail figuring out where the story was going.. which is why Mechwarrior games were more popular, since they focused more on mech combat and strategy.

You needed the entire manual to finish the game. Early DRM I guess. I had it and the ending was pretty cool byou wind up with a 20 ton mech.

This game sadly, despite getting pretty good reviews, was a poor seller and didn't get a lot of buzz back in the day, which is sad because it's a good RPG/Strategy mix and a fine adaptation of the Battletech world. Infocom was in financial trouble by time the game came out and was making a desperate attempt to get away from being known as the "text adventure" company. Unfortunately, their core fans dismissed it because it wasn't another "Zork" and other customers dismissed it assuming it was just another text adventure.

you can get the Chamelon and Jenner both. kill two Jenner then run. then Follow Jakes plan. you have a new pilot, and a Jenner for them

The "more info" link is a dead site. It just has a bunch of broken links.

thanks for making this game available. :) I loved it when it was first released and am still a battletech fan. Happy gaming!

I should add, that was the C-64 version, I never really played the DOS version that much, not sure if you can get the Jenner in this one.

I may be a bit biased being a fan of table-top battle tech and CRPGs in general, but I really enjoyed this game.
To add to what dosgamer stated, you can also get yourself a Jenner in that breakout, kill at least 2 of them with your Chameleon, then run like the devil to the city to get your first crewmate, then come back, usually at least one salvageable Jenner will still be there. There's a catch though, you cant save/load, you cant fight any battles in between (it will still be there if you can escape any random fights without any serious exchange of gunfire,) and you cannot repair your mech. The downside is that there are no mod-kits for the Jenner, but it packs enough punch as-is to make it the best Mech in your arsenal. Of course, come to think of it, if you meet the above criteria, you're pretty much proving you don't need the Jenner to begin with...

Does this game finish ?
because i remember when i was playing this game, the game stuck when i found the last Mech in the cave ( after those headache door puzzle ) i thought the disk game were damage so i decided to buy a new one. but still stuck there .. " pls insert next CD "

it's frustating me

trying to load this up on D-Fend Reloaded but it just goes into DOS and does a 100% load twice then closes out.. any advice? only my second game ive tried to play.. (the first one worked fine) would love to know what I need to do

Thanks for these great games! Brings back so many memories!

There is a password (manual) copy protection for this game.
Tip- you can actually grab the (medium mech) Chameleon during the escape from the training center. Being the only medium in the game, its a good advantage. Save the game before the training session where the enemy Jenners crash in since it might take a few tries, and just try to evade and run away, don't even bother fighting.

...Unless you've got the manual, you *will* need this FAQ in order to complete the game:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/581539-battletech-the-crescent-hawks-inception/faqs/24550

Review of Battletech for DOS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgJq2zZ2UbI