More of a mechs powered by “red-blooded passion” guy, but this is good too.
For anyone getting into this after the recent announcement of VI, it’s worth mentioning that Hard mode adds in a bunch of gameplay and story elements that are missing on your initial playthrough- had a terrible first impression after playing, most missions passing by in what felt seconds, incomplete thoughts that only rarely capitalized on the promise of high-speed mech battles. But go into Hard mode and suddenly the game comes alive; those missions that seemed so effortless on the first go around sees the standard enemies kitted out with deadlier gear, and more importantly, the game becomes a lot more aggressive with the amount of rival NEXTs you end up fighting.
It represents a tremendous uptick in quality, fights that really demand that you know the environment and the strengths of your own mech, but it’s maybe the most aggressively that a first playthrough has felt like a tutorial- like it really is just a chance to learn the buttons and get enough currency to buy whatever parts you need when you start getting bodied by the actually interesting scenarios on the next go-around. At my most cynical, it comes across as a way of getting more value out of the content on offer (sort feels like starting with inverted castle in SOTN).
Miyazaki has discussed the gulf in resources between Rubicon’s development and the AC’s of the past, and this is one aspect where those limitations are made the most apparent- otherwise the game is really good at masking its budget, even when it re-uses many of the same levels throughout its campaign. In a war “without ideology or reason,” it makes an absurd sort of sense to liquidate the same facility you were just defending a few missions ago, or to recapture the same city, again and again and again, the nature of an all-consuming corporate war, the reasons for these conflicts never really in question.
I do think it loses some of its bite as a depiction of the corporate apocalypse though- the player flush with so much capital that you don’t feel the boot heel of your overlords so much. I’ve only played a few hours of the older AC titles, but I totally get why there would be a schism between the generations for longtime fans- something that really stuck out to me with the older games was the way that they acknowledged the logistical reality of operating one of these mechs, with cumbersome controls and so many expenses at the end of a mission that it was hard just to break even. AC4 goes more for a straightforward power fantasy; I never found myself selling parts or reloading out of fear that I’d cobbled together some junker out of what remained of my earnings.
It’s not a huge problem, and despite my issues with the game, finally getting into some of the tougher Hard mode missions causes most of those other problems to fall by the wayside, each enemy NEXT adding a huge amount of drama and challenge to proceedings. That part where youhorribly murder a bunch of people “purge” a GA facility is elevated massively thanks to a NEXT ambushing you right at the end, re-contextualizing a pretty boring objective into something really engaging, getting you to conserve enough health and ammo to have a decent chance at winning the fight- and serving as final twist of the knife when you realize who hired them to kill you.
Cool game, and it’s made me a lot more curious about what shape ACVI is going to take.
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Stray thoughts:
- It’s probably because the Ace Combat games are so fresh on my mind, but I think the game would’ve really benefited from the perspective of an ordinary person in this world- especially during Emil’s monologues between chapters, a few stills of charting the changing nature of life in Anatolia could've really helped cast a shadow over the rest of the action.
- It would have been a complete luxury, but I also would have loved to have seen some kind of replay feature charting your NEXT’s progression over the course of the game; the chance to see my “teleports behind u” starter mutate into a graceless weapons platform, Ship-of-Theseus style, would’ve been killer.
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References:
https://www.ign.com/articles/armored-core-6-interview:
Hidetaka Miyazaki: Actually, I was the director on Armored Core 4 and For Answer. And of course in those days, the level of resources and the cost and the time that we could dedicate to game development was just a completely different ballpark. So I'm extremely jealous of the team today who gets to make this new Armored Core. I wish we had that sort of leverage back in the day.
For anyone getting into this after the recent announcement of VI, it’s worth mentioning that Hard mode adds in a bunch of gameplay and story elements that are missing on your initial playthrough- had a terrible first impression after playing, most missions passing by in what felt seconds, incomplete thoughts that only rarely capitalized on the promise of high-speed mech battles. But go into Hard mode and suddenly the game comes alive; those missions that seemed so effortless on the first go around sees the standard enemies kitted out with deadlier gear, and more importantly, the game becomes a lot more aggressive with the amount of rival NEXTs you end up fighting.
It represents a tremendous uptick in quality, fights that really demand that you know the environment and the strengths of your own mech, but it’s maybe the most aggressively that a first playthrough has felt like a tutorial- like it really is just a chance to learn the buttons and get enough currency to buy whatever parts you need when you start getting bodied by the actually interesting scenarios on the next go-around. At my most cynical, it comes across as a way of getting more value out of the content on offer (sort feels like starting with inverted castle in SOTN).
Miyazaki has discussed the gulf in resources between Rubicon’s development and the AC’s of the past, and this is one aspect where those limitations are made the most apparent- otherwise the game is really good at masking its budget, even when it re-uses many of the same levels throughout its campaign. In a war “without ideology or reason,” it makes an absurd sort of sense to liquidate the same facility you were just defending a few missions ago, or to recapture the same city, again and again and again, the nature of an all-consuming corporate war, the reasons for these conflicts never really in question.
I do think it loses some of its bite as a depiction of the corporate apocalypse though- the player flush with so much capital that you don’t feel the boot heel of your overlords so much. I’ve only played a few hours of the older AC titles, but I totally get why there would be a schism between the generations for longtime fans- something that really stuck out to me with the older games was the way that they acknowledged the logistical reality of operating one of these mechs, with cumbersome controls and so many expenses at the end of a mission that it was hard just to break even. AC4 goes more for a straightforward power fantasy; I never found myself selling parts or reloading out of fear that I’d cobbled together some junker out of what remained of my earnings.
It’s not a huge problem, and despite my issues with the game, finally getting into some of the tougher Hard mode missions causes most of those other problems to fall by the wayside, each enemy NEXT adding a huge amount of drama and challenge to proceedings. That part where you
Cool game, and it’s made me a lot more curious about what shape ACVI is going to take.
---
Stray thoughts:
- It’s probably because the Ace Combat games are so fresh on my mind, but I think the game would’ve really benefited from the perspective of an ordinary person in this world- especially during Emil’s monologues between chapters, a few stills of charting the changing nature of life in Anatolia could've really helped cast a shadow over the rest of the action.
- It would have been a complete luxury, but I also would have loved to have seen some kind of replay feature charting your NEXT’s progression over the course of the game; the chance to see my “teleports behind u” starter mutate into a graceless weapons platform, Ship-of-Theseus style, would’ve been killer.
---
References:
https://www.ign.com/articles/armored-core-6-interview:
Hidetaka Miyazaki: Actually, I was the director on Armored Core 4 and For Answer. And of course in those days, the level of resources and the cost and the time that we could dedicate to game development was just a completely different ballpark. So I'm extremely jealous of the team today who gets to make this new Armored Core. I wish we had that sort of leverage back in the day.
2 Comments
If you going to play any of the older AC game's that's definitely something they hone in on, with contracts for competing corporations where they'll lure you in with prospect of free part or having your body donated to Human PLUS if you get into too much debt.
Pangburn
1 year ago