Karrakin takes that idea and doubles down on it, which is why I dislike it. The game divides mechanics completely into narrative play (freeform RP with the apocalypse-lite rules) and combat play (the mech stuff). In narrative play, you no longer have pilot HP, gear, speed, etc. Instead you get a new palette of fiction-first tools: Bonds that help you, Burdens that harm you, and a narrative-exclusive resource called strain. The great irony of Karrakin is that the pilot rules are more robust, but that robustness is worse (for me) if I want to smoothly transition between mech & pilot combat.
This especially frustrates me because Karrakin doesn't provide alternative gameplay elements for pilots outside of their mech (e.g. if they use Black Thumb). So my PCs need to maintain a list of armor / weapons / etc, in addition to their Bonds and Burdens. I can have a pilot eject from a mech and get blasted by enemies, barely surviving at 2 HP thanks to their heavy armor. In the next scene, they get into a shootout on foot where their heavy armor suddenly doesn't matter. If they get hit in the shootout, they're out of the fight, but in the next mech combat scene they'll still have exactly 2 HP and their heavy armor will suddenly matter again.
I know a couple folks who treat Lancer like a video game, with narrative scenes that hard-cut to tactical grid combat. I assume that's a popular mentality with Massif's audience, because they seem to be doing it in ICON as well. But it sits poorly with me. I still try to have at least one non-mech scene in each mission, but I don't use the Karrakin mechanics.
