Sometimes when people make a really big deal out of a particular part of a game being bad, the majority of the game actually turns out to be decent to good. Unfortunately, in Battletech‘s case all the complaints turned out to be 100% accurate.
The bones of an entertaining tactical RPG are there and combat on the face of things is engaging. The problem lies in the number of enemies arrayed against you, the number of sudden/random reinforcements they get, the limits on how many mechs you can field, and the XCom-like resource management elements. You’re always going to be taking damage while heavily outnumbered, and trying to avoid battle (by, say, traveling a side path instead of approaching an enemy directly) only leads to being even more heavily outnumbered when crossing an invisible threshold suddenly triggers the appearance of more units. It’s simply not fun.
The Banner Saga, which I finally got around to giving a second chance, suffers from a similar problem. While you don’t have to worry about resources as much (running out of supplies and having everyone starve to death apparently doesn’t actually affect much of anything beyond Morale level) the issue of facing nothing but battle after lopsided battle while traveling along a straight line is a real one. Ash of Gods gives you actual choices that felt like they had meaning/impact on the progress of the story; the few choices provided here are laughable in comparison.