Looking at the characters and listening to them talk filled me with so much bile that I couldn't play to the second map. This could be Thracia 2, Kaga could swear on his collection of erotic male-male age gap literature that this makes the game design in every other TRPG look like Wargroove, and I would not pick it back up. Anyone equating this to Conquest because they both have good gameplay and bad writing should be forced to spend eight hours a week at an art museum until they show some flickering of aesthetic sensibility. It's not even horny.

Very happy that this is strongly an AC game spiritually and not just “robot souls”, but I don’t think that’s stopped people from projecting the conceptual framework of souls onto it. It’s undeniable that the last 10 years of fromsoft games has had significant influence on this, not just the healing and lock-on and chapter-ending bosses but more generally the animations and level design and art direction, at the same time it’s also been frustrating to see people treat so many game design decisions that are characteristically Armored Core or at least conscious modernisations of it as being solely extensions of Elden Ring. Fromsoft has been making punishing games long before Demon’s Souls was even a twinkle in Miyazaki’s eye and that was originally much more to do with how it cohesively fits with the bleak atmosphere that their games try to evoke rather than any notion that “this is what the hardcore gamerz want”. Souls fans hypostatized this into the “hard but fair” slogan and we’ve ended up in a situation where so many people mistakenly think fromsoft’s games are hard just for the sake of being hard (which is partly the fault of marketing and party the fault of DS2 and partly the fault of the fans), but even then I feel Armored Core has always had a very different “fight bullshit with bullshit” approach to difficulty that’s often more puzzle-like than a mere test of execution or reactions, and the reception to this title more than any makes the difference clear as swathes of soulsheads struggle to make the transition or simply assume that they're struggling "because it's meant to be hard" rather than their build being bad.

I hate feeling like I’m wading into “discourse” but rattling off “bad difficulty curve” as if it’s some objectively bad thing is exactly the kind of abstract “good game design rules 101” thinking that I hate about so much game critique - acting like there’s a universally correct standard of difficulty instead of trying to concretely reflect on the wider context of the thing in front of you. One of the things I like about Armored Core is how it is principally about difficulty spikes, how it attempts to weave together incredibly easy morbid power-fantasy missions where you effortlessly stomp on people who don’t really deserve it and incredibly memorable walls like Nine-ball or White Glint or Balteus who kick you back to the drawing board and force you to engage with the customization without much regard for how predictably-structured or player-friendly the outcome is. This isn’t to say that disliking this blend or any of the boss design here isn’t valid, in a very general sense the flow is not traditionally Armored Core so I understand why oldheads would be turned off by that, nor is it to say it’s “good because it’s different”, it’s good because it works within the uniquely unconventional gameplay texture of this series, in spirit if not literally. If every game had a perfectly smooth difficulty curve, they would all be homogenous and sterile, and one of the things I love about fromsoft is how they’ve always been willing to flaunt such rules in pursuit of more holistically sublime experiences: Common game design dictates that Demon’s Souls’ final boss should have been the epic showdown against King Allant, not a mercy-kill against a defenceless blob, common narrative design dictates that Armored Core’s stories should be conveyed in appealing ways instead of frigid corporate Zoom calls - but I think both are better and more unique and interesting for ignoring such refrains.

This is all to say that Armored Core will alienate people. It’s a game that will be defined by its reception, by the clash between its uncompromising vision of excessive stat spreadsheets, difficulty walls and corporate bleakness against the expectant fans eager to experience Miyazaki’s new game with the souls series as their standard of quality. If anything, I think the cautionary attempts to inject some souls tropes into the affair have actually backfired: Chapter 1 starts incredibly slowly so new fans can be eased into things, but this mostly just creates a poor first impression and bores experienced players while also slowing down NG+ runs. There’s healing now, but the existence of checkpoints means that souls fans expecting something estus-adjacent will be disappointed, and the checkpoints themselves mostly (from what I’ve seen) trick new players into trying to brute force bosses instead of backing off to try a new build, which is admittedly discouraged by the mission structure requiring you to re-do the whole level leading up to the boss if you want to back out to buy new parts, despite the mid-level assembly option. There’s a lock-on now, and there has been an attempt to balance it, but it still mostly serves to make the game less unique and feel less like AC.

All that being said, there’s a lot to love here: Boosting around in your AC is more smooth and responsive than it’s ever been (though not as wild as 4A), so many of the new weapons here are unbelievably satisfying to use, the animations are gorgeously well done and the sound effects are top notch. While I wished to explore them a bit more, some of the environments are stunningly intricate and grand. The charming arena descriptions are back, Balteus’ theme slaps so hard, Rusty feels like AC’s version of Pixy from AC, Cel 240 reminded me of the final boss from Panzer Dragoon Zwei (though this is probably the only boss I would consider outright overtuned in its second phase), and I love how explicitly this game picks up on the thread of augmented humans from older games, I especially love making absolute freakshow mechs and giving them pretentious names and some of the new options here like the tetrapod legs are really unique.

Still need to delve deeper into NG+ and beyond, but I’ve been pretty damn satisfied with this. It’s certainly not without flaws but I think there’s just so much potential in this new style of AC that I can’t help but want it to succeed, and I would love to see it iterated upon and see some of those confused fusions between souls and AC ironed out and working properly. I think 4A might still be my favourite AC overall but this is definitely a promising revival for the series.

If Rusty has a million fans, I am one of them
If Rusty has five fans, I am one of them
If Rusty has 1 fan, that one is me
If Rusty has no fans, I am no longer alive
If the world is against Rusty, I am against the entire world 🗣️🔥

this isn't really a review so much as it is an emotional plea as to the value and worth of NieR Gestalt. i feel compelled to talk about what made this game so special to me when I played this over 10 years ago now, before NieR becomes completely subsumed underneath the shadow of its vastly more financially successful follow-up. the original nier is an important game to me, and I refuse to let it be forgotten or replaced.

------[a] requiem for smokin' sick style------

the combat is good, actually. and i'm tired of pretending it's not.

maybe it's just because I've spend a disproportionate percentage of my time online hanging with people who think KH2FM and DMC4 are the peak of video games and anything that isn't trying to emulate them is a fundamental failure, but it feels like this is the one stick absolutely everyone beats this game with and it's disappointing.

when Nier hits someone with his sword in this game, there's almost a full second of frame pause as the weapon cleaves into a shade and lets loose abject fountains of blood that paints the environment around the now dismembered spectral body. when he uses magic, he summons a horde of blood spears that obliterate anything they hit. it is one of the most casually violent feeling things in the entire world and it absolutely owns. when this game recontextualises it's violence (refreshingly without falling into "you enjoy the killing" played-out shite), it lands harder than so many other games because of how genuinely violent all this feels, and manages to accomplish it without the cartoonish viscera of something like The Last of Us Part 2.

yes it is stiff and clunky. no, you will not make skillvids of this online. i beg of you, expand your definitions of what makes combat in a game good beyond that narrow field. no other game can be Devil May Cry 4, not even Devil May Cry 4.

------1,312 years [b]efore its time------

representing the satisfying midpoint between the interminable bansky-esqe "makes u think..." philosophy 101 drivel of Automata's lowest points and the insufferable edgelord tendencies of Drakengard 1 & 3 that tended to bury the things about those games that were genuinely interesting, Nier is everything I find enthralling about the DrakenNier games without the things that have ultimately led to me walking away from every other Taro joint feeling disappointed and unfulfilled.

2010 was a really long time ago. NieR came out before The Last of Us, before Bioshock Infinite, before Spec Ops: The Line, before the explosion in indie scene that led to more diverse voices getting a platform on itch.io and steam. maybe taking that into account can help explain why NieR completely changed the way I thought about games. it challenged what i thought video games could be. the way it flirted with different genres and forms was utterly captivating. nier felt like a game from the future or a different dimension. and now it isn't nearly as impressive, sure. it's been mapped out and explained and recapped by people trying to hurry you onto the next, less interesting game. everyone knows about ending D, everyone knows about the drakengard connection, everyone knows about the other routes. but I didn't. when I first played this game, and finishing it unlocked a new game+ that let me hear what the enemies had to say? my tiny 14-year old brain just about exploded, and opened a third eye to just what video games could do. maybe for you the game that did this was killer7, or deus ex, or undertale, or breath of the wild. for me it was NieR.

in a way, this is the real shame about automata, and the way square enix responded to its success. the game itself is fine, good even. but the way in which people have used it to turn this game into a footnote that should be skipped, skimmed, or otherwise treated as a mere prelude to the game about the robots in fetish outfits saying "wot if ur mum ran on batteries and went on about the ship of theseus" is profoundly neglectful.

yes i am being reductive and mean about NieR: Automata. if squeenix wanted me to not do that, they should have been less reductive about this game.

------the [c]ase for papa nier------

when people talk about the story of NieR, it's often the subversive or Lore aspects that are talked about the most, about the details of Project Gestalt and it's implications for the themes and what the ending means and things like that. which is all fine and good. but i think it's worth noting that NieR also just has one of the best parties I've ever seen in a JRPG. weiss. emil. kaine. kaine, most of all. they're all wonderfully well-drawn, complex, and deeply human characters, complete misfits that find a place to fit in each other. it's one of the core appeals of the entire genre and NieR just knocks it out of the park, and (setting aside the fact that I think the game has much more engaging things to say on the subject of parental love and it's toxicity than sibling love) that's why Father Nier matters so much.

because brother nier? he fits. he's a young jrpg hero on his way to save his sister with his party in tow. this is a darkness to him, but he is, overwhelmingly, the normalcy at the heart of the cast. he fits in as a JRPG hero. father nier, though? father nier doesn't fit. nothing about him fits. he's a hideous trollman who makes incredibly earnest speeches about friendship. he is a world-weary and cynical man who takes time to garden and help everyone in his home village. he is just as much of a misfit as the rest of this party, and thus, fits in with them perfectly. he makes this collection of off-the-wall characters, these people that fit absolutely nowhere else in this world, into a family that finds themselves, a place to belong, and people they love, in each other. he is what drives this party dynamic to heights that spoke to me in ways that i didn't really understand at the time, and that is why he will always matter to me.

brother nier is fine. he's cool. he's got some of his own stuff that's interesting.

but he's not my papa nier.

kinda like that time in g gundam tequila gundam showed up + "i know it smell crazy in there" + mid 90s meta human anxiety + light kaiju metaphors + the GOAT '96 olympics all condensed into a 30 minute sports arcade masher and given 3rd strike's animation budget. to call anything that happens here ridiculous or crazy feels like an understatement to its vibrancy--pretty much every 5 minutes or so i was mouth agape at what i just witnessed but then nodding along, engrossed in the lunacy. mental break was playing the nuke catch & toss challenge, where the "perfect performance" is tossing said nuke (back) at a vaguely Californian nightline. "o word? ianeen kno yall got down like that lemme get it in" i said as i reloaded tryna get my japanese schoolgirl avatar to destroy the worst city on earth. worth noting that the distance required for the perfect performance here is ~8000 "m" and the distance between tokyo japan and los angles is ~8,800 miles. some of you sound very silly when you say videogames arent praxis. shits hard asl and worth taking a few months of your controller.

shit goes crazy why nobody said nothin? important reclamation fiction of what shoulda happened after the #8 seed franks upset the #1 seed umayyads at the battle of tours: the legacy of the caliphates, mythologized into a assassin quasi-prophet who kicks really hard and fast, spinnin back to hit a vicious stain on the now globalized "West" and "Neoliberalism" across 5 side-scroller stages. look i know "the west & neoliberalism" mean absolutely nothing beyond "uh america & profits" in the current critical landscape but the opps here are the Federal Government (proper noun) and an Attorney General who double crosses you after using you to put down a religious cult in the Persian Gulf. shits like a silver bullet made for the Bush family's headtop and a very personal short call of the Dollar System as far as political specificity in video games go. contra strider, osman asks you to put the weapon down and beat ass with two hands and feet--you'll be sliding n gliding n crouching through the mud like any side scroller but the greatest mechanic here is the afterimage system. each powerup you get gives you an brief stationary clone that'll stay in your last attack spot and synchronize with your attack inputs for the next few seconds. seems strong enough right, but the real trick is to plant like 8 of these clones right in somebody's hurtbox, run away, then start whiffing like a ken player to trigger all 8 of those attack clones at once and deal unconscious amounts of damage in quick succession. nomiss runs of this are like 15 minutes because of how much burst damage you can put out in addition to the bombs--bosses here can go out sad in like 20 seconds if you've been on it in keeping your powerups & bombs available. was this intended? maybe, but it made avoiding any death to keep my resources really critical, and some sense of tension along with unhinged ingenuity is all i ask from the MAME experience these days n i got it in spades. there's also some metatext here but honestly just taking this shit at face value was a joy. prescient in recognizing the global south is where the revolution at and we're just kinda pussy.

another romhack W kinda unfortunately. playing this i had an epiphany about competitive pokemon but before that lemme say that doin this three innates + one selectable ability on every mon shit is crazyyyy cool and smthn that i'd like to see carried forward for romhacks, kinda like how day/night cycles are the complimentary bread you get with a romhack meal. three innates keep the core identity of most mons in tact and the selectable ability lets you splash between some gimmick, offensive, or defensive niches, meaning that you can pop out with the offensive v-create trick room solrock one gym then have him on some shiesty sand support rocker type beat the next gym. never been one to really hankerdown on one set of mons but with how quickly you can switch EVs and abilities, and thus team niches for each mon, it makes homie loyalty an actual incentive...rather a nostalgia prison of how watching venusaur clicking giga drain for 23 hours of the 40 hour experience was secretly fun because it distracted you from that overdue LabCorp bill you got last time you got burned and had to go to the clinic. similarly the minimal grinding shit this does along with level caps feels essential for the similar smogon simulator breed of romhacks that have been cropping up tryna ride radical red's high. this fares sooooo much better than radical red just on account of how quickly it is to drop and build teams back up, you can run a full new set of six after every gym if you wanted and that kinda easy team variety is something i think this genre has been missing for a long ass time now.

course as you can imagine here the power scaling is pushing prosperous amounts of P when niggas have four abilities--the recent 1.5v build has brought things back into the realm of sanity (weather teams were gettin the goob nut off on everything) but still keeps cool balance changes like feraligtr being a superbeast or dewong being an unkillable support god who comes up and sets up six turns of aurora veil for free for the whole gang. i think this has finally fulfilled the true promise of every mon is viable here that every romhack hitherto has claimed but never really succeeded. like, no lil baby, but if ur rlly 4PF you can build a team to have beautifly 6-0 super sweep about half of the elite four without requiring much more than some hazard support to be honest. not every change is perfect,,, (i beat this on 1.0 where weather abilities weren't as nerfed, and lets just say sharpedo with strong jaw + swift swim is first ballot hoenn HOF--conversely; parasect my friend....welcome to the guangdong tigers) but there's more than enough boosts here to justify a toe tip for even the most experienced romhackers. some personal favorites:

-- steelix getting shore up + some shiest defensive abilites lets him be an actual top tier wall, capitalizing on how good steel/ground is as a defensive typing whilst also minimizing how quickly he falls over to special attackers (still weak to them and other breakers but not in a crippling way as in before).
-- LOVE dhelmise here, some innates give you triple types and dhelmise is a grass/steel/ghost combo. AND has an ability that makes him only neutral fire and deal neutral damage back to fire types with grass STABs, AND has fucking water absorb for some reason. which means blud is like a super ferrothorn that can maintain excellent hazard control with spin but still put on that presh with a poltergeist + STAB anchor shot combo.
-- hitmonchan gets priority on all punching moves, letting him pop out with priority boltbeam coverage and a priority CC for funsies.
-- Typholsion having a priority eruption is fucking hilarious + he can splash on sand teams cause he's a ground type for some reason
-- greninja is so insanely cracked they give him wicked blow and skill link for water shuriken, like why.
-- Slaking can opt for truant or an ability that lets him act every turn but just move last, which is still p great
-- Lots of mons like sirfetch'd have this ability called Rampage which lets them avoid recharge if they get a KO, meaning you can run goofy shit like scarf giga impact tauros as a cleaner or even something more unserious like aerilate rampage giga impact dragonite as a cleaner. fun for the whole family.
-- giving tangrowth a neutrality to fire + an ability that gives him free lefties is so nice, genuinely kinda heartwarming that after decades of stall ballcrushing a romhacker is willing to toss the more patient amongst us a bone. stall players are truly feasting on the low tho between sheninja buffs + blissy regenerator + new intimidate for special attackers + more access to recovery and roost and auto-healing abilites across the board. if ur struggling early-mid game just get a quag and wall everybody, trust

now onto the epiphany: could be burn out since competitive singles dominates about 30% of my life in between youtube recommendations, me & my friends' draft league, spare showdown sessions, and occasional romhack runs like this but i think the appeal of mons to me will never be fully unlocked. about the 7th gym here i kinda got bored of all the shocking new changes and really just kinda wanted to be done with the whole endeavor lmao. as cool as the new changes are the game never feels like it can catchup to player ingenuity in a way that another player would, resulting in either some self-imposed limitations to even the scales or AI just using legendaries out the gate to even the odds. its cool that drake has a mega rayquaza, i guess? but if u got to pull out that shit just to make the game difficult i feel like there's some other considerations in terms of AI and trainer team building to be had here. likewise i look forward to when this gets some kinda movepool or ability expansion, not to undercut the sails of the aforementioned changes because they all are genuinely fun but like the shit boils down to the same archetypes for mons we've had since like gen 3: hits hard but slow, hits hard but fast, walls physical, walls special, gets up hazards, removes hazards, etc etc etc. the fact that any given mon can fulfill at least one of these roles viably is great, but without any change to the way these niches interact with each other or the kind of core teambuilding considerations to competitive pokemon as a whole its very whatever. maybe playing the whole game in doubles woulda fixed that (doubt it) but about 30 hours in it felt like i was swapping variables for the same formula rather than experiencing some transmutive. and look i get it, romhack, can only expect so much, and the scope achieved here is already crazy impressive, BUT i would be lying to u reader if i didnt walk away wanting more & more....for once i see gamefreak's vision in how they've tried to shake up battling for a decade now with z-moves, dynamax, terra, etc. z-moves were the best out of those IMO but like we need a gamefreak version of drive gauge or some shit--this is in many ways a lot of pokefiends' dream romhack, but the dream has made it clearer than ever that we've been smokin mids.