" are you ready for your zenith of the medium lessons? "

super mario brothers wonder gulped.
spider-man 2 kneeled.
baldur's gate 3 sweated profusely.
tears of the kingdom shuddered.
armored core vi fi- nah who am i kidding

" yes hiori, mano, meguru, kiriko, mamimi, kogane, sakuya, yuika, tenka, chiyuki, amana, chiyoko, rinze, kaho, natsuha, juri, fuyuko, asahi, mei, hinana, asahi, madoka, koito, nichika, hazuki, mikoto, hana, luca, and haruki. GLORY TO 283PRO !!!! "

i was pretty blown away right off the bat by this game's speed, scope and scale. i mean fuck - skydiving past anti air lasers in the second mission? destroying a fleet of battleships shortly after?? being able to destroy a gen 1 AC by flicking it??? shit's crazy!!!

it was kinda surprising how fast-moving the narrative was in general. the foreshadowing towards a grand scale war over a clearly dangerous resource, the rising value of the player as a mercenary - leveling a corporation's entire base of operations halfway through the game? imagine my shock!

...when the following mission ended with credits

that's it? that's armored core 4?! this game is like 30 seconds long and hardly anything actually happens in it!! what the fuck?? this is effectively a prologue and a tech demo. i mean, don't get me wrong - it's a cool tech demo and it's really fun while it lasts - but holy shit is it brief and anticlimactic

anyway. nice appetizer. some of the hard missions were cool too i guess. fuck that 4v1. i'll be getting to for answer now

sleek and dark even by the standards of a series that operates on those terms. cranks the industrial hellscape vibes to infinity both sonically and aesthetically and i'm here for all of it

route system is badass - the constant feeling of impending doom absolutely menacing. enemy ACs are fun to fight and can be seriously trying (not to mention raven personalities are actually memorable now too)

weapon balancing is also at an all time high. seriously, i feel like just about anything is viable in this game if you've got the skill and know-how to make it work. i never changed up my builds - or saved multiple ones - nearly as much in any other game in the series. i did that constantly here

i have exactly two gripes:

1. there's one ending in particular that's pretty much the objectively most climactic and finalizing of them all. it's by far the most difficult and the most cinematic too. this was my second route... so the following ones felt much more whelming than they probably should have

2. mopping up stray missions for 100% is a bit of a chore. if you could just play any mission out of sequence after getting the main endings - that'd be perfect. i don't really think the superboss is significant or challenging enough to justify an additional five playthroughs (minimum) just to access it.

that's the extent of my negativity. this is a killer fucking game. old gen seriously ended with a bang

if you know me, i've played my handful of management sims so i went into this expecting a nice, high-budget management sim and came out of it with:

- a crippling horsegirl addiction
- a membership at my local racetrack
- a supporter tote bag from the japanese retired horse association
- a designer collab t-shirt (special week design)
- an elevation chart spreadsheet of every major race for each distance (made by yours truly)
- countless acrylic stands of my favorite characters (mostly the symbolis)
- a new shelf (for the starting gate/winning live cds)

AND
- a game that's pretty fun too : )

so yeah this game may or may not be life-changing but more than that i think it's also pretty neat! 🐱👍🐴

"unapyoi"/10

The machine did indeed, cry.

Crymachina is a spiritual successor to Crystar, carrying over plenty of the old game's systems, ideas, and staff which would make old fans feel at home right away but also give them an entirely different experience that often times feel like the complete opposite of Crystar. While this can possibly be a bit of a turn off for returning fans depending on how much they expect this game to be like the other, I believe that anyone going into the game with an open mind would find this different experience to be a very enjoyable, lovely, and emotional experience.

Mechanically, the game is a gigantic leap from the first game in pretty much every aspect. The character models are very high quality and animated very well, accurately depicting their really unique and expressive designs by Rolua. The graphics themselves are also very good and shown off a lot in the really flashy, unique, and very enjoyable combat system which can get quite challenging too. The game also has a different gameplay loop from Crystar, now offering very short linear stages that always ends in a boss fight with all playable characters having their own differing playstyles and offering a nice degree of customization in the form of assistive gear that you call up during combat to cover different situations like hitting from afar, granting impenetrable defense, starting launch combos, etc. Although, the map designs definitely don't feel as expressive as they used to be, which is fairly understandable given the entirely opposite setting with a "grounded" spaceship interior as opposed to Crystar's colorful depiction of purgatory.

The aspects that really took me by surprise though would definitely be the characters and story with how they really went in a different direction from everything I expected. Despite the game still having plenty of really dramatic moments and intriguing mysteries, the game in general has a much lighter tone for a majority of the time compared to Hayashi's previous works. I often found myself with a grin or giggling every time we're shown the characters interactions, whether its among the main 4 or with the rest of the interesting side cast. I also did not expect, but very much appreciate, how hard they went into the sci-fi aspect of the story and setting with a very refreshing far-future world done so well that it really pulls you into the entire thing. The story's various twists and surprises were all handled really well too and kept me hooked the entire time with how well they've put their own crazy spin to the classic concept of machines gaining sentience and emotion and how far those would take these machines whose sole purpose and reason for creation were to simply obey commands they were given.

Admittedly though, the game sadly doesn't hit the emotional highs that I've gotten from Crystar which I feel is a bit of a shame but I'm perfectly fine with considering everything else the game handles really well. It was everything I didn't expect it to be but still really left the best impression on me given what the game was openly going for, and for that it deserves all the praise I can give it and really makes me more excited for the future projects Hayashi will hopefully have which I will definitely be there for.

GOTY.