Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus

I’ll say it straight up: over the 50-odd hours it takes to squeeze absolutely everything out of the game, it starts to wear thin and the monotony gets annoying. Keep it to a brisk 20-30 hours - without going out of your way to “try literally everything” - and it plays with real energy.
Mechanicus is a perfectly decent turn‑based tactics game in which you lead a small squad (from one to six Tech‑Priests plus servitors) as they explore a tomb‑world. The core mechanic is the Awakening Meter that fills after every mission, depending on how many turns you took. Hitting 100 % triggers an early showdown with the final boss. The loop boils down to four big steps:
1. Assemble your squad & pick their gear
2. Choose a mission
3. Explore the tomb
4. Fight in a tomb chamber
About squab building.
This isn’t a heavy Darkest Dungeon-style resource‑management puzzle. You simply decide who’s going on the next mission and what weapons/augments they’ll carry. During a mission you earn cogitator points (the game’s currency) and spend them on skills that define each Tech‑Priest’s build. Equipment is earned as mission rewards, essentially “free,” but stronger items require more purchased skills before they can be slotted. That’s the main bit of complexity. In practice you’ll tweak builds every two or three missions once you’re flush with currency and new loot, not before every single outing.
A neat touch: gear and skills change your characters’ models. Install a scan‑range skill and a sensor array literally juts out of their back; swap in bionic legs and the lower half and walk animation update accordingly. The detail is great.
Choosing a mission.
This is barely a choice beyond matching a reward you want for a planned build. Several quest givers offer missions; their reward previews let you guess what future jobs will yield.
Exploring the tomb.
Here lie the first snag lines. Gameplay is simple: a map of the tomb shows threats, events and the main objectives. Every new room you enter bumps the Awakening Meter (re‑entering old rooms is free). Events and your responses can raise or lower the meter further. Strategy becomes “pick the whole tomb clean for extra loot but jack up Awakening” versus “beeline the objectives, miss some goodies, leave with a low meter.” There’s hardly any “optimal path‑finding” because maps are too small and basic; planning revolves purely around rewards.
Fighing.
Enter an objective room - or deliberately step into one marked “enemies” - and combat loads on a detailed battle map with a goal. Most often it’s “kill everyone.” Occasionally it’s “reach and interact with a console,” which then flips to “now kill everyone”; more rarely “reach the console, then sprint to an extraction point.” A handful of bespoke goals pop up once apiece.
Combat runs on a replenishable resource: CP (Cognition Points - think action points). You gained some while exploring, and you can harvest more mid‑fight via skills or special nodes on the map. Anything that truly impacts battle costs CP; trivial or weak actions are free. CP does not refresh automatically each turn - you have to walk to those nodes and collect it. You’ll spend most of it on attacks (there are buffs/debuffs but fewer).
Damage comes in three flavors - physical, energy, and “true.” The first two are reduced by armour; true damage ignores armour entirely. Armour cuts incoming damage by N; there are no separate “shields,” only health. Strategy therefore means either piling on one damage type in bulk or fielding a mixed squad so you’re never stuck plinking for zero. Rooms are roomy: plenty of cover, obstacles, lines‑of‑sight to block, space to kite. There’s real tactical elbow room. The system is repetitive, yet the large enemy roster and varied gear keep it engaging - at least until the 20‑ to 30‑hour mark, as I said. Healing is limited and health pools are tiny (15 HP is fragile, 19 HP is already sturdy), so you must plan for incoming damage or build around repairs. Fights can get tense and genuinely exciting.
Difficulty options.
Huge plus: a fully tuneable difficulty system. Besides the usual Easy/Normal/Hard toggle, you can individually scale enemy health, damage, currency gain, CP movement cost, and several other sliders. Fantastic for tailoring challenge. The downside: dropping difficulty - or any slider - below certain thresholds disables achievements, but the game warns you loudly, so you won’t do it by accident.
Net impression.
Mechanicus doesn’t invent new mechanics or shock veterans of the genre, yet it’s still fun.
Presentation, audio, story & lore
Visuals: Not next‑gen; up‑close models are simple, but overall it’s pleasing. Don’t expect hard realism or flashy effects, yet it never looks ugly.
Music: Bombastic, very Warhammer 40k, but also repetitive. A five‑hour session will wear it out; short sessions keep it fresh. I’m biased - I love pipe organs, and the soundtrack has a lot of them.
Story: Simple, unremarkable: “We arrived to explore a tomb‑world; once we’re done exploring, we’ll decide what to do next.” That’s basically the setup.
Lore: Warhammer 40k lore is famously dense. Like most 40k games, it throws terms, figures, and rituals at you with minimal hand‑holding. A newcomer may struggle to piece it all together. Still, the presentation is solid enough that you can use this as a gateway into the universe. A bonus: the game spotlights the relatively rare matchup Adeptus Mechanicus vs. Necrons - most WH40k media fixates on Space Marines vs. Chaos/Orks. Seeing Necrons get some love is refreshing.
So… should you play it?
Yes - but not an automatic “must‑play” for everyone. Its setting and gameplay are both niche: some will find it repetitive or too straightforward. For slow, occasional sessions, for soaking in Warhammer 40k atmosphere, or for a focused look at the Adeptus Mechanicus-Necron conflict, it’s very solid. Even taken purely as a stand‑alone tactics game, it’s enjoyable, though outsiders might find the context… opaque.

Fun and not at all stressful when compared to similar games within the turn based management strategy genre. I really like that your units cannot miss. If enemies are within range, they can hit their targets no problem provided that there are no line of sight blockers. Oh and the soundtrack, the soundtrack! The soundtrack has set the standard for what Warhammer 40K should sound like. Honestly its so good it made me buy the game originally.

As for difficulty, there are many options to customise difficulty. Once in game, you can easily cheese each battle, something that I found out like 75% through the game, by equipping an item that makes your techpriests untargetable at the start of combat until the next combat action they take. You can just delay your turns and waste the enemies' and you got yourself one free turn of action.

The game itself goes on sale quite often and is fairly cheap when it does. An easy recommendation.

Very good turn-based strategy game in the Warhammer 40K universe. Insane OST and very immersive atmosphere. The techpriest progression and upgrade aspect are very good. The game is quite difficult at first but get easier as you play. It's also a great game to play on steam deck. I highly recommend it !

"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh… it disgusted me."
The intro already tells you what to expect. Extremely atmospheric 40k game where you play as a bunch of techseeking "enthusiasts" from the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Some speak funny, almost in pseudo-code language. The gameplay is turn-based and attacks automatically hit, but they can be absorbed by different types of armor (there's physical and energy damage).
Certain weapons can destroy armor to make life easier for you. Protip: axes and melee builds are great.
++Turn based tactics. No hit chance calculation needed.
Classification = Necron.
++Purging necessary. Necron discorporation = true
= lowest priority. = highest priority.
The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.

Listening to Magos Faustinius telling Subdomina Khepra that he hadn't excised his emotions when he attained the rank of Magos and therefore his subordinates' mission loss rate has been lower, all spoken in the W40K lingo, while the soundtrack's sonorous chorals and vibrant chimes echo through your speakers is nothing short of mindblowing.
And yeah, it's pretty cool TTRPG, too. Don't you worry. Lot's of build customization; cool room-by-room dungeon clearing with the 'text adventures with outcomes', sort of similar to FTL jump-points; abundant lore; sinister plot.
Cleanse the Xenos!

Mechanicus is one of the few games to fully take advantage of the Warhammer 40.000 franchise and it shows right from the introduction. The campaign is long and fun (supported by an incredible art direction and memorable soundtracks), with an interesting feature (it can be disabled) that sets the tone and urgency of the main quest: the player can play a limited amount of missions before the "Necron awakening meter" reaches 100% and closes all quest options with the exception of the final boss (the player will also have to fight all the Necron leaders still alive at this point). This forces the player to decide which quests are worth pursuing and which ones must be ignored, as weapons and equipments for the characters are rewarded at the end of each expedition. To access all missions players can either disable this feature or play multiple runs of the campaign, which also aids replayability.
The only problem worth mentioning is the difficulty curve: played at the higher difficulties, the game is unforgiving in the first missions, only to turn trivial once the right equipments are obtained.

Fun TRPG, first mission in the tutorial feels very unfair and is kind of one of the hardest fights of the game, but once you finish it you get decently strong decently fast.

Customization and specializing units is pretty cool even tho i know nothing about 40k

Looking forward to the second game.