+ Pleasing visual style
+ Feels like the game is testing the breaking point of enemy density. You push the crowds or else you will die first.
+ Felt unfair at first because the movement felt too stiff to deal with the enemies on the screen, but still there are many tools that can be used for making your own space (like izuna drop, LLL-dash loop, get-off-me-tool that uses resources, grenades), and the dash i frame is surprisingly lenient.
+ Healing system also encourages you to be more aggressive and the meter management also plays into this process.
+ Bosses are (as long as they are functioning as 1v1 humanoids) pretty alright.
-A lot of encounters blend in too much because barely any environment plays into the combat arenas.
-Maybe way too long considering the enemy variety itself and the monotonous gameplay flow shifts. I would remove some levels in the middle.
-3D background and camera panning can make misaligned hit boxes which can make some how-did-that-hit-me situations
-Final boss sucks ass
+- Tutorial dump at the beginning can be overwhelming, but hey, if I could comprehend it, maybe you also can.
+- I think S ranking is in the unreasonable territory. It requires a no-hit run in regular encounters and bosses.. and honestly that’s…reserved for only the top 0.1% of the player base? It’s definitely not for me lol

[Game Director]
- Mounir Radi

[Senior Game Designer]
- Rèmi Boutin

[Combat Designer]
- Lucas Sachez
- Paul Bordeau
- Red Cochennec

[Level Designer]
- Bertrand Israel
- Yannick Patet
- Gregory Palvadeu
- Erwan Cochon
- Alvin Chambost
- Tom Guiraud
- Alberto Portero Ariza

Praise their names instead of Ubisoft.

With the expressive animation work of the characters, punk-like aesthetic, and over-the-top energy the game has, it’s easy to see that the devs had a clear thematic vision with this game. This game is a labor of love.

However, there are so many things that are unpolished, underdeveloped, and blatantly cheap.

To talk about the technical department, I DO NOT recommend you play this game on Steam Deck for now. The game stutters like crazy when you get to the middle part of the game. Even with the Steam community’s discussion board’s help, I couldn’t bear the inconsistent animation frames and glitching, so I just finished the game on the Desktop instead.

The option menu is also barebone, with no adjustable screen size, full screen/window mode switch, reduction option for the flashing light, or something like that.

The structure as a metroidvania is alright. The mazes are designed tightly with the platforming sections that utilize unlockable moves, collectable that feel mostly meaningful for the player progression, and the frequent mixture of arenas -which is a welcomed addition, as the combat system is the main selling point here-.

However, I think that, if the game is trying to sell the combat more, it should have had better enemies, which is my main gripe with this game. There are a few types of enemies, and here’s how I would describe them.

Normal goons: Mono pattern fodder (sometimes they add a projectile move) and those attacks are arbitrarily hyperarmored (meaning that you can't stagger them consistently when they are in the attack-tell animation. Not a great feeling when you are playing a combo action game.)

Big enemies: Twin pattern meatbag that flips like a card when players move around them. No collider prevents the player from going through the enemy so size rarely matters.

Ranged enemies: Animations are just mere suggestions and the shooting point’s direction is always targeting you -meaning that the aiming animation never matches to the direction of the projectiles-. This aspect gets worse if the ranged enemy is a big enemy type too. (I’m looking at you, D!ckhead gunner.)

Gimmick enemies: I’m talking about the flame shield guy and the bug-like robot that needs to be flipped before attacking. I don’t see any value in them as a combat chess piece.

Bosses: 4-6 attack patterns with a barebone phase change. (Puanini and Final Boss were good though, even with this limitation.)

And yes, I think the current pool of enemies wasn't enough to fill the combat section of this game. 2-3 new enemies per big area hardly give you an interesting discovery moment, and I would say almost all of them get palette-swapped so the surprise elements get diminished as the game goes on to the end part. The arena combat mixes up the enemies mentioned above pretty well (which is my favorite part of the game), but I think the dev should have put more thought into the Big enemy placements, as they sometimes just appear as a SOLE enemy without additional goons (meaning that they don’t even function as a space controller chess piece in the arena).

I know making an enemy is hard for a frame-by-frame animation workflow, but considering that every enemy has their glory kill animation (I think it is pretty redundant to put too much effort into them), some man-power should have been allocated to different attack patterns or just entirely new enemies.

It is obvious that there’s a sequel is planned as the ending credit appears at the urgent situation. I’m absolutely nothing when it comes to the developer’s direction (as I’m just a mere player) but my suggestion is that they should refine the strength they currently have (aesthetic, player toolset) and then put more effort into the enemies. Even though I think this game couldn’t nail down everything with its potential, I expect more good things from this developer.

Here’s a boss fight video I have recorded for this review. It doesn’t necessarily support my thoughts, but in case you want to watch it, here you go: https://youtu.be/ALLPMFvZ0Mo?si=0BJtAlatypNdsbwH

Also, spoiler warning. I’m gonna namedrop every important boss and local so consider reading this after you are done with the game.

What I expected from the demo playthrough was that this game was just gonna be a typical Souls game with a deflection mechanic. What I got in the end with the 30+ hours of journey is that this game is…. still a typical souls game, but with the combination of the best aspects of the modern post-DeS/pre-ER FROM games. Of course, there are some downfalls driven from that scope, but I won’t sugarcoat that my experience with this game was almost close to my first playthrough of Bloodborne. If this game came out in 2015, it would have been my identity to praise this game till death. Of course, this won’t be my game of life, because at this point in my gaming journey, I’m more interested in games that aren’t really souls-like, but there was a spark of joy to have for a long-time fan of the formula.

Lies of P’s thematical structure is similar to BB at first glance. There’s a dying city, there’s also a problem with outbreak of monstrosities, celestial beings behind the veil, yadayda… you know the drill. But once you dive into the game, you can see that the game is trying to convey a different thing while maintaining the value of the traditional Souls game.

In the older Myazaki’s Souls games. There’s a sense that the world in that game is an elaborated place instead of just being a pretty background. When we go back to Demon’s Souls, you might remember that you have to open the giant gate in the castle area, pick up the key and use it to open the doors in the asylum area and activate the mining elevator in the mine area, all for the one purpose: opening the shortcut or the next passage. Even though they are just a little detail, you wouldn’t disagree that this little detail in interactions make each level feel distinguished and elaborated. While this environmental detail is what FROM still excels at, you can’t deny that modern FROM games aren’t really good at delivering that premise as they look more dungeon-y than a thematically accurate place. This aspect got worse after Dark Souls 3 and we all know that Elden Ring introduced soulless manufactured mini-dungeons, which kinda ruined the game as a whole even with the inclusion of Legacy Dungeons.

Compared to this, Lies of P is full of elaborated environmental details and interactions that convey the game feel. For example, one thing you will realize soon is that this game took place around the pseudo-Belle-Époque era. To elaborate it, the game actually introduces levels themed around such as a gigantic factory manufacturing dolls, a gigantic market arcade, and a world expo with grandiose exhibitions. And those levels are, instead of being too dungeon-y, structured like an actual place for that purpose. You have to lower the pipe hanging on the crane to make a shortcut in the factory. You can ride the tram that was shown at the beginning to open a way to the expo. The arcade area is full of little shops that function as ambushes, lootable places, and backdoor shortcuts. In this aspect, Lies of P holds the torch as the best non-FROM souls-like that gave a shit about environments. If I have to nitpick, there are some obstacles that made me question “Why can’t I just jump over this”, but honestly the stronger part is so strong that I kinda forgot about it.

We are still talking about the world-building so I can add more about the thing I liked about Lies of P’s way of distinguishing itself from other FROM Souls games.
Firstly, I think the members of Hotel Krat are much more likable and sympathetic than any FROM’s hub dwellers. In FROM Souls games, after the 4 similar entries, you kinda see the boring patterns of the NPC placements. A calm and cryptic maiden figure that levels you up, A cynical-ass depressed soldier, A bulky blacksmith, and some boring merchants here and there. And you know some of them will go off and die in a ditch at some point. Bloodborne did kinda experimental things with survivors in the chapel, but they didn’t do stuff like that after BB which is pretty weird. While Lies of P still has that cryptic maiden figure, the other NPCs are full of distinguishable characteristics. A nerd girl who is very enthusiastic about gears, A CEO of the puppet industry who has a depressing backstory even with the hilarious facade, a swindler treasure hunter who tries so hard to be known as a real one, and a hotel counter robot that secretly loves the hotel owner. You may say these characters are almost like caricatures, but I personally think some amount of campiness can work as a good contrast in the consistently depressing scenario. Also, the motivations of those characters are well-established compared to FROM game NPCs which require two parts of Vaatividya videos to understand the full context.

Secondly, I think the collectables in this game are pretty neat. Unlike Souls games, there are varied types of collectables to get the lores and trivia behind the world. Message notes, guide tour books, newspapers, advertisement posters, and all that. While there are some Resident Evil documents moments that made me think “There’s no way that people would write this thing before dying lmao”, the varied way of describing the worldbuilding establishes that this world is a place where people actually lived, not a glorified dungeon after dungeon. There were some cute moments too, like the notes from Black Rabbit brotherhood. The message cylinders are probably my favorite addition to this formula since it is thematically accurate and I just like doing the treasure hunt while looking at the visual clues. This game’s strong suit is the environment department, so it works wonderfully when I just can guess the location right away with a blurred picture in the clue. There are also vinyl records to collect which can be played in the hotel lobby. Here’s a thing you should know: this is not the same as the Nier Automata’s jukebox where you can play the in-game themes again. This plays an actual original song just for this sole function! And all the vinyl record music is wonderfully composed fitting to the narrative of certain characters or the general mood so it actually had an intrinsic value for me even if it doesn’t benefit the gameplay department at all. It’s not a lie that I was happier to find records more so than the weapons.

Speaking of weapons, I think Lies of P has probably the best weapon customization in all the souls-likes I’ve played. (I’m only talking about the weapons here. If we are talking about player toolsets as a whole, there are many games that did better than this.) One of the biggest gripes I had with Souls games, in general, is that experimenting with other weapons requires an entire stat rollback or a complete re-upgrade for that new weapon just to make it useful. And even then you are limited to given weapons moves which are pretty basic most of the time. In a way, all the Souls games “build progression” can be boiled down to [Get the base weapon] - [Stick to that weapon till you find a better weapon with the same stat requirements] - [Change it to that new weapon and fully upgrade it] - [Stick to it till the end]. Even with the stat rollback functions, people rarely want to change the gears ignoring the floods of “other options” in their inventory, because trying out other weapons optimally is such busy work to do in the initial playthrough. In an ideal world, we should be able to get the Armored Core treatment where you can pull out every weapon from a cargo, but that won’t happen in the Souls game structure because they need to drip-feed the reward to fill the exploration aspect, like the hidden weapons or upgrade materials.

Lies of P took the middle ground by making the weapon parts combinable. Blades are completely separate from your stat requirement and you can upgrade these parts with moonstones. Handles on the other hand require your stat requirement, but it doesn’t determine the overall power of the weapon and it changes the moveset instead. By combining these two, you can experiment with the builds freely, as your stat requirement or the lack of upgrade materials doesn’t halt you from trying out the weapon customization. For example, you want to try out the drill-like lance which fits your stat requirement. but you may think it is obnoxious to upgrade it from the +1. Then you can just go to the Stargazer, switch the blade to the fully upgraded one, and there you have it! It may have a different speed or attack range, but you still can use the drill lance. By the end of the game, I used 5 or 6 weapons throughout the game without reallocating the stats even once. People say Souls games thrive on build variety, and Lies of P shows how to upgrade the formula to meet that expectations.

If we dig deeper into the combat side, we can find even more interesting changes to the formula. While it is basic, the fable arts and charge attacks are neat additions to the combat system. In a way, this is not a new thing as these things have become standardized since Bloodborne, but these combat options have much more clear purpose in this combat loop - the groggy attack. Unlike the traditional souls games where your basic maneuver leads you to the small victories (enemy stagger) and then big victories(enemy death) in a linear fashion, Lies of P makes you “earn” the small victory by requiring you to do a high skill action: dealing damage with fable arts or charge attacks while the enemy healthbar is glowing white. This mechanic provides two interesting things in your gameplay. Since your fable arts consume the meter and charge attack requires a long start-up time, you have to be more knowledgeable about enemy patterns or your positioning to actually punish, and sometimes you have to make hard decisions as the white bar won’t stay longer. Because some enemies just don’t give you a lot of breathing ground, you have to think about hit trading or ignoring the white bar for now and waiting for the next one.
This interesting dynamics also can be seen from the guard mechanic. Lies of P’s twist on the BB’s regain system is that players can regenerate the lost health by hitting the enemies, but only after you guard the damage. The raw damage will just go straight to the health bar and you won’t get anything after that. However, once you manage to nail down the perfect parry with the guard button, it gives a groggy damage to the enemies and you can also regenerate the lost health a bit, just like when you hit the enemies. But the perfect parry’s frame window is much shorter than Sekiro or Wo Long, so there’s definitely a high-skill ceiling aspect to master this.
This little dynamism makes the game much more than strict whip punishes even if the game is framed as a reactive side on the whole action game spectrum. Also, with this combat framework, the enemies are just fantastically designed. Fitting to the narrative, most of the enemies are malfunctioning dolls or erratic zombies. So most attacks have non-conventional timing with all the twitching joints and irregular steps. Because of this aspect, you can’t just comfortably parry or I-frame dodge every attack from the get-go. You have to consider the enemy attack distance, tracking angle, and your position in the environment to make yourself safe. This is something that lacked in Sekiro where you could comfortably deflect everything (Well, except for some main bosses, mind you!) while being stationary to the point that it feels like a rhythmical Punchout.

The bosses are great examples that elaborate the importance of positioning. The second main boss Scrapped Watchman has insane amount of patterns for an early game boss. It starts out as a simple parry/i-frame dodge test, but then the boss quickly introduces lightning effects on the ground which makes you adjust your movements more thoughtfully. Probably my favorite bosses would be Archbishop and The Swamp Monster. Visually they both look grotesque and cool, there’s a fun aspect of finding a good spot to deflect the attack while maintaining the distance, and also there were some satisfying moments where you have to pull off the groggy attack while the gigantic monstrosity is sweeping around the arena erratically.

Bosses are the highlights of this game, but where the game exceptionally excels at is how they handle the normal enemies. I heard that the director’s favorite Souls game is Dark Souls 2 from some rumors around here, but it surely shows his taste in some areas with an extreme amount of ambushes, traps, enemy compositions, and just a sheer amount of enemy numbers after the mid-game levels. I reviewed in Thymesia that souls-like games really need to grow balls to introduce multiple hazards at once, but they did it with this game. Also, there are just TONS of different mini-bosses. Each of them has borderline-boss-tier move lists hidden in their sleeves, and there is a bunch of new type of elites in one area. And these enemies appear only two or three times in the whole game? This uniqueness makes the area much more memorable than it should be. There’s a swamp level near the end of the game where all the abandoned dolls are gathered and crushed, and there was a unique scary-looking scrapped monkey mini-boss which scared the shit out of me. It has a fun moveset, but also it really elevated the mood of that freakish environment. Considering that most games just try to reuse the elite enemies over and over once it was introduced, I kinda liked the approach here, where it uses the unique enemy sparingly to make the area more special.

However, there are some dirty tricks the game abuses to the point that it kinda soured my enjoyment a bit -which is also the reason why I couldn’t give this game the perfect score-. Even though the game respects your positioning, there are some baffling enemy patterns that are just designed to “hit” you. If you have read all of my other reviews, you know what I’m talking about. It’s the god damn automatic movement assist from the enemy's side. If you ever felt like this game is a bit “floaty”, it’s because of this. Some of the patterns just ignore the context of that animation and slide them to the front so that the attack swing collides with the player. The Eldest of Black Rabbit Brotherhood shows a clear example -even though conceptually, the fight is good-. There’s a vertical strike attack combo which gives you massive damage if you get hit. Looking at the animation, it looks like he is swinging the blade in the same position as the legs are locked in one place, so you think it is safe to distance from him a bit and then prepare your next move by charging up the heavy attack, healing, or grinding your weapons… something like that. But then he slides way further than you anticipated so you get smacked by the chunk of iron, and then stun-locked to death. This dirty trick can be worse if it is combined with red attacks which require you to do a perfect parry or do a manual positioning to negate the damage. If you have completed the game, there’s no denying that Laxasia’s first phase is the perfect example of the great test of spacing, finding the punish window, and parrying. But then the second phase shows up and it forces you to parry the red attack from the sky above and the attack distance is absurdly large and fast that you are forced to remember the exact TIME to parry that attack. Considering that most red attacks so far had some window to play safe, this one felt absurdly forced. At this point, the automatic gap closer became a normal thing in action games built with Unreal Engine (I’m looking at you, En Garde, Sifu, Thymesia, and all that janky shit I played) but I wish this game didn’t abuse this trick at all, because when it didn’t rely on it, it worked wonderfully.

There are more nitpicks to add to this critique, like why are there so many gigantic two-phase bosses, why the puppet king’s first phase is much more interesting than the second phase but then the devs decided to nerf the first phase, why aren’t there many boss weapon upgrade materials in the mid-late game, and why the game didn’t have the interconnectivity of Dark Souls 1 even though there are many oppourtunities with the structures of levels, but even excluding that, there are more reasons to love this game, and it is very cultural one. It might be a cringe reason, but it’s because it’s a Korean game.

You see, I didn’t expect a lot from my home country’s industry. The whole industry here has earned titles like “the gotcha factory of the East”, and “the place where MMORPGs are born and die” and there’s no way I can deny that. It’s a cynical landscape where people’s enjoyment about videogames is heavily concentrated in irl transactions, number crunching and gamblings in disguise. This aspect extends to the indie scene except for some glowing exceptions like Unsouled. But then there’s this game, released by the company built from the web card game in the old days. I was expecting a soul-less clone, a husk of a game with money-grabbing scheme but this actually turned out to be a good game. It also understood the merits of the original Souls games, but it also paved its own ways to twist the source material(Pinocchio) in their unique taste and addressed many issues the original Souls games had. It’s a beautiful holistic combination.
And looking around the forum or communities, even with some mild criticism here and there, it’s quite a scenery to see this game getting big praise from everywhere. Even though I didn’t participate in the development at all, it made me feel happy in some sense. Maybe that subjective thought is the reason why it clouds my “fair and reasonable” eyes to read this game, but what I can’t lie about is that I really really adored this game in the end.

Armored Core 6 was 10/10 in my first playthrough, but the further playthroughs showed me that there are undeniable flaws that can’t be ignored, and it soured my enjoyment a bit. Here’s a review that explains my thought process.

Before riding the AC6 hype train, I beat AC3 on my old PS2 for the study purpose. It was a decent game, and I could understand why there are many people looking forward to the revitalisation of the AC series. The gloomy but kinda wacky world building, the alien feeling of movement control, the holistic gear combination system, and the planning procedure to beat the hard missions.. all these elements are conjoined like clockwork and formed a unique mech mercenary simulator. I could see the value of that, and I even poured some love to build the best hover tank mech, but to be honest, I didn’t fully love the game.

My PS2 is a dying old machine so there were a lot of performance-related frustrations here and there, but even without the technical issues there’s a thing I didn’t like about the structure itself.

One thing I really liked about the game is that a lot of tools require some risk factors. Jumping is cool, but it drains your energy. Every bullet fired will be counted and written on the receipt. Melee swing is powerful, but you can’t easily cancel out the animation. There are several options available from the get go, but there’s an underlying stake on your basic maneuver, and the combat situations can be more hectic and dynamic when you are fighting other AC enemies and some mobile enemy types, since you have to juggle both problems - the enemies threatening you and the player control itself.

However probably 50% of the missions were filled with boring fodder enemies that die in one hit, and some weak platforming sections. These obstacles are as basic as this “monkey see monkey do”, and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I’m doing the tutorial mission again and again, but with different mech in control. The worst case however, would be when they introduce that “seemingly piss-easy mission” at the start, drag the game to snail pace, and then introduce the bullshit hard DPS monster AC as a mission final boss. Yes, I’m talking about the Destroy Kisaragi Forces mission. It was more than just frustrating to beat the mission, because I had to waste 5 minutes with nothing-burger obstacles just to get a single chance to beat the machine gun spamming monstrosity. Even beating that boss required some pure luck because 9 out of 10 times, my ally mech couldn’t bait the attention and the boss just spammed the machine gun at me with the extreme tracking ability and shredded me to pieces. That mission scarred my sanity to the point that I had to halt the AC3 playthrough for several months.

So, yeah. To put it shortly, what I could say about the AC series before playing AC6 was, “I can see the potential, and I hope the new one has better paced missions and encounters.”

Then AC6 was released, and I played it like there’s no tomorrow. After seeing the first credit sequence, I concluded that it is a tremendous masterpiece, the return of the king, “FROMSOFT never misses”, yada yada... You know what I mean. Everything I liked about the AC3 was conveyed with some modern touches. The movement felt slick with the modern control setting (thank god for the right stick camera control), extra stake on your positioning is still a thing thanks to the lack of i-frames, shoulder weapons and main hand weapons are much easier to juggle, and the universal assault booster is a great inclusion as a both positioning and offense tool. Even though the nuanced mech turning mechanic of old AC games got removed in the procedure, overall, it was a cool player foundation.

I also liked the inclusion of mid-level checkpoints. Of course it is an unthinkable idea when you consider about the previous entries’ core gameplay value -the pre-mission strategy aspect-, but at the very least there won’t be cases like “Destroy Kisaragi Forces”, and the mission structure could be built to throw more heavy punches at you.

I was very delighted when I met the giant tetrapod enemy for the first time, because that common enemy actually showed the “dangerous patterns to care about” unlike any other previous non-AC enemy jobbers. In fact, most of the common enemies are in the straight-up-upgraded territory when you compare them to the older games. Things like invisible sniper and the Karla’s bionicle-looking creatures added more threats to the early game. There were cool multi enemy fight sequences too, like fighting several invisible mechs in the coral plant.

Just like the previous games, AC fights are the moments where you have to focus on your actions, but the non-conventional-AC bosses are the absolute highlights of the game. The early mission chopper boss had more things going on when compared to something like that weird submarine boss you find at the late game part of AC3. And the series of bosses after that chopper never disappointed me. Cataphract is probably my favorite when it comes to the casual rematch, mainly because of the short mission structure and the rodeo-like boss fight flow I love, but there’s something special about the three giant walls of AC6 -Balteus, Sea Spider, and Ibis-.

In a way, they are designed like any other modern FROM action game bosses (especially Elden Ring bosses) which don't have a lot of safe patterns to counter. Each patterns get chained indefinitely and relentlessly, and you have to weave the counter measure when they show some windows in the attack animation. You won’t likely find them in the neutral state that often.

While the boss philosophy is similar, I liked only a handful of “hard Elden Ring bosses”, and absolutely adored every “hard boss” in AC6. Mainly because the player control is absolutely better in AC6, -like, no doubt about that- but there’s also a satisfying feeling about constantly changing and weaving your attack methods depending on the enemy pattern, enemy’s state and the position of your character. Are they too far away? Use the tracking missile to give some small damage or to bait the action. Are they in the mid-range? Use the main damage dealer (like bazuka or rifle). And if you are floating high enough, you may get a higher chance to hit it too. If you found the way to get near the boss? Time to go melee and beat the shit out of it! And these internal choices are not flowcharty at all, as some weapons have multi purposes (for example, the lancer-drill thing is really good at tracking the enemy and narrowing the space in the extreme speed, so it is good for zooming if you are low on boost energy), and the ever-changing circumstances require you to do different things.

That’s why I enjoyed the game in the game design manner, but of course there are other reasons to like it too. Even though the game is firmly set itself as a mech dystopia game, somehow FROM’s creative fantasy design found its way to shine brightly with the striking visual of crimson coral mist and the mechanical monstrosities like Ice Worm and Strider. The sound work full of heavy explosives, banging metal, crunching plates, and gearing machines can be described as top notch, even though it muffled some music in the background. And while many people criticized the game for having a dried up narrative tone and rather weak conclusion, I have to give a credit to the devs, that somehow, they made likable characters only with the audio transmission and without any portraits or animations depicting the characters. The voice actors (for the main characters) actually nailed their job wonderfully.

So why did it sour my enjoyment in the end? Well, if you think the game’s entire value is lying on the first playthrough, and you can rate the game conclusively by just watching the initial ending of it, I won’t stop you. (After all, that’s how I usually rate the games that I didn’t love with the initial approach). But I loved my first playthrough here in AC6, and I thought there’s obviously more things to dig in, as the game is built around in-depth combat mechanics, mech customization, and some branching missions.

So I dug more and I found the progression of the NG+ to be strange. There were some neat branching outcomes that are “narratively” interesting, but other than that, every vanilla mission worked as it was, without any enemy placement adjustments or difficulty tuning works. Imagine you are playing Doom Eternal with all the unlocked fully-leveled up weapons but all the enemies are the doom soldiers. That’s what it felt like going through the old missions again.

Even the new missions or the other branched missions were boring to get through. Yes, there were interesting new situations that weren’t presented in the first playthrough, but every enemy (that I complimented before) dies in one combo of assault boost-melee attack, and at that point, there were no new threats that would surprise me, because 99% of them were already utilized in the first playthrough anyway. The new test subject ACs were no different as they cannot be really distinguished from the normal ACs you fought in the normal arenas.

At the end of NG++, there were only a handful of missions that satisfied me with the fully-geared up mech. The final mission that featured Baltius 2, the Defend the Strider mission that occurred in the early part of NG++, and the true final boss mission. But even then, the feeling of clearing them was nowhere close to beating Ibis for the first time, which was a huge let down.

In a way, this can work as a power fantasy, as you can use all the upgraded mech parts and mow down all the challenges you struggled before, but for that purpose, I can replay the missions in the replay tab, not doing the same missions all over again. You can say this is a chance to use different builds or intentionally undertuned mechs, but that’s unreasonable to me as I built up my mech that suits to my fun zone, and with some experiments, I found the balancing to be extremely broken, so I decided to stay where I am -a moderately mobile tank build that has some generalist tool-.

The thing is, when I beat the game for the first time, my mech wasn’t in the most optimized state. I mained the wheelchair tank which is pretty mobile in the tank leg standard, but still clumsy about aerial mobility. I stuck to the wheelchair because it just looked aesthetically pleasing. My stubbornness about the wheelchair was the reason why my builds were not always fully optimized, which made the game more challenging in some way. Like, platforming or moving to higher ground with the wheelchair is kinda hard. Also assault-boosting towards a boss required more thoughtful and deliberate approach as you can’t easily avoid the dangers from the midrange zone with this tank leg. I kinda knew the importance of staggering enemies, but I’ve never thought about using the songbirds and shotgun, so I relied on some bazuka weapon with kinda okay-ish tracking ability, and some missile launchers on shoulders. It is not too awful, but from the late-game min-maxer’s standpoint, it is kinda mid build.

After the initial playthrough, I tried the infamous Zimmermann & Songbird combination with high mobility chicken legs. Something was definitely off, and that was the point I felt like “yeah I’ll just stay in my place because this is too busted”. This is the criticism that was done a million times by the experienced AC players by now, but the stagger system needs more than just a single balance patch. I would say the item unlock system might need some rework too. While some people consider that mowing down the hardship with busted builds can be considered as a “player expression”, I personally think it is way too easy to approach as it stands now. I just didn’t use that because I just simply assumed those weapons aren’t my vibes, but still, those OP weapons’ unlock timing is pretty questionable. Remember that you have to show some little bit of effort and study to make a busted build in the Dark Souls series.

So there you have the reasons why I thought this game doesn’t deserve the glowing five star love call. I wouldn’t say the NG++ experience was necessarily the worst time in my life, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the game showed more weakness by telling me that there are more things to discover. But unlike the bittersweet feeling -that FROM can not truly escape from its own mannerisms- I had after beating Elden Ring, I’m absolutely hopeful about the expansion of Armored Core 6 after this. After all, the game is like an old mech that has been abandoned for 10 years and just booted again. Malfunction is damned sure to happen, but the important thing is… it worked for me as the initial run. And this dust-covered mech finally got the limelight again, so there are more chances to be upgraded in the future.

[Here are some other petty complaints I want to make but I couldn’t fit them in the review so I list them here]

- I still don’t know why they decided not to rank the NG+ playthrough. If there were some score hunting elements while going through the previous missions, at least they would be more enjoyable.

- The only hover tank in this game is lukewarm at best. This is an utter disrespect against the hover leg users in the previous games.

- Speaking of special legs, including the leg parts, there aren’t many interesting body parts when you compare them to AC3. Of course the build variety would suffer with AC6’s semi-stream-lined approach, but I didn’t expect it to have this low amount of variety.

- I know the scoring hunting requires several retries, but I wish the S rank threshold was more transparent than the current form. I can’t expect what method the game wants from me to achieve the S rank in the mission. Do I have to minmax the shit out and burst everything down at the speed of light? Or do I have to wear the basic gears to lower the ammo cost? Some hints can be cool, I think.

- The current way the OST chip was implemented is not good at adjusting the small stats when you are in the first run. The devs implemented the hard reset function anyway, so why not just allow me to allocate the chip wherever I want?

- Quick match implementation, please.

Even though I act like a hardened veteran of old-school video games sometimes, the truth is, I’m a filthy modern gamer in the end. I prefer when animations are fancier and the graphic looks more comprehensible at one glance.

That’s one of the petty excuses why I abandoned System Shock 1 when I played it for the first time. I was intrigued by the fact that it was the father of the Shock series (and Prey2017) and the game that did the “Metroidvania” design before SotN, but then the Grimace Shake of UI design splashed over me and I died. Also, I was busy doing other stuff at that time too, so I just hopelessly abandoned the playthrough.

So, the remake is out. And even though the outcome isn’t exactly the same, I heard that the developer’s premise was not ignoring the value of the original and recreating the same contexts and systems with the modern graphical touch.
And a lot of people who played both said the remake is the almost-perfect conversion of the original System Shock.

With these gathered opinions, I’m going to think that the core value and the feature of both games are all the same.
I played it on difficulty “2” for every department and I didn’t use a guide from start to finish, except for one time when I didn’t know what the CPU nods look like (yeah I can be that stupid sometimes).

And I can say that even though there are some moments that made me feel exhausted, I really appreciated the game overall. And if it is true that the remake’s outcome barely changed anything from the original’s design sensibility, then I would also respect the old devs for nailing down the dungeon design at that time.

If you have been in some gaming communities, you may have seen some memes comparing System Shock levels and Bioshock Infinite levels. While that’s a surface-level sneering at best, (there are better reasons to hate Bioshock Infinite than that) it is true that the level design of System Shock is the most impressive part.
I would say, even if you set the combat difficulty modifier to 0, you will still find enjoyment in the level navigation alone, because the level is like a giant jigsaw puzzle that gets larger and more convoluted as you progress.
You walk down the new corridor and there are two vents at the corner, three locked doors leading to completely different areas, and four hidden traps waiting for you to step on. Oh yeah, and there are like five patrolling security bots charging up the laser beams, so good luck!
That was a little bit exaggerated, but something as unhinged as that case happened all the time and it made me tense throughout the whole game.
The Storage Room is probably the best example of this case with the sheer size of the level, the swirling multiple branches, and the vertical structure of the small rooms that make you aware of the 3D spaces. That stage was disgustingly confusing and at the same time really memorable because of that.

Until the end game part, there’s never been a time when I felt “I know it will be a smooth ride from now on.” even though the game features a lenient form of the quick save system and the revive mechanic. (I would also argue that the resources in this game are pretty generous that you don’t have to horde the items all the time, at least on the difficulty “2” modifier.)
But the point of this game is not about surviving in a minute-to-minute real-time action. It’s about figuring out how the whole gigantic clusters are interconnected while also juggling the busy work.
The anxious thoughts constantly whispered that I won’t be able to beat this game, not because of the combat, but because of the missing pieces I couldn’t connect in the gargantuan maze.
Even after you mostly clear out the level and reveal most parts of the map, it isn’t enough to get rid of the whole underlying anxiety.
Only after you see the Citadel Station getting exploded in the cutscene, you can feel absolute relief and it was one of the most satisfying feelings I had with video games. (And even then, there’s a comparably simple and yet challenging ending mission right after that. The game never lets you take a break lol)

And the experience is amplified by the omnipresent entity Shodan.
Technically, every video game is just about dealing with shit thrown by the omnipresent entity - the developer, but what I really liked about her is how she is(or the developer is) so on the nose about showing the hidden cards in the sleeves.
There’s a seemingly mundane problem, so you solve it. But then she summons the horde of cyborg soldiers behind you while mocking and insulting you.
You think you solved the main big problem, but then she directly calls you and introduces a new problem -something that requires another hour and hours of multi-tasking and puzzle-solving.
Even though Shodan is just conceptualized quest giver and surprise encounter, I would say her existence elevated the experience because I could kinda connect to the developer’s sadistic intent behind that character. You can even hear her monologue that she is a god damn SHINTO of the citadel. Yeah, sure thing, developer. You and the dungeon design are one and the same, you evil bastard.

To get to the negative bits, I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed by the fact that, while the level progression is extremely liberal, the solutions for the small roadblocks are limited to specific key hunting or puzzles.
When I was in the Executive level, I got stuck there for a long time, because I didn’t know that there was a second unlockable cyber lock in cyberspace. That specific part halted my progression for a really long time, so I got really frustrated.
In the ideal world, the game could have provided some way to bypass the cyberspace challenges like the puzzle-skipping device.
To be fair, System Shock shouldn’t be considered as a sand-box imsim like Prey. It should be considered as a classic dungeon crawling. But even then, I think multiple solutions for each locked-door-type roadblock could have worked out better for the game. After all, the strength of this game is connecting the dots in the large unknown places, not beating a specific shooter mini-game located in the tiny corner.

Oh yeah, and I can’t express enough how the final boss was a shitshow. Though, there’s never been a good “imsim” boss so it makes sense that the forefather of the genre suffers from the same problem.
But it’s still a shame because the other bosses like Diego and Cortex Reavers were serviceable as a combat challenge where you actually have to care about what you are doing.

Negative comments aside, this is still a work of art.
It shows that the maze-like levels are much, much more than just a tedious roundabout. It can be an amazing ingredient or even a main dish if the devs can weave them well.
If I could stomach the old presentation, I could have experienced this journey early on with the original 1. Sadly I couldn’t, but I’m so glad that the remake turned out to be a real thing in the end. My appreciation goes to both the old devs and the new devs.

People just easily throw the sentence “this game design didn’t age well” like some kind of experts, but if I’m being honest, if a certain old game is mentioned fondly by some people even nowadays, there is a chance that the only things that aged from that game were presentation and graphic fidelity, not the design method.
Unshockingly, System Shock was the case.

2023-03-13
If Wo long is gonna follow the modern Team Ninja tradition, I should revalue this game later when all the DLC contents are released, but as it is now, I can confidently say it is “moderately good as a whole”, but not more than that.

It was apparent that Team Ninja had some interest in the Sekiro combat system, as the final fantasy origin was built upon the counter-based combat. But Wo Long takes it further and made the entire flow encourages you to do the timed counter. Blocking and deflection are differently mapped buttons, and the block option has generally fewer advantages than the counter. It is obvious that the block button solely exists as “use this when you can’t get the right timing”. The deflection button receives the direction input so that you can easily reposition yourself while countering the enemies. Every hitbox, including flame, air explosion, quake, and liquid can be parried if it is timed well. The successful counter gives you a morale boost, which can be used as a resource for your diverse special attacks. Enemies’ “red” attack can only be parried and there are no other options to negate that attack aside from running away from the danger zone (which is mostly impossible because red attacks are tracking-heavy attacks solely designed to hit you).

One button parry mechanic with a nice clang sound is the new black of the modern action game. With well-timed input, you can negate the attack at a close distance and maintain your position. But the mistimed input can damage or kill you. It’s a simple but satisfying risk and reward system. And I can confidently say Wo Long is the top of the parry mountain as it has the most liberating form of one button parry mechanic. As I said, you can parry ANYTHING, so there’s no “impossible to not get damage bullshit pattern” as long as you get the timing down. Counter-movement also gives you a nice amount of i-frame, and this shines thoroughly in group fights. Zhang Rang is one of my favorite boss fights and it is built upon that system. It’s a crowd-control boss fight, and what you have to do is removing the clone one by one while negating the projectile spam coming from the far back. This could have been a disastrous fight if the combat system was as dull as other souls-like games, but Wo long isn’t like that. Parrying the incoming multiple attacks, then using that to boost yourself to other directions to get close to the other clones and removing one by one felt satisfying.

Also, I would be lying if there were no other offensive attack flows other than counter & poking. Even though it is not on the Nioh 2 level, each weapon has a moderate amount of moveset, and as long as you are in the high morale status, pushing the enemies with the constant chain of normal attacks, martial arts, and spells is more beneficial than staying defensive. Jumping over an enemy is a good offensive positioning option that can be chained to a vertical drop attack. And the weapon swap attack has a parry window middle of the animation, so you can attack the enemies while deflecting if you are cheeky enough.

However, building the game MOSTLY around the counter movement also means there were sacrifices to be made. One is that the universal parry mechanic became the dominant strategy as a defensive option. There are many interesting things that can stem from the counter-movement, but the other options -block, and jump- felt rather static. If there were more varied jump attack options (like Ninja Gaiden did), post-block movements (again, like Ninja Gaiden did), or just the block-input attack branches (like Nioh did), they could have provided more reasons to experiment with, but right now they are just less appealing than they should be.

Another thing that was sacrificed is the nuanced spacing game, which was the best part of the Nioh series, the spiritual ancestor of Wo long.
My favorite boss fight from Nioh was Date Shigezane. Just like average bosses in Wo Long, he has an extreme amount of mid-range attack patterns that test your pattern memorization skill and timing skill, but the way he moves is quite different. Just like other bipedal enemies in Nioh, Date tracks you horizontally, but the distance of each footstep is fixed. This means, even without relying on a timed dodge, by knowing the attack pattern’s total movement distance, you can easily guess the safe zone of the attack and then position yourself. In this situation, your normal L stick movement is just as important as the dodge direction. Making a good space, and then lunging & punishing the opponent felt really satisfying in that boss fight, and if the iconic centipede-slash attack closed the gap towards you like a magnet, then the challenge would be harder, but less interesting because that would force you to use the timed-dodge only.

Wo Long opponents are -maybe not as infuriating as my hypothetical example- built just like that. From the small humanoids to the big creatures, all enemies have at least one or two gap closers (if it’s a boss, 75% of their moves can be a gap closer) and they are specifically designed to NOT have fixed movement distances. In a way, this is an optimal design that forces you to use the deflection, but there’s “generally” no interesting spacing game between 1 vs 1 boss fights because, at the end of their melee combo, they would be in front of you no matter what you do. I mentioned “generally” because there were some cases where you could bait out some attack patterns while maintaining the long-distance position, but you have to admit that there aren’t many cases where you could find the normal movement useful aside from finding a chance to heal yourself or distancing yourself to use the ranged spell. The fact that post-counter maneuver being diverse enough could carry the satisfying combat flow, but the lack of 1v1 spacing game left me a bitter aftertaste because it also shows that even with the diverse boss patterns, the solution can be reduced to one method at the end, which is the timed deflection. I would point at Zhang Liang, Lu Bu, Dong Zhuo, Zhang Liao, and the final-final boss and say they are ALL great bosses built with the finest Team Ninja production, but I also think the other enemies could have been the entities that work "differently" from those great bosses instead of being the “less” of those great bosses, if you know what I mean.

But this monotony can be reduced if Team Ninja focused on the dynamic multi-enemy fights as it showed the glimmer of brilliance with the assassin enemies, Zhang Rang, Not-ornstein & Not-smough, and the infamous side mission with the three warriors, but there are some issues.

One is that in the 25-hour of the campaign, there is only a handful of brilliantly crafted multi-enemy fights. And I think it is inexcusable considering that there’s an NPC follower that can help the players who have a crowd-control-skill issue. Sure, if you don’t use the stealth-kill at all and rush into the battlefield without thinking, it would lead to a multi-enemy fight, but I really don’t think that should be counted as a “finely crafted multi-enemy fight”.

Secondly, it doesn’t have enough supporter enemies. If you have played some action games based on multi-enemy fights (like Doom Eternal, Ultrakill, DMC, Ninja Gaiden, Bayonetta, Evil West, you name it) you’d know the importance of ranged harasser in a given combat situation. Without thinking that much, there is only a handful of dedicated harassers in the enemy roster, and they alone are not diversified enough to fill the long playtime. Instead of making bosses like…. Taotie, they could have allocated their time to make more interesting chess pieces. You could say that TN could use some miniboss tier enemies as the chess pieces, but I can confidently say most of them are not that apt for the grouped fight. Tigers and Mermaids are extremely aggressive so they will take all the priority, Crocodiles are awkward to fight in any situation, and we don’t talk about that stupid braindead giant statue.

Lastly, there are some minor issues with the control, and TN needs to deal with them as soon as possible to make even more fluid multi-enemy fights. Unlike the blocking system of NG or Nioh, the blocking animation doesn’t automatically track the threat when it gets hit. I mean, it is “realistic” that you get damaged when you are showing the back and the enemies hit your back, but god damn, this is already a classic Team Ninja game with extremely snappy animations. I have no idea why they designed the blocking like this, and it gives me more reasons to NOT use the block button at all. Also the execution technique should auto-target the closest enemy even if I’m locking on the other enemy. Picture this, while you are targeting Enemy A, Enemy B comes at you from the side with their red attack, so you parry it. Enemy B collapses right in front of you, but because of the manual target system, you CAN’T execute the enemy with the heavy attack input and you just start the normal heavy attack towards Enemy A instead. I never had to think about this issue when I was playing Ninja Gaiden series and yet the lack of a target priority system made some big annoyance in the situations like this. I hope they realize that their current combat system’s strength lies in the multi-enemy fights because while it is almost there, the current combat system lacks some polish to support the fluidity.

I’m mostly focusing on the combat system, because even in the big picture, there’s not much to say about Wo Long other than the combat system. I’m familiar with Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but aside from the reveal of the final-final boss’s true identity, the “twisted” story didn’t strike me that much, and I’m a person who enjoyed Nioh 2’s story. Bloodborne-ization of the characters looked cool in the first few hours, but as a whole, the visual design of the enemies wasn’t as vibrant as nioh2 which was a huge let-down.
Flag hunting is a cool concept that utilizes the verticality of maze-like levels, but there are some moments that made me think, “Is marking this flag that necessary?” because even as a player who did the solo run from the start to the end, with the moderate amount of street cleansing, I could exceed the morale level 20 threshold so easily, and make a boss fight a joke. But then the New game + slams the door open and introduces the morale level 25 bosses which kill you in one or two hits. What a GREAT balancing work.
Also, while I think the reduced amount of busy work of player customization is a welcomed feature, I think the martial arts being fixed per a weapon is a hot garbage choice from Team Ninja’s design department. I have no idea who thought it was a good idea. Fucking Elden Ring had a better weapon art customization if you ask me!
Even with the nitpicks, Wo Long is a good game that still contains the Team Ninja’s soul. I still think it is remarkable, and it is a good gateway drug that can seduce souls-like players to the “pure” action games. But in the end, it also made me think “Man, I wish I can transfer the Nioh2 save data in the PS4 to PC”. I’ll revisit this review after the DLC’s release and see if I’ll like it more or not.

2023-12-26
So the DLCs are all released. Didn't fundamentally change the game's central mechanism (like duh, why would they) but the new weapons and new contents built upon that foundation were fantastic. All the final big demon bosses were amazing, greatsword movesets are just dopamine rush, and I really liked the additional control/camera options and combat tools added with the frequent updates. I can bump it up to four stars for sure. But, please... I wish TN just never released games on Early Access state without the Early Access card.

Until the midpoint, it was one of my favoirte games I’ve played in this year, but it turned sour near the end. Here’s my explanation.

I played it on Hard difficulty from the start to finish. I dabbled into Evil difficulty with NG+ a bit. Didn’t finish that one, but I think my issue will be conveyed without fully playing that one.

What I really liked about the game is the initial attitude of the game; “We are not a typical cinematic game, and we are not gonna waste your time with walky-talky sections. Go and kill some hordes of enemies with these tools and keep moving on”. Within the first three stages, all the important melee/ranged options get opened such as melee juggling, ranged juggling, launcher, sniping, rapid pistol shot, long-distance pull, long-distance dash, parry, cancel kick, etc. These combat options are designed around the fact the player character’s movement is kinda clumsy so that you must actively make a safe space by actively demolishing the enemies with destructive combos. Fodders get easily stunned and electrocuted, and they turn into cannonballs when they get launched. Sniping the weak spot mostly guarantees heavy damage and stun, and a well-timed uppercut and cancel kick can cancel the incoming attack.

These overpowered options synergize with arena combats wonderfully. Since enemies are trying to surround and push you from everywhere, and there are frequent miniboss mix-ups in the later part of the game, you have to improvise the best combat methods that suit your situation every time. For example, when the fat giant type of miniboss shows up, pulling and cannonballing fodder enemies to the mini boss helps a lot. Also, you can zap the mini bosses if you punch them enough, so there’s an incentive to push more in the close distance. If the miniboss that got mixed is a flying type, maintaining your position to snipe the boss becomes the high priority, so you have to use more range-focused attacks to deal with the enemies. There’s a good sense of chaos control simulator in there, and when the game shows more and more ridiculous combat settings (such as fighting 3 giant bats and fodders at the final arena), the game shines brilliantly. I would say, the best moment of the game reminds me some of God Hand combat, even though this game has fewer options than that game.

However, the game really suffers from the technical department. And I’m not talking about graphical fidelity. For that size of a game dev company, the game looks great on its own with its gritty western vibe. One of the big problems is that while the control works fluently 98% of time, in the other 2%, it takes a nosedive and turns into an uncontrollable mess. And that aspect is worsened by the fact that the game is built around context-sensitive moveset and janky-ass collisions. To properly launch an enemy to a target, the target should be in the player’s frontal viewpoint while the character model is directly standing in front of the target in the distance. The same goes for the zapper-related moves. If you want to zap-pull or zap-dash to the enemy, the enemy should be in your sight, and in the right distance. There are some UI elements that try to remove the guess works -such as the glowing circle or the zapper target mark-, but when the arena becomes chaos, not only relying on UI is not viable, but the target priority becomes tangled, and you start to accidentally pull wrong things or launch wrong enemies to wrong targets. Not only that, if the context-sensitive movement failed to register, your input will start the “wrong movement” which will make the player vulnerable for short time. This doesn’t seem like an issue in the early-to-mid part of the game, but as the enemies become deadlier and overcrowded, you will see why it can lead to frustrating moments.

Other context-sensitive moveset-related issues can be found in the zapping mechanic. Happened only a few times in the game, but worth mentioning. When the enemy is zapped, and you are right in front of them, your main melee attack input will start the E-combo punch attack that works like grab attacks. And E-combo makes enemies attack less frequently, which means not only it’s a combo method, but it is also a useful breathing room maker too. Most of the time, it works well with the player’s intention, but when the arena gets uneven, and cramped, and the enemies are too many, the colliders become messy…and you know what it leads to. It may start the normal punch combo when I want to start the E-combo or vice versa. One time, I successfully electrocute the miniboss and then I dashed to the target, but my character model got stuck between the boss’s back and the wall behind the boss. But still, I was still contacting the miniboss and if my E-Combo somehow registered in this situation, I would have survived since it would automatically positioned me in front of the miniboss. But my attempt to punish the miniboss with E-combo didn’t get registered and I died by getting slashed by fodders and the miniboss who just got rid of the status effect. It was so frustrating.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of games can have issues with context-sensitive movements, since colliders are tricky bastards in game development. Bloodborne’s viscera attack and Doom Eternal’s Blood punch mechanic come to my mind. But my gripe is, the game is designed in a way that makes players dive into groups of enemies and that’s often the most enjoyable way to play. And sadly, it is also the method that makes players deal with the buggy colliders and combo movements. Maybe, if there were better ways to see the “grander picture” of the arena fight, I would have also found the fun in predicting the enemy behaviors, planning, positioning, and proceeding with the attack in a careful manner. Sadly, the camera is also too janky to provide the “grander picture”.
The good thing about this game is that enemy magnetism is not as harsh as Sifu or GoW reboot, fitting to the character’s close-up over-the-shoulder camera. But that doesn’t mean the camera is clean from issues. I think there are some AI features that reduce the attack patterns when they are behind the player’s back, but the unfair offscreen attacks are still frequent. Of course, the close-up camera doesn’t really help in that situation. Also, the camera refuses to work properly when there’s a wall behind the player -my least favorite aspect of the typical over-the-shoulder-view action games-. Getting stuck in the corner by two mini bosses was surely an experience. Some terrains prevent the players from doing the dodge-roll, but thanks to the default camera angle, players can’t see the feet, which caused a lot of death by getting stuck in the small pebble in the road that I couldn’t see. And don’t mention how atrocious can the camera be in some main boss fights.

I don’t know if the issues related to the main bosses stem purely from the technical problem or the design decision, but I have to say, there are many issues. The Parasiter is bad. Normally there aren’t many good static structure bosses in action games in general, but this one is even more frustrating, thanks to the weird lock-on feature that wires the player input in an unintuitive way. Bruch and the third main boss were mostly enjoyable, but the camera didn’t help when there are multiple targets to snipe quickly as possible. Also, I thought the feedbacks for player melee attacks were not that great, considering that all the bipedal minibosses show some flinch when they get hit by the player’s uppercut, no matter how tanky they look. The final boss worked in a similar fashion (with really good animation btw), but the final third phase was not great both on the technical and design sides. The third phase is the sized-up version of the first & second phase entity, but for some reason, your melee attack refuses to register, and you get blocked by an invisible capsule preventing the players to go underneath the body. In this situation, you are forced to use ranged options and contextual punish moves. What a great way to end the game built upon varied combat maneuvers and mostly consistent player interaction, isn’t it? And don’t forget the camera issue, as it gets worse and worse when the boss’s size grows up.

Also, here are some more things to add. Even if every control worked in the way I intended, the camera didn’t have issues, and the bosses were buttery smooth, there are some fundamental design decisions that baffled me. While there are SOME elements that break the flow of constant combat scenarios (such as the mine cart roller coaster sections and the puzzle sections), Fundamentally, the game is extremely repetitive. Now, this is a bit contradictory to what I’ve said before, but the point is different. I enjoyed the improvisational chaotic decision-making in the combat loop, but the combat loop is, still, the loop. If a player finds the most effective solution for certain chess pieces, then it becomes a habit. And a habit is anti-dynamism if you know what I mean. Unless they introduce the absurd difficulty spike (like the 3-bats battle I mentioned), or introduce the chess pieces in a different context, the combat situations will get stale.

While there are varied enemies with different moveset and different weak points, the arena’s context blends together way too much. When the arenas are mostly just the flat grounds with TNT boxes here and there, then the whole massive train cargo, oil rig, mines, vampire cavern, and swamp themes are losing their value as distinguishable stage settings, which must have taken a lot of effort to visualize. I’m not saying that this game should be the next coming of The Wonderful 101, but some elements could have been mixed as the arena gimmicks to make the combat situations more distinguishable and memorable. The sinking swamp tiles that made you keep moving in the puzzle section could have been used in certain arenas. They could have introduced an interactable mine cart that you can kick to turn it into a moving cannon ball on a rail. Sifu also proved that even if the character is mostly stuck to the ground, as long as there’s gravity working on the map, you can turn the whole level into your weapon, like throwing the enemy off the stairs or ledges. And in Evil West, you already can launch enemies off the cliff! This means by adding some layers to the arena, the game could have been more dynamic than what we have right now.

But even then, I’m kinda hesitant to call the game devs were not even trying to break the mold because I’m also facing a similar dilemma as a game dev who is developing an action game consisting of constant arenas. As you develop the enemy behaviors, you will realize that just a tiny bit of obstacles in an arena can make a lot of unintended noises. Maybe the flattened arena with no obstacles in the middle is the best for both players and enemies who are already facing numerous issues with the colliders. Maybe they tried to add the dynamic elements at the end of the dev cycle, but the time ran out, so they released it as it is. Whatever the reason is, I think they knew what they were doing. And my trust in the dev team’s future project is high. The fundamental of Evil West still reminds me of the golden era of PS2 action game titles, and they have balls to put bazillions of enemies in an arena even if they can cause a technical issue, just for sake of the dynamic play. I have no intention to play the game again since I think I’ve seen enough, but I hope their spirit carries on to more double-A game studios.

Even though I fairly enjoyed Sekiro, one thing Sekiro getting GOTY 2019 made me concerned the most is that a lot of future dev will think of it as the pinnacle of action game design method and will make a bunch of copycats.
To put my perspective, Sekiro's parry-oriented reaction-based combat system had its own limits. The fast movement options exist, but with the lack of long I-frames and uber-tracking enemies, the crowd controlling in group fights always felt atrocious and it always led me to play defensively. And in 1 vs 1 combat, the positioning options were borderline non-existent as the blocking and jab can deal almost all patterns in one single place while the dodging and zooming always felt risky as hell unless the patterns are deliberately designed to be dodged. There were some neat bosses that tried to shake things off in the game flow, but overall, I couldn’t get rid of the feeling that it wasn’t as dynamic as I expected it to be. And the current red ocean of stagnating Souls-like trend tells me that this formula won’t likely be implemented and improved by other devs that easily unless that dev is already experienced like Team Ninja or Deck 13 (And Deck 13 took two atrocious projects to finally make The Surge 2).

I talked about Sekiro for a moment because Thymesia is seemingly a blatantly Sekiro-like game, and it is not possible to not compare it to that when you watch the gameplay footage. Enemies have a twin health system. The Player’s parry move can deal damage to enemies while negating the incoming dangers. Enemies track you like a teacup on a slippery coaster. Almost all enemies have off-beat attacks to make it hard to parry… and so on. However, I couldn’t resist playing it because the plague mask looks cool as hell, and the setting looked cool in the trailer. It had a flying zombie bat monstrosity and a fancy circus master that has some cool grab moves. Surely this game would be an unhinged theme park of Tim Burton-ish nightmare, right….?

Well, I got a completely different experience from what I expected. It showed me a promising twist of the Sekiro-combat system but a lackluster theming and content that couldn’t reach the hype that the trailer induced.

The baseline is similar, but as you learn the game, you will realize that the player’s arsenals are more varied than you initially saw and each of them has its own role in a combat cycle. The normal slash attacks deal heavy damage to the “first layer” of the health bar while the claw attacks deal heavy damage to the “second layer” of the health bar. The plague weapons have different damage values depending on your weapon choice. The interesting thing about the enemy health system is that if you deal damage to them and wait, the first layer of health will automatically regenerate to the amount of the second layer, and the first layer must be deflated to deal damage to the second layer. Unlike Sekiro where if you deflate the health a bit, the posture bar becomes no issue at all, you need to try your best to juggle your methods to deflate both bars and I really liked that idea. The swappable plague weapons are also the best contributors to the combat cycle as you can hold them up to three (one by stealing from the enemies) and quickly initiate them. And most plague weapons are designed to be combo-supplement rather than one-method to one-problem skills like Sekiro’s prosthetic tools, so there were enjoyments to find by pushing the enemies with consecutive plague weapon combos. By juggling the tools available, your combat cycle becomes like a mad doctor’s surgical procedure – skinning them with a saber, then slamming the cursed plague combination inside their body, and then brutally slashing them to finish off, which is pretty fitting to the main character of this game.

There’s a little bit of "but…" in the player arsenals though. And that is the plume throw attack. It’s like a magical dart that is specialized to neutralize the “special” attacks from the enemy, but if you learn the “mikiri counter” of this game, there’s seemingly no reason to use this tool to use as a counter maneuver at all. There’s an upgrade where you can auto-zoom-teleport to the opponent with the plume, but it felt like tacked on since gap-closing to an enemy is not a big issue in this game, but more on that later.

Another thing I liked about the game is that the “upgrade” system is really liberating and works satisfyingly in the early-mid game section. By making the upgrade points retractable, the game directly encourages you to try out different skill trees anytime. There are different types of dodges, blocking, saber attacks, claw attacks, and passive buffs that can be easily experimented with this liberty. However, the upgrade points aren’t available that many early on, so there’s also a trade-off you have to think about. The vanilla character setting can be clumsy, so you need to decide which tools to adapt with your sheer will and skill, and which tools to supplement. But as I said before, that doesn’t take away the chance to try out different tools. I was stuck at Odur boss fight for some time because he has some tricky melee patterns that cannot be “intuitively” parried and for an early boss, he clearly has some tricks in his sleeves. To supplement the “skill issue” I had, I swapped the skill trees that can pull out the big damage output while tanking some hits, and I enjoyed the procedure of finding the balance that suits my combat style. But as the game goes on, you will realize that once you reach the end of the skill trees, things go messy.

Now we are on the negative side - the contents.
The low-hanging fruit is that Thymesia is really short, and the enemy variety is lacking, even worse than Sekiro or Nioh 1. There were some interesting enemies with distinguishable features like a small jester miniboss, fat hammer wielder, and sword and shield guy, but most of them felt interchangeable with small timing and positioning differences. This is utterly disappointing because there’s an entire laboratory level that is themed around grotesque animal experiments, and what they could have done is to add more experimented-animal-type of enemies that don’t work like other humanoid enemies, and then mix them up in every level’s corner with the lore that “they escaped from the lab lol”. At the near end of the game, the only dynamic encounters left in the field are the handful of boss fights.

This feels sad because the moderately-upgraded Corvus can initiate the crowd control and positioning more liberally than Sekiro. At the late stage, I intentionally aggroed multiple enemies in one combat zone so that I can try out some multi-enemy fights as an experiment. By utilizing plague weapons (I used Katar and Scythe in that scenario), upgraded dash movement, claw attacks, and “mikiri counter”, dash movement could negate the tracking attack because the movement distance was wide enough, charged claw attacks were great as a gap closer, and the two Plague Weapons I wielded were so effective at managing Corvus’s health and positioning. I had an enjoyable crowd fight that felt FAIR, and it was way more dynamic than 70% of the normal encounters in the game. This also means that even if the enemy variety is lacking, just by adding more aggressive enemies in the combat situation, things could have been more interesting in the late game, but they didn’t. Most of the enemies are initially spawned as a passive “sitting” state so that unless you intentionally get near them, there’s no direct engagement you’ll face. Enemy sight detection is mind-numbingly dumb that it’s always easy to attack first when they are showing their back. Champion enemies ALWAYS initiate the fight as 1 vs 1 and I don’t know why the devs decide to go safe with the multi-hard-enemy idea, considering that the same “type” of champion enemies appears more than several times per the whole playthrough, and they are all spawned isolated.

The question of “Why didn’t they go more than this?” doesn’t end at the enemy encounters. It also spreads on the theming and the presentation that supports them.
- Why aren’t there any other survivors or any interesting NPC that can tell the lore or build up the stake for the main character who is a doctor/alchemist saving the world? Why are there only papers?
- Why the idol boss looks like the most boring-looking tree giant creature considering that they could have add the circus elements to give the consistency that it is an Odur’s creation.
- If this is all about memories, Couldn’t they add more surreal scenes or presentations that could establish the other-worldly elements? Arguably only the final boss stage has that element.
- Overall, how is this world distinguishable from other souls-like dark fantasy games that contain plague elements and crumbling down medieval fortress?
Even with some downfalls, I liked Sekiro’s experience because even if the message and the narrative is vanilla as hell, at least they were unhinged about the presentation, (especially with the Guardian Ape and the Divine Dragon), and thematically everything worked together to present a bloodshed-epic-journey of a-nobody-shinobi. I had fun with this game, but I couldn’t shake off the feeling that they were holding back too many things that it led to a quite underwhelming experience. At least there’s a silver lining that they are eager to innovate and refine the game system that most other studios stagnate to dust, so I hope they make even more extreme works next time with that mindset. Maybe escaping from the FROM’s mold is one of the methods. I don’t know.

And where the hack are the voice actors? There aren’t many dialogues in the game, and freelancers are affordable for most studios. I just don’t get it…

To put it bluntly, I have zero experience with previous Final Fantasy games. I have no nostalgia about the series at all so the premise of the game came off to me as a Chaos-killing-meme-game and nothing more at first glance. But this game was made by Team Ninja, which is one of my favorite action game developer teams.
And Nioh 2 is -despite of its diablo-like loot system which I loathe- the greatest game I've ever played.
So, my hope was kinda high. The chaos-killing shenanigans in the trailer looked like God Hand-tier comedy and the combat system they have shown looked fun enough. It could have been 9/10 for its sheer entertainment value.

The core gameplay was, -as expected- amazing. This is not an exact copy-and-paste of Nioh formula.
Instead, they introduced an interesting form of the Sekiro-parry system, Soul Shield.
Soul Shield mechanic shows a cool compromise of reactive part and proactive part of this game. To use special skills or heavy attacks, you need some mana gauge. And how do you gain your mana? Well, you can gain some mana by hitting the enemies with normal attacks but parrying the enemies' attacks with Soul Shield is more beneficial. Soul Shield is tied to the player's "posture" meter, but unlike any other just-timed parry system, you can lengthen the parry window by spending the posture points. This is great because it makes the just-timed-parry system to be more than just "just-timed".
Not only that, but there is also other normal block function that supplements the Soul Shield.
It has high posture damage resistance (I used a shield, so the resistance rate can be different) but doesn’t give you mana when you block the attacks, which can be useful if the enemy attack timings are hard-to-judge so that you can’t safely parry the upcoming attacks.
Hopefully, you get the idea that this game’s fundamental defensive options are fantastic.

The job system and the "heavy attack" swap system are -maybe not the greatest thing ever- pretty solid.
Job is like Style in DMC in the sense that it can be swapped anytime for your own playstyle benefits, although there are only two slots.
Your weapon choice and the default heavy attack change depending on the job you "equipped".
Here's an interesting thing. As you grind a bit, your job level will grow up and you can unlock new types of "heavy attacks" that can be chained from normal attacks. For example, if the normal-normal-heavy combo ends with a down-slash in the default setting, as you unlock new moves, you can change the combo to end with a more powerful spinning slash. And you can unlock a new set of jobs by max-leveling multiple jobs. So, at least in terms of a customizable combo system, this game is a blast. Although it can be grindy if you want to try out different jobs.

Speaking of grinds, unfortunately, this game has so many downfalls to becoming the great experience I was hoping for.
I played this game on the Hard setting from the start to finish. I mostly stuck to the mage+melee-based jobs and actively used the team members.
I sometimes solo’d the bosses if the boss fight seemed reasonable to do 1v1, but it happened only three times (not including the final boss).
On the hard difficulty, Jack can die in a few hits and dangerous enemies always come in a pack. So, gear management is almost mandatory for your own safety and the team members. Here’s a thing though. I don’t know if this is a tradition of FF, but the loot drops and the item management are ridiculous.
A lot of enemy drops a shit ton of items when they die, so your inventory gets cluttered with garbage weapons and useless armors when you are not looking for the inventory for like two main stages. As a crutch, the game allows an auto-management button that automatically allocates the “best” armor and the “best” weapons for each character. Here’s another issue for this though. It is only optimal in the numbers. Since there are heavy attack skills that can be allocated depending on the weapons you have, there is a chance that the auto-management button can mess with the current skill set.
This means I have to change the weapon again for my skill set. A waste of time at best.
It’s better to have the button, but I still don’t get the point of this loot/management system when you can just have none so that I don’t have to click the damn button and fix the micro-error every time.

Another problem is the general enemy design.
There are some new elements I like, such as the chain execution: You can chain the execution if the nearby enemies also have zero posture. And there are unblockable attacks that force you to move and absorbable attacks that can be absorbed with Soul Shield and become your arsenal.
Not only that, but some bosses are also really good, like Fused Elemental which provides a good multi-boss challenge that ties two enemies creatively into one battle. Behemoth and Tiamat were good too.
But on the negative side, we have enemies that are so small that you can’t actually tell the attack distance (Tonberry), A tiny bat that spawns tornado out of sight, A beholder-like creature that spams explosive magic out of sight, bosses that spin like a cheap Beyblade even though they are clearly made of a chunk of iron(Iron Giant and Cray Claw), A boss so big and yet moves so erratically that makes my head spin(Marilith), A fast humanoid boss that has good patterns and yet has the worst SFX feedback you can imagine (You’ll see him near the end part), and the god-fucking-damn mindflayer.
Now, I know that weighty animations and clear attack tells aren’t the Team Ninja’s strongest toolset, but I remember that in Nioh2, they really improved the quality of the enemy design with the clear sound telegraphs (Remember the BOOM sound when the enemy does the red aura attacks?) and reasonable animations that are redactable for most people in that combat situations.
Compared to Nioh2, FFO’s enemies’ qualities are downgraded. These are some Ninja Gaiden 1 era janks if I have to exaggerate.
I’m guessing there is a reason why the attacks feel cheap. Since the enemy attacks are mostly told by a literal signal board, the devs must have thought that the signal would do enough tells for each attack. However, I would have preferred if they didn’t include the skill board at all. Instead, they should have provided a clearer colored aura on their attacks and better animation/SFX feedback. As a simple-minded action gamer, I want to read the animation, not a skill name.

Also, it is not related to the enemy design, but for a 30~40-hour game, the enemy variety isn’t that great. Yes, the bosses are varied, but the common enemies aren’t. After the midpoint, they spam the color-swapped enemies that are more annoying to deal with than the vanilla ones. This reminded me of Nioh 1’s problem, but Nioh 1’s humanoid enemies worked dynamically with their own stamina system, much more expansive movesets, and different kinds of encounters so the issue wasn’t that glaring. This game is screaming for more enemy types, but I’m doubting that adding new enemies would fix the issue since the general enemy qualities are kinda mess.

Since I mentioned the Nioh series, let’s talk about the levels because this game is also sharing similar issues to Nioh. Or maybe even worse.
The art "style" isn't bad, but there are no noticeable landmarks in most of the dungeons, and the lighting in this game doesn’t help you at all when you are fighting enemies in the darker area. The place is clearly having sunlight and yet the shadowy places are so dark that you CAN’T see the enemy’s animation, which is not a good idea if the game’s foundation is built upon the fast action.
The gameplay element in the level design department is quite underwhelming because the level structures aren't as convoluted as any Dark Souls, or even Nioh's main levels. Even though there are some shortcuts, I wouldn't say there were many branches to explore around ignoring the obvious main path.
Enemy placements are also monotonous. From what I've experienced, there are no ambushes using the blind spots, or showing interesting behaviors. They are standing right in the arena, visibly, standing still.
Also, the level gimmicks are either half-baked or don't provide interesting exploration elements.
Maybe it is because there weren't many contents to incentivize the explorations like the hidden Kodamas, but even considering that I felt like the dungeons in this game are working like arena after corridor after arena. It's serviceable as stages for action games, but I wouldn't call this an interesting "adventure".

The story was fun, but we have to admit that as an outsider of the FF series, the “chaos killing” mumbo jumbo got old at the end. Yes, Jack was charming in the Doom Slayer way, but his merit faded away at the end when the half of the end game cutscenes were full of anime drama that stimulates my emotion like a wet fart. At the end of the day, this game is the best form of 3/5 games. There are glaring issues here and there, and yet there are hidden charms that cannot be overlooked. Some people will love this game if they are a diehard fan of combat-experiment or an old final fantasy fan. (Since many people have pointed out that this game is full of old and new FF references) But for me, It just made me wish to see Team Ninja and FROM working together and making an absolute banger game by supplementing their weaknesses.