I can confidently, wholeheartedly, and unironically say that if you did not enjoy Azure Striker Gunvolt 2, you simply did not get it.

You missed the point.

You played it wrong.

You could have received the benefit of the doubt for the first Gunvolt game, but this game has been polished to a noticeable sheen; you have no excuse.

To all the smug little poindexters that recommend this boring ass series every time someone mentions SMT or some other dungeon crawler:

1. May the Universe itself conspire against you, strike you down, and rend your Soul asunder, such that your Body fades away with the sands of Time, and your Soul is confined to the holy Purgatory outside the Realm of existence, where the full weight of your new Nonexistence will be laid bare, now and forevermore. You will come to be intimate with the Event Horizon that stradles the edge of Infinity and Nothingness. Even the indomitable promise of Time will falter, and your very thoughts will abandon you. Peace will be nothing more than a forlong Dream from a time long past in the godless place; there will be no forgiveness, no solace. No, only the oppressive horror of Oblivion will remain.

2. Your jordans are fake

One of the most unique JRPGs I have EVER played. The game starts fun, stays fun through it's ~20 hour runtime (besides THAT Week 3 mission), and continues to be fun through the end of the POST-game. It's that good. The story is absolutely solid as well, getting even better in the post-game when you're collecting secret reports. I love all of the QoL and features the game has, most notably the selectable difficulty and the chapter select for NG+ (the latter is especially great, as it's rare for an RPG to have a worthwhile NG+ system). Would definitely recommend to anyone.

Boot up the game on Knight difficulty, thought I was hot shit, you know? Hit the first level, and I got the surprise of my fucking life. I ain't gonna lie to you bruh. I got filtered. I got filtered BAD. How bad? I'm talkin' "Purina Water Filter" bad.

I'm talkin' "industrial grade diesel particulate filter" bad.

Talkin' "Medify MA-25 Air Purifier with H13 True HEPA Filter" bad.

Talkin' "game journalists playing literally anything with a modicum of difficulty" bad.

"Sodium ions attempting to cross the cell membrane from low concentration to high concentration" bad.

"Dodgeball trying to pass through a solid steel wall" bad.

"Working class during the Great Depression" bad.

"Draining pasta with a strainer" bad.

"Ultraviolet radiation across the ozone layer" bad.

"Egyptian army crossing the Red Sea" bad.

"Brazil at the 2014 FIFA World Cup" bad.

So yeah it's some fucked up shit. Cool game tho.

In every single way, shape, and form, this game is amazing. Ten years in development to create a genuine masterpiece.

Do NOT read further unless you've beaten ZeroRanger yourself.

As a shoot 'em up, it's got every core value you could ask for: it's satisfying, and almost addicting to shoot down enemies in various situations, whilst trying to keep that multiplier up for an ever increasing score. Different ships and weapon choices allow for a lot of customization. Stages never overstay their welcome, keeping you engaged all throughout, mixing it up often. Bosses are fast-paced fights with varied patterns as well.

Like any good shmup, ZeroRanger has a phenomenal OST too. There isn't a single song in the entire OST that I didn't like. Was it Greenish?, The Sea has Returned, Despair, Bossay, 4th Gear, Final B'ex, Sky XXX Days, Despair, Unstopping, and Descent At Last are among my favorites. And the game looks great too. Who knew a game composed solely of various shades of green and orange could look so good.

But it doesn't end there.

Once you get the sword/drill power-up, the game releases its COOL limiters, and it just gets progressively more and more insane from there, culminating in a face-off against a computer that sends you across the fucking space-time continuum for the remixed 2nd loop. Every boss reveal, every remixed track, and every new music track just gets crazier and crazier. All culminating in the Radiant Silvergun-esque finale, with the orgasmic Sacred Defender playing, and the fate of the world (and your entire fucking save file) on the line. And believe me. It's a lot of pressure. But this whole game is a once in a lifetime experience. Even though I lost my save file THREE TIMES on the path to enlightenment, it felt amazing. Playing through the entire game every time, building up continues, just to give the TLB another try, I've never felt anything like it.

And then on my fourth try, I finally did it. And what did I get? An alternate timeline without Green Orange, AND without the entire color green. So you go on one last ride, to defeat the Great Oppressor. And this time, your mission is successful.

God, what a truly fantastic game. I have never, and most likely will never, play a game quite like this.

Nexus was easily my most anticipated game when I started playing through it's series. After watching the intro, I was sold on the entire franchise. Massive, weighty mechs with slick designs boosting everywhere and blowing shit up against the backdrop of an amazing Kota Hoshino piece. It was (and still is) one of the rawest things I have ever seen in my entire life; genuinely some personality-warping shit. So much so, that I decided right then and there I was going to play every game in the series no matter what; not even PCSX2 was gonna stop me.

In an unexpected twist, instead of being a direct follow-up to the previous AC game (Silent Line), Nexus started what is now known as "late gen 3", due to the large amount of changes made between the two games. New part types were added, some were removed, and a LOT of rebalancing happened. Radars became more important, lockboxes are smaller, left arm weaponry has been fully realized, hangar cores can store extra weapons, etc. You can even "tune" part stats slightly to better accommodate for your build. However, the most infamous change has to do with heat. Not only is overheating more dangerous now, as it drains your energy to cool down instead of just eating health. but boosting also generates heat this time around. Gone are the days of ignoring the radiator while you upgrade everything else; you better balance your cooling and heat generation or else you'll spend half your time on fire. But even with extra consideration for cooling, heat will still be a huge problem as Fromsoft was a little overzealous with the rework, to the point where playing around it can and will be annoying. Thankfully, it mostly just stayed at mere annoyance; Nexus isn't too difficult, so I could safely fuck around with the new mechanics and figure out what worked for me without abject frustration or anything.

Everything else, for the most part, is business as usual as far as Armored Core goes. Take missions, complete the objective, get money, yadda yadda. Mission design itself, on the other hand, is noticeably a bit worse than previous games, at least in Disc 1. Maps don't feel as varied, mission objectives feel a tad bit more repetitive, and exploration feels railroaded. At the end of the day, it's still Armored Core, so I enjoyed it, but combine this with some of the aforementioned balance changes and I just wasn't having as much fun as before.

In stark contrast, the music in this game is PHENOMENAL; it's straight up the greatest OST in the old generations. Just listen to this. It's not an unexpected outcome, what with the venerable Kota Hoshino at the helm of most of the soundtrack, but it is what it is. Any shortcomings that the actual gameplay had were compensated for by banger after banger. And although I felt generally ambivalent about the story up until the final cutscene, I REALLY like the new style of cutscene direction this game has. It's far more dynamic than the old gens, so much so that they feel stiff in comparison. Mix both of these elements together and you get an experience that matches the tone of the intro cutscene I love so much.

I haven't even touched on Disc 2 yet though, which is comprised of remakes, remasters, and reimaginings of various sorties from the PS1 games. Said missions are even expanded upon too, usually by either by providing additional missions with more context, or even letting you experience them from the opposing side. Speaking as someone who started with those earlier games, it was really cool experiencing them again with a fresh coat of late-gen 3 paint. And better yet, Disc 2's OST is composed of great remixed tracks from across the WHOLE series. And naturally, where there's Kota Hoshino, there's an elevated experience. You haven't lived until you've comitted acts of terrorism against a city of innocents, culminating in a battle against the tough Valkyrie, all while a remix of the best song from Armored Core 3 plays. "Good luck and have fun." Believe me mission client, I did.

Nexus gets a lot of shit from the Armored Core community for, well, not being as good as the other games in the series, and I do, at some level, understand their grievances. Disc 2's gen 1 mission design in particular makes it a little too clear that Disc 1 slacked a bit on that front, and I'm not a fan of spending half of the game overheating. However, I really can't bring myself to not love this game; it's got too much going for it. As I said before, it's still good 'ol Armored Core, with a soundtrack for the ages, a presentation and tone that resonates with me, and a nice trip down memory lane in the form of Disc 2.