The real disillusion is the combat here.

A while ago, I found out about Disillusion in some youtube video and the game looked very intriguing with its bizarre art direction and strange vibe, so I wanted to play it in the near future. Considering this is an indie game that's about 3€ and won't go on sale anytime soon, I just decided to snag it recently and check it out (since I had nothing else I wanted to play at the time).

I'll give credit where it's due, the intended atmosphere is well done and the exploration was also exciting for most of the time: you navigate through the tower in a first-person dungeon crawler perspective, while stumbling upon various weird creatures and portals leading you to other places. Some of these places are a classroom, a shrine or even some... jumbled mess. It's fun to explore those areas, since they have a surreal feel to them I can't really put into words, even if there's not much gameplay here. I mean, there is gameplay with the combat, but it's not good. Sometimes an enemy blocks the way and you can't pass through, so you need to resort to the most basic and barebones RPG Maker combat out there to fend them off. While many people don't like OMORI's combat, atleast that game tried for an unique approach (which I personally liked too). With a plethora of useless skills and needlessly spongy enemies, the normally fun exploration comes to a screeching halt and you'll just engage in this really boring combat for a large amount of your playtime. I know the game is a walking simulator for the most part, so why even include fights in the first place? I'm sure me and many others are playing it just to run around those strange settings and not to fight monsters, which are all copy pasted and use the same three attacks anyways. The worst part is really dying to some random crit and having to do entire areas over again if you forgot to save, but to be fair, you're warned early on to save often. You get the gist.

Surprisingly, unlike games like Yume Nikki, Disillusion actually has a story, dealing with themes like rebirth and eternal damnation. It's not a central focus, as you only get vague hints spoonfed through your companion Mel and you're expected to piece together the remaining pieces for yourself. Speaking of Mel, she's pretty cool and probably one of the main reasons I didn't drop this game earlier, her banter at times is nice even if it's nothing special by writing standards. There's... not much else to be said about her, except that she's green and also plays a bigger role in the overarching narrative.

Alright, so Disillusion is a decent game, but I just can't get myself to finish it, knowing that it's going to mess with my PC's resolution again (for some reason it breaks windowed applications like Discord and you need to resize them anytime after going into this game's fullscreen mode) and I'd have to go through more arduous random encounters. Despite this, I'd still recommend it for the most part for anyone interested, as the exploration aspect is rather intriguing and you can get a few hours of content for the low price of 3€.

Finding meaning in a world with no definite overall truth to strive for is already hard but compound that with being in an era of war and all the characters in this world being AI just beginning to understand having humanity. Their attempts at constructing meaning set to fail, saying so much about us in the process. You end up with one of the most profoundly written stories of the modern era. Heartbreaking, philosophical, masterful medium utility, almost meditative as an experience. Just a masterpiece.

Ender Lilies is a solid game which is sometimes elevated to a very good game by its presentation and especially its superb OST, but stops short of being fantastic due to a lack of polish and an identity that truly sets it apart. Still, a strong and under-appreciated entry into the Metroidvania genre.

7,5 / 10
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The market for Metroidvanias is certainly a bit oversaturated at this point in time, considering there seems to be a new one coming out every other week. It’s understandable that a lot of devs want to jump on this train; it’s a great way to combine a lot of different game design elements into a fun and cohesive experience that feels like a real journey through a vast world and usually offers ample challenge for players to overcome. While a lot of them try and take their inspiration from older games in the genre, the vast majority of modern MVs tend to closely follow in the footsteps of one game in particular; Hollow Knight.

Perhaps this is why Ender Lilies seems to have largely flown under the radar for most people. Even some die-hard fans of the genre seem to have missed it. Make no mistake, this game isn’t exactly subtle about its influence from HK. Visually alone, you’d be hard pressed not to feel reminded of it a little bit. It has the same tragic and forlorn atmosphere, beautifully detailed background art, melancholic background music, tough, “Souls-like” combat (meaning “animation-based, high commitment attacks and fairly dangerous enemies”) and most other trappings of that specific niche. But this isn’t just a HK-clone, even if it occasionally veers a bit too close into the direction that some games like Gleamlight, Lotus Knight or Crowsworn went into. Whereas the others here seem to purposefully, almost deceptively try to lure you into playing them by specifically targeting Hollow Knight fans, Ender Lilies does seem like it’s genuinely trying its best to be its own thing, even if it doesn’t always succeed in that endeavour.

It’s definitely not for a lack of trying, and I can say one thing for certain: This game does not feel like a cynical cash grab. Ender Lilies clearly had a lot of passion and love behind its creation, and if nothing else, it’s a very promising title from an upcoming indie studio. It does a lot of things very well. But at the same time, it often feels weirdly unfinished and frustratingly inconsistent when it comes the fine details and polish. It’s a very solid title with no real critical flaw, but a lot of little annoyances that might add up to a “death by a thousand cuts” situation for some people. Personally, I wasn’t THAT bothered by most of it until I reached the later areas, where these issues became a bit more noticeable.

A good example for the general trend with Ender Lilies is the world design. For the most part, it’s quite good and at some points even manages to be great! While the early areas after the tutorial aren’t very complex or hard, they’re absolutely fine for what they are. They even telegraph some secrets and inaccessible areas for you to return to later. Unfortunately, I think this aspect is a little haphazardly implemented though. Fast travelling is available from the start - an unusual choice for a MV/Soulslike - and includes every checkpoint, of which there are quite a few. This kind of leads the game to rely on this system a little too much, meaning you’ll find yourself often teleporting between random areas to explore rooms you’ve already been to because the world isn’t really designed to be quickly traversed on foot. It becomes even stranger when you end up opening up shortcuts to areas you’ve already been to and completely cleared out - although you could easily argue that these are meant to facilitate a more non-linear approach to exploring the world. And it works quite well in that regard. I know I totally went off the beaten path multiple times and only realised it much later. I just wish that these connections and short cuts could’ve been handled a bit more elegantly. It sometimes feels like they were placed there as an afterthought, more than being an intentional piece of game design.

The world feels fairly large for a small-ish indie Metroidvania. It’s not the gargantuan size of Hollow Knight’s Hallownest, or even Blasphemous’ Custodia but it certainly feels larger than something like the Ori games, and it does so - mostly - without it getting stale, and that by itself is already a huge compliment. It’s just sad that most of the levels here feel somewhat clichéd in terms of visual identity, setting and memorability. A village and forest section in the beginning, 2 separate castles (right next to each other no less) dark and dank catacombs, and even a sewer/prison area. As far as creativity goes, this just feels like the absolute bare minimum, like someone just checked the essentials off a list of “obligatory MV world design elements”. At least the final area, the Verboten Domain feels a bit more unique, with its fungus-infected, poisonous, purple vibes and thick atmosphere. What’s more is that the actual art direction and music for these areas are always really good, but I’ll get more into that later.

The actual level design is more varied. Like I mentioned before, the early areas are fine, but nothing special. Both are quite linear in their progression, with some side paths to explore at the most, or a short fork in the path which tends to converge again in the next room. They do offer quite a bit for players choosing to return at a later point, when they have more power ups and higher stats, and that’s something I appreciate, this game isn’t afraid to put some of its most important secrets into some seemingly inconspicuous places and asking you to remember it - although the map attempts to help you in that regard (more on that later). The areas after this thankfully do become a lot more open and allow for noticeably less linear travel through them. I particularly like the two castle areas, even if they do feel somewhat similar, but lore-wise I got the feeling that this was kinda the point. While other areas sometimes boil down to a lot of long, huge hallways filled with enemies with not much in the way of actual level design, the castles, especially the Twin Spires, get pretty creative with some of their set ups. Elegant short cuts and expert-level recontextualisation of previous obstacles, as well as some pretty interesting enemy set ups. The less likely I am inclined to run past the majority of enemies, the better. I also enjoy the aesthetic of a truly ancient castle perched between the mountains, covered under a thick layer of snow. The music is fantastic too, but that’s a given for the whole game.

I wasn’t as big a fan of the 2 last areas, the Stockade and Verboten Domain. While both do feature some clever level design ideas, an unfortunate amount of rooms are just brutally long hallways filled to the brim with extremely spongy enemies, some of which can teleport directly on top of you. It’s nothing absolutely egregious or anything, but having to repeat these areas with nothing more engaging to do than fighting or running past what feels like an endless amount of enemies gets pretty boring pretty quickly. It’s not helped by the fact that the game rarely - if ever - asks anything in the way of platforming from you either. The strange thing is, the mechanics would be here, it’s just that the level design doesn’t really make use of Lily’s surprisingly flexible air mobility. That is, unless you’re looking to complete the game’s true ending, where there will be the occasional platforming section that are so much harder to pull off than literally anything else in this game, it feels downright out of place. I suspect that these were added at the last minute, as the entire endgame feels a bit rushed, at least in terms of level design and interesting gameplay ideas. Fighting over-tuned enemies can only remain engaging for so long.

At this point I have to talk about the only thing I genuinely hate about this game; its map. It’s ugly, unintuitive and manages a very interesting, albeit unintentional tight rope walk where it’s completely unintelligible at first and you have no fucking clue what you’re looking at, but as soon as you understand what it does, it spoils literally EVERYTHING in that area; whether there are still any collectibles, how many paths lead to and away from it and even where they are. The larger the map becomes, the less you feel like you’re getting a grasp on it, because everything looks the same from start to finish. Trying to figure out how to navigate this map was a fight I didn’t know I was getting into.

Speaking of fighting, let’s move on to the most recognisable element of this game; its spirit/Stand-based combat system. It was featured heavily in the marketing and seems to have been the initial draw for a lot of people. Lily is a small child, and thus is obviously rather incapable of fighting all those zombie soldiers and eldritch abominations herself. That’s what our spirit friends are for. She starts off with just single spirit companion, the Umbral Knight, who works as your typical sword moveset and by defeating the many bosses and mini-bosses of this game we gain a new spirit to fight alongside our player character each time. Lily is instead capable of using the typical “genre abilities”, like a double jump, dash, wall climb, hookshot, etc, which are unlocked by defeating the main bosses. There is a considerable number of these spirit-attacks ranging from melee to ranged magic attacks to AOEs to DoTs, and you can equip up to 6 of them at a time, which makes for a surprisingly deep moveset and “build variety” on the player’s part. You can swap these out at every check point, and you can upgrade them individually. Playing around with this system is very fun and I didn’t anticipate enjoying it as much as I did. I do have to admit that this system isn’t really as revolutionary as some people make it out to be though; these are all effectively still just weapons and/or spells. They basically work exactly like in the older Souls games, with a limited amount of charges per spell with some of them being able to string combos. It’s really just an aesthetic choice, gameplay wise these work exactly like they would in any other Metroidvania/Souls-like. On the other hand, I had much more fun with this than I had with the Ori games’ or The Messenger’s combat, for example. Learning what all the different spells do and how they interact with each other is very engaging.

I always say that a game’s combat system is only ever as good as the enemies and bosses you use it against. So how does Ender Lilies fare in that regard?

I can happily say: fairly well, actually. The enemy variety is surprisingly high and repetition is kept to a sensible margin. Their move-sets are varied, differ in speeds, ferocity and damage and they are - with some exceptions - always fun to fight. They always telegraph their attacks in a fair and understandable manner. The character designs could be a bit more interesting and unique, but it’s fine. It works for what it’s going for, even if I feel like a more recognisable design scheme for the average enemy would’ve done wonders for memorability. The mini bosses are basically powered up regular enemies with some additions to their move-set and a massively increased health pool. As mentioned before, they’ll always give you a new combat ability, often their own signature attack. These fights are ok for the most part, but nothing special, I would hesitate to call them “bosses”. The actual bosses range from really good to quite annoying. I personally really liked both Dark Witch Elaine and Knight Commander Julius the best, while I really dislike the two bosses that make use of additional enemies during the fight: Hoenir, Master of the Abyss and the final boss, the Blighted Lord. This combat system really doesn’t feel like its designed to constantly fight multiple enemies at once, which is made worse by the fact that in both cases the ads immediately respawn, which in practice kinda forces you to ignore them because killing them is literally pointless. This, on the other hand, makes it harder to pay attention to what the boss is doing, and cost me a bunch of lives in both cases. I especially disliked Hoenir because on top of endlessly spawning ads, he also keeps running away. (Elden Beast flash back intensifies) Luckily the other bosses are mostly very fun to fight and don’t rely on cheap stuff like this.

The one thing I’ll say about ALL enemies, bosses included, is that they feel needlessly spongey at all times. No matter which level you are, and even if you complete a harder area and then come back to an easier one later, enemies will STILL take multiple hits to take down. The only time when you’ll feel TRULY powerful is when you’ll return to the very first few areas to complete whatever you missed initially. Initially I liked that enemies could withstand multiple hits, but later areas go so overkill with the amount of enemies in a single room that their general tankiness just led to me avoiding them entirely a lot of the time. This isn’t exactly helped by the fact that, in both the Stockade and Verboten Domain areas, the difficulty (or rather, enemy damage) increases dramatically. It almost feels like Lily just got reset to level 1.

Speaking of the levelling; I still don’t really understand what it does. Is it health? Damage? Both? You can increase both health and damage in other ways though. A bit confusing imo, but nothing too egregious.

With most of the gameplay stuff out of the way, let’s talk about story and lore. Initially I was quite dismissive of the story and lore, as I found the presentation of it very cliché and overdone. Something, something kingdom was good, then calamity happened and now everyone’s a zombie. A very typical and average Dark Souls-esque story about how fucked up the world is. And in a way, it IS that, but it’s also a very personal and emotional story about finding your purpose and finding out who you even are, and when I realised this towards the end I found myself appreciating it all a lot more. There is some genuine heart and profundity to it all. All the sadder that they chose to go with the “read a billion in-game texts and listen to people shout a bunch of cryptic nonsense at you”. You know, the typical “ahh.. Margriel… Forgive me.. I only meant to protect you… arggh..” type beat. I genuinely believe the story would’ve had MUCH more impact on the player if they went about it in a more direct way involving an actual narrative that doesn’t take place in item descriptions. I obviously love this stuff in Soulsborne games, or Blasphemous or other games that are more about the “how’s” and “why’s” of an event, rather than the “who’s”, but here it felt weirdly unfitting. That being said, as soon as the story DID start to click for me, I really liked it. It’s quite a heartfelt and emotional story about a little girl trying to find her place and purpose in a hostile world, and an old knight who still struggles with the guilt of not having been able to uphold his vow. I even got a bit emotional at the end, and that’s a sign that I did appreciate it after all. It’s just sad that the emotional heart of this story was buried so deep beneath what felt like fluff.

Finally, let’s talk about the game’s strongest aspect by far: presentation.

The art style, especially when it comes to the world and levels, is generally very good to fantastic. The background art is beautiful and extremely detailed, and tells a lot of the game’s story. The lighting and colours are generally very lush and give a good dynamic to it all. While it does start off a bit monochromatic, it’s nowhere near as bad as other examples in the genre, this game is generally quite colourful despite the black and white colour-scheme of the promotional material. Especially areas like the Witch Coven or Verboten Domain feel like they can barely contain the explosively colourful background trying to creep in. It really feels like a big budget game with a lot of creative energy behind it. The character animations are generally also very good, with only a select few instances of it feeling awkward. Like mentioned before, character designs are generally good, but could’ve certainly been more unique and original. I’m wondering whether the anime style of presentation might have added to it feeling a bit generic at times. Sadly, the same can be also said for the design concepts behind the areas. While they are technically and artistically great, conceptually they are a bit tame, like they went out of their way to not include anything that was too wild or out of the ordinary.

The sound design is weird. Sometimes it’s very good and spacey, and feels very elegant and well mixed, and then other actions simply don’t have any sounds associated with them. The sword strikes sound great, the foot steps sound like plastic. Some sounds are extremely intricate, while others are ripped straight from sound libraries without anything done to them. It’s noticeable enough to pull me out of the experience occasionally, and that’s probably the most critical mistake a game like this can make. Sound design IS important, and it’s sad to see that it clearly wasn’t a priority here.

It’s the music that TRULY elevates this game though. All the area tunes are extremely catchy and memorable and communicate the sadness and tragedy of this world better than any other aspect of this game. The boss themes, while not as memorable, are also very creative and comment on their respective bosses’ personalities very well. I keep listening to the game’s OST during work, and I genuinely love some of the tracks so much I’m considering sampling them for my own music. Especially the main theme, the White Parish theme and some of the post-boss songs are hauntingly beautiful, and during the credits I almost shed a little tear because it all added up so well in that moment. Music truly is one of the most important aspects of a game, and I think Ender Lilies is a prime example of that.

And that’s the thing with this game; it’s sometimes genuinely great and clearly knows what it’s doing, and then other times, it’ll fumble some really basic stuff in a way that even amateur game designers should know better. Sometimes the devs have a stroke of genius, and then other times, they’ll go with the absolute bare minimum. And I think this is most noticeable when it comes to the game’s overall place in the genre:

What really sets Ender Lilies apart? What is the draw that’s supposed to pull people in? What is this game’s identity? It feels like it’s so busy trying to appeal to all sorts of MV audiences that it forgot to really work out its own personality, it’s own pull. The art direction and music ARE great, but games like Hollow Knight, Blasphemous, Super Metroid, CV: Symphony of the Night, Ori, Axiom Verge.. all of these games have fantastic art direction and music, but they also have their own identity, both in terms of art AND gameplay. It’s even worse since the game orients itself very clearly around Hollow Knight in particular, and goes for a very similar style of presentation but doesn’t really quite reach the heights that HK did, neither in art, music NOR in gameplay. If I had to choose between HK and EL to recommend to a friend who’s trying to get into Metroidvanias, there’d be no contest - especially since Ender Lilies is twice as expensive as Hollow Knight. The only reason I would ever recommend EL over HK would be for it’s significantly lighter difficulty and shorter run-time.

I realise that this review probably sounded a bit negative overall, but don’t let that fool you. This IS a really good game. It’s an extremely solid Metroidvania / Souls-like. Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t have any real critical flaws. It has very enjoyable gameplay, a non-linear map that feels appropriately large, amazing art and music, it has no bullshit areas, and doesn’t drag on forever. It just has a lot of minor disappointments and annoyances that may or may not add up to a legitimate grievance, depending on who’s playing. And I won’t lie, these things do annoy me and kinda break my heart, because this game would really have deserved a lot more polish.

The reason I genuinely really like this game, and consider it not only worth your time but one of the better experiences I’ve had in a while is simple; it has heart. It has a soul. It’s a passion project by a couple of people that clearly love the Metroidvania genre, and cared a lot about the story they were trying to tell. It’s not a cynical, self-referential, meta-humour ridden “””clever””” game, nor is it a soulless, predatory cash grab, it’s a game that’s not afraid to pull on your heartstrings and present you with some actual emotion here and there. Again, I REALLY like this game, and I think every fan of Metroidvania games ought to give this one a shot. Even though I have problems with it, I enjoyed it more than other MVs I’ve played recently, including Salt & Sanctuary, The Messenger, Metroid: Dread and both Ori’s, and I think that’s saying something. All things considered, I do think this game is underrated. It genuinely is a very fun game, with an extremely solid foundation, and I could see a sequel ironing out a lot of the kinks, creating a truly fantastic gaming experience in the process.

I think there are a lot of people who would probably get a lot out of this. I’ll definitely give it a second playthrough some time in the future.

7,5 / 10


This is not a perfect game. It has some flaws. It's also a perfect game that is amazing and has no flaws.

This game was pretty ahead of its time in so many ways, chief among them its status as a living meme - back when the term "meme" wasn't AS widespread outside of internet circles. It's one of the last pieces of media that refers to memes in their original meaning; "...an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme". MGR is a story about cyclical violence, the power of propaganda and the churning of the wheel of the military industrial complex....

...it's also a game about chopping the absolute goddamned fuck out of everything. If you skip the cutscenes in this thing [although I don't recommend it if it's your first time playing the game, as they are a whole-ass experience in an out of themselves] this game becomes a non stop, no-holds-barred thrill ride all the way up to the end credits and it NEVER lets up, no matter how much you're hyperventilating.

You can chop up EVERYTHING. People, robots, walls, trees, cars, etc. Nothing is safe from the all powerful electric sharpened weeb death stick. It can also block just about everything in known reality.

The boss fights are amazing. They are pretty challenging mechanically, have unbelievably flamboyant and eye-catching personalities, and deliver some of the most absurd one-liners you've ever heard. Especially the final boss is a one of a kind gaming experience that I have yet to see replicated even remotely.

There are some things that drag this game down a bit; namely everything that isn't chopping things up. The stealth sections are bad. Like, really bad. The """"platforming"""" is laughable and some of the sections between boss fights feel a little braindead with how often you'll just slice down hoards of enemies like they were blades of grass and you were the worlds most powerful military-grade lawnmower.

These are pretty minor annoyances compared to the sheer, unbridled insanity that this game delivers every second you're not busy splitting dudes in half for their tasty Gatorade spines.

In truth, it's barely a Metal Gear title.

It shares very little with its parent franchise in terms of second-to-second gameplay. It does have a knack for the same kind of narratively driven Kojima-style madness the originals have though.

If you're looking for a relatively short but action-filled title that'll make you feel like the most powerful otaku in the known universe, this is the game for you.

All that's left to say is: NANOMACHINES, SON!

8/10

Dark Souls is my favourite game of all time. There is no other game (or other piece of art) I talk about as much and as profusely as Dark Souls. I've annoyed my friends with how good this game is for years. Despite that, I've kinda dreaded writing this review.

Is there another game in history as much talked and ruminated about in the modern era as Dark Souls? What can you even say about a game this massively influential and polarising? I feel like even that this very phrase itself has become cliché in the discourse surrounding it.

Instead of regurgitating that which more knowledgeable and eloquent critics than I have already talked about at length, I'll simply just talk about what I love (and don't love) about the game and I explain how learning to love it wasn't all that easy at first.

I love the world of Lordran. I love its intricacies, its characters, its lore and its structure.

The world of Lordran is beautiful and bleak. It is horrifying and reassuring. From the top of the highest mountain, where the very gods reside, to the fiery chasm of the underworld, all areas of this world are connected with each other, making the world seem almost like a colossal anthill. This gives Dark Souls its distinctive "3rd Person Metroidvania" feeling. And as per usual with that genre of games, this world is filled with secrets that only those with the keenest of eyes will spot.

Lordran is mired in histories long forgotten, lost to the inhabitants of today. In this land, humans are victims of a past they'll never fully understand, as as such, are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Like a cancer, the Undead Curse seeps into the very being of unfortunate souls, each death stripping them from a bit of their humanity, hollowing them out from the inside until nothing but a witless husk remains. They are doomed to keep reviving at the various Bonfires speckled throughout the lands, which explains their function as checkpoints for the player character in a diegetic manner. This is only one of many examples of FromSoft constructing a deeply immersive and authentic experience through their skilful interweaving of world building and gameplay, not only in this game, but their entire Soulsborne catalogue.

Despite a world so gruel and punishing, so obscure and indifferent, the various NPCs you encounter are very much the opposite. Be they good or evil, charmers or intimidating, friend or foe alike; they are unabashedly human. They laugh, they cry, they want and they yearn. Some will attempt to kill you for your humanity, while others will assist you on your travels just out of the goodness of their heart.

I love the atmosphere, so thick that you could slice it with a knife.

The soft, cloudy lighting of Firelink Shrine, the piercing fiery reds of Izalith, the noxious green of Blighttown... the sheer grandeur of Anor Londo in the false evening sun, the reverential and deeply mystical Ash Lake, the sheer terror of the pitch black Tomb of the Giants... each part of Lordran has its own character.

I love how uncompromisingly melancholic and depressing this game is. Where other fantasy games will usually try and instil a sense of heroism in the player, Dark Souls consistently asks the player what it even is they're fighting for. Do they even know? Are they even the hero in this story?

Dark Souls masterfully subverts Campbell's archetype of the Hero's Journey in almost every aspect. You are NOT the chosen one. You are NOT someone special. There are many just like you, and they all failed. What makes you different?

I love the incredibly mystical and byzantine lore. This game's lore and world building are perhaps my favourite in all of fiction. Miyazaki and his team evidently drew from a lot of existing mythology and real life history, as well as many other inspirations, most notoriously among them, the late Kentaro Miura's Berserk. It is masterfully crafted, and the proof can be found in various forums, Reddit threads and YouTube videos, still speculating about the minutiae of the most obscure lore references almost a decade after the game first released.

I love the story of Gwyn, Izalith and Nito, of the Ancient Dragons and the Furtive Pygmy. I love the tale of Artorias and his tragic battle against the Abyss itself. I love the occult hushes and whispers spoken about the plots of Velka, the Goddess of Sin. None of these characters ever speak a word to the protagonist, and yet are more memorable to me than any character in any AAA game with 3 hours worth of dialogue.

I love the fittingly brutal and punishing gameplay. I love the slow and deliberate combat. Every decision is a micro puzzle, a question of "do you really want to do this?". Mistakes are brutally punished, but they make you learn. You get into the flow of the slow and steady dance of dodging enemy attacks and punishing them for not being able to kill you. When I first played these games, I had never felt anything nearly as exhilarating as killing a boss in them.

Apropos bosses; Dark Souls (as in DS1), may not have the best bosses in the Souls series but it sure as hell has some of the best and most memorable bosses in all of gaming regardless. Ornstein and Smough, Manus, Artorias, Kalameet, Quelaag, Gwyn, the Iron Golem, the Gaping Dragon.. those are just a few from the immensely creative and fantastically designed boss roster.

And that's kind of the whole beauty of it too; the combat system itself isn't anything amazing, it's very simple. It's the fantastic variety in enemy design and the absolutely incredible levels these encounters even take place in.

Dark Souls has some of the best levels in video game history.
From the impeccably designed pseudo-tutorial area the Undead Burg, to the murky Darkroot Garden, the delightfully devilish Sen's Fortress, the cold and scary but also beautiful Painted World of Ariamis, the awe inspiring Anor Londo, the terrifying gutters of Blighttown, etc. all of these levels feature fantastic and challenging encounters and are unbelievably well designed. As mentioned, the game lifts a lot of techniques from the Metroidvania genre, utilising one-way locked doors, elevators, kick-down ladders etc. to get you back to the checkpoint, and letting you skip huge sections of any map as a reward for making it this far and staying perceptive.

All of this is to say that I think that Dark Souls is an ALMOST perfect game. Why almost? Well, for the same reason that I ended up giving this game 4,5/5 instead of 5/5. The reason for that is Dark Souls notorious and often maligned second half.

While I personally always found the criticisms towards that second half to be quite overblown and disproportionate, I can't deny that it drags the whole game down a bit because of it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the entire second half of Dark Souls is outright bad, but the levels and bosses post-Anor Londo definitely drop in quality quite a bit in certain places.

It's not as bad in the Duke's Archives and in New Londo. The Duke's Archives are essentially an extension of the Anor Londo map, and as such is designed relatively similar in terms of progression and navigation. I would argue that the actual level design of the place is quite good even! It's the absolute load of very strong and annoying enemies that tend to frustrate a lot of people, myself included. The boss, Seath the Scaleless, is a huge letdown compared to how much he was hyped up in the lore, but somehow not even the worst offender in that regard. He just ends up being disappointingly easy.

New Londo is actually really cool and I never understood the unfortunate amount of hate it received. The (seemingly) invincible ghosts are pretty menacing and a rather frightening sight but can be dealt with quite easily if you know how. The level itself is intensely creepy and dark, and features a harrowing story of the city having been flooded with all the people still in it, by the healers who found themselves forced to do so to contain the terrible evil that had arisen within the depths of the town; the boss of this level, the Four Kings, corrupted by the Abyss. Easily my favourite fight out of the Lord Souls.

I can definitely understand the grievances with Dark Souls' second half a lot more with areas like the unfinished pits of the Demon Ruins and the city of Lost Izalith, the annoying and trollish Tomb of the Giants and the bullshit, broken level geometry of the Crystal Cave.

Tomb of the Giants is easily explained; the place is literally so dark you can't see shit. There are exactly 2 items that can help alleviate the darkness, and one of them is locked in another late game area. What makes this area unforgivable is that this is also the area with the most narrow walkways, the most confusing layout AND the enemies with the highest potential of knocking your ass right off the next cliff. You also can't really see them coming. Neat.

The Crystal Cave looks amazing but clearly hasn't been playtested very much, as numerous sections of the floor are simply broken and will lead to a lot of deaths where you were walking along a crystal beam and suddenly slip off the side without warning. And that's just the VISIBLE ones. There are also invisible walkways, which are just as broken. Also there isn't a single bonfire in the whole area.

Lost Izalith and the Demon Ruins aren't AS bad as the other two, and they even look pretty cool, but are clearly (and afaik even confirmed by the devs to be) unfinished. If the horde of copypasted early game bosses and lack of everything else wasn't indication enough, the fact that the second level consists to 90% of literally only running across a lava lake definitely should be. The sad thing is, this general area features the worst bosses in the whole game, with one of them - the Bed of Chaos - being widely considered to be one of the worst video game bosses of all time. Rightly so, I might add.

But as I mentioned, as a whole these flaws don't weigh heavily enough upon the game to say that the "entire second half is bad" or anything to that effect - especially since the Remastered version comes with the DLC pre-installed.

The DLC truly elevates the entire experience back to the realm of masterpiece.

It introduces 3 new levels and 4 new bosses, all of which range from ok at worst to amazing at its best! Moreover, it actually expands upon the story of Artorias the Abysswalker, of whom we've caught glimpses and whispers of other NPCs but have never seen in the main game, we just meet his wolf, Sif. We only know that he defeated the Darkwraiths of New Londo, and saved the ancient city of Oolacile from the Abyss.

The player is transported back in time after saving Princess Dusk from the inside of a golden golem and finding a mysterious pendant in the Duke's Archives. Upon arriving, and slaying the Sanctuary Guardian in our way, we meet up with a talking mushroom and gradually uncover that the tale of Artorias defeating the Abyss in Oolacile was nothing a fabrication.

Artorias, driven mad by grief and the powers of the Abyss, knows not friend from foe and will attack any living thing near him. After defeating him, in what is likely the best boss fight in this game, we begin to understand that WE are the ones to put an end to the Abyss. And such, we descend down the city of Oolacile, all the way down its pitch black dungeon to confront the host of the Abyss - Manus. He is easily the hardest boss in the entire game, and doubles as the true final fight.

That is, other than the secret boss of the DLC, Black Dragon Kalameet. Though appearing as literally undefeatable at first, with the help of an unlikely friend you manage to pin the beast to the ground and engage in a thrilling fight with him.

After finishing the DLC, there is only one more thing to do: To go toe to toe with the man who started this whole mess: Gwyn, the Lord of Sunlight - now the Lord of Cinder. The soundtrack is not bombastic, not loud and terrifying like the others in the game; it is sombre, calm and melancholic.

What is it you're really fighting for? Did you ever find an answer? Or will you end up like him; standing watch at the fire for millennia, until another one as strong as you arrives to link the flame in your stead?

...

I can't believe how close I once was to writing this game off as toxic bullshit. When I first played it in early 2019, I got stuck on Taurus Demon in the first level, and got so frustrated at the run back to it that I simply gave up. I told myself "this isn't fun" and dropped it for a good 6 months.

I still don't know what exactly compelled me to go back and give it a try. Maybe it was a random VaatiVidya lore video I got recommended that revived my interest. Maybe it was the many, many people praising it as one of the best ever that got me thinking I might have missed something. But something in this game called to me and drew me into its spell.

If you were like me, and you bounced off Dark Souls because you found it too frustrating, too demanding or too cryptic; I hope I could show you that most of us felt this way at first, and that it's likely part of the intended experience.

People don't grow without frustration, and people don't learn without making mistakes.

I hope that you can find it in yourself to give this game another chance; you deserve it.

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Wow, so this ended up WAY longer than I anticipated. If you actually read this entire ass thing, thank you so much, I write this stuff because of people like you.

Dead Cells takes lots of different ideas from various genres and fuses them together into a fantastic mix of challenging combat, rewarding exploration and a creative meta-progression system. Balancing issues and a slow rate of unlocking things drag the game down a bit though.

8/10
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The Rouge-like genre has seen tremendous growth over the years, and even though obviously a lot of these games are really good, the majority of them kinda blur together in my mind. Either they're just trying to out-do each other in terms of difficulty or introduce new, strange gimmicks that don't really complement the core gameplay loop. Maybe it's because the Rouge-like/lite genre currently feels a bit oversaturated in general.

Dead Cells, contrary to the examples just mentioned, is a very good - although not perfect - example of how to breathe new life into an old genre without really changing all that much.

If we're being very conservative with our definitions, it's not really a classic Rouge-like; it's more of a Rouge-lite with elements of Metroidvania and Souls-like games. But these very same elements make Dead Cells so much more rewarding to master and try again and again.

Let's start with this: How do you even combine Metroidvania and Rouge-like elements; aren't they kind of at odds with each other by definition? Yes. That's what makes it so interesting. While the levels are procedurally generated, certain "room archetypes" (for lack of a better word) will always appear on each map, just with their location swapped around or the means of accessing them hidden somewhere else this time. Each area has the potential to branch off into multiple other paths. While the path is at first pretty constrictive, and you have only one way forward, playing the game for a while and unlocking various power ups will allow you to access new areas that you couldn't before - which in turn means, access to new maps, items, enemies and even bosses.

This is a brilliant decision. It takes one of the biggest problems I had with Hades (even though that game came out after Dead Cells and is also an amazing game) and essentially deletes it. It ensures that, the only way that the set of areas will feel repetitive is by your own choice, never by design. The level design blueprints for every area are varied enough to make every zone of the game - even though they are procedurally generated - distinct and varied enough to give off the illusion that they were hand crafted each time. The combat is extremely fast paced and the platforming is pretty tight for the most part as well.

The combat itself is almost purely skill based and expects you to familiarise with the various attack animations of both your enemies and your own weapons. There are melee weapons, ranged weapons, spells, grenades, shields for parrying and blocking, etc. - all fairly standard elements for most Souls-like games. I really like how Dead Cells manages to strongly incentivise your to play as fast-paced and flawless as you can, while never outright forcing you to. That way, it puts the key to success squarely in your corner and pushes you further to truly master this combat system.

The "build system" takes some getting used to and could use some work to maybe include hybrid-builds as a valid option but works very well otherwise. The various mutations for each build archetype are really fun and work in countless constellations - even though I feel like Green builds are severely underpowered in comparison to the other two. That's the thing though; it's not that easy to say. At its core, this combat system relies more on the synergies of various tools and effects more than raw stats and OP weapon animations.

Another thing that's interesting, and tying into this, is this game's strong focus on what I'd call "meta-progress". While every Rouge-like features something in the way of this in their gameplay loop, the emphasis that Dead Cells puts on it does turn it into something else, almost. Especially in the early game (and the post game) it almost feels like actually winning the game isn't even the point; but rather to find all the various items, unlock all the levels, find all the secrets, etc.

This is both good AND a flaw; in that on the one hand, you don't get tunnel visioned on that ONE particular build that worked really well for you that last time so you're forced to play around with more mechanics; on the other hand so many of the various combinations that are possible to get flat out don't work or are woefully underpowered.

In short; whether or not you'll get a powerful set up can be pretty RNG dependent. While, yes, careful planning and thinking ahead IS also important, it won't do you any good if you simply get bad RNG.

The same can be said about Dead Cell's weapon system. While it's really cool that there's a metric fuckton of unique, varied and stylish weapons to play around with, the majority of them don't feel very useful, strong OR fun. It almost feels like the more weapons you unlock, the harder you're making things for yourself, due to the weapons you get on each run being decided by RNG, and that's not something the player should be made to feel. There are in-game options of turning this off and choosing precisely which weapons you'll get for each run, but they disable your ability to obtain special items you get to properly "meta-progress" through the game so - unless you're already stacked on items / through with the game - you're not likely going to use it.

In general, the rate of unlocking new items can sometimes be rather slow due to unreasonably low drop rates for certain items - yes, you get most items from random drops from enemies in a rouge-like system. I honestly don't really like this system and wished they went for something a little less time consuming.

As far as the story-telling is concerned, there barely is any of it. The environmental story telling is very opaque and the few interactions you do get with NPCs don't really do much for getting you interested in any of it. To be fair though, it doesn't really feel like it's the point anyway.

All in all I had a lot of time with this game for close to 80 hours already, and I see myself picking it up from time to time in the future as well. It's not perfect, but if you're looking for a good, skill-based action platformer with lots of great content, this is the game for you.

8/10

Metal Gear Solid, even after over two decades, remains one of Kojima’s most innovative, out there and forward thinking games, even if the game can’t help but show its age. While story, cinematography and themes held up incredibly well, the gameplay hasn’t survived the years in quite the same way.

7,5 / 10

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This is one of those games where I’m kind of struggling to come up with unique things to say about it, namely because a game series so ubiquitous and influential as Metal Gear Solid is bound to have been discussed to death for close to 25 years now. There are countless think pieces and articles and video essays about its role as a cultural juggernaut, about how innovative a game it was for its time, about the genius of Kojima, etc. So, instead I’ll try my hardest to simply talk about what I liked and didn’t like about the game, what I think held up well, didn’t hold up well, or was never all that good in the first place.

I think I should start with saying that I have no nostalgic connection to this game, or even this series as a whole. I played MGS1 in April 2023, after only having played 2 other Kojima games the year before, namely MGS5 and the often maligned Death Stranding. (I also played Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance but that one isn’t even a Kojima game) I did enjoy both of these games quite a bit, even though both of them are rather divisive, Death Stranding in particular. I mean, I did have more than my fair share of problems with both, and I even though I had a lot of fun with them, I could also see the points of the many detractors of Kojima’s extremely idiosyncratic style of making games. Personally, I’m somewhere in between the two camps of “Kojima is god” and “Kojima is a hack”, often wildly flipping between them on a whim. Often, I’ve heard old school Kojima fans say stuff like “he fell off with MGS4” and that “the first 3 MGS are flawless”. While I can’t speak about those games and related opinions, I can say that MGS1 fit surprisingly well with my impression of the games I actually did play. Which is to say, great in some parts, not so great in others. On the one hand, you have some fantastic stuff that survived the ages in a way that is only possible with Kojima, and on the other hand I have rarely been as frustrated by haphazard design decisions, extremely blatant padding, bad stealth mechanics and lots of other stuff that soured my experience with MGS1 - also only possible with Kojima. But ultimately, like MGS5 and Death Stranding, I did end up liking this game over all, despite its flaws.

I think easily the most impressive part about MGS1 today is its fantastic sense of cinematography. For those not familiar with the PS1-era, it needs to be stated that at that time video game cutscenes - if a game had any cutscenes - were often times not very good, quite short, lacked quite a bit in terms of cinematography and storytelling, and beyond that, were almost always simply FMVs. (“full motion video”, = pre-rendered video files) Even Silent Hill 1, which had absolutely fantastically animated cutscenes at the time, had to fully rely on those FMVs to give the game a feeling of “big budget Hollywood” stuff. Metal Gear Solid 1 is extremely cool and forward thinking in that, not only does the game not use any FMVs whatsoever, but the way the animators used the actual in game graphics and models to direct really compelling and interestingly staged cutscenes is unprecedented.

Not only do the movement of the characters and their delivery of dialogue feel very natural, the camera is almost always placed in interesting positions and even utilises movement during action sequences or otherwise tense moments. This gives the game a far more cinematic feel than just about anything else up to that point. Game designers back often didn’t know all that much about cinematography and story telling, and had to rely on their limited understanding of these things to make everything work. At some points in MGS1, I forgot I was watching highly abstracted, polygonal versions of real people talking and interacting with each other, and fully bought into the illusion that I was watching a film. It really feels like a movie/game hybrid in the best of ways.

Of course, another thing that adds to this is the surprisingly good voice acting. “Surprising” insofar that, once again, at the time video game voice acting tended to be pretty bad. Most of the time the “””actors””” were literally just staff members and programmers without any experience in acting or direction what so ever. While MGS1’s voice acting wouldn’t be anything of particular interest today, this was as close to Hollywood levels of acting you could get in video games at the time. David Hayter as Solid Snake is obviously legendary and immortalised through his “dummy thicc” copy pasta. Oh, and for playing the main character in one of the most acclaimed video game series of all time or whatever. But besides him, the other performances were also really good. I particularly liked Robert Aktin Downes as Master Miller / other characters.

So far so good, great cinematography and voice acting. These are things that Kojima is known for even today, perhaps to the point where this unique selling point itself even kind of became almost flanderised. “Kojima wants to make movies, not games.” And, you know there is a point to that. However, here’s the thing; I don’t really mind it all that much if the story I’m witnessing is actually interesting and told well. And I think, that’s the same for most people, because somehow I don’t hear anywhere near as many people make this complaint with MGS1 than they do with MGS5 and Death Stranding. MGS5 is infamously an unfinished game with an unfinished story, and you can tell. It doesn’t help that the story it tries to tell positions itself as a prequel to over almost every Metal Gear game, retroactively setting up a lot of plot points for the rest of the series, meaning the story makes even less sense if you haven’t played the others first. Death Stranding isn’t unfinished per se, but its story makes no fucking sense and feels like it should be way simpler and to the point than it ended up being. The fact that both of these games also suffer from the most severe case of “Kojima story telling” yet (meaning: and excess of incredibly drawn out and unnecessary information dumps that don’t evolve the plot or characters what so ever and only serve to give the world a fake sense of depth) doesn’t help matters at all.

Needless to say, I expected MGS1 to be just as much of a confusing, nonsensical mess with plot lines that ended nowhere and didn’t really have much of a point. Well, I can happily say that I know understand what old-school Kojima fans were on about when they say the newer games kinda sucked story wise, because unlike the aforementioned games MGS1’s story isn’t just really good, it’s by far the best part of the game.

While we can just jump straight into the actual main plot of the game by hitting new game, the devs provided multiple ways of catching up on the previous games’ plot lines as well as gain more context for the mission you’re currently on. Lingering in the main menu for a while will give you the typical main menu cutscene which will fill you in on some details we’ll get into shortly. The other option comes in the form of a “mission briefing”, in which you’ll be thoroughly informed of the player character’s mission, goal, potential threats, ways in and ways out. You’ll also get a bit of character set up for both Snake and the colonel.

We play as mercenary, freedom fighter and super soldier extraordinaire Solid Snake, aka Snake, aka David, aka Iroqois Pliskin etc. The game takes place some years after the events of both Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, in which Snake invades the private military station / micro nation called “Outer Heaven”, and kills its leader; the greatest soldier of all time, god of combat and patron saint of mercenaries, Big Boss, aka John, aka Jack, aka Naked Snake , aka Ishmael, and so on, who spearheaded all kinds of military organisations, secret government programs, etc. all for one singular goal: to create a nation for soldiers alone. Why? I don’t fucking know, I don’t think I’d be able to comprehend the entirety of Metal Gear Solid lore even IF I played all the games. The reason for our conflict with Big Boss is the titular military tech called “Metal Gear”, which are essentially big old anime mechs, but set in a world basically like ours, where they would undoubtedly be weapons of unbelievable mass destruction. There are a whole lot of details about the story of both MG and MG2 I don’t know about because I haven’t played them yet.

Anyway, back to the plot of MGS. A few years after the events of the aforementioned games, living in isolation somewhere in the Alaskan frozen wastes, Snake is, uh, “contacted” by his old commander, Colonel Roy Campbell. Our guy has achieved legend status for his previous missions and is known as the greatest living warrior, after having defeated and foiled the man who previously held that title. Like I mentioned before, you can choose to receive some extra context by selecting the mission briefing, in which the following happens:

We open up on Solid Snake, stripped naked to a chair inside of a military submarine, being greeted by a mysterious voice which turns out to be the Colonel. Snake, previously having been the top soldier for the US Military special forces, is now retired, living in Alaska, and finds himself detained by a couple of armed soldiers, for the purpose of coercing him to go on one final mission for the US military. We also get introduced to a bunch of other NPCs we’ll get to talk to a lot during this game, namely Dr. Naomi Hunter, Mei Ling, Master Miller, and so on. So, what is the problem, and why is Snake the one who has to solve it?

Our goal is to invade the fictional Alaskan island and former US military outpost “Shadow Moses”, which has been taken over by FOXHOUND after rebelling against their employers. The leaders of FOXHOUND have since threatened the US government with nuclear strikes from the new iteration of the game series’ eponymous fighting robots, the American-produced Metal Gear REX, over the remains of Big Boss and 1 billion dollars cash. Our job is to infiltrate the base, free the various hostages taken by FOXHOUND - including Colonel Campbell’s niece Meryl Silverburgh -, check whether or not Shadow Moses DOES possess the capabilities for said strike, and destroy Metal Gear should the need arise. While we’re there, we’re also tasked with saving both the DARPA chief Donald Anderson, and the ever infamous Dr. Hal “Otacon” (abbreviated from “Otaku-convention”, yes, seriously) Emmerich. Simple enough. Snake isn’t exactly super quick to trust the colonel, and asks for full disclosure regarding the mission details. After getting to know the other characters, and being injected with a healthy dose of nano-machines who will turn out to have a whole bunch of different uses, we set out for the frozen military base.

This is where we should briefly talk about this game’s signature game mechanic you’ve seen referenced a billion times in other games or other media without ever knowing where it originated from: The Soliton radar system. At its most basic it’s a radar system that lets you see enemies from farther away, as well as their effective line of sight / range in the environment. This is what basically makes the stealth system, other than the level design. But the Soliton is also a communication device which let’s you ring up various NPCs back at the home station, who all have different fields of expertise and will give you varying advice depending on the situation - and depending on whether or not they are even qualified to help you in the first place. The amount of different dialogue that these NPCs can present you with depending on the situation is seriously impressive, even for today’s standards. And it’s not all just strictly gameplay related either. Sometimes, especially when any given NPC can’t really help in a situation, they’ll often give you more story context or background on their own character, sometimes even giving away a little too much for their own good - at least, if you’re perceptive. The single biggest thing I’ll praise about the codec calls are that they are a great way to find out what to do in certain boss fights, that would probably have you Google the solution in any other game. Once again, incredibly forward thinking and a fantastic way to future proof your game.

That’s enough set up, we’ll get back to the story in a bit, but for now we ascend from the waves and make our way into the enemy base. So, let’s take the opportunity and talk about the incredibly iconic Shadow Moses:

The game takes place entirely within its confines, and is made up of several smaller sections. The outpost is constructed a bit like something you’d see in a Metroidvania game, with many unlockable shortcuts and doors that are locked from one side, and has some areas that aren’t necessary to complete the game, and instead have upgrades, supplies or other stuff that makes exploring the whole of Shadow Moses worthwhile. Level design is quite good for the most part and works well for a game based around stealth, and surprisingly does more for the experience than the actual mechanics the game provides you with. I will say that it’s nothing too crazy though, and that I’ve seen plenty of stealth-based games do more with similar set ups and mechanics. On the other hand, most of these games came well after this one. Mostly it comes down to stealth being practically necessitated by a lack of useful combat mechanics, more than the designated stealth mechanics in this game being particularly fleshed out.

In either case, the thing that really makes Shadow Moses work for me is the atmosphere. The rough and brutalist metal and concrete structure jutting out from the rocks of this Alaskan island, penetrating through the thick snow and fog. The sound of machines whirring and snow falling and Snake’s footsteps walking through it, the incredibly iconic musical themes in the background… great stuff. It really makes you feel like you’re breaking into a place you’re not supposed to be. The fact that you can switch to first person mode to take a look around, once again underlining the three dimensional nature of this place makes this even more immersive. The many levels inside Shadow Moses are all rather small and quick to traverse, at least at first, and give you plenty of stuff to find if you’re curious enough - and it turns out, you really SHOULD explore, because while a lot of the stuff you can find is optional, some other stuff isn’t, and the game WILL make you go all the way back to retrieve it.

This is kind of a perfect segue to move on to one of the things that exist on the other end of the Kojima extreme for me; the boss fights. I cannot say that I was a big fan of them.

I felt that they are all extremely gimmicky and some relied heavily on the player finding very specific items that would hard lock you out of completing the boss fights until you find them. Sometimes they might require you to find a specific weapon that, like I alluded to before, you could have found if you were observant enough, like one of the mid-game bosses, the first battle against Sniper Wolf. Story context; after having freed Meryl (who is also Snake’s love interest in this game), we lead her through parts of the level until she gets shot by the aforementioned boss while walking through a narrow hallway to a different part of Shadow Moses. Bleeding out on the floor, she’ll be at the mercy of Snake defeating Wolf as quickly as possible. However, should Snake not have brought a PSG-1 sniper rifle with him, the game unironically stops everything and makes you go back to the start of the game to retrieve it, all the while Meryl is bleeding out on the floor, in the cold of an Alaskan winter night, while a deadly enemy sniper is still aiming her sights on our girl. This is, frankly, absurdly out of place, tonally speaking. I get that this fight is hardly doable without a sniper rifle, but having to leave the encounter in the middle of a gunfight while your love interest is literally dying on the floor feels so incredibly off. I have to believe this was some last minute decision, as it makes no sense, dramaturgically speaking. What’s worse is that the game seemingly intends for you to go through whole ordeal, as I don’t think that most people would’ve found the sniper without first fully understanding how this game even works.

Another example, this one particularly egregious for me personally, was Vulcan Raven during the second half of the game. While you don’t technically need a specific weapon to beat him, in praxis you kinda do. Structurally, the boss fight works by putting you in a small rat maze with a guy wearing a heavy mech-suit with mini guns equipped on each arm. Needless to say, if he spots you, he’ll kill you in seconds flat. While you can technically fight him with just about any form of explosive in this game, including the rocket launcher, what you REALLY want to use are claymore mines. The problem being that, once again, you have to go out of your way to search every nook and cranny of this map if you want to find some of them. You can potentially pick them up during a certain boss battle, and some in certain, short sections in between areas. Now, I’ll admit that not picking them up every chance I get was on me. There were plenty of instances where I stepped on some claymores and died, and therefore should’ve known about their presence. The game does tell you about the x-ray vision that lets you see invisible enemies and hidden explosives. However, the game does not tell you that you’ll practically NEED to use them during certain boss battles, at least if you don’t plan on having an aneurysm. I tried this boss fight so many times without them, because I didn’t feel like starting from an earlier save, when that save was at least an hour back. Eventually, however, I caved and loaded an earlier save so I could go up and farm those mines like you’re clearly supposed to. Usually this wouldn’t piss me off so much, but the obtuse way in which this whole strategy is relayed to you, alongside the fact that you’re ostensibly given multiple angles for any boss fight here made this whole section almost unbearably frustrating for me, and made me drop the game for a couple of days. Having one option that is significantly easier and more practical than ANY of the other solutions you technically could use isn’t good design. The worst part is that, even with the intended solution, this fight is still a tedious chore.

And that is sadly true for every single boss in this game. I’m not going into detail on every single boss fight here, but I can confidently say I didn’t enjoy a single one of them except for MAYBE the final one(s). Not even the legendary Psycho Mantis did it for me, but that’s mostly due to the intended solution - switching the controller ports - obviously doesn’t work on emulator. I had to go for the less interesting solution of shooting the statue and then running around the room like crazy trying to get a hit in. I don’t think having access to the intended solution would’ve massively benefitted the fight though.

Something that remains true for every boss fight; if you walk in without enough heals (that is, typically a full stack of them) or god forbid, low health, you’re gonna have a bad time. I understand that this was usually not considered a design flaw since “you could just start from an earlier save”, which was genuinely considered a valid design decision in the late 90’s. For all the shit that the late 2000’s hand-holding design epidemic gets, making it so players don’t lose hours of progress for very simple mistakes was a pretty good thing. Maybe going so hard on the boss encounters isn’t really warranted, but they do present themselves as a rather important part of the story, there are quite a lot of them and most importantly, the regular enemies really don’t offer anything in the way of challenge. This is only a stealth game as long as you feel like playing a stealth game. You can absolutely just walk through and, with enough patience, simply shoot all the enemies without utilising any stealth what so ever. The boss fights are the only instances where the game actually gets a bit challenging, but sadly most of them go about it in the most obnoxious way possible.

Sadly, the boss fights aren’t even my biggest problem, which says a lot because they already pissed me off quite a bit. No, it’s actually the entire second half of the game I have some serious gripes with. The first disc of the game (which is also the first half) is generally paced very well, with good level design, nice stealth sections, and a continuous feeling of progressing forward while also making those little Metroidvania-esque connections in your head about how the map is structured. While backtracking is a thing, it’s kept to a minimum in favour of constantly presenting you with new stuff. The second half is the complete opposite of that.

Backtracking does not only become noticeable, but excessive. The game also isn’t going about implementing it in a way that I would describe as “elegant”, either. Honestly, it’s one of the most offensively obvious examples of padding out a game’s length for no reason other to increase its “runtime” I have ever seen. It is beyond belief to me that this keeps getting ignored in all of those nostalgia-drenched 5 star reviews that go on and on about how beautifully this game has aged, and how it’s one of the best games of all time. This is bad design, and it was bad design for its time as well.

Easily the most infamous example of this - although sadly not the only one - would be the whole ordeal about using the PAL key to deactivate the nuclear launch sequence. Now, the set up is actually quite clever. You spent around half of the game looking for three distinct PALs (permissive action link), knowing that you need them to shut down the launch, since there are three colour-coded modules on the launch console. Thus far you’ve only found one, and time is running out. But then Otacon informs you that you already had all three keys the entire time. Turns out, that one single keycard you found actually includes the other two codes you need. How? The key turns into a different key depending on the temperature. Conceptually, this is really cool and one of the smarter ways to go about it. Gameplay wise, it’s fucking horrible and by far my least favourite section of the game. What’s worse is that it’s right at the end, dragging out the moment you finally get to the final boss even more.

Basically, you’re supposed to go to an area with a certain temperature, stay there for a couple of minutes so the key changes colour, and then get back to the final room. Sounds simple enough. But there are some things that utterly destroy the pacing of this final stretch. First, none of the areas you go to are new. You are required to backtrack to places you’ve already been to hours ago, just to stay a few minutes there and go back. There are no clever shortcuts to make traversing the second half of the map more interesting. You have to fight the exact same enemies every time you go through EITHER way. There is no way to effectively circumnavigate them without being a speed runner or other gamer god. And, on top of that, each trip takes significantly longer than the one before it. Depending on how you play, this could take you anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours. This is legit some of the worst cases of padding I have ever seen. This is just straight up filler bullshit. I’m sorry, but I’m gonna call it like it is. It’s dogshit game design.

Now, I think I understand why they did it. Apart from the obvious point (just make the game a little longer), I think it’s structured like this go give the absolute load of codec calls you’ll be receiving a bit more room to breathe. This section is basically where the entire story of MGS1 pulls a complete 180° and makes you realise you didn’t have the full picture. I understand that there needed to be a big focus on that, and that cramming them into a very short gameplay section would’ve probably just overloaded players with info. However, artificially padding out the game just so a few cutscenes have a little extra room to breathe is akin to a cardinal sin of game design for me. Surely there had to have been a better way than this. I’m not gonna harp on for it more than I already have, because I think I’ve made my point.

Luckily the actual story of the game keeps up its quality up until the credits. The final boss is also really fucking cool, story wise. Gameplay, it’s more of what we already got, albeit slightly more thrilling. A good hand-to-hand brawl is just what this story needed, even if Kojima can’t stop shoving it into literally every game he makes. The final turret section is not my favourite but it works well enough and builds tension right until the climax of the story. I’m not gonna go into great detail concerning the overall story; a.) because it’d take way too long and this review is too long as is, and b.) in the slim off-chance that someone who hasn’t played the game fully read this review (If that’s you, hi. What’s up?) they won’t get spoiled too much, at least not about the good parts.

Before I sign off, here are some other notable parts about the game that didn’t fit into the text so far:

The music is generally fantastic. It strikes a nice balance between James Bond-y, funky bass guitar and synth driven tracks and some droney, almost industrial sounding stuff. The standard combat theme is literally iconic, alongside various pieces of sound design in this game, most notably of course the “!” sound. (You just heard it in your head, admit it.) I especially love the song “The Best Is Yet To Come” by Aoife Ní Fhearraigh, absolutely beautiful anti-war song.

While I wasn’t a huge fan of the actual boss battles, I loved the actual characters’ monologues. And that’s saying something, because usually I’m not the biggest fan of overly indulgent monologuing - and no, the irony of saying this while writing a Bachelor thesis’ worth of text is not lost on me. They tell so much about their respective characters and philosophies, and they’re fantastic stand-ins for various aspects of warfare and the ideologies behind it. Their designs are all extremely memorable and iconic.

Speaking of characters, I loved all the codec call characters, and the whole concept of it more than I would anticipate. Having to speak to Mei Ling whenever you want to save gives it so much more meaning. Discovering more and more about both Naomi and Dr. Miller, finding out who (or what) is the enigmatic “Deepthroat” (yes, that’s his actual name, don’t laugh) and being amused by all of Otacon’s weird weeabo antics. The only thing I wish was that maybe ignoring the codec, or at least being able to fully skip certain sections (esp. if you’ve already seen them) was an option sometimes, especially after you died and have to watch a whole 5 minute monologue again.

Snake himself is also a great protagonist. He’s witty, he’s badass and he has a surprisingly fleshed out personality with a lot of nuance. He loves to smoke and he hates being lied to. An appreciator of beautiful women, but not a womaniser. A battle compatriot as well as man with a heart with the size of a mountain. David Hayter is literally perfect as Solid Snake. You can also really tell that Snake really grows as character throughout his mission. Really makes me wish I played the previous entries to have a little more story context.

CONCLUSION:

Ultimately, Metal Gear Solid isn’t a game I would say I love, but it’s definitely a game I deeply respect. It brought so many great innovations to the gaming world. It was one of the most important steps in giving games as a whole a more prestigious connotation than simply being mindless entertainment. It kicked off what could be considered one of the most influential and greatest video game series of all time. But the actual, well, game-part left me exceedingly frustrated the more time I spent on it. While some things aged brilliantly, others aged horribly. It surprises me just how close this game comes to both Metal Gear Solid 5 and Death Stranding for me. All games with great individual moments, overall good systems but a lot of excess fat and unnecessary nonsense that really drags the game down more than it adds to it.

It’s definitely a game that’s a lot more fun to talk and write about than it is to actually play. It tries so many different things, and it’s surprisingly good at a lot of them, but sadly simply overdoes it. If I ever wanted to experience the story again, I would most likely just watch a YT video of it. However, it did make me even more curious to finally fully work my way through this legendary series, and I can’t wait to give Metal Gear Solid 2 a try.


7,5 / 10

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is a pure thrill ride. A thunderous symphony of pounding machine guns, clashing metal and whirring engines of death. A few relatively unengaging missions notwithstanding, this game just keeps on giving and feels like it never ends. FromSoft don’t miss.

9 / 10
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Dark Souls is my favourite game of all time. As a matter of fact, each and every one of the previous 7 games that FromSoftware have produced in the series variably known as “Souls games”, “Soulsborne”, “Bloodsouls”, etc, are among my favourite games ever made. From Demon’s Souls to Elden Ring, I’ve beaten them all numerous times, with various builds and self-imposed challenges. I’ve even written a review here on Backlogged about DS1 specifically, and what makes me love it so much beyond just mentioning that the game is difficult, which seems to be the only thing most reviewers are capable of mentioning.

So, that being said, it is baffling - mind-boggling even - that this company, despite me being a massive fanboy, has managed to create what is inarguably THE biggest surprise title of the year for me. I know what you’re thinking now: “Of course you’re gonna like it if you’ve enjoyed their previous work, right?” Clearly you know me better than I know myself, because I remember being fairly disenchanted by AC6’s reveal at the Game Awards 2022. Like any good FromSoft / Miyazaki fanboy, I was of course aware of the company’s history previous to their meteoric rise to stardom within the gaming industry. Unlike some of their oldest games (like the King’s Field series) I wasn’t too interested in ever delving deep into all of this stuff - especially Armored Core. Personally, I was never a huge fan of mechs and massive robots beyond accepting them as a staple of anime and gaming culture. So with all of that in mind, seeing that “FromSoft” title card during the game awards, desperately awaiting news of Elden Ring’s upcoming “Shadow of the Erdtree” DLC only to be met with an announcement concerning the revival of a series that hadn’t had any new entries in 15 years was a bit disappointing. I wasn’t even sure I was going to buy it, when every title other FromSoft released up until now was a guaranteed purchase. And to top it off, this game wasn’t even made by Miyazaki. If the legend himself wasn’t even really involved, did this ever stand any chance of actually being good?

I was never happier to have been completely wrong. This is very easily one of the best games released this year, a year stacked with amazing releases. Disregarding all titles not actually from this year, AC6 comes almost shockingly close to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for me, a game which had around thrice the amount of time and MANY times the budget of our beloved robot game. It probably won’t win GOTY, but that’s because this really is not a game for everyone - even though they really went out of their way to make this the most accessible and pick-up-and-play AC title yet. It’s more that this game just lacks that kind of stage presence and mainstream appeal that the Souls series has garnered by this point in time. In case you’re unfamiliar, Dark Souls was by no means the first game in FromSoft’s catalogue to gain them a reputation for their difficult games. While King’s Field was already infamous for seemingly hating the player for trying to, you know, play the game, Armored Core games quickly gained a reputation for being some of the hardest, toughest and unforgiving games out there. But I don’t want to spend too much time in this review talking about the previous titles. You could probably tell from how I worded myself thus far, but in case you couldn’t; this has been my first dance with the Armored Core series, and as such I have no actual first hand experience with the rest of the series. I deliberately didn’t delve into the previous titles in the series because a.) I didn’t want to burn myself out on a series right when the newest entry came around and b.) I wanted to see what this game was like specifically for someone who hadn’t played AC 1 - 5 and all the rest. Some older, longer-established AC fans told me that I NEED to play the older ones, or I will not be able to play it. They even told me horror stories about the so-called “reverse grip”, and how the games are supposedly way, way harder than the Souls games, etc. None of this is true. I was able to play this game with a normal controller grip, like any other normal game.

Speaking of which, let’s head right into the big question that rears its ugly head every time a new FromSoft title gets released:

Does this game is an hard?!??

Of course the answer to what one may find difficult is entirely subjective, and there is no discussion on planet earth that I’m more sick of than debating the need for “easy modes” in Soulsborne or other difficult video games. Of course I cannot definitely answer questions like “is this harder than Elden Ring or Sekiro” or others like this. What I can do is talk about my own experience as a Souls veteran and someone generally enjoys challenging games. I’m not a try-hard who thinks that beating a hard video game is somehow part of my personality, or that I need to beat a game on the hardest possible difficulty to give it a fair shake. I’ll try to get this topic over and done with as fast as possible so we can get to the stuff that’s actually interesting.

So, just how hard is this game? I honestly can’t say I found it significantly more or less difficult than any other game by FromSoftware I’ve played. There is a similar focus on reading enemy movements, judging your own distance and stamina/energy levels, trying to get your own hits in while avoiding theirs. The game is just different in HOW this difficulty manifests itself. As opposed to the generally very open world-structure of Souls games, in which you are expected to journey across a big world, often backtracking multiple times through connected areas, Armored Core generally takes a “mission-based” approach. That means each level is a self-contained map that features classical checkpoints rather than the iconic bonfires we’ve come to know. That of course means that one of the core aspects about any game’s difficulty - the healing system - is a lot different here than it was in Souls. In Souls, the general idea was to give you a (relatively) fixed amount of heals per run from each bonfire, which you can think of as the maximum amount of mistakes you’re allowed to make before you have to restart the run. These runs could be very long, which was balanced by giving you a lot of heals, e.g. (up to) 20 heals in Dark Souls (since you were also meant to traverse the greater world beyond just the levels), around 15 in DS2 and DS3, while DS2 also gave you life gems to compensate how much larger levels tended to be, Bloodborne let you farm heals to make for open world traversal, etc. You get the idea.

Here, in AC6, as mentioned, there are no bonfires. Instead, the game goes for multiple checkpoints in each level, which are often times not too far from each other. These checkpoints restore all your health on death (or reset), including your heals. Armored Cores also have a lot more health than your typical Souls protagonist, relatively speaking. As such, your healing is massively restricted in this game; you’re only ever given access to 3 heals. While you can upgrade the flat amount of health they restore, the number of individual heals cannot be altered. This is perhaps the biggest factor in potentially making this game a lot harder, although it should be mentioned that enemies generally tend to do way less damage to you than regular mobs in Souls games. As a matter of fact, most regular grunt enemies feel barely even like a threat and more like walking targets. Most ads can be destroyed within seconds, and not engaging them in the first place is even easier due to the insane mobility that your robot can potentially have. The real challenge definitely comes from the many, MANY bosses and other AC’s that the planet Rubicon 3 is populated with. And make no mistake, there are some tough fuckers among them. Another thing that might add to this, especially for Souls veterans, is that there are no i-frames in this game. That’s right, one of the core aspects of the Souls combat formula is missing. Dodges exist, but are meant to reposition yourself more than they are meant to dodge something point blank. If you dodge into an attack, you will get hit. And that really does make a difference. Not only is it hard to unlearn dodging right into attacks as the most optimal way to deal with them, some attacks track you so goddamn efficiently that it feels almost impossible to jump out of the way - that might have been unintentional though, as enemy tracking was some of the stuff that was addressed in the latest big patch for the game (as of late September 2023).

So much for how difficult this game might be, now let’s get to how it actually plays.

Unsurprisingly, it plays very differently from Souls. In fact, it barely has anything to do with the aforementioned genre at all. I’m sorry to all the old-school AC fans for continuously comparing this game to a series it has barely anything in common with, but I’d assume that the vast majority of people who got into AC this year did so in a similar manner to me, with no prior experience with AC, but a lot of experience with Souls games. I promise I will only continue to do it where it feels pertinent.

From what I’ve seen, all Armored Core games play rather similarly. They are all 3rd person shooters set in very large, open levels that extensively make use of all 3 dimensions. The games are very fast-paced, demand a lot of spacial and situational awareness from the player, fast reaction times and above all - patience and a willingness to perfect your play style. I’d say the closest comparison (other than similar mech-games) would be something between a non-cover based shooter mixed with a flying simulation game like Ace Combat. This game differentiates itself from the others by giving you some conveniences from the Souls games, like a directional dodge, a better camera system and a hard lock-on (previously the other games only featured an automatic “soft” lock on).

Players are generally given a great amount of mobility, both on the ground as well as in the air. That is, depending on the mech that you build. If you were to break down Armored Core down to a single signature mechanic, the one thing to identify it by, it would have to be its insane focus on customisability. From the speediest, jumpiest light weight build that can zoom around the map at near light-speed, to the heaviest, chunkiest tanks with enough firepower to wipe out a city, you can make any mech you can possibly think of. From long-range to melee, from ground-based speed demon to death-from-above. All pieces have their strengths and weaknesses, and as such, so do the many different combinations thereof. This customisability comes in the form of a staggering amount of individual parts you can unlock through various means. Some you can simply buy in the shop, others you have to find in secret chests hidden in the levels and others you have to unlock by beating one of AC6’s many, many optional challenges like the Arena. This doesn’t just involve the parts concerned with direct gameplay, you can also customise its colour schemes in great detail and even create entirely new decals and logos from scratch. Yeah, they have an actual, full blown image creator in there. Looks like Adobe Indesign comes with a whole video game attached these days. What’s even crazier is just how intuitive it all really is. While each and every single piece has an absurd amount of individual stats and parameters that change how your AC functions, working out how it all comes together is fairly easy. Ultimately, you just have to check whether the number you’re getting is blue or red. Blue = good, red = bad. Simple as.

The single most important piece for any of your mechs is going to be its leg component. They determine speed, jump distance and carrying capacity, the latter being the single most important aspect of your build. But it doesn’t stop there. Some legs are specifically made for jumping a long distance and come in all sorts of weight classes. Others, like the Quad Legs, are quite sturdy and have a lot of carrying capacity but can also levitate in the air for a time, making them great for builds that wanna stay airborne. Or take the tank legs, which suck at flying around and jumping, but give you great mobility on the ground as well as damn near infinite carrying capacity. And that’s just scratching the surface.

In the end, it’s all about what works FOR YOU. It’s not about making the best mech, creating the most broken robot you can possibly make and then go through the whole game with that singular build. While you can absolutely play AC6 that way if you want to, that would be the most boring and uninteresting way to engage with it. Luckily, this game has its ways of making you reconsider your build, and that mostly comes in the form of the many bosses and other ACs.

To those who did already play AC6, stop me if this feels familiar; you’ve played the game for a couple of hours, you’re starting to like your build, you breeze through the game like it’s nothing and then it appears: The hardest, toughest, brickiest brick wall of a boss you can imagine. Just a total dumpster fire. Whatever strategy you had is out the window. There is no chance you’re beating this boss with your current set up. And that’s where the beauty happens; you can simply swap out your build on the fly - more or less. Every time you die, you get the choice of starting again from the checkpoint, starting the whole mission again, or to either customise your current AC, or swap out an entirely new one. Both tweaking your machine as well as swapping out the whole thing are so fun, and really make you consider each and every piece you’re buying. What may be the most brutal and absurd boss for one person may be a walk in the park for another, and that’s all because they just built their mechs differently. This is part of what makes the “difficulty” discussion is especially redundant in this game; how easy or hard this game is depends entirely on you and your choices. An “easy mode” would do nothing to actually change how this game plays and how people perceived its difficulty. And the thing is, after a while this notion of “I have to defeat the boss with my current set up” grows less and less relevant. By this point, I have made 12 different builds, all of which I am actively using. Of course I have my standard, “default” melee build which I use to probe out everything, and which is my go to for most boss fights as I find it the most fun to use. But sooner or later everyone begins to understand that the real fun actually IS the build of the mech itself. The joy of seeing whatever you came up with shredding through enemies… or not. It really is all about the process of creation, and whether those creations can stand up to the toughest machines on Rubicon 3.

This game has a LOT of bosses. If we’re counting the many ACs that you might have to fight both in the story and the arenas, we’re looking at around 50 bosses. Without them, it’s more like 15-20. I wouldn’t really consider the ACs “bosses”, since they behave much more like the player, making them more similar to the typical Soulsborne NPC battle. Well over half of them are Arena-exclusive anyway, so I generally don’t consider them actual boss fights. As far as “actual” boss fights go, they are generally very, very good. I struggle to come up with even one I’d describe as bad. Even the ones I didn’t enjoy quite as much were at least alright compared to FS’s standard. They range from massive, spaceship like combat helicopters like the already infamous tutorial boss to Evangelion-esque fighting robots all the way up to truly gargantuan, country-sized super machines that could crush a city with a single step of their foot, like the absolutely colossal Strider, which is so large it would literally span an entire continent like Limgrave. And, in typical FromSoft fashion, it’ll be the smaller ones that will give you more trouble. In any case, they’re all visually very impressive and provide an immense sense of scale and immensity. It’s easy to forget that even the smallest enemies in this game are still massive when compared to real life. The important bit here is that you likely won’t be able to fight all bosses with the same build. Some bosses will absolutely hard counter certain builds, and it’s on you to figure out which set up might work. All in all in can be said that the boss fights in this game are masterful as always with FromSoft, even though they are very different from Souls bosses.

The same cannot be said for regular enemies, unfortunately. When compared to Soulsborne, they feel like barely even an afterthought. In those games, each and every enemy no matter how seemingly insignificant commanded a certain type of respect from you. Even the lowliest grunt could whoop your ass into the next century if you weren’t careful. Here in AC6 most regular enemies feel like they’re made out of cardboard. They are barely even a nuisance, much less an actual threat. What’s more is that you barely, if ever, have to actually engage with enemies, you can dart right past them almost always. While that has historically also been true for Souls, here it doesn’t even feel remotely challenging. But I think I understand why they did it. You’re expected to clear levels over and over again, trying to S-rank them and do them as fast as possible. You’re not supposed to struggle against the mobs, you’re supposed to be a machine of war. It’s not about taking as little damage as possible, it’s about blowing the absolute fuck out of your enemies. Blow through the little guys, preserve your ammunition and health for the big guys ahead.

This relative lack of deliberate level design with curated challenges speckled throughout is something you just have to accept. It’s not for everyone. It certainly demands a lot less cognitive work from the player. I've seen content creators like Videogamedunkey call this game out as "braindead" but I think that's doing it dirty. I think that the game offers you a very generous amount of customisable difficulty, and I think that's a fantastic, fresh way to address this debate.

Since we already addressed it, let’s move on to the level design.

Like I mentioned, AC6 follows a mission-based gameplay loop that takes you from level to level from a select-screen, instead of following an open world / semi-metroidvania model as the Souls games do. This, coupled with the fact that the sense of scale is entirely different, the players movement isn’t restricted to only 2 dimensions, and the generally much more open design philosophy of this game, explains why levels are the way they are here. While there is a surprising amount of variety within the selection here, generally speaking levels are much, much larger and more open than in Souls, while at the same time remaining completely linear with maybe the occasional treasure chest or combat log to find in some small side path. There are only a handful of instances where levels include actual alternate paths, and even then those are typically tied to certain story moments. Level size ranges from relatively small and claustrophobic areas to levels that are so fucking big that they might fit the entirety of Elden Ring inside them. The Strider is large enough to span an entire continent of that game, with the map that houses it obviously being many times the size of it. But size isn’t everything of course. Design and aesthetics are important too. You obviously don’t really have those typical looping level structures with shortcuts and winding paths and all that, but what you do have are some pretty amazing set pieces.

Missions will generally follow one of two styles. The first would be relatively short, single objective missions that typically revolve around taking out a boss, mini-boss or mob of enemies or retrieve something. These are typically doable in less than 5 minutes, and are overall perhaps the weakest part of the entire game, although that really isn’t saying much. The worst I can say about them is that they feel a little too much like filler, and that they often don’t really do much to advance the plot either. But that is not to say that there aren’t any short missions that are fun, there certainly are. It’s more that - to me at least - the real fun comes from the feeling of flying through absurdly large city scapes and mechanical superstructures at breakneck speed, taking out as many grunts as flawlessly as I can while working towards a bigger goal. The second variant of missions are the ones that take place in much larger, more involved levels which typically involve multiple stages, many different enemy set ups, story moments and typically a big, cinematic boss fight at the end. But of course, there are exceptions. In NG+ missions, you may be tasked with escorting an allied transport airship through a war zone. Or you might be tasked with picking up data storages from a battle field. I will admit that these typically aren’t the most thrilling missions. Of course there are also some missions that are just flat out annoying or uninteresting, like the NEPENTES mission, in which you have to simply jump down a huge hole, dodge some lasers and kill the laser machine in like 2 hits. Or certain missions in which you’re tasked with literally just taking out hoards of trash mobs. The point is, not every mission here is a masterpiece, but that’s fine. If we’re including all NG+ and NG++ exclusive ones, we’re looking at around 60+ missions for the whole game by my count, and I’d say only around 10-15 of them are mediocre or uninteresting.

Now, artistically speaking, this game isn’t all that comparable to the Soulsborne series. Not even close. FromSoftware, for the last 10+ years, have been cultivating a cult following and a not insignificant part of this was their dedication to create incredibly authentic feeling, richly detailed worlds teeming with history and life and dripping with atmosphere. The art direction wasn’t just a neat extra, it was inextricably linked to the very core of their games’ identity. Their games felt heavy, their stories deeply meaningful, like they were about nothing and everything at the same time. They felt like real art. At the very least, you could say that they had a certain prestige. A very serious flair about them. Armored Core doesn’t really have that, not to the same extent. It doesn’t have that weight, that same air of grandeur. But that isn’t to say that AC6 doesn’t do some really cool things with its aesthetic and art direction.

FromSoft always had a fascination with absurdly large architecture, and so do I. Generally, the concept of varying scale seems to be a long running theme with those folks. The monstrously large castles of Elden Ring and the Dark Souls series, the infinite catacombs of the Chalice Dungeons, the sheer might of Ashina atop the highest peak, etc. They love some overwhelmingly massive buildings and structures. And so do i. And it never felt more noticeable than in this game. Everything is so fucking big. It makes me think of Tsutomu Nihei’s “Blame!”, my favourite manga ever made, and it really feels like they may have taken just a smidgen of inspiration from it. This may be very personal, but I feel like there is a bit of cosmic horror baked into this concept of man-made structures being so unfathomably large than you just feel insignificant next to it. When you think about the fact that an Amored Core is itself already about 10-15 meter tall, and you can occasionally see microscopic wreckages of cars or helicopters, and then you stand next to something that makes YOU feel like an ant in comparison, that’s some crazy shit. It’s an intensely powerful feeling of dread. I just love that. The first time I saw that Moon-sized machine at the Coral Convergence, I thought that this was some of the most impressive shit I’ve ever seen. It’s easily as big as the Erdtree, if not larger. But it’s not just about dazzling you with immense size, sometimes all the stars align and certain areas have really good atmosphere. There is a section in the mid game where you have to explore a city drenched in a deep fog that kills all communication with the outside, and I found it somewhere in between weirdly chilling and relaxing. Typically that mission only takes 5 minutes, but I took 30 minutes just to explore all of it, once again highlighting just how massive these levels really are if you take your time.

My weird fascination with colossal buildings and machines out of the way, the actual design isn’t half bad either, at least with the big missions. What’s true for all them is their incredible attention to detail, which isn’t super surprising since FS are known for meticulously adding little extras and nods into their world. What IS surprising about this is that this game really does not expect you to explore every nook and cranny of it. I have to also mention how insanely beautiful the sky boxes tend to be in this game, especially the closer you draw to the coral convergence.

The actual design is, as previously mentioned, typically very straightforward with little to no deviations. More often than not, you’ll have some variable in the mix, like having to avoid giant space lasers, or having to protect an ally, trying to get through undetected, etc. Other times, levels are created as one contiguous, wide open space, and you have to simply fulfil a couple of objectives in any order you wish, like “destroy 5 turrets” or something like that. The game is definitely the least ambitious here, but it really doesn’t have to be. Intricate level design and “Firelink Shrine elevator” moments aren’t why you’re playing this game. You’re playing this game to make your own personalised Bionicle of death and commit war crimes in the name of evil space corporations.

Let’s also briefly talk about the music here. It’s pretty good for the most part, but it’s a far cry from what the Souls series managed to dish out. AC6’s OST is pretty average electronic-synth-wave type music that has a few good tracks on it (“Contact with You”, “Rusted Pride”, “Cries of Coral”, etc.) but I have to admit that I find the production on these tracks not very impressive. They all sound very flat and even have some pretty obvious production mistakes left in there. It generally sounds like there wasn’t quite as much effort put into this than they did on stuff like Elden Ring or Bloodborne. I do enjoy some fan-remixes of certain tunes from the OST though, so there’s that. In general I think that a lot of the tracks here could’ve been far more memorable if the production efforts went a little further.

With the aesthetic components out of the way, let’s talk about the thing that actually ended up making it my surprise title of the year; a very good story.

Now if there’s one thing that Armored Core fans love to praise about these games, it’s definitely not their narrative. I’m sure they are interesting, but from what plot summaries I’ve seen, it’s nothing too special, nothing too daring or out of the ordinary for the mech genre. The plot of AC6 seems to follow this trend - at least at first. The truth is that this game has 3 different endings, with the third and arguably true ending only being available on the third playthrough, meaning NG++. And before we get into the meat of it, I just have to quickly come out and say that I think that this is something that FromSoft have seriously missed out on in their past games; give us an actual REASON to play NG+ and beyond. DS2 at least did something in that regard, with having some unique things happen like bosses roaming the map, or rarer item drops, etc. but it did little to actually motivate people to go further than NG+, especially since you already had Bonfire Ascetics, items that let you move a singular area up to the next NG cycle. Not only will AC6 physically not let you know its full story until you finished the game for a third time, some of the best items and AC parts only start showing up here. While this may seem tedious to some people, I can assure you that finishing the second and third didn’t take nearly as long as my first one, even with both combined.

Most of the story is relayed to you via a series of Metal Gear Solid-esque intercom calls, in which - depending on the situation - you receive either exposition, details on your next mission, or some more personal stuff. These calls are literally just disembodied voices talking at you, you never get a face or anything other to memorise most NPCs by. What’s more is that they don’t seem to be voiced by anywhere near the same calibre of actors that worked on the Souls games. They sound more like your typical Anime-dub voice actors. And yet, despite all of this, I ended up enjoying both the story and the characters a lot more than I thought I would.

Let’s get to the plot now. I won’t go into too much detail concerning the endings, but consider this an official SPOILER WARNING.

You play as 4th generation augmented human “C-4: 621”, at least that’s what your master, the infamous and brutal Handler Walter calls you. You have no real name to speak of. You are a semi-sentient bag of bones and meat, barely even human. More like a brain in a jar, really. The only time you’re even able to move on your own volition is inside your AC. To Walter, and to everyone he’s offering your services to, you’re a hound. A dog to be beaten and trained. The lowliest of cannon fodder. Walter takes you with him to Rubicon 3, a dead and cold planet on the outskirts of the galaxy where 50-60 years ago a terrible calamity occurred; the Fires of Ibis. The planet was previously a research station and mining planet for a strange, reddish substance called “Coral” (omg Prey reference!?!?) which not only possesses immense energy potential, but is somehow also sentient. It’s essentially sentient and self-replicating gasoline, which also functions as a hive mind or network which potentially can absorb other consciousnesses into itself. During this time the planet has been inhabited by people - presumably of Earthen origin - who consider themselves “natives”. What exactly started the fires isn’t really explained, at least not explicitly, but it’s highly implied that it was due to excessive experimentation on the substance. In either case, whatever happened caused a fire so immense and devastating that it almost took out the entire planet with it. The survivors of this disaster, called “Cinders”, are still on Rubicon, defending it from corporate vultures who try to benefit from the chaos and destruction. And it’s important too, since 2 massive conglomerates, “Arquebus” and “Balam” have set their eyes on the planet due to a recent, huge resurgence of Coral. And that’s where you and Walter come in; like the other corporate parasites, you’re also here looking for some quick cash… or that’s what you think, at least. For now, the overarching goal is to gain a reputation as a hired gun, so the big corps will book you for their eventual missions to retake the slumbering Coral deposits.

The game begins with you illegally entering into Rubicon’s airspace with the help of Walter and landing in the ruins of a recent battle. You have no creds, no reputation and not even an identity to your name, so naturally your first mission is to steal one from a recently abandoned AC. This AC, called “NIGHTFALL” was piloted by a mercenary under the codename “Raven”, who was reported M.I.A., meaning we can simply pretend to be them and end their M.I.A. status. And so “Raven” becomes our new codename henceforth. After fucking around in the tutorial level and getting to grips with this game’s controls, in typical FromSoftware fashion we are met with an attack helicopter the size of an aircraft carrier. This thing was pretty infamous upon launch and quickly became known as the “noob filter” or whatever gatekeepy nonsense gamers are coming up with these days. Truly, this is your average, bog standard FromSoft tutorial boss. Certainly harder than you’d expect from the very first boss in the game, even harder than some of the bosses you’ll see a bit later, but not unbeatable or unreasonably tough by any means. What may be true is that, should you struggle with this boss to the point of frustration, the others will not be fun for you. But, once again, this is no different from a Iudex Gundyr or Asylum Demon or Father Gascoigne. The big helicopter goes down eventually, and we’ve secured a spot in the marketplace of hired guns. The ruse worked, and we’re operating under the codename Raven, which lets us access the mercenary liaison network “ALLMIND”. This network in turn lets us access various mission briefings, almost all of them provided by subsidiaries of either Arquebus or Balam, although you’ll get the occasional offer from other potential employers, but more on that later. It’s basically the life blood of the mercenary network working on Rubicon, and you’re gonna get very familiar with it.

From this point onward, getting into the actual story of the game is a bit difficult because it might go a lot of ways. While there are 2 endings you can get on your first 2 playthroughs, and a secret third one for your third playthrough, individual story moments might still different between 2 people depending on their choices. For the first 2 endings, there is only one decision that really makes a true difference concerning the endings, while most other choices will influence which other missions you might get. Most of these choices will only start appearing on your second and especially third playthrough, although NG does have some of them as well. Mostly they’ll influence who you’ll be getting your jobs from. Next to Balam and Arquebus, there is a third faction you could take jobs from - the Rubicon Liberation Front.

The RLF is the big obstacle for our friends, the lovely space corporations, to fully subjugate and ravage this planet. If I understand correctly, they’re mainly made up of the survivors of the Fires of Ibis, and their descendants. They fiercely defend their home against the capitalist vultures, and as such are subject to us committing horrible war crimes on their people. If you’re anything like me, at some point you’ll probably think something along the lines of “Damn, kinda sucks I can’t help the commies to beat the fascists”. Well, if you make the correct choices, you can make it so you’ll take most of your jobs from them. This sadly doesn’t really influence the ending, but it gives you an entirely different perspective on the story than just doing the corpo missions. They’re not the only other faction though.

Next to the three belligerent parties, there is also the space capitalist equivalent of the UN, the Planetary Closure Association (or PCA) which are equally ineffective and useless. After the great disaster 50 years ago, they attempted to fully lock off the planet to keep away any would-be scavengers looking to make a profit off the Coral deposits, including the native inhabitants of Rubicon. These people would later form the RLF, drive out the PCA and take back control of their home planet. Unfortunately, this also invited the vultures back in, leading to the ongoing, years long conflict you find yourself embroiled in. They’re never a faction you can work for, and will instead always remain as an antagonistic force, since they are at war with all three parties. There are other, minor factions too but they don’t really concern the main plot.

Regardless of which specific choices you follow, you’ll meet the same characters, follow the same overall development and make the same friends. And more important than any other is one in particular; the Coral-being Ayre.

At the end of Act 1, after previously establishing yourself as a capable mercenary for the corps, and attaining an almost legendary status for climbing “the Wall” (a gigantic RLF military fortress), Walter will send you on a secret mission, just for you. You’re sent to attack a PCA watchpoint which houses a sensor valve at its core, which stores massive amounts of Coral. After failing to sneakily get in, and after fighting what will certainly be the toughest enemy AC you’ve fought thus far, you get to the valve and blow it up. This leads to a massive Coral surge, of which you get a full dosage. During your near death experience, you hear a strange voice talking to you. It introduces itself as Ayre, and can communicate with you inside of your mind. No one knows of her, no one can sense her even remotely. Is she even real? Whoever, or whatever she is, she seems very invested in you from the moment she meets you. She gives you hints, works on guiding you through the level whenever Walter is not available and has your back in general, but most importantly - she is the only character in the whole game to treat you like an actual person.

There certainly are some other sympathetic characters, like “Cinder” Carla - a brilliant weapon designer who is seemingly a survivor of the fire, but seems too young for that to make sense. Or, everyone’s favourite character Rusty, who is pretty much this game’s Solaire of Astora. You might find characters like G1 Michigan entertaining, or you might find him annoying. In either case, some of these character might like you, some might hate you. But all of them treat you as nothing more than a dog. A semi-sentient robot to do the bidding of other people. But not Ayre. She believes in you. She sees the traces of a person in you, no matter how feint. And like all other characters in this game, she has her very own agenda.

For the first two endings, your choice is between 2 different visions for the future of Rubicon. I won’t go into too much detail, but effectively you’re choosing between Walter and his friends, and Ayre (and by extension, the Rubiconians).

Both of these endings start from the same general scenario; you’ve just defeated the IBIS-series AC which protects the big Coral deposit, but are knocked out by Snail and his goons, who take you prisoner and intend to “reprogram” you - they have presumably already done this to Walter at the time of you regaining consciousness. You claw your way out of there with a shitty makeshift AC and are rescued by Carla, who takes you back to the foggy city - only, it turns out this city is actually a gargantuan, titanic space ship called “Xylem”. From this point, you’re faced with the choice of which ending to go for. Let’s go over Walter’s ending first.

Walter, despite initially telling you he wants to make a profit, actually wants to burn all the remaining Coral to prevent anyone from ever trying to exploit it again - and also to stop the Coral from potentially infecting human civilisation. We learn that both Walter and Carla are part of an organisation called “OVERSEER”, who - as the name suggests - watch over Rubicon and monitor the status of the Coral and are tasked with burning it should the need arise. Turns out, Coral loves a good vacuum of space, apparently it’s the perfect environment for it to thrive and replicate in. This accelerated and chaotic replication might lead to mutations and a subsequent collapse of the entire Coral ecosystem, which may very well doom humanity. This realisation is what caused the great fire 50 years ago. It’s what made the scientists at Ibis, the great city built around the giant siphon, make a very difficult choice; to burn the Coral to prevent total collapse. It’s a bit reminiscent of Dark Souls and the story of New Londo, where its healers flooded the the whole town with all people in it to prevent the rise of a great evil that been growing.

If we’re going with this ending, we’re tasked with steering the mighty Xylem right into the huge Coral siphon to set it all ablaze. As typical for FromSoftware, if you go down this route, you’ll have some tough times ahead, and not only in terms of gameplay. On this route, you’ll have to kill and betray some people. One would be the one and only Rusty, who turns out to have been an undercover agent for the Liberation Front this whole time, who really hoped for you to turn around and find a better cause to fight for. But the real heartbreaker was the surprise that waited for me as the final boss for this ending of the game; Ayre. As a story moment, this is just brutal. Here you go, on your quest to become the ultimate beast of war, to rationalise all potential of collaboration out of existence - who better to stop you in your tracks than the one entity that treated you as a friend? This is by far my favourite boss fight in the game, mostly for its devastating emotional impact due to her still vocally insisting that we could have had a much better future and that it’s not too late, and this slowly shifting towards a determination to stop you whatever it takes. But it’s also one of the more mechanically interesting fights, with her using a similar set up to the IB-01 CEL-240 “Ibis series” AC (aka the “Malenia” of this game) meaning she is unbelievably fast, uses Coral based weaponry and has a strong desire to put a stop to your plans. Upon defeating her with tears in our eyes and our hands shaking, we proceed to steer the Xylem into the Coral to light the biggest fire the galaxy has ever seen. Rubicon is done for, all potential for any life eradicated for all times to come. Only ashes remain. This ending is called “Fires of Raven” in the achievements.

To the fans, it’s commonly known as the “Bad ending”, and even though I happen to agree that this is the worst ending you can pick, I wouldn’t say that the game is trying to make the point that one ending is inherently better than the other. It’s about your choice and how you interpret it, after all. And all I can say that the choice to go for this ending made me feel like a huge piece of shit.

Depending on how you choose to see Walter, there might be even something to fight for here. While I do not regard Walter as a terribly sympathetic character, it’s clear that he receives no joy from treating you like a hound, but rather has a very single-minded goal that he will follow whatever means necessary. But it’s not that you’re just a means to his ends; you’re supposed to carry on his legacy. His dream. He trusts you, deeply. He treats you the way he does so you follow through, so you do “what’s right”. Only.. is this truly what’s right? If you ask me, Walter’s ending is the worst ending since it really doesn’t concern itself with what YOU want at all. At the end of the day, he is your slaver. He is using you for his goals, and your actual thoughts and feelings are of no concern to him. A bit like a father who grooms you to do a certain thing - taking over the family business maybe - but never even entertains the notion that you might not want to do that.

Ayre’s ending on the other hand, banks on you making your own choices. To believe in a future of shared potential between humans and Coral. To believe in a future for Rubicon, for the people who live here and whatever form of life the Coral is. Naturally, being a Coral being herself she doesn’t want her and her family to die, but it’s about more than that. She really believes in you. She wants to spend time with you and wants to see you reach your full potential, to become more than just a witless dog. We’ve experienced first hand the possibilities of this shared existence. Of the intimacy and friendship granted to lonely souls like us. And it’s not just 621 who experienced this, Thumb Dolmayan (the grand priest of the Rubiconians, as it were) also had a similar experience, but more on that in a bit. I chose Ayre’s ending on my first playthrough, and I’m glad I did, because it’s really bittersweet and beautiful.

You’re met with the same scenario as before, only this time instead of confronting the Corps’ army, you’re tasked by Ayre to eliminate Carla. Naturally, this is a really rough decision to make. Carla literally JUST saved your life, and not for the first time either. She has been a friend to you since the Smart Cleaner incident, and a lot longer than that to Walter, and here you go turning around and killing her and Chatty. But we understand why this needs to be done. It’s not that Carla is evil or unjustified in her actions, it’s that we made the decision for a different future, and she made the decision to stand in the way of that. Having to take her and Chatty out is not only emotionally tough, but also perhaps the second hardest fight in the entire game. Jesus, that woman’s got hands. But not only that, she also has a backup plan should be die before the Xylem hit the Coral; an autopilot with commands to go full speed ahead.

Ayre then proceeds to send out a message to all Rubiconians via the Coral network; “Beyond scorched skies, Raven fights on”. Perhaps we should briefly talk about the nature of “Raven”. See, the identity that we stole, “Raven”, is not just a regular old codename. It’s a collective, a concept. It’s more like a title than a name. Ravens are independent. They fight not for money, but for what they believe in. This leads the RLF to join forces with you, and one very special fighter among them; Rusty is now on our side, fighting alongside instead of against us.
We proceed down the Xylem to destroy the computer responsible for the autopilot, but somewhere along the way Rusty’s signal suddenly just breaks up. We never hear from him again. We never learn whether he died or escaped, sadly. Just before the computer, we face VII Snail, the little snot-nosed prick, for the last time and send him to his fiery death, screaming like the little bitch he is. We manage to divert the course of the ship but there is one last obstacle to take care of… it’s our old master, Handler Walter. Much like Ayre in the other ending, he pilots a coral IBIS-series AC, only black instead of white. But something is wrong. He isn’t really himself.

Arquebus have seemingly brainwashed Walter and “done something to him”. It’s never really elaborated on what exactly it was they did to him, or how or even why Walter managed to escape and come here. Did he even escape? Did they let him loose on purpose? It might be that Arquebus thinks that we’re still on the way to blow the Coral up, which would be bad news for them, so they send the only one that might possibly stand a chance against us. But Walter also seems to be still holding on to his dream. He occasionally makes mumbled and fragmented references to the reeducation and “his friend’s wish” during the fight, indicating that he might be here on his own volition after all. Mechanically, the fight is fairly similar to Ayre, but easier somehow. He is much slower, has less health and also isn’t anywhere near as aggressive as she was. I don’t have much else to say on that front, since it does feel more like a typical AC fight, rather than a boss.

Regardless, we beat him. During the ending cutscene Walter briefly raises his weapon as if to fight on, but then lowers it again only to say: “Look at you, 621… You found a friend.”, seemingly in acknowledgement of Ayre. I have so many questions. Who exactly was Walter’s “friend”? Why is he the only one who seems to know about her? Why is the realisation that we forged a connection with Ayre suddenly enough to stop Walter from attacking us further? Ultimately, we make our escape, and watch the Xylem tumble down into Rubicons atmosphere, missing the Coral by a couple hundred kilometres. Ayre remarks that “One day, humans and coral will thrive together… You kept our potential safe”. The screen fades to black. This one’s called “Liberator of Rubicon”.

This ending is definitely more ambiguous than the first one. What happens after all of this isn’t stated or spelled out by anyone. Basically, you just prevented the Coral from going extinct, and as such not much has changed about the actual status quo; it’s just that now perhaps we can go forward with a shared future in mind. You might notice that neither of these endings really address the core problems that this world faces.

The first ending has us burn all the coral… only, who is to say that it truly worked this time? The Fires of Ibis were said to have destroyed all Coral forever, and yet it came back, seemingly more powerful than ever. If even the smallest Coral particle survives, it’ll be only a matter of time before it will all happen again - and nothing will have changed, except that we have genocided an entire planet for nothing. The other ending may have prevented the utter destruction of Rubicon, but doesn’t really address the issue of unchecked Coral growth and potential collapse. Who is to stop other corps and villains to try and claim the Coral for themselves?

There is one more ending, which you can only unlock in NG++. I’m going into a bit more detail here, so once again consider this a SPOILER WARNING FOR THE TRUE ENDING. I felt fairly confident talking about story details for the first two endings because a lot of it isn’t really all that obvious until you sit down and think about it. This third and final ending however, has some pretty overt and noticeable story moments that starkly differentiate it from the others.

If this game only had the aforementioned endings, it would already be one of the more interesting and well made stories for a video game out there. There is already a good deal of commentary on the nature of choices, of loyalty, of what it means to follow orders vs. to fight for something you believe in. Of friendship, of loneliness, of the heartbreak of betraying the people you love for doing the thing that’s right. But then this game goes complete sicko mode and adds an entirely different layer on top of all this.

The third ending is called “Alea iacta est” (Lat. “The die is cast”), a phrase attributed to Julius Caesar when he and his army crossed the river Rubicon in northern Italy. By doing this, he burned all bridges between him and the Roman senate, effectively starting the civil war between him and Pompey and the Optimates. The phrase is used to indicate that something has moved past the point of no return - and that is most certainly appropriate in this context.

This new ending involves an aspect of the game I’ve deliberately avoided until now; the Arena mode. Until now, the Arena mode was mainly an alternate way to challenge yourself and unlock OST chips - which let you permanently upgrade your AC in multiple ways, such as upgrading the amount of health regained on heal, unlocking new abilities, increasing certain weapon damage, etc. - and grind money. During your first and second playthrough, you’ll likely occasionally have played around with it a bit. It’s what seems to be a semi-diegetic virtual combat arena in which you can test your strength against simulations of other ACs, ranked from section F all the way up to S. It’s main purpose is to gain access to new parts and make a lot of money real quick, apart from also being just a really fun alternative to doing missions. On your first playthrough, there truly is nothing more to this game mode, it really is just there to distract you from other stuff and make you grind OST chips. On the second playthrough, we notice that the arena now has a second tab, called “Analysis”, in which we can access even harder, more specialised fights which, again, primarily let us farm money and OST chips. This time around, we get enough chips to upgrade our AC to completion. Again on this playthrough, nothing too out of the ordinary, and still not really a cause for concern.

It’s on the third playthrough were strange things start happening. Right out of the gate you’ll notice that you’re getting a lot more decision missions, with most of them coming from the RLF, most notably you’re meant to protect the Strider this time instead of destroying it. To get to the third ending, you’re going to have to work a little harder this time. Not only do you need to complete a specific set of missions to end up at the correct scenario, you also need to complete the arena. You might have noticed that, during NG+, the three final slots in the arena remained closed off, even though you already fought what was supposed to be THE strongest mercenary alive. Choosing certain missions will result in unlocking these final three slots. All three of them are based on the IBIS style ACs you’ll be fighting in the other two endings. After you’ve beaten all three of them and you chose the right set of missions, at the end of chapter 4 there’ll be quite a different set of events waiting for you. But before we get to that, lets set the stage for the two great antagonists of this run.

Remember ALLMIND? Up until now, for the last 2 playthroughs, it was nothing more than a mercenary support network, a digital hub for pilots to test their skills and work together. In fact, it blended in with the background so much that I honestly kinda forgot about it. During this playthrough however, ALLMIND slowly begins to gain - or perhaps rather reveal - a certain level of sentience. It seems to know about your previous playthroughs, about your connection to Ayre and your past decisions. I found this slow and surprising reveal really creepy and uncanny, almost as though it can see right through 621 as a character and is speaking directly to you. Like it’s hijacking the story like an observer outside of it. It feels like a very strange fourth-wall break in the best way possible. It becomes an actual character in the story, with its own goal, an ending very different from Walter’s or Ayre’s. We briefly talked about how neither ending really addressed the problems that loomed over Rubicon. Walter’s ending “solves” the issue by killing the entire planet, without any actual guarantee that the Coral won’t reconstitute as it already has in the past, essentially rendering it pointless. The other ending has us preserve the Coral, but without any insurance that greedy corporations won’t come back in the future to haunt the planet. It’s a bit like a trolley problem in which neither solution is optimal. The third ending is a bit like if you strapped high power rockets onto the trolley and shot it into outer space. ALLMIND instead wants to accelerate Coral growth, pushing it to expand into the vacuum of space to expedite its growth, spreading throughout the whole galaxy. This is what’s known as “Coral release”.

Before we get into the how’s and why’s, we need to talk about another character I’ve neglected to mention until now: G5 Iguazu. For your first two playthroughs, he’s not terribly important. He is introduced to you in the “Destroy the Dam” mission during Chapter 1, in which G1 Michigan of the RedGuns (Balam’s elite AC force) hires you to help G4 and Iguazu to take a strategically important base from the rebels. While neither are particularly thrilled to have an independent mercenary assist them on their mission, Iguazu seems to be particularly offended by this. He only refers to you as “Freelancer”, and seemingly hates you simply for daring to be independent and not considering yourself part of any greater group. I guess to him this signals you not taking this life style seriously, but there might be something else that adds to his - like you, Iguazu is part of the same type of series of augmented humans, namely C4. I think it isn’t necessarily that he despises you for living your life so differently; it’s more that, deep down, he wishes he could be like you. To have what you have. On your second playthrough, the RLF will offer you a pretty handsome reward for taking out G4 and G5. Regardless of which option you pick, Iguazu will have nothing but disdain for you. He seems to pretty much run purely on spite in general. He absolutely hates Michigan and fantasises about killing him for constantly berating him and blasting his ass, seemingly not understanding that this is Michigan’s (admittedly very toxic and flawed) way of showing affection for his soldiers. He doesn’t seem to like anyone, really.

From this point onward, you’ll meet Iguazu a bunch, depending on which missions you choose and what you do in them, but the fact that he will show up here and there is a given. Like I said, for the first two playthroughs this isn’t anything particularly meaningful, it’s just a fairly low energy rival story. During the third playthrough however, Iguazu will show up a bunch more, and is going somewhere with it all.

With the stage having been set, let’s get into it now.

During NG++, ALLMIND will start to give you very specific and weird missions, all very different with one overarching goal; to help create the perfect AC. Occasionally, you’ll unlock one of the three mysterious closed off Arena slots, with all three of them not being piloted by a human, but by an AI. Most of ALLMINDS missions have data collection as their primary objective.

Now, the big question is of course; why? Why does ALLMIND seek coral release? What is even the idea behind it? The answers to these questions are never stated as such, and instead must be gleamed from many context clues such as the various logs you can find, environmental story telling and listening very closely to what the characters in this game have to say.

Let’s maybe begin with this: Who (or what) is ALLMIND exactly? It’s never stated how long it has existed for, who created it or why.

These questions don’t have any certified answers I’m afraid, but there are some hints. There is mention of a character only called “Assistant No. 1”, who is said to have gone insane during his research into Coral, and its possibilities concerning human augmentation. He is mentioned by another character, Prof. Nagai, who was the head scientist of the Rubicon Research Facility. He says the following:

“Assistant No 1. Has lost his mind. His research has utterly lost his mind. Granted, there may be some logic to C-PULSE sensory augmentation of human subjects - but no ethical scholar would ever dare cross that point of no return. Mankind is driven mad by possibilities. What does Coral represent, if not sheer potential?”

That line again. “Point of no return”. I think that this wording is very deliberate and supposed to make you connect it to this ending. My theory is that this Assistant 1 is the person who created ALLMIND. ALLMIND seeks coral release to augment all of humanity (and perhaps, all of sentient life) with Coral. It wants to do this by way of Coral release. So far, so good. My biggest personal question is how exactly the whole “build the perfect AC” relates to this. More on that later.

For the first 3 chapters, apart from the wave of new missions, everything is more or less the same as before. This all changes by the end of Chapter 4, where you’d normally fight CEL-240. Instead, ALLMIND chimes in to warn you that V.II Snail is planning to take you captive. Instead, you pull a UNO-reverse card on his ass and gank him and his friends. Then, suddenly, Iguazu shows up unannounced here to beat the shit out of both of you. Why is he here all of a sudden? After taking out Snail together, you two duke it out for what feels like the 20th time, and once again you clap Iguazu’s butt cheeks without too much effort. But things have changed.

ALLMIND takes you off the network, and proclaims you dead - at least, to the other people in the mercenary network. This is, of course, so no one can stand in the way of Coral release, not even Walter. Just like in Ayre’s ending, your goal is to stop the Xylem from crashing into the Coral convergence, with some added bonuses. I won’t go into detail concerning the last set of missions because this analysis / review is way too long already. Regardless, we push on to the final boss.

Anyway, as you all (hopefully) already know, the TRUE final boss isn't even ALLMIND itself, it's fucking Iguazu. I lost my shit when I realised who was inside that hyper-advanced mech from the next century. It's none other than the little neek whose face I've been dragging through the mud through 3 playthroughs, the guy who would keep on coming back to try his luck no matter how often and how badly I kept beating his ass. This man's sheer, unbridled hater-energy is something to behold. All the coral on this planet is but a humble spark compared to the unfathomable store of energy that could be processed by mining Iguazu's salt. I fucking love this guy.

We learn that he was able to hear the voices of the Coral the entire time as well. This was very likely the reason Iguazu was chosen by ALLMIND, although Iguazu makes it very clear that he doesn’t give a flying fuck about Coral release, he has one thing on his mind and one thing only: getting his hands around your throat.

The fight itself is in my opinion perhaps the most difficult fight in the game, alongside CEL-240. But sadly that's mostly due to some design decisions I'm not a fan of. I don't like that you have to deal with 5 MT's in the first stage, 2 freaking Sea Spiders in the second, only to THEN have to fight this guy solo in Super Saiyan mode. Ayre joining in on the party is cool in theory, but her presence there is not super helpful, because she really sucks at drawing aggro - also she leaves during what is arguably the hardest phase of the fight. Super-Iguazu himself is perfectly fine, and one of the more fun encounters in the game, but having to fight him at the end of a 3-phase boss encounter seems a bit like overkill to me.

Ultimately, we persevere and go ahead and achieve Coral release - we cut forward to an undisclosed point in time, in a strange, shallow sea. The night sky is burning red, tiny fiery sparkles among the stars. The Coral permeates the cosmos. Next to you, a thousand ACs rise, all glowing red with the power of Coral. Together you stare fatefully into the night sky. A new age has come. A new lifeform has taken to the stars. And you and Ayre will remain together for as long as this age will live on.

What a powerful fucking story. This was easily the biggest surprise for me, and why I ended up calling it my “surprise title of the year”. I expected I would enjoy the gameplay and customisation aspects of it all, I did however not expect that the thing that would stick with me the most out of all things in AC6 would be its narrative. It’s a very intricate and heartfelt story about purpose and choice, about identity and carving your own meaning in a universe that tells you you’re worth nothing. I expected something like Transformers and got something like Blade Runner instead. FromSoftware have once again proven why they’re the best in the industry, and it’ll be a long time before we see another company rise up to this level of consistent quality. This game has proven that they literally cannot do wrong, it seems like they’re incapable. Thank you Miyazaki.

Jokes aside, this really is a fantastic game all around. Yeah, it has a couple of annoying moments here and there but it wouldn’t be a From game if it didn’t. I haven’t gone back to S-rank every level yet, but I will definitely do that and I think I might go for the Platinum trophy as well, it really is that good of a game. Again, I don’t think it will win GOTY, but I’d love to see it get nominated at least, it would definitely deserve it.

All that’s left to say is: Got a job for you, 621.

Player movement is really good in this one. Jumps inherit momentum, and it's often possible to dart across the platforming courses with impromptu shortcuts.
Combat is serviceable. Being adequate compared to its genre ancestors, though not nearly on the same level as some of its contemporaries such as Spark.
Aesthetically and narratively this whole outing felt like an interactive animated family film. Quite cozy overall.
Albeit the polish is flaky here and there. I ran into a couple of sections of building that lacked collision, facial animations could occasionally feel ill suited to the spoken lines, and the ending felt a tad rushed.
Despite the short runtime I almost felt like it was too long. Likely due to how the game does little to escalate and explore its mechanics. About two thirds of the way through it felt like I was in a repeat of past themes. Thankfully the experience is short, so I'm left looking back at another pleasant bite-sized game to recommend.

One of my favorite units in any RTS are the AoE2 Teutonic Knights, which like many things in this have been historically modified for the sake of gameplay.

The real Teutonic Knights were a bunch of catholic dudes on horseback, while in this game they fight on foot and walk very slowly towards their opponents with their swords at their sides and beat the shit out of cavalry, trebuchets, and entire castles with nothing but that same sword. They're little tin can armor fellas in capes with stats equivalent to Mammoth Tanks from Command & Conquer, except they'd probably solo Kirov Airships too if you gave them jetpacks. Hell, could you imagine what would happen if you gave them a skateboard or a set of rollerblades? It's nightmarish imagining such a scenario, every archer would piss their pants at the sight of these guys sliding at them downhill with their swords pointed towards them.

Simplicity is sometimes the most endearing thing.

This had to have been my dad's favorite game ever at least on the ol' piece of shit Gateway PC. He was always a sucker for medieval warfare, and honestly I ain't exactly straying from the same path of interests he had, at least in this instance. It was an all too common occurrence to constantly hear the "under attack" alert ring out through the apartment. It was only slightly less funnier than the Empire Earth alert that was some pompous bastard bellowing "WE'RE UNDER ATTACK" even when an unthreatening bronze age slinger was bouncing stones off a space age chicken walker.

Between playing this, Balatro, and Picross I can't help but feel like I'm slowly turning into a hodgepodge of both my dad and my grandma. ;-;

I respect this game first and foremost for not babying you -- it drops you (literally) into zombie shopping mall hell and says, "figure it out." All of the mechanics I uncovered in the hours I played were quite cool -- holding books to increase stats; levelling up with survivor rescues and photography; unlockable special moves; the way game-time is woven into progression; etc... And the actual meat of the gameplay -- the dispatching of countless undead through comically varied means, including lawnmowers and umbrellas and mannequins and whatever else you can find -- is awesome. You can tell it's fine-tuned to feel exceptionally hefty. Every swing of a baseball bat, or pole, or dismembered hand feels consequential and releases sweet, sweet brain chemicals.

Where the game falters is fairly obvious. The "boss battles" (for example, the second encounter with Carlito) are embarrasments of design. Much of the world traversal feels too slow for a game that relies so heavily on it. Many of the coolest weapons are made far too difficult to uncover in the early game -- a needless roping off of fun. Finally, as many, many others have mentioned, the entire thing is a rickety tower of escort missions with the stupidest AI imaginable.

But, you know, at the end of the day I think there's still plenty of fun to be had here. There's a ton of genuinely great ideas to mull over, there's that miniature-open-world gamefeel that I personally love, and then of course there's Frank West -- a surprisingly delightful protagonist.

Recommended in spite of its flaws.

Holy shit it has bullet drop.
Loading times and screen tearing (fixed by enabling v-sync via .ini edit) aside, damn this is so cool so far. A tacticool-retro-fps.
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Simple magazine management, mantling, unlockable bullet time, and more cool stuff I won't spoil. Also the HUD can be disabled diegetically, nice touch. There's options to modularly reconfigure the difficulty, and also a toggle for the style of bullet spread you'd like to play with. Crosshairs can also be disabled, and this is the first FPS I've seen to actually pair meaningful Aim-Down-Sights with such an option. Hipfiring and ADS both have a place in your toolset, which is a balance I've been dying to see met in an FPS.
Two chapters in, and it's safe to say I really dig this.
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Nearing the end of the campaign, I maintain my position that this is a well designed game. However I'm starting to run into more consistent crashing. I think the black blob enemy giblets might be overloading the engine. Previously reloading or transitioning between levels would sometimes throw a memory access violation, but no progress was ever lost.
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Artistically the entire production is cast in somber tones. Most of the OST is laced with melancholy, offsetting the extreme brutality on screen as the mangled bodies of the enemy gynoids lay weeping in the aftermath of your firefights.
Excellent game, deserving of a higher score if stability is improved.
I eagerly await the sequel.
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If you're seeing a lot of occlusion errors as you turn corners, you can try adding this:
[/script/engine.renderersettings]
r.AllowOcclusionQueries=0
to the end of Engine.ini in %localappdata%\the_citadel\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor\
It's a common UE4 graphical issue.

Took me more than a few years, but I've been finally getting to my backlog while I await a few games.

I thought the first Evil Within had its flaws, but it was a pretty great game from what I remember. It feels like the ideal blend of different pieces of Resident Evil and Silent Hill while having its own gameplay quirks, and playing the sequel makes me want to replay it (maybe I'll go full lunatic and finally play Akumu mode). It's been a while since I last played it so my comparisons are going off memory and are likely not completely accurate so take those bits with a grain of salt.

Gameplay-wise The Evil Within 2 improves quite a bit from its predecessor. The combat (mostly) feels more refined (disclaimer: I thought melee with the knife was absolutely worthless until you unlock the brass knuckles, then it becomes utterly broken. I'd prefer a middle ground). It has a few larger towns that can be explored in a pseudo-open world manner with a few side quests to complete. The game had some impressive creature designs (the Guardian, Obscura, and the white clay monsters are pretty awesome), but I feel its enemy variety dwindles partially due to its "open" structure.

I finished my first playthrough on Nightmare difficulty and it was pretty intense. The atmosphere coupled with the vicious enemies really had me on edge, and I made extra sure to preserve ammo as necessary. The story started off strong, the whole "father saves child" convention became a bit overdone in more recent years, but I didn't take issue here. I do believe the story becomes less interesting after the cult leader gets introduced.

I prefer the first game's level design, it had a claustrophobic and consuming atmosphere that really added to every encounter. I also prefer the voice actors as well (here Sebastian sounds like he's trying his best Snake impression and it was pretty offputting).

It might sound like I'm being harsh on this game in spite of my score, but be assured I think this is a genuinely great game. Most of the critiques I had were based on personal preferences. I'll definitely get to replaying the first EW at some point, in the meantime I'm glad I finished the platinum trophy run just in time for FFXVI's new expansion.

8/10