Everyone knows gen 5 (or at least this game, i'm not quite sure about Verdict Day) is mostly a multiplayer experience, and it shows. the single player campaign is not only boring, but even the customization that's a literal staple of the series is almost non existent if you're not willing to grind boring side missions, because shop components get unlocked in the shop as your team level progress, and the only way to do that is to play missions, whether it's the 9 story missions (yep, not a lot of them) or order missions which are just "kill those enemy units/AC"

Thankfully it doesn't really matter, as the game is piss easy. Enemies usually do chip damage to you, and as long as you get one (good) weapon of each type (there's of them and you got 5 weapons on you), you're kinda good to go. Sometimes harder enemies do appear, but the missions have multiple checkpoints (thankfully, as they're pretty long), and even garages allowing you to get back to full HP/ammo and change parts if needed, so unless you really did not go out with a good enough build it's just a matter of retrying.

The base gameplay is interesting on paper, but never really clicks here. You're way slower than in previous games (especially coming from gen 4), there's no more flying around, movement is closer to gen 1 and 2 but even more slow and grounded. However, you can use bursts of energy to dodge in each direction, and also wall jump, and i think it's sick on paper, you can really gain some cool speed and height this way, the maps are even built around that since they're mostly city streets. sadly few are the moments where the game throws anything at you that showcases the potential of the system.

Scan mode is terrible tho. Having a mode where you can't shoot but can analyze enemies to find their weakness (and also get your energy back faster) is neat on concept, but, and that's one of the biggest issue with this game, that mode is damn near unreadable. Your screen gets a blue filter that makes everything look terrible, the scan UI is unreadable in the middle of action, and everything in this game is like that. The HUD is terrible, and every time you get hit your screen "glitches", the game already has a pretty terrible esthetic (it's the classic 7th gen gray look) but the on hit effect makes it worse

The music is absolutely phenomenal tho, everything else is kinda just ass

cool ass game. the audacity to go from the fastest game of the series to what it is arguably its slowest is pretty fucking insane, and i respect it massively for just that, but it's also good on top of that!

i can't talk about any of the online stuff since servers shut down many years ago, but i'm immediately struck by the many many similarities to ac6. that feels like the successor to this in many ways, with different damage type, "combat modes," focus on vertical combat, etc. obviously it plays very differently from everything else in the series but i like that, it still very much feels like armored core, just a different identity of it being brought to the forefront.

tbh lack of parts, a short campaign, and a lot of other minor grievances bring this down a bit for me, things i'm hoping verdict day addresses. but yeah fuck the haters this game rocks

Me disseram que era ruim, bom eu me diverti mais nele do que no 4 então...
Okay brincadeiras a parte consigo ver pq algumas pessoas não gostam mas acho q ele e 4/FA andam de mao dadas
gosto do slowpacing, do feeling mais metalico e junkier e etc
Só não jogue isso imediatamente depois do 4/FA pq ele É BEM DIFERENTE mas acho que ambos andaram pro VI correr.
Minhas unicas ressalvas são pra HUD que é um pouco confusa no começo, ate demais.
Pra trilha sonora que começa fraca mas fica muito melhor e por ele ser muito linear e curto tbm.
De resto acho tão solido quanto o 4 e acredito que o VD, assim como FA, melhore o que começou aqui

puh, wie fang ich an?

Ich hatte mich tatsächlich nicht gefreut nun nur noch die 5th gen von Armored Core vor mir zu haben.
Verdict Day war das erste AC was ich je gespielt hatte und ich mochte es damals nicht sonderlich. Das Spiel ist nur noch düster und "realistisch" und hat nicht mehr viel von dem übrig was all die Vorgänger waren, zumal der große Onlinefokus mir nun gar nichts mehr bringt da doch die Server längst offline sind.

Und ja, mein Ersteindruck war nicht gerade ein guter.
Das Menü ist ähnlich wie in Nexus, wenn auch deutlich besser.
Dafür ist das bauen von ACs mal wieder in überkompliziert verschachtelte Menüs gestopft worden die ich erst viele Stunden später halbwegs durchschaut hatte.
Und auch das Gameplay gefiel mir irgendwie nicht richtig. Das Movement wirkte zwar irgendwie ganz lustig aber alle Missionen zogen sich ewig, die Bulletsponges waren suuuper lästig und die absurd niedrige Framerate setzte dem ganzen die Krone auf.

Ich hasste es nicht, hatte aber unglaubliche Langeweile und schloss damit ab einfach direkt Verdict Day zu spielen.


Nun, und dann spielte ich Verdict Day. Und mochte auch das nicht. Bis ich aber plötzlich eine Fehlübersetzung an V bemerkte. Immer mal wieder wenn du einen Gegner triffst, taucht die Zeile "unwirksam" auf.
Verdict Day übersetzte diese Zeile auch nur sehr bescheiden, aber erst dann merkte ich, dass das Schutz-System der Vorgänger hier um eine dritte Schadensart erweitert wurde für eine Art Schere-Stein-Papier Prinzip.

Zugegeben, nicht gerade mein Lieblingselement, doch sobald ich das begriffen hatte und mich dran gewöhnte, machte das Spiel plötzlich Klick.


ACV wollte "der Schritt zurück" sein, nachdem manche Leute kein Fan der Boost-betonten Vorgänger waren. Also wurde das Spiel wieder langsamer, bodenständiger und taktischer.
Allerdings wollte man mit diesem Teil auch einen Onlinemodus in den Fokus stellen. So ganz mit Teams und Clans und Onlineschlachten.

Und deshalb wurde einiges geändert. Der Radar der seit Teil 1 existierte wurde entfernt und zu einem unbeliebten Scan-Modus verdonnert.
AC Teile sind nun mehr in Kategorien eingeteilt mit straight Upgrades was Experimentation im Weg steht, und das Gameplay ist quasi ein waschechter Shooter geworden.

Aber was für einer. Ich kann ohne Videomaterial nun kaum ins Detail gehen, aber das Movement in diesem Spiel ist so genau mein Shit. Statt durchgehen rumzufliegen, musst du die Höhe erstmal erarbeiten. Du kannst Wallkicks machen, von Gebäude zu Gebäude hovern, im Sprung den Hochboost aktivieren um Raketen auszuweichen, und dann an der nächsten Häuserwand wieder abspringen.
Der Boost hat einen kurzen Delay bei dem man mit Animation kurz in der Luft steht und es fühlt sich SO FUCKING GUUUUT an, es ist unglaublich.
Dann hält man noch auf den Gegner, wechselt in den Scanmodus um herauszufinden ob sich einer von hinten anschleicht und ob der nächste AC vielleicht eine andere Waffe braucht, und erkämpft sich etwas Freiraum durch die nächste Häuserschlucht.

Armored Core fühlte sich nie so heavy und trotzdem so direkt an wie in diesem Spiel. Als reines Actiongame tatsächlich mein Lieblingsgameplay der Reihe.
Und, ich mein, wie viele Movementfokussierte Shooter hatten wir in der Generation? Vanquish ist cool, Gears hatte so etwas hidden tech die mir aber nie gefiel, uhhh... Saints Row 4 wobei dort "shooten" und "bewegen" so dermaßen voneinander separiert waren dass es kaum zählt... und das wars dann auch schon fast?
Selbst Spiderman Spiele spielten sich in dieser Gen kacke, die Konsolenwelt war wortwörtlich einfach noch nicht bereit für Shooter in denen es Spaß macht in Bewegung zu sein.


Aber leider musste durch den Fokuswechsel auf Multiplayer vieles andere deutlich leiden.
Dass AC-Konfigurationen deutlich uninteressanter wurden hab ich ja schon erwähnt. Allerdings leiden auch die Singleplayermissionen an sich darunter.
Also, an sich ist lobenswert was From hier versuchte - man ging weg von den kurzen Mini-Missionen und hin zu linearen Singleplayer Leveln. So richtig mit Wegpunkten und Dialogen in den Leveln, Minibossen, Wendungen, Cutscenes und Checkpoints. Und die Präsentation ist sogar auf einem All-Time High für die Reihe! Nur sind diese Level mit 20 Minuten auch immer etwas zu lang mit nur wenigen Setpieces die tatsächlich in Erinnerung bleiben.

Und während das Spiel zwar beinahe 100 Missionen hat, zählen nur 10 davon zu den sogenannten "Handlung"-smissionen. Der Rest sind einfach random kill em all Missions in denen man wieder und wieder und wieder das gleiche tut.
Das Spiel ist wahnsinnig monoton, während zwei der Hauptaspekte für mich an der AC Reihe, die Konstruktion und das Merc-Feeling, vollkommen in den Hintergrund gerückt sind.

Dieses peinliche Fazit "Ein gutes Spiel, aber kein gutes [Franchise-Name-Einfügen] Spiel" kommt mir in den Sinn. Es betrügt so viele Selbstverständlichkeiten die ich an der Reihe so mag und ersetzt es mit einem Gameplay das den Kern kaum ergänzt, für das was es ist aber sooo gut funktioniert.

Super viele Kritikpunkte, bei weitem nicht das was ich am liebsten von einem AC haben will, was für mich aber dadurch wettgemacht wird dass ich hier gerne shoote.
Ich hoffe, dass mir diese Meinung nicht vergeht sobald mir die Credits von Verdict Day irgendwann entgegenflimmern.

Also ja, scheinbar mag ich Gen5 mehr als Gen4.


Oh und fick diese Framerate

Playing this entry after I played Armored Core For Answer is such a wild feeling. Since, I officially started the series with Armored Core 2 and have enjoyed all of the entries up to For Answer. Well… except Nine-Breaker, but that’s a story for another day. And so when I started to play Armored Core V. I wondered if I would enjoy this entry too. And is it worth playing for newcomers?

And the answer is very mixed…

First off, your mech is bulky and can’t fly high to the sky anymore like in past entries and the game maintains a mech altitude closer to the ground. If you want to go at a higher altitude you need to wall boost your way, by repeatedly jumping onto buildings.

Certainly, you can customize your AC with light parts, light load, and a big generator with a low-consumption booster. In becoming more mobile. But it's just not the same as the previous titles due to the other added features which I'll go into.

Controlling your AC, especially at the start, feels clunky and slow throughout the game. I even completed all the story and optional order missions and still felt that to some extent. I did update my build more than several times to see any difference or if my feelings would shift.

And upon reflection, they adjusted once I tried to see these new developments under different lenses and thematically I think it does work to some extent. Combat feels a bit more personal since you’re mostly fighting in cities and other open areas in a wasteland. But mostly the former than the latter. And it feels better winning close encounters with an AC than battling them from far away.

However, there are just too many changes here I did not like. Such as the implementation of online modes. But I can’t even access the online features since the servers are down which is a shame. I think there are some workarounds to it for pc and emulation, but I’m not sure on that front.

Moving on. Making scan mode mandatory to recover energy at a faster rate, seeing objective routes and the inability to attack is a weird compromise to make the gameplay more tactical. But I ultimately felt it was bothersome and distracted me from fighting. Even when I could activate and deactivate it at a moment's notice. The mechanic seems a bit weird to use and while I appreciate some moments for it. I just didn't like utilizing the feature throughout my playthrough.

I also didn’t like the multiple resistances here you have to remember. Its too complicated playing rock, paper, scissors, further confusing newcomers and perhaps veterans like me in wondering why my weapons aren’t effective. So it sucks when you’re already on a mission and can’t complete it because you don’t have the right weapon to be more effective in damaging the enemy. Sure you have workshop sites to change parts, but good luck changing that when you're facing off an enemy AC and can't find a workshop site available. And you can't enter a site if enemies are nearby. So these new elements are more of a chore.

Aside from these mixed feelings, I do have with the game. I do appreciate some other new changes like sorties. Which allows the player to restart from a saved checkpoint within story missions. This is a feature I super love and makes redoing missions less of a frustration and more of an easier way to retry attempts.

In addition to that, I love how you can go to multiple workshop sites in the game to replenish ammo, modify parts and recover your health. For a small price. It goes up as I consecutively use more workshop sites while in story missions. So it's very nice to diversify your build midway through a mission instead of having to do that each time before you head into battle.

The soundtrack is fire and demonstrates mechanized warfare for Armored Core standards to a T. Where fights are a bit more visceral and up close. And tracks becoming triumphant but also somber. Fitting for the game’s storyline to be so grimdark, dangerous, and full of chaos.

And the order missions are good, sometimes dropping lore bits and more since these missions take place after the main story. So you have 83 missions to dig into. All with different mission parameters ranging from defeating enemy ACs, destroying all enemy units, completing the mission within a time limit, and more.

Story is decent. Being serviceable and I like the villains here since they ooze personality.

So in the end is Armored Core V worth playing still?

A bit of a yes, a bit of a no. There are too many modifications this entry does which I didn’t appreciate at the end which makes combat a bit of a mess to enjoy and doesn’t leave a good first impression I think.

I still enjoyed my time with the game to some extent. I just wish the multiple resistances, scan mode, and online feature being implemented so heavily are tweaked or removed. Resistances just remove that. Or keep it simple to one not multiple. For scan mode. Make it so you can attack and tweak the overlay a bit to allow that or remove it and allow route markers to happen naturally. And allow some online modes playable with ai.

If you’re looking for another Armored Core entry by Fromsoftware to sink your teeth into since you already played the past entries, then I give a shaky thumbs up for this entry. And for newcomers I am hesitant to recommend this entry and would point you to Armored Core 4 or Armored Core: For Answer. Heck, I would even go so far as to recommend past PS2 titles like Armored Core 2, 3, or Nexus instead.


6/10

"Gen 5 is the absolute worst AC generation"->They played it on PS3
"Gen 5 is actually good you're just bad"->They played it on Xbox 360

Unfortunately, I've got to play the PS3 version in OG hardware and made Dark Souls' OG Blighttown look like Metal Gear Solid 2 in comparison. I have no feelings towards this game but FromSoft should be ashamed to have pulled one of the absolute worst running games I have ever played. Why is this generation such a pain just to be played normally??? On OG PS3 this runs like dogshit, let alone RPCS3; on Xbox 360 I saw it runs smoothly but you need good-ass hardware if you want to play it on Xenia, otherwise you've got to play it WITHOUT AC TEXTURES????

I've always closed an eye on From Software's absolute lack of capacity in terms of optimization, but this is too much I'm sorry.

Disaster of a game. Horrible framerate on PS3, questionable design choices, tanks suck ass and can't even boost because the booster management is ass and there is no classic boost, UI is ok but not intuitive, story has 2 or 3 good moments (the first train bit is memorable and mission 08 might be the best in the game overall) but is completely ruined by the mess on the screen and the framerate. Sometimes it's very hard to tell what's happening on screen, the game is too fast for being tactical and too janky to be entertaining. The OST is the best in the series imo but the game is not fun, at least solo. You have to be equipped for anything or a single hit makes you drop a lot of health if you don't have the big stats. This makes it that once you try a good build (heavy bipedal for big AP and overall defenses, especially TE) and find at least three weapons of three different damages you never touch the garage again. Melee weapons have no boost, kick is the way to go when it hits. Of course you have to overboost and hit enemies, but how can I when the framerate barely hits two digits?

Armored Core 5 is one of those very divisive entries in a franchise that feature some major shakeup that leads a sort of generalization that fans who didn't like it are in one way or another unfairly biased, or resistant to change.

Well, despite the insane marathon of the series I've been doing I've been an AC fan for all of three months. I have no deep-seated ideas about what the series is allowed to be. I've liked every other generation, which means I've liked some very different visions of the series. I knew this game's reputation going in. I did my research. I really, actively, wholeheartedly wanted to like it. I am not afraid of change, I like games with slow-paced tactical action, I think walljumps are cool. Not one of the stereotypical Bad Reasons not to like Armored Core 5 apply to me.

Mothers and fuckers of the jury, I assure you: there are plenty of good reasons not to like Armored Core 5. (You... you might want to settle in. I'm the kind of asshole who can talk for a lot longer about a game I hate than one I like.)

Well, mainly there's one or two really inescapably massive ones, but there are plenty of more basic areas where the game is just straightforwardly not good even at what it specifically wants to do. Let's start with one of the big problems, because it's extremely obvious and ties in to a lot of the smaller ones:

This is a heavily, heavily (online, no split-screen) multiplayer-focused game with long dead servers. I'm given to understand it's still possible to arrange a basic versus match with a P2P connection, but most game modes are no longer possible to play in any capacity.

And to be honest, I would absolutely categorically not be here for a mainly multiplayer experience even if that experience still existed, but that's not, like, a Bad thing about the game, that would be a matter of taste. There is a story campaign, which you used to be able to play co-op, and I'm not the type to begrudge a game for being a little short. I was fine with just blowing through the story and moving on. In theory.

It's not a good campaign. The plot is maybe the thinnest in the series outside of the games that literally don't have one, and I know that's saying a lot. It does have some decent banter with a persistent main cast of characters, but bantering between giving you orders is about all they're there to do.

More importantly, the mission design is mediocre at its very best. They're a small number of very long missions with a lot of updates to your objectives as you go, which sounds like the kind of thing that would make them really involved and memorable, but the thing is the objectives are almost always "go here and fight stuff on the way" and they take place on what are clearly multiplayer maps. The game doesn't have a ton of those; even in its grand total of ten missions, there are several outright repeats. And frankly I can't really tell how many maps there are because most of them are just different segments of the same big city area, which are just about distinct enough to be able to tell that they're not the same map but still basically mean the terrain is There's Some Buildings.

That's purposeful; the core gameplay requires a lot of cover and you can only gain any real altitude by jumping off walls, so there's a big focus on urban combat. That doesn't actually make it fun level design; everything looks the fucking same. It would be the absolute worst kind of level to try to navigate, but navigation is not a major concern because the game gives you a Detective Scan Mode. Scan Mode displays not just an objective marker but an entire routed path towards it... which just means the huge areas are functionally decoration on a set of Shooter Corridors. Admittedly the whole series can be big on corridors, but at least in other games you sometimes have to actually search them, or get aesthetics on them beside City Streets and Sewer Tunnels Under City Streets.

Technically there are also a huge number of Order Missions, which are sort of non-story mini-missions you can also play solo, but I did about 30 of these and they're pretty firmly Nothing. Like, "destroy all enemies (there are four of them and they're just completely normal enemies)" material. These also just take place on the same small handful of maps, but the enemies tend to be concentrated in a pretty small area. A few of the Order Missions are AC duels and take the place of the game having an Arena; you can hunt down which ones those are and cherry pick them if you really want, but otherwise, the Order Missions are about as egregiously Filler as any content in an Armored Core game. Don't bother.

The Tactical Combat might have been a less empty promise when the game had multiplayer, but in the campaign it's a joke. What Tactics means is that aside from a smattering of big bosses and AC minibosses, there are four or five types of enemies in the game, and they each have one extremely specific behavior and one or two equally specific hard counters. Snipers? The laser sights are visible at all times, trace them back to the source and shoot them. They will not move unless you stand fully on their perch with them for like ten seconds. Big slow shield guys? Go around them or switch to your sword to smash the shield. The little flying fuckers? Groan in annoyed misery and shoot them when they decide to come near you. The other little flying fuckers, who try to suicide bomb you? This is strictly easier than the first kind because they always come near you. Good tactical combat feels kind of like solving a puzzle, but the puzzle in AC5's story missions is designed to teach basic shapes to toddlers. It's technically more methodical than the more action-based combat of other Armored Core games, but just enough so to call attention to how mindless and repetitive it is. I wouldn't say most of the game is super easy, but only because.... god. Not yet. Put a pin in that.

Even AC building was kind of the least fun it's ever been, to me. The maps are another example of this, but builds are where I really think the single-player content suffers from the multiplayer focus. In any other Armored Core game, you're building for playstyles. You'll want to change up your build a lot depending on the mission, but it still feels like you have kind of a personal connection to how you choose to tackle a problem. (Which now that I mention it is much more satisfying Tactical Gameplay than anything you'll get out of 5's campaign.)

In AC5 the build process is geared towards building for Team Composition. What this mostly means, and cannot be neglected even in single player, is that you have to consider Type Matchups. There are three damage types in this game, and corresponding defense stats for each, with both weapons and armor divided by type. (Honestly almost every type of part is subdivided into categories like this, in a way that I feel kind of dumbs down the process of comparing and contrasting them; you don't have to find a generator with your preferred balance between capacity and output, for example, because the game just labels all the generators as High Output, High Capacity or Balanced.) As far as I can tell there's no consistent set of rules for how resistances and weaknesses interplay with each other, so you just kind of have to find out for every individual enemy/enemy type. But the upshot is that damage output drops off precipitously if the target has a high defense for the same damage type that your weapon deals, to the point of the wrong weapon being essentially useless.

This was intended to make you coordinate type balance with your teammates, but for a solo player it means you have to have a reliable source of DPS, and decent defense, for all three types on every build, for every mission, which is both a very uninteresting restriction and means there's very little reason to experiment once you've found a loadout that strikes a good balance. I struggled with the latter part for the first few missions, but once I worked out I wanted a kinetic damage rifle, a chemical damage rifle, a plasma gun for thermal damage and a shotgun for doing more burst damage than my piddly kinetic rifle, it carried me to the final boss (which is cool, but also a huge fuckoff difficulty spike that made me eventually look up a recommended max DPS build) with no more variations.

This was not, like... fun. Normally when you find a reliable build in Armored Core it's something you take a sort of pride in, because the reason it's reliable is that it excels at an approach to combat that you like. This was just the most Neutral build possible, because if you specialize too much you'll inevitably get stuck doing chip damage to something annoying.

Let's see, what else is there... I hate the mechanical design aesthetic, but that's subjective, I guess. Oh, the menu UI sucks ass, there's that. But aside from that... I think we have to come back to the pin. The big problem. This is the longest, most negative review I've written and I have not even gotten to my biggest complaint. The one that absolutely pervades every second of gameplay. The thing I've seen a few other people complain about but not many, which makes me feel insane, because it's so glaringly gigantic to me:

This game has the worst visual clarity I've ever seen in my fucking life.

If I am sitting more than about six feet away from my 46 inch TV, I cannot tell what the fuck is happening in Armored Core 5. If I am up close, I can keep track, but I won't be happy about it. I mentioned the game (up until the final boss) not being absolutely faceroll easy, but that is only because of the effort needed to keep even basic track of what's happening.

We're talking an absolutely garbage HUD, one that's both way too obstructive and makes the information plastered all over the center of the screen extremely hard to read. What is that fucking font? I'm not dyslexic but I feel like I suddenly understand what it's like to be dyslexic. And your ammo count being bars while your energy is a displayed number??? The ammo bars being built seamlessly into the target box so you have to squint to see where they begin and end??? I'd like that it makes information like current health pop up for enemies you're locked on to but they can't just be a fucking health bar over their heads, it's a giant window that, again, displays as a number so you have to read the horrible text, but you better read it fast because it flickers off every time you lose your lockon, and the whole entire screen glitches into nonsense when you take damage, like it's not a subtle effect, you lose all track of everything for a second, and that's not getting into all the extra bullshit when you switch to scan mode, fucking JESUS what an awful HUD.

We're talking motion blur dialed up to eleven. Thousand. Honestly I'd swear everything is subtly hazy even when standing still, like there's a Smog Filter or something? That would make sense narratively, the setting is a super-polluted wasteland, but the game does not need to be blurrier. We're talking absolutely dogshit 2006-style washed out color grading, where somehow every color blends into the standard gray environments, and yes Armored Core usually has a lot of gray for mood reasons but there's supposed to be some fucking contrast. We're talking some kind of weird shakey camera tracking that makes every movement as chaotic and disorienting as possible. (Combined with how ugly the robots are this looks like a playable Michael Bay movie.) We're talking, just, like, it's raining in a lot of missions? And rain effects shouldn't be that big of a problem in most games but on top of everything else it's just Even More Visual Noise and I hate it.

If you're thinking something snide about how I should get new glasses, I don't know what to say except that every other game in the series Looks fine to me, including the much faster ones that I'm playing on the same PS3 and TV (so, you know, it's not emulation problems either). If your eyeballs are configured to the settings that make this game anything but a hideous jerky blurry headache more power to you, but I am really, truly not exaggerating. To me it borders on Fucking Unplayable under even slightly suboptimal viewing conditions, and it's massively unpleasant under any.

I want to reiterate that I don't like feeling this way. I really liked what it sounded like this game was like. I was in its corner. I made a serious effort to engage with it on its own terms. But Christ, I did not enjoy my time one iota. Verdict Day is by all accounts vastly superior... I'll find out, I guess.






Oh, but! You have two operator ladies and they're slightly fruity, so it's actually impossible to say whether the game is good or bad.

proof that dumbasses will clown on anything that differs from what they're comfortable with. take it from someone who had zero gen 5 experience and nearly wrote this game (as well as verdict day) off due to its flak and generally misconceived perceptions as being outdated and invalidated:

these people are fuckin' wrong!

yeah - the ACs are shorter and stockier, the game's slower paced and the combat's more tactical. but this is a problem... why? as if 4/fa weren't massive departures for the series in the first place, gen 5 tends to be treated like a black sheep when it has more in common with old gen to begin with. give me a break

if you like weighty mechs that feel akin to cobbled together machinery - this may be the AC for you! movement seems limited compared to gen 1-3 on paper, but it also boasts more potential. you may not be able to boost directly up in the air - fly high or watch the sun rise - but you can hop up and off walls infinitely, hover in midair and execute a slew of more advanced movements that amp the mobility tenfold

a lot of gen 6 ideas can be seen in their infancy here. shape based emblem editing that doesn't suck ass is a nice one (iykyk) as well as the boost kick and scan mode. more importantly, weapon bays make their first proper appearance (hangars don't count) and they're especially significant due to there being 3 damage types this time around. if this sounds daunting - it isn't. so as long as this image doesn't describe your attitude, you'll be fine - you have five fucking weapons - do the math

as for the campaign: it's all killer and no filler for the main story missions. they're lengthy and totally substantial - clocking in at around 10-20 minutes minimum and 20-40 a pop on average. here's the catch: there's only 10 of them (one less if you don't count the finale being a potentially 15 second long boss fight). it's pretty short. additionally there's 80 or so "order missions" which serve as a sort of postgame side content, but they're pathetically simple compared to the main story, super trivial and probably not worth the time

but overall - fuck what you've heard. this game's fun. if the short campaign doesn't sway you too negatively, pick it up. it's still a rewarding single player experience and physical copies aren't nearly as outrageously priced as vd's

oh yeah - soundtrack bangs too - but you knew that already

An awesome mecha game unfortunately limited by its heavy focus on multiplayer. The game offers an array of various parts and weapons (the latter of which is forever un-tunable due to the servers being forever down), and in general is a better "AC game", so to speak. That's because it recovered the importance of building an AC, in comparison to AC4 and ACFA, particularly ACFA, which is known as the easiest in the whole franchise.
Moreover, I thoroughly enjoyed the detail put into the weaponry and the AC parts. They strived to stay grounded and a little bit similar to modern military technology. A tad bit "realistic" in design, especially in regards to the movement system.
Instead of adding in tried-and-true tropes of movement in AC, this game removed upwards flight but kept float. You can now wall-kick off the walls and send you in whatever direction is available to you, and gives a boost in speed. This movement plays very well with the environments, which enable you to backstab your enemies and get into cover easily.

There are a few flaws to note, however. Among them is the often times annoying and dizzying motion blur, horrible FPS times on PS3, reliance on multiplayer and online connectivity and etc.
Still, the game was unfairly hated on so much because it was merely different from what the fans'd expect.