3 reviews liked by Redylo
Earlier this year, I played most Armored Core bar the PS3 games in anticipation for this game, though not really out of pure hype, but because I was curious what bedrock of design From Software was working with. I didn’t expect to like them much, as I'm not a big mecha fan and I rarely hear high praise for its gameplay, but I was pleasantly surprised. Armored Core had a great niche in which fast movement did not mean great flexibility. You can boost around at high speeds, but your ability to turn and aim is limited by your mech’s legs and your FCS Lockbox. It was an incredibly compelling way to design a console shooter in which traditional aiming was not the main skill, but instead the usage of movement and positioning to supplement your limited tank controls was heavily emphasized. It tickled a very different part of the brain than most games usually do, and this is not without getting into how deep and detailed the mech-building was and the way in which it very directly affected how you control and move with your AC.
I felt very positive towards Oldgen AC as a whole in spite of some issues with mission design, but I also felt like there was no chance FromSoft could replicate any of this. The core conceit of the system after all was limited and unintuitive controls. Without it, none of this would work, and in the year of our lord 2023 we’ve already had a couple releases whos primary objective to sand off anything awkward to the modern gamer even if it leaves glaring flaws in the design (looking at you, Resident Evil 4 Remake) so I prepared myself for Armored Core 6 to not really reach those same heights.
Having played it now, I can call it decent as a brainless mecha-themed action game, though only decent, as even on those metrics it is greatly brought down by poor balancing and some core mechanic weaknesses. It had cool spectacle, and the music was occasionally good, and the plot had enough intrigue going on with answerable questions if you cared to find hidden data logs. The challenge that some bosses give at the beginning was interesting, and I particularly liked the Ibis Chapter 4 boss, who moved too fast to brainlessly shoot at, demanding you wait for openings and keep closing the distance to make sure your shots don't ricochet. Though unfortunately that challenge faded and never returned, even as I completed the supposedly extra difficult content of NG++ and attempted to nerf my own builds to allow the game to shine more while it had the chance, and FromSoft missed the chance of fix Armored Core’s long standing issue of boring mission design, which in some ways is made even worse as they are all made much shorter and less demanding and ammo/repair costs feeling like a complete non-factor to the mission gameplay thus failing to incentivize you to play around saving costs.
The game’s greatest virtue in my opinion is the mech creation sandbox and how much flexibility you have with the ability to place numerous decals anywhere and change the material type of the different metals all over the mech. You can create some very beautifully rendered custom mecha in this game and it makes it easy to get attached to your particular creation if you put some effort into them, and I think that alone can definitely carry a playthrough of this game. However, that about sums up all the nice things I have to say about the game. The actual gameplay suffers and does not justify replaying the game three times to see all the content, and that's what the rest of this review will be dedicated towards.
One of the core issues that hurts this game’s vision is the Stagger system. It acts like a simplified but more extreme version of the Heat mechanic from the older games, however the changes made to it hurt the game’s balance severely. Armored Core 6 rewards the player exponentially for adopting a burst damage based playstyle, often turning fights into complete stomps in favor of the player once you put on a shotgun or grenade launcher. In contrast, anything that doesn't include some form of burst feels heavily undertuned and weak, try playing assault rifles in this game and you will have a bad time for multiple reasons. The issue is twofold here and I will be using it to segue into my other issue with the game’s design.
Stagger leaves the enemy open to critical damage for a small window, and so in order to take advantage of that window, some kind of burst damage is sorely needed. Building Stagger bar itself is also primarily dependent on the damage being dealt, and this makes it so slow damage over time weapons often are bad at causing stagger too, whereas burst damage options will both inflict Stagger very fast while also allowing you deal massive amounts of damage during the window. Finding a build that allows you to take advantage of the stagger system to a reasonable degree while also not completely invalidating the enemies is a far far more challenging task than anything in the game itself. But why balance it like this? Why are Shotguns so obscenely strong?? I suspect the answer to that lies in them being carryovers from Old AC design without much consideration put into how their power changes when the core limitations of tank controls were removed.
In Old-Gen AC, options like a shotgun or a stationary rockets/grenades were much harder to line up the shot for due to the nature of tank controls and FCS. This especially was felt with Shotguns, which demanded you to stick up close to an enemy to get worthwhile damage, which in Oldgen this meant that you were consciously moving into a range where you cannot track your target very well as they can move much faster than you can turn around to chase them, and thus lining up the shot properly took a lot of skill and finesse. Your movement needed to make up for your limited turning and made it so your ability to deal high damage was highly reliant on moving in smart ways, but this conflicted with the demands brought on by needing to dodge enemy attacks and keep yourself out of their sights. This created an incredibly complex dance of challenging priorities that made the high damage feel earned once you manage to land the shots.
However, in the world of Armored Core 6, the mechs are blessed with hard-lock auto aim and insta turning around, nearly all your shots will land, the negligible drawbacks of hard-lock are not felt whatsoever in PvE and the game’s much too stationary bosses. Your movement rarely needs to take into account your ability to land shots, just do whatever it takes to dodge the enemy’s telegraphed cannons and stay close while spamming the shoot buttons.
The assault rifles and other long/mid range options still had a strong place in Old Gen because in order to track targets within your lockbox, you had to keep a certain distance that made their movement manageable, allowing them to be good ways to chip away at enemies with ease. In comparison, AC6 gives you no reason to ever be far from opponents. With the increased power of laser blades, the addition of assault boost kicks, and the bosses who constantly dash up to you for Souls-like melee attacks, there is nearly never a reason to play long/mid range. You need to stay close to even dodge most boss attacks which ask you to hover over them and/or dash past them. It’s telling that most FCS given to you are close-range focused and that Sniper Rifles didn’t even make it into this game.
I find these flaws to be the result of the sacrifices made by the game for the sake of ultra-intuitive controls, but when you take away the entire skill of aiming and the movement, positioning, and weapon balancing factors that come with it, issues like this are bound to bubble up. It's also because of this that none of the mech types really feel as different as they used to, with the controls homogenized the way they are, many of the drawbacks and strengths of different mech-types are not as apparent. Of course the flipside of this is you can now bring a tank leg into any kind of fight you want, whereas Oldgen AC tended to railroad you into making a fast AC if you wanted to deal with its endgame challenges. But unlike this game, Oldgen AC often still had a lot of bite and challenge left to it even when you develop an AC that has the right tools for the mission. That isn’t to say that you can’t cheese difficult fights and challenges with some broken weapons/setups, but you had to go out of your way to make them and most challenges feel beatable without a cheese build, you just need the skills to push yourself over the finish lines. The demands of the build were only one half of the puzzle, but playing well enough to beat challenges was even more emphasized, which I don’t find be the case in Armored Core 6 as the “right build” is both even easier to make and once created, utterly destroys any challenge and doesn’t let me have any fun with the boss. Perhaps this is great for the type of player who likes the power-fantasy of crushing infamous Souls bosses by changing their build, but I was never that kind of player and even if I was, the relative ease and simplicity at which you can create a build that dominates all this game’s content makes even that part of the game unsatisfying in concept.
It's hard to look at the game in a good light after three playthroughs, with the flaws in the game’s balancing and the limited depth of its systems becoming more apparent as I attempted to find ways to make the game challenging. This a game where you never need to worry about anything but dodging once you’re locked on and while yes, the ways in which you dodge in this game are definitely more fun than Souls i-framing, dashing over forward moving attacks that every boss spams is not enough to make me fall love in with a game, especially not with the vast majority of missions being some flavor of “boring” with how little they demand of any of the systems in place. At the very least I hope the way this game introduces mech-building can serve as a nice way to ease players into the older games.
I felt very positive towards Oldgen AC as a whole in spite of some issues with mission design, but I also felt like there was no chance FromSoft could replicate any of this. The core conceit of the system after all was limited and unintuitive controls. Without it, none of this would work, and in the year of our lord 2023 we’ve already had a couple releases whos primary objective to sand off anything awkward to the modern gamer even if it leaves glaring flaws in the design (looking at you, Resident Evil 4 Remake) so I prepared myself for Armored Core 6 to not really reach those same heights.
Having played it now, I can call it decent as a brainless mecha-themed action game, though only decent, as even on those metrics it is greatly brought down by poor balancing and some core mechanic weaknesses. It had cool spectacle, and the music was occasionally good, and the plot had enough intrigue going on with answerable questions if you cared to find hidden data logs. The challenge that some bosses give at the beginning was interesting, and I particularly liked the Ibis Chapter 4 boss, who moved too fast to brainlessly shoot at, demanding you wait for openings and keep closing the distance to make sure your shots don't ricochet. Though unfortunately that challenge faded and never returned, even as I completed the supposedly extra difficult content of NG++ and attempted to nerf my own builds to allow the game to shine more while it had the chance, and FromSoft missed the chance of fix Armored Core’s long standing issue of boring mission design, which in some ways is made even worse as they are all made much shorter and less demanding and ammo/repair costs feeling like a complete non-factor to the mission gameplay thus failing to incentivize you to play around saving costs.
The game’s greatest virtue in my opinion is the mech creation sandbox and how much flexibility you have with the ability to place numerous decals anywhere and change the material type of the different metals all over the mech. You can create some very beautifully rendered custom mecha in this game and it makes it easy to get attached to your particular creation if you put some effort into them, and I think that alone can definitely carry a playthrough of this game. However, that about sums up all the nice things I have to say about the game. The actual gameplay suffers and does not justify replaying the game three times to see all the content, and that's what the rest of this review will be dedicated towards.
One of the core issues that hurts this game’s vision is the Stagger system. It acts like a simplified but more extreme version of the Heat mechanic from the older games, however the changes made to it hurt the game’s balance severely. Armored Core 6 rewards the player exponentially for adopting a burst damage based playstyle, often turning fights into complete stomps in favor of the player once you put on a shotgun or grenade launcher. In contrast, anything that doesn't include some form of burst feels heavily undertuned and weak, try playing assault rifles in this game and you will have a bad time for multiple reasons. The issue is twofold here and I will be using it to segue into my other issue with the game’s design.
Stagger leaves the enemy open to critical damage for a small window, and so in order to take advantage of that window, some kind of burst damage is sorely needed. Building Stagger bar itself is also primarily dependent on the damage being dealt, and this makes it so slow damage over time weapons often are bad at causing stagger too, whereas burst damage options will both inflict Stagger very fast while also allowing you deal massive amounts of damage during the window. Finding a build that allows you to take advantage of the stagger system to a reasonable degree while also not completely invalidating the enemies is a far far more challenging task than anything in the game itself. But why balance it like this? Why are Shotguns so obscenely strong?? I suspect the answer to that lies in them being carryovers from Old AC design without much consideration put into how their power changes when the core limitations of tank controls were removed.
In Old-Gen AC, options like a shotgun or a stationary rockets/grenades were much harder to line up the shot for due to the nature of tank controls and FCS. This especially was felt with Shotguns, which demanded you to stick up close to an enemy to get worthwhile damage, which in Oldgen this meant that you were consciously moving into a range where you cannot track your target very well as they can move much faster than you can turn around to chase them, and thus lining up the shot properly took a lot of skill and finesse. Your movement needed to make up for your limited turning and made it so your ability to deal high damage was highly reliant on moving in smart ways, but this conflicted with the demands brought on by needing to dodge enemy attacks and keep yourself out of their sights. This created an incredibly complex dance of challenging priorities that made the high damage feel earned once you manage to land the shots.
However, in the world of Armored Core 6, the mechs are blessed with hard-lock auto aim and insta turning around, nearly all your shots will land, the negligible drawbacks of hard-lock are not felt whatsoever in PvE and the game’s much too stationary bosses. Your movement rarely needs to take into account your ability to land shots, just do whatever it takes to dodge the enemy’s telegraphed cannons and stay close while spamming the shoot buttons.
The assault rifles and other long/mid range options still had a strong place in Old Gen because in order to track targets within your lockbox, you had to keep a certain distance that made their movement manageable, allowing them to be good ways to chip away at enemies with ease. In comparison, AC6 gives you no reason to ever be far from opponents. With the increased power of laser blades, the addition of assault boost kicks, and the bosses who constantly dash up to you for Souls-like melee attacks, there is nearly never a reason to play long/mid range. You need to stay close to even dodge most boss attacks which ask you to hover over them and/or dash past them. It’s telling that most FCS given to you are close-range focused and that Sniper Rifles didn’t even make it into this game.
I find these flaws to be the result of the sacrifices made by the game for the sake of ultra-intuitive controls, but when you take away the entire skill of aiming and the movement, positioning, and weapon balancing factors that come with it, issues like this are bound to bubble up. It's also because of this that none of the mech types really feel as different as they used to, with the controls homogenized the way they are, many of the drawbacks and strengths of different mech-types are not as apparent. Of course the flipside of this is you can now bring a tank leg into any kind of fight you want, whereas Oldgen AC tended to railroad you into making a fast AC if you wanted to deal with its endgame challenges. But unlike this game, Oldgen AC often still had a lot of bite and challenge left to it even when you develop an AC that has the right tools for the mission. That isn’t to say that you can’t cheese difficult fights and challenges with some broken weapons/setups, but you had to go out of your way to make them and most challenges feel beatable without a cheese build, you just need the skills to push yourself over the finish lines. The demands of the build were only one half of the puzzle, but playing well enough to beat challenges was even more emphasized, which I don’t find be the case in Armored Core 6 as the “right build” is both even easier to make and once created, utterly destroys any challenge and doesn’t let me have any fun with the boss. Perhaps this is great for the type of player who likes the power-fantasy of crushing infamous Souls bosses by changing their build, but I was never that kind of player and even if I was, the relative ease and simplicity at which you can create a build that dominates all this game’s content makes even that part of the game unsatisfying in concept.
It's hard to look at the game in a good light after three playthroughs, with the flaws in the game’s balancing and the limited depth of its systems becoming more apparent as I attempted to find ways to make the game challenging. This a game where you never need to worry about anything but dodging once you’re locked on and while yes, the ways in which you dodge in this game are definitely more fun than Souls i-framing, dashing over forward moving attacks that every boss spams is not enough to make me fall love in with a game, especially not with the vast majority of missions being some flavor of “boring” with how little they demand of any of the systems in place. At the very least I hope the way this game introduces mech-building can serve as a nice way to ease players into the older games.
This review contains spoilers
Blue Reflection TIE/Second Light makes me really happy that I play JRPGs. It's captured why I love and play video games, and all the anxieties and joys that come with it, and it also looks and feels amazing to play in the meanwhile.
The visual coherence of this game cannot be overstated. The Kokorotope dungeon designs, the cutscene directing, the character models and their expressions, even the lighting effects all contribute to the world, the 世界観 that the game wants to establish. The devs at GUST really poured their hearts into making this game look memorable.
It doesn't just look good for its own sake though. The aforementioned Kokorotopes are the characters' hearts manifesting as dungeons. They're great characterization set pieces, but the game does so much more than just that to give nuance to its cast. The characters all get ample screen time with the main character Ao that they all get to express many facets of themselves. it also helps that Ao is a really well-written empathetic character who brings out the best of the rest of the cast. The character writing is top-notch, it is respectful to its characters' nuances, issues and relationships without feeling condescending or simplistic.
The soundtrack is admittedly a little less catchy than the first game's. I have not played BR1, but its soundtrack has drawn me in ever since I first heard it. Even then, I consider this game's soundtrack to be impressive anyway. W-P.NEURONS is less catchy than OVERDOSE, but it's easier to listen to and works perfectly as a regular battle theme. The Kokorotope themes are all memorable as well. What I like the most about the soundtrack though is how it makes the main leitmotif for the franchise feel meaningful to you the player by the time you get to the ending credits.
BR Tie is also an especially rewarding game if you go into it after playing Gust and Tsuchiya Akira's earlier games, Ciel Nosurge and Ar Nosurge. There are ideas and themes and narrative quirks from those earlier games that can be recognized in this game that's made me smile throughout my playthrough. More impressively though, the (Normal) end of this game frames its outlook on video games in a slightly different way than Ar Nosurge's that I cannot help but be impressed. I cannot decide if I like Ar Nosurge or BR Tie more. I think that is the highest praise I can possibly give to this game.
The visual coherence of this game cannot be overstated. The Kokorotope dungeon designs, the cutscene directing, the character models and their expressions, even the lighting effects all contribute to the world, the 世界観 that the game wants to establish. The devs at GUST really poured their hearts into making this game look memorable.
It doesn't just look good for its own sake though. The aforementioned Kokorotopes are the characters' hearts manifesting as dungeons. They're great characterization set pieces, but the game does so much more than just that to give nuance to its cast. The characters all get ample screen time with the main character Ao that they all get to express many facets of themselves. it also helps that Ao is a really well-written empathetic character who brings out the best of the rest of the cast. The character writing is top-notch, it is respectful to its characters' nuances, issues and relationships without feeling condescending or simplistic.
The soundtrack is admittedly a little less catchy than the first game's. I have not played BR1, but its soundtrack has drawn me in ever since I first heard it. Even then, I consider this game's soundtrack to be impressive anyway. W-P.NEURONS is less catchy than OVERDOSE, but it's easier to listen to and works perfectly as a regular battle theme. The Kokorotope themes are all memorable as well. What I like the most about the soundtrack though is how it makes the main leitmotif for the franchise feel meaningful to you the player by the time you get to the ending credits.
BR Tie is also an especially rewarding game if you go into it after playing Gust and Tsuchiya Akira's earlier games, Ciel Nosurge and Ar Nosurge. There are ideas and themes and narrative quirks from those earlier games that can be recognized in this game that's made me smile throughout my playthrough. More impressively though, the (Normal) end of this game frames its outlook on video games in a slightly different way than Ar Nosurge's that I cannot help but be impressed. I cannot decide if I like Ar Nosurge or BR Tie more. I think that is the highest praise I can possibly give to this game.
Gensou Shoujo Taisen
2010
The best, if not most ambitious Touhou fangame I've played. Weaves the events of 6~12 with some surprises sprinkled in throughout the experience, while also telling its own messages across each arc through the characters and their development. Gensou Shoujo Wars is a big treat to Touhou fans, and doubly so for Super Robot Wars fans with a bunch of homages from the attack animations and the soundtrack.
- The gameplay's serviceable, with each character having their own unique set of abilities. It's Super Robot Wars gameplay but with added enemy Danmaku/Spellcard effects which makes boss fights not merely HP sponges, but HP sponges with phases that buffs themselves or debuffs your team.
- Soundtrack by Ibiza and cobu puts out a variety of banging songs that sets the stage for a lot of memorable moments.
- A plot that develops towards the importance of Dreams and Bonds (and the difficulty of communicating feelings, especially in the case of THAT chapter). The original scenario can honestly overdo it with those themes, but it's still really satisfying to see it all play out through the game.
A 100+ hour experience that I have no regrets going through. Thank you Sanbondo and the Gensou Shoujo Wars team for the great work in the past 11 years.
- The gameplay's serviceable, with each character having their own unique set of abilities. It's Super Robot Wars gameplay but with added enemy Danmaku/Spellcard effects which makes boss fights not merely HP sponges, but HP sponges with phases that buffs themselves or debuffs your team.
- Soundtrack by Ibiza and cobu puts out a variety of banging songs that sets the stage for a lot of memorable moments.
- A plot that develops towards the importance of Dreams and Bonds (and the difficulty of communicating feelings, especially in the case of THAT chapter). The original scenario can honestly overdo it with those themes, but it's still really satisfying to see it all play out through the game.
A 100+ hour experience that I have no regrets going through. Thank you Sanbondo and the Gensou Shoujo Wars team for the great work in the past 11 years.