Completed
Researched alternate endings (I got King of Wands apparently and cannot personally do Tower Ending because of that)
Reviewed

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When I dropped out of Oikospiel the first time, I was only like 40 minutes from the ending. What a pain. Anyway:

- In concept, I love the aggressively unorthodox presentation. I am a firm believer that sometimes, games need to get weird.

- In practice, this game is a blaring headache. Its visually aggravating and aurally obnoxious and its just a very negative kind of overstimulation - I am either shaken into anguish or dazed to sleep like a fucking cobra.

- Generally, good politics (from what I can tell).

- Specifically I cannot understand maybe 70% of what is happening in this game. I suspect that Im just not thinking hard enough about it (Im unintelligent) and that there is most likely significance to some of the… tableaus? on display in the game but it rides the line between “eccentric” and “gibberish” too wildly to read very clearly.

- Above all else tho: it is a viciously inaccessible game. There are segments in this game I truthfully cannot tell if they are functioning correctly or if they are suffering from some kind of bug. People complain about game cameras all the time but this is actually the first game Ive played with a demonstrably bad camera. I know the dev knows this about their game too, cuz its clear youre supposed to jump to the Table of Contents at basically any point where you feel like you dont know how to / physically cannot complete the level.

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Lets see if I can collect my thoughts for a game I played over the span of 1.5 years.

- In general, I think its a well made game. Looks good, functions smooth. No weirdness, no design holes, its an airtight experience the whole time and I guess thats notable cuz I usually cant expect that from high graphic 3D indie games all of the time.

- I have mixed feedback about cat gameplay. On one hand, this is probably about as good as playing as a realistic cat could ever get. Jumping on tables and pipes and such probably wouldnt have worked in a "physicality based" way. There probably does need to be snapping points and handplaced pathing and such.

- But on the other hand, its a very friction-full experience to be constantly pushing up against the edges of meshes or tilting the camera in awkward ways to search for the button prompt that lets you transition to a different surface. If this is the best solution for cat gameplay, I probably dont want to play as a cat too much more in the future.

- I think the dev team managed to make a charming and interesting world that is also very often thoughtful and realistic. I think the issue I might ultimately have is that it also doesnt feel very insightful - like I dont think I walked away from Stray with any bigger thoughts than when I had entered it.

- Im definitely not the first to say it, but this is also probably the least believable cat - which irks me on some level cuz the game also clearly wants you to oggle this cat for their catness. Some "cant have your cake and eat it too" type beat to me.

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As someone who played several Armored Core games as a kid, and played the rest more recently as an adult (and am generally a large fan of Fromsoft in general, including the recent Souls game era), my perspective is that this is the best Armored Core game From Software has ever made. When I say this, I dont just mean “its better cuz its more like Dark Souls”, I genuinely think the general arrangement of the entire game is the superior form of uniquely Armored Core traits - with the only real exception being that I miss the classic Arena format.

Adding Stagger was a genius way to add depth to weapons that used to be exclusively measured by ammo and damage (Missiles were literally useless to me in most Armored Core games, no joke, and its so nice how much utility they have now) Reinvention of laser blades and diversifying leg types and basically all the ways they shook up the Assembly sandbox was a boon to the game and desperately loosens the historically very stiff design scheme. Frankly it just feels better to play.

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But then, the Souls influence also does add alot of charm. The bosses are very clearly Souls bosses - but each boss is as good as what is normally a traditional final boss in other Armored Core games (which is fun and good). The more dramatic narrative greatly improves the more… pedestrian? world the games typically represent, where companies are just doing a lil bit of military corporate warfare for a giggle and a laugh. It also just has a very striking visual flair thanks to the art direction for things like Coral.

It is, in general, just a much more badass game and mech games were born to be badass - in fact I think Armored Core deserves to be badass more than the medieval settings of the Souls games, where it maybe IS a lil strange your dopey player character is doing blood Zantetsukens across the map with his magic katana.

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External to the game, there was a funny phenomenon happening where alot of people were sour on Armored Core because it was, ostensibly maybe, not exactly like Dark Souls. This was, of course, patently not fair to Armored Core as Armored Core was an established franchise long before Dark Souls - but also it didnt seem to me like alot of these players were even very interested in preserving their experience with the game either. Alot of milk was spilled during Elden Ring about Spirit Ashes and Moonveils, with people being particularly concerned with protecting the challenge the Souls games are known for.

Yet when it came to Armored Core, it seems like alot of people were not worried at all about over-building their way out of the more interesting challenges the game offers. Which, tbf, shouldnt be an issue - you should be able to use tank legs and quadruple bazookas and shotguns if you want to, in the same way you should be able to use Rivers Of Blood if you want to. But the thing thats irksome is that Armored Core is getting some rash verdicts because people havent contextualized that maybe they min/maxed themselves into a less interesting experience.

I think something that doesnt help that issue is that Armored Core took their own lil brand of “replayability” where they have playthroughs introduce secret mission branches to help you get to the multiple endings the game has. Curiously, Fromsoft also stacked most of the more tedious missions into these later playthroughs - so people who only do one playthrough are having a sort of lopsided experience to begin with.

For my money, I dont think the playthrough staggering was worth it. Sure, it extends playtime but it seems like theres too much collateral in the meantime.

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Alright, all missions finished, all endings complete, time to throw down some:

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I think its fair to say Last Raven is a specialized Armored Core experience. Its exclusively the shorter variety of missions, focused on difficult "gotcha" objective missions and has a high density of the famous enemy AC interference events. I think how you feel about the game overall will depend on how much you like these kinds of missions in the other games (which is maybe why this title seems to be one of the more divisive ones).

For me personally, I think too many AC fights makes them blend together - and I also think its too generic a painpoint considering most of these fights derive most of their difficulty from the fact that you are fighting them with diminished resources. That could be interesting once or twice, three times, four times, but it starts to feel like a crutch that Last Raven is leaning on in this case.

Last Ravens big addition of course is the mission structure, and I think this is a mixed blessing. On one hand, its interesting to see events play out from different angles, and see the consequences of which events you choose to participate in (and which ones you dont). But I also really hate multiple endings depending on your choice of mission chain, cuz I think it only really guarantees that you will waste your time and repeat an ending at least once (and in necessity might require you to repeat things several times in order to access all unique content). I think this is a "less is more" situation - I think AC4A is a good example cuz while the missions didnt feel as meaningfully connected, how short the mission chains were really reduced the tedium of the structure.

I think its also worth criticizing how small the maps are. Considering the fact the game reuses every map for several missions, this should have been an excuse to make bigger maps they could then repeat to get more mileage out of - but instead we got a sort of double-whammy. We got some of the smallest maps Ive ever seen with possibly the least amount of variety or depth to them. Several maps feel straight up like PVP Arena maps - and in fact the selection of PVP maps seems larger and more interesting than the selection of story maps (probably imported over from Nexus, which I honestly barely remember). If I had to guess why this is, Id say maybe Last Raven had a shoestring budget (which would also connect with the reliance on enemy AC fights and also the replay mission structure. Theyre probably easier to make.)

I think everything else was good Armored Core tho. The sort of "central protagonist" was maybe very safe and reserved this time around with the Pulverizers and such, but the unique enemies are almost always the best part of Armored Core and Im glad Last Raven wasnt exclusively enemy AC fights. I think the story does end up feeling a bit more.... hmmmm, fleshed out? thanks to the mission structure letting you sort of digest the finer points. The game takes place over 24 hours, so it gives them the opportunity to make it a very eventful single day.

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