Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

[Hag]

Started this shit, completed first three missions. Took me six tries on the helicopter boss, mostly to get accustomed to the controls (I'm not a big gamepad user). In the end shooting at the idiot until it exploded was a valid tactic.
Mixed feelings right now. I do appreciate most aspects of the game. Customization looks fun, movement is ok, but I would do away with all the trash mobs and like more interesting fights. Right now the game is lacking some serious oomph and apart from that boss I felt I spent my time swatting flies. Story also looks wonderfully bland. But I'll carry on some more, this is only the beginning. I think I'll go for some dual bazooka next.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i did the stealth mission where you have to kill the AC on behalf of the peasant faction, and got an emblemem for it. I then noticed i had one log missing. Scoured the damn thing like four times and couldn't find anything, so i go head to kill the AC is one of those just to wrap it up and notice at some point he tries to surrender, which the first time i missed since i was so busy trying to kill him. Allowing him to flee makes you fight some turbo-dweeb AC which i'm convinced was put there intentionally as a joke to take the piss on the animu hotakus.

I'm not wondering if this affects anything on the story. What if i had allowed the first AC to surrender the first time? Would that have counted as a different choice? Did i set myself on the path to help the Rubicon rebel faction?

 

[Hag]

The handler voice is getting on my nerves. Maybe he should treat his throat cancer instead of playing mister wise-guy.

Also, what kind of teenage intern has written the script ? This is the most mindbogglingly boring and bland scifi setting I can imagine. Rebels, corporations, mercenaries, greed, rare resource that is good also bad, cataclysm, all the tropes are here but the fun isn't.

 

[TedNugent]

The handler voice is getting on my nerves. Maybe he should treat his throat cancer instead of playing mister wise-guy.

Also, what kind of teenage intern has written the script ? This is the most mindbogglingly boring and bland scifi setting I can imagine. Rebels, corporations, mercenaries, greed, rare resource that is good also bad, cataclysm, all the tropes are here but the fun isn't.

It's kinda sad considering how good the voice acting is in Dark Souls.

My first playthrough I chose to kill Michigan simply because he was annoying as fuck.

Started this shit, completed first three missions. Took me six tries on the helicopter boss, mostly to get accustomed to the controls (I'm not a big gamepad user). In the end shooting at the idiot until it exploded was a valid tactic.
Mixed feelings right now. I do appreciate most aspects of the game. Customization looks fun, movement is ok, but I would do away with all the trash mobs and like more interesting fights. Right now the game is lacking some serious oomph and apart from that boss I felt I spent my time swatting flies. Story also looks wonderfully bland. But I'll carry on some more, this is only the beginning. I think I'll go for some dual bazooka next.

The first laser rifle makes shooting trash mobs FUN. It's mostly a oneshot. Zooming around spewing lasers at them and popping them was very satisfying, actually. Try dual lazerz. The ammo economy is also very good on this weapon. Try throwing one on one arm just for this purpose. It's reliable DPS regardless.

Also, just wanted to add this vid:



TL;dr, Nachtreiher arms are kinda the best for precision shooting. There's nothing close for firearm specialization.

 

[Crayll]

I know this is haram outside of the JRPG forum, but the Jap voice acting is simply leagues and away better than the English, I can't imagine listening to that for a whole playthrough.

 

[TedNugent]

I know this is haram outside of the JRPG forum, but the Jap voice acting is simply leagues and away better than the English, I can't imagine listening to that for a whole playthrough.

It may sound weeb but the truth of the matter is that unless it has good localization, the whole point is just to get the best version of the audio, not to be a Japophile.

For example, I normally listen to Studio Ghibli films with English audio, simply because Disney heavily invested in A/B list actors in their localized version. For anything else, the original audio is always best. I do the same with French or Russian films. If you ever listen to Spanish dubs of American films, it's just as bad. With most anime, it's largely a product of the heavy butchery and sanitization of the scripts, especially with shonen, to remove blood and swear words, or the perverted jokes of the original Dragon Ball. Alternately, they will heavily change the script to try and sync it to the character's mouth and facial movements, which isn't an issue here as everyone is talking over the radio or from the cockpit hatch of a robot.

On a side note, the creators of Red Orchestra really annoyed people when they switched from Russian/German voice acting to Americans putting on very heavy accents while dubbing in English.

Of the voice actors in Armored Core, I do like Carla and I actually don't mind the snobby professionalism of Arquebus.

 

[The Decline]

I can't help but laugh when I see the wheelchair treads. All I see is a paraplegic athlete trying his hardest to to win against a normal person.

 

[Multidirectional]

Ice Worm wasn't hard but I still managed to get annoyed at it. Hate these shit gimmick fights that make me wait for something specific to happen before I'm allowed to do damage. Shittiest boss so far. Though I guess it was inevitable, there must be at least one gimmick fight per FS game.

 

[TedNugent]

I can't help but laugh when I see the wheelchair treads. All I see is a paraplegic athlete trying his hardest to to win against a normal person.

It's actually kinda silly because the flavor text says it was inspired by wheelchair athletes and favored by amputees.

Ice Worm wasn't hard but I still managed to get annoyed at it. Hate these shit gimmick fights that make me wait for something specific to happen before I'm allowed to do damage. Shittiest boss so far. Though I guess it was inevitable, there must be at least one gimmick fight per FS game.

The fight was trash but it was easy and quick at least.

Considering how utterly out of place and ridiculous the boss looked, it really should've been cut IMHO. The entire fact that the backstabbing corps sheath their knives and send out their aces to die to a worm with an inexplicable invulnerability shield is pretty weird too. What even is this goofy thing.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I thought the Iceworm was a fun change of pace, but it only took me to my second try. I guess if I had to do it multiple times it would have been annoying just due to length.

Also, it's explained right in the briefing that the corporations are at a temporary ceasefire primarily to facilitate an all-out assault on the PCA, since it's arrival on Rubicon is threatening everyone's business interests, and the future of the entire planet. With the Iceworm being the most immediate interference of continued surveying of the ice fields, it takes priority in being gotten rid of, so it also makes sense to everyone's interests to cooperate in taking it down since there's a ceasefire in place already.

 

[Jacob]

Pirated this game so I don't have to play with the nerf update.

Finally killed the Sea Spider, only for the fucking game to crash during cutscene after fight and now I'll have play through the mission again. Well played From.

My... pirated copy... crashed after Balteus, it's definitely much more frustrating because at least the Sea Spider stage is much shorter and doesn't have a midboss.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So the nerf pissed me and basically threw a monkey wrench on my progress with my friends since i can no longer compare my playthrough to theirs, but i guess it is what it is so i decided to resume sharing my playthrough once more.

Just to test how much was actually changed with the nerf, i decided to s-rank the mission with Balteus. First time i did it with rockets and he went down in a nanosecond lmao (by contrast, the Sulla fight was a shitshow since he kept dodging everything). Just to make it a little cleaner (especially with Sulla), and to make Balteus last a bit longer, i switched to gutling guns instead:



Doesn't seem THAT much different from last time, aside for the missile tracking. Apparently, knocking him out doesn't stop him from doing his little powerup sequence (i had the shield ready for it and everything but i got caught with my pants down since i was shooting knocking his ACS was going to prevent him from doing that nova attack or whatever it is). People keep saying they nerfed the AI, but honestly didn't really seem that different, not the least because the AI had a tendency to also get randomly passive before the patch.

I'm still of the opinion this game needs an hard mode, and definitely a debt mode as well. If FromSoft doesn't do it, i hope modders will.

 

[Lyric Suite]

From's one size fits all difficulty is always garbage. Games need a separate hardcore mode regardless because there are some features that are unmarketable to the masses. Like removal of checkpoint shit in this game, I want to have consequences, not get fully healed because I fucked up hard enough. And these nerfs could have been localized to the normal mode or whatever.

Anyway, thank god they finally buffed all the kinetic weapons. Half this shit was near useless.

I think a lot of weapons in this game are still useless. Some weapons are just so good they make everything else redundant.

 

[jaekl]

My final review of Armored Core 6 - became bored halfway through chapter 5 and never played it again. No idea what was going on in the storyline which was often delivered by staring at your screen while listening to an answering machine, causing frequent daydreaming. It's still one of the best games released this year due to abysmal competition.

 

[mediocrepoet]

My final review of Armored Core 6 - became bored halfway through chapter 5 and never played it again. No idea what was going on in the storyline which was often delivered by staring at your screen while listening to an answering machine, causing frequent daydreaming. It's still one of the best games released this year due to abysmal competition.

100% agreed on the story presentation.

From makes really great gameplay experiences combined with reasonably interesting settings and great artistic presentation, and total shit narrative/storyline elements. e.g. 10/10 games, eat it storyfags!

 

[Jacob]

#storyfags lives dont matter

 

[Multidirectional]

Yeah I tried to follow the story at first but listening to these monologues was so boring I kept dozing off.

 

[Morgoth]

Wtf was the "Smart Cleaner" all about? Especially after the Gamer Chair boss.

Game really starts to grow on me though.

 

[Lyric Suite]

This is still one of my favored maps in the game, but as expected, s-ranking it just involved pretty much skipping everything:



Got really good at hovering above the boss, and compared to the puny missiles i had on my first fight, those songbirds just wrecked his shit. Slightly harder to hit him dead center into the chimney compared to the missiles but still worth it.

 

[TedNugent]

My final review of Armored Core 6 - became bored halfway through chapter 5 and never played it again. No idea what was going on in the storyline which was often delivered by staring at your screen while listening to an answering machine, causing frequent daydreaming. It's still one of the best games released this year due to abysmal competition.

100% agreed on the story presentation.

From makes really great gameplay experiences combined with reasonably interesting settings and great artistic presentation, and total shit narrative/storyline elements. e.g. 10/10 games, eat it storyfags!

Dark Souls has pretty sick voiceovers though.

It does a lot more with the same level of density, and better yet, most of it is either a flavor dump in the intro cutscene or in-game experience.

I found the Starcraft and Warcraft 2 briefing screens had more character and substance than this game's mission interludes. It's a definite weak point. Once you're in the cockpit it's all good, however. I think it more serves as a break in between sorties than anything.

This is still one of my favored maps in the game, but as expected, s-ranking it just involved pretty much skipping everything:



Got really good at hovering above the boss, and compared to the puny missiles i had on my first fight, those songbirds just wrecked his shit. Slightly harder to hit him dead center into the chimney compared to the missiles but still worth it.

I liked how you ended up with the same fat bitch dual grenade launcher loadout as everyone else on YouTube, but I appreciate that you're holding on to the sword.

 

[Lyric Suite]

BTW, speaking of the story in this game. I haven't gotten far enough yet to really judge it (waiting for the inevitable "big" twist towards the end) but i'm kinda of shocked at how... easy it is to actually follow.

My final review of Armored Core 6 - became bored halfway through chapter 5 and never played it again. No idea what was going on in the storyline which was often delivered by staring at your screen while listening to an answering machine, causing frequent daydreaming. It's still one of the best games released this year due to abysmal competition.

100% agreed on the story presentation.

From makes really great gameplay experiences combined with reasonably interesting settings and great artistic presentation, and total shit narrative/storyline elements. e.g. 10/10 games, eat it storyfags!

Dark Souls has pretty sick voiceovers though.

It does a lot more with the same level of density, and better yet, most of it is either a flavor dump in the intro cutscene or in-game experience.

I found the Starcraft and Warcraft 2 briefing screens had more character and substance than this game's mission interludes. It's a definite weak point. Once you're in the cockpit it's all good, however. I think it more serves as a break in between sorties than anything.

This is still one of my favored maps in the game, but as expected, s-ranking it just involved pretty much skipping everything:



Got really good at hovering above the boss, and compared to the puny missiles i had on my first fight, those songbirds just wrecked his shit. Slightly harder to hit him dead center into the chimney compared to the missiles but still worth it.

I liked how you ended up with the same fat bitch dual grenade launcher loadout as everyone else on YouTube, but I appreciate that you're holding on to the sword.

I didn't actually check what other people are doing and i have no idea what's "popular". It's just that some options are clearly more powerful than others and it's so patently obvious there's no need to check out what everybody else is doing.

In fact, i have half a mind of getting rid of those songbirds, at least for single boss fight. For s-ranking all bets are off so i'll use whatever is best lest i get burned out trying to do a mission over and over.

 

[gabel]

[...] I found the Starcraft and Warcraft 2 briefing screens had more character and substance than this game's mission interludes. It's a definite weak point. Once you're in the cockpit it's all good, however. I think it more serves as a break in between sorties than anything. [...]

Starcraft and Warcraft 2 are top of the crop in that area though. The voice acting and writing of the mission screens in these games are second to none. That's where Blizzard got its reputation from (in addition to the cinematic cut scenes). They were neither too long long nor too short, and explained the mission objectives perfectly.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I haven't got far enough to really judge the story yet i'm just shocked at how easy to follow it is in this game. Really unusual for a FromSoft game usually i still have no idea WTF is going on even after finishing their games multiple times lmao.

 

[Multidirectional]

I haven't got far enough to really judge the story yet i'm just shocked at how easy to follow it is in this game. Really unusual for a FromSoft game

Because you haven't played Sekiro. Actually this is harder to follow for me than Sekiro story because it is a lot more boring and I just can't stay focused during these messages. I should really just skip all that shit because it adds nothing of value to the game for me.

 

[gabel]

Sekiro has probably the best story of all modern (PS3/X360+) FromSoft games.
Still subtle and easy to ignore if you don't give a shit, but worth exploring if that's your kind of thing.

And Armored Core sounds worse and worse the more I read this thread.