Everyone knows gen 5 (or at least this game, i'm not quite sure about Verdict Day) is mostly a multiplayer experience, and it shows. the single player campaign is not only boring, but even the customization that's a literal staple of the series is almost non existent if you're not willing to grind boring side missions, because shop components get unlocked in the shop as your team level progress, and the only way to do that is to play missions, whether it's the 9 story missions (yep, not a lot of them) or order missions which are just "kill those enemy units/AC"

Thankfully it doesn't really matter, as the game is piss easy. Enemies usually do chip damage to you, and as long as you get one (good) weapon of each type (there's of them and you got 5 weapons on you), you're kinda good to go. Sometimes harder enemies do appear, but the missions have multiple checkpoints (thankfully, as they're pretty long), and even garages allowing you to get back to full HP/ammo and change parts if needed, so unless you really did not go out with a good enough build it's just a matter of retrying.

The base gameplay is interesting on paper, but never really clicks here. You're way slower than in previous games (especially coming from gen 4), there's no more flying around, movement is closer to gen 1 and 2 but even more slow and grounded. However, you can use bursts of energy to dodge in each direction, and also wall jump, and i think it's sick on paper, you can really gain some cool speed and height this way, the maps are even built around that since they're mostly city streets. sadly few are the moments where the game throws anything at you that showcases the potential of the system.

Scan mode is terrible tho. Having a mode where you can't shoot but can analyze enemies to find their weakness (and also get your energy back faster) is neat on concept, but, and that's one of the biggest issue with this game, that mode is damn near unreadable. Your screen gets a blue filter that makes everything look terrible, the scan UI is unreadable in the middle of action, and everything in this game is like that. The HUD is terrible, and every time you get hit your screen "glitches", the game already has a pretty terrible esthetic (it's the classic 7th gen gray look) but the on hit effect makes it worse

The music is absolutely phenomenal tho, everything else is kinda just ass

Resident Evil 3, on a conceptual concept, feels like a logical follow-up to Resident Evil 2, but at the same time it doesn't really work.

Resident Evil 2 was already more action focused than Resident Evil one; you had more enemies, more variety in them too, and way more resources, but it was still possible to screw up and have to temporarily have to manage those a bit more closely if you didn't pay attention. RE3 goes in the same direction of making the game more action focused: there are way more zombies than before, but you also get a lot of resources. Too much of them, even.

For almost the entire run of the game, you're given so many ammos or health items, the entire resource management aspect of the game feels like it's gone. Sure, if you decide to fight the Nemesis you can get low on those resources, but usually that's a temporary setback that doesn't last more than 15 minutes. Instead of being focused on resources management, the game is more focused on the action part.

I don't think the combat in this game really is that fun. the new dodge mechanic is terrible, sometimes it procs, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it does but since you don't really chose how you're dodging you can just dodge in a wall and end up getting damaged anyway... In the previous games, combat was interesting because you had to wonder if using your precious ammos instead of running was worth it, but now not only you have way too many ammo but also there's often too many zombies to be able to ignore them all anyways!

Nemesis is an interesting concept; you can fight him to get some loot and get rid of him for a while, or try to just dodge him. I fought him every time, which is imo pretty hard to do but ends up making the game easier because of what he loots. However, this really showcases that the combat isn't my cup of tea. I don't have anything against the controls of this games (i'm terrible at it tho), but i don't think they really work well in fights like nemesis.

Nemesis isn't the only interesting on paper, kinda not that great in practice thing this game has to offer tho! Most rooms have randomized enemies and items placement, which sounds neat but actually kinda isn't. Sometimes you'll run into a room with nothing in it, die later on, and the next time the room will have 3 green herbs. Or sometimes instead of fighting 2 hunters you'll fight 5 zombies. Depending on your luck you'll just get a harder or easier time, i think having rooms spawn depending on your performances would be much better.

Overall, RE3 is still an alright game, it's just the worst of the og trilogy for me. The first area is really cool and it has some cool ideas like the parts where you have to make a choice in cutscenes, but the action focus just doesn't work for me

This was supposed to be the only way to play Before Crisis stuff on top of the rest of the compilation but right now this ain't it and i doubt it'll ever will.

As of right now you can only play a very abridged version of the beginning of FF7 (all of midgar) and the beginning of Crisis Core (Operation tamblin, in wutai) and the beginning of a brand new story set during the early day of SOLDIER.

A bit over 2 months after the game released, we only had one single story update that added one measly chapter (which is like one dungeon, 2 "cuscenes" and like 5 fights, so not a lot of content) There's been a lot of events going on tho! Sometimes even multiples of them happening at once!

The game is extremely grindy, and that fact is made worse by the content onslaught of events. Levelling up characters is slow. Creating new materias for better stats? Slow. Farming events to get all they can offer to you? Also slow! Getting better weapons? Oh boy welcome to everyone's favorite part of gacha games, MTX city!

To get better version of each weapons, you need to roll for them, and to really get weapons with good stats, multiple versions of a single weapon are required. The game really drip feeds you crystals, which as i understand is common practice, but it also bombards you with a lot, a lot, of microtransaction. Looking at the shop rn, there are 12 daily packs you can buy, and on top of that you also have monthly packs, weekly packs, just buying currency outside of a pack, a monthly battlepass... The game does everything it can to get people to spend money.
For example, each event will feature one or more "special roll" where you can get stamps for getting guaranteed weapons but also new costumes, yknow the thing people usually look the most for in gachas. The rate for getting stamps is abysmall, on top of that you can't roll a lot without paying, on top of that getting both costumes requires a lot of stamps, and on top of all that they always add another stamp card mid event with different costumes!

FFVII EC is a waste of time. The story content, as of right now, is very lackluster, and in term of gacha games.. Either don't fucking play gachas or play some that are less predatory than that lol

An upgrade on almost every point from the first game. Not only do you get to play two completely different scenarios with each ones having exclusive areas/bosses/weapons, the order in which you play them will make your run slightly different, because events of the first run will have influence on the second one, which is really cool.
There's more monster variety, and more monsters overall: while RE2 definitely gives you more resources than RE1, a regular zombie takes on average more gun ammo to kill, and there are way more zombies attacking you at once this time around.
The game also has its story more involved with the progression. While i do like how RE1's story is mostly just you figuring out some plot elements from notes you find, this time around you have more characters being involved, most notably the final boss and biggest threat of the game is a recurring fight and it rules (his design is absolutely awesome too)
The only thing i really miss from RE1 is the exploration, once you exit the police station you have way less puzzles and exploration to go through, which is an element of 1 i really liked; i don't mind it that much since the first part of the game is still pretty "metroidvaniaesque", i just wish we'd get more of it

Also Mr X is a huge joke in this game he's just a scripted event that does chip damage it's hilarious

"more of the same but greater" would be an accurate description of Spider-Man 2, but that's not a bad thing if you ask me. Unless you didn't like the first two games for w/e reason, SM2 is an easy sell, because almost everything to love from the previous games is there, but with so much more new cool stuff.

The worst part of these games, at least for me, is the inherent nature of the triple A open world formula; spending time just transiting from point A to point B while getting distracted by activites scattered all around the place to give you some small dopamine hits when you complete them is a design philosophy i don't really vibe with, and i think the SM games are the only ones of that kind i actually completed, and i think the reason for that, besides the fact that i think spider-man is awesome, is that the traversal system is just god damn good.

SM2 vastly improves on said traversal system. Right off the bat, i turned the web assist thing all the way down, and activated fall damage, which imo really makes the game better since you need to be more active in your swings. But more than that, i think the web wings they added in the game just works really well. Swinging around is fun, but the wings really let you gain speed really fast if you know what to do, and balancing wings, swinging and doing tricks in the air to gain as much speed as you want is just cool. And if you end up being bored from that, the insanely fast fast travel system is really helpful, i ended up basically using it all the time when i was finishing up doing all the side content and had to go from one side of the map to the other.

The combat also got some sick overhauls, the new moves are sick and playing as symbiote pete is BADASS. What i really didn't expect was how cool the boss are; in the previous games, they weren't really bad but they weren't good either, just kinda w/e (tho i do love the SM1 final one). In this game however, bosses feel way more dynamic: you can parry their attacks, some gadgets or skills will let you get openings on them, instead of being a game of waiting for an opening to get a combo in, this time around you can really make the fights go your own way if you're good enough, and it feels good.

I'm not gonna talk much about the story but it also was really good, i especially loved the arc Miles went through during this game. The side missions were also all awesome, they really showcase the "friendly neighborhood" aspect of spidey extremely well, i even wish we could have gotten a couple more of them because there's a few that can really hit you hard in the feels

Asides from both mario maker, 2d mario games have been following the same formula ever since New Super Mario Bros for the DS released, and even if i'm sure someone could argue that the New soup games have some creative levels, there's nothing that really makes any entry stand apart from the rest of the other ones for most people. But tbh, this issue kinda has been there from day one, because even the classic mario games are very well "classic", there's not a lot of whacky memorable one off idea, sure there's a few levels that do stand out as unique but it's exceptions more than rules.

Super Mario Wonder does a complete 180 on that, by having every level be a full on unique concept. Every level will have a unique mechanic, or a spin on a previous one, or unique enemies, a spin on how they worked etc, there's no two levels that feel really similar. Better than that yet, every single ones of those levels will have a wonder seed that makes this level even more unique, from turning the level into a musical autoscroller to having you run through it under a rain of invincibility stars, the range of ideas the game throws at you is extremely expensive, to the point it feels weird when some one those ideas are used more than once.

Coupled to that, the game has a badge system that allows you to have some fun customization. I'm gonna be honest, i spent most of the game using the same ones (mostly the floating jump or the mid air spin ones), while the idea is cool i think that aspect of the game is kinda w/e, i guess it's pretty neat for doing challenge runs where you try to play through every levels with only a specific badge or whatever but some of them are so good in regular gameplay they make the rest of them pretty useless.

My favorite feature of the game is something i didn't expect, and it's the online feature. Once you opt in it, you can play levels alongside other random players (or friends if you wish to), and if someone dies they have a few seconds as a ghost to either touch a player or a standee that players have placed down, and it's extremely fun to wait for other people to serve as a safety net for them, i think this entire aspect of the game rules.

Overall Mario Wonder is an excellent 2D platformer, brimming with ideas, that anyone can pick up no matter their skill level, and it's really cool to have a good platformer that's not just for people willing to grind levels until they get good enough at the game

"Oh shit we forgot to put actual missions in AC4" - Miyazaki coming up with For Answer, probably

Just like Last Raven before it, For Answer follows up on a mediocre game and turns it into something great, although for reasons completely different than Last Raven; LR is the hardest AC game, but FA is definitely the easiest one so far.

FA saw the good points of AC4 and doubled down on them: never before have you been so fast, flying around infinitely is now basically a given and it rules. In AC4, sometimes you'd feel like a badass because you're just controlling a huge mech and blowing up everything (something cool on a fundamental level), but it never lasted long enough for it to ever feel that good. FA solves this by making missions longer, and more varied: from destroying huge fleets of dozens and dozens of battleships to fighting city sized forts, the variety of stuff to blow up in FA is extremely good, and even having to replay missions for the different endings doesn't feel like a chore. The final chapter of the last ending is just literally insane and something i'm sure to remember for a long time, truly the second best AC game to me (LR still clears) and definitely the one i'd recommend the most to people willing to play one of the older AC games

In another universe, From Software fired Miyazaki after realizing how ass this game is, making Dark Souls and its consequences on the game industry but a fever dream.

Armored Core 4 is very different from its predecessor; Ravens are now called LYNX, ACs are now called NEXTs, at least that's how it's supposed to be but half the time in game dialogue uses the old terms (i have no idea if it's on purpose or not). The game is now much more focused on speed and aerial combat, it's very easy to make an AC with near infinite flight capacities, and you now have 3 buttons assigned to boost all around the place, the movement in this game feels really neat!

Unfortunately, movement is the really good thing the game has going for it, mechanically speaking. The customization UI is terrible, probably the worst from the series so far, getting to understand where to go to build your AC and how to even display how much money you have took me a few minutes. I do like the idea of getting blueprints of ACs you defeat tho, that concept is neat.

Heating has been removed, and weight now functions differently, you just have an overall weight value instead of having arm and legs weight. (at least i think so; again, that customization UI is dogshit) So are optional parts and tuning, now you just get FRS points that let you finetune your AC, letting you get more turning speed, boost power, energy output, damage, w/e you want. The game doesn't explain that at all tho and the same applies to the stabilizer mechanic, i have no idea what those do or which ones are good.

The part selection is... Eh. I didn't really vibe with any of the weapons. In fact, one of my biggest issue with this game is how the combat feels like it's lacking some feedbacks. When i get hit, i barely register what's happening, i just see my HP go down but whatever's hitting me doesn't really have enough visual impact for it to feel like i get hit, and the same kinda applies to when i hit something, it's the same kind of issue i have with the Halo games I played.

The missions are a biiiig whatever dude. They exist. Some of them even last longer than 30 seconds, but most don't. There's a few that feels really cool, you're just blasting around at extremely high speed, blasting small robots that pose you no threat at all, it's neat and really highlight how sick the movement is and how much you feel like an unstoppable mecha... Except they never last really long enough to ever feel good. There's also no really challenging missions, which isn't really an issue by itself but after how GOOD Last Raven was because it was beating your ass half the time, it's a bit disappointing. The game is also ridiculously short, it took me 6h30 to beat it and that includes the fact i was idling in menus for long period of times and also had to redo some missions because i forgot to save and the emulator sometimes crashes on cutscenes.

The story is also like so weird. Corporations are fighting each others and you gradually destroy them all i think but the game gives so little like actual story it's hard to feel involved in it. i could barely give you the name of any corporation and who i was fighting for the most because it really feel like it doesn't matter, you just destroy shit in missions and sometimes it apparently "changes the world" but there's no real impact. Again, i wouldn't mind it that much normally if the previous game wasn't that good in that regard.

At least the music's really good, but apart from that and the movement being badass there's not much of value to be found in Armored Core 4, and comparing it to Last Raven makes it even worse

From it's intro cutscene alone, Last Raven is a game that stands out from the rest of the series up to that point, with its gritty tone and for the first time ever, appearance of human beings outside of the mechs. I went into the game with high expectations, as I heard that Last Raven is as good as it is hard, and this cutscene immediately hooked me up.

Last Raven, in more than one way, feel like both the culmination and a goodbye to the "old gen" AC games. The game adds a part breaking mechanic (each AC part can now be damaged which reduces their efficiency, or straight up destroyed which forces you to buy them again), rebalances stuff from Nexus/Nine Breaker, and the arena’s back, but on the surface, it's just like every single game (minus Formula Front and I guess Nine Breaker) since Armored Core 1 released: the same as the previous game with a few additions. But saying Last Raven is just like the previous games is a huge understatement, because while there's a lot that's different outside of the "base gameplay" that it makes the game stand out above every other ones.

Firstly, the story. After the ending of Nexus, corporations have all merged into Alliance, and the Ravens have split between serving Alliance, trying to be standalone warlords, or joining Vertex, which is basically the remnant of the Raven's Nest that didn't join Alliance. War ensued, and Vertex put an ultimatum: in 24 hours, they'll launch a massive attack.
The game's entire structure revolves around those 24 hours. Each time you clear a mission, time marches forward. No matter who you choose to help, doom seems inevitable, and the game really plays off that atmosphere really well. The garage music evolves as time is running out, you can check the status of the other Ravens and slowly but surely see that everyone is dying, the doomsday scenario of this game is great. Not only that, but who you choose to help matters! The game has multiple routes, depending on who you decide to side with. I only played one of the routes so far but from what i've heard, depending on the route you take, motivations for some characters will be revealed whereas they're a mystery in the other routes, which is really good both for worldbuilding but also replayability.

The progression of the game thanks to the doomsday scenario is also greatly improved. For once, you’re not just playing as a mercenary, you’re playing as a mercenary in a world that’s running out of time. Meaning not only the number of missions on each route is way lower than usual (for most of the game the clock advances by 2 hours for each mission), but they also all feel more interesting than in previous games. Sure, you still have some missions that just require you to kill a dozen MTs and you’re done, but this time the context of the story makes it feel more involved.
But the one big thing that makes the missions stand out is the difficulty. There are easy missions, of course, but every mission that requires you to fight an AC is on a whole different level. Simply put, ACs in this game are straight up cheating. They all have human plus/OP-INTENSIFY, which you can’t have, and their AI is NOT playing games, they’re fighting for their life as much as you are! I think i even read somewhere that their pattern will adapt to what kind of build you have, tho it may just be internet rumors. No matter if it’s real or not tho, the difficulty of those boss fights is real, and you will have to adapt. While it’s still possible to find a build that suits your playstyle for most of the game, Last Raven is by far the one game that will require you to modify your build the most, because some archetypes are a nightmare to use against some bosses. It feels like the game tends to emphasize being fast and flying around, which sucked for me since i tend to be a quad legs user, but you can still just use a good old tank…. In most situations, at least.

I only finished one route for now, but even then, Last Raven is by far the best the series has to offer, at least so far (i still have to play gen 4-6). It’s not easy to recommend to someone who never played one of the old gen AC game due to how brutal it can and will be, but if someone’s already into the series, it’s a must play. While it may sometimes be frustrating and unfair, finally managing to beat whatever boss is giving you trouble has never felt that good, which is just like another series From Software is known to have worked on


UPDATE: after clearing all the routes i'm upping this game from 4.5 to 5 stars. It's GOOD on a single route, it gets even more awesome once you start getting into the hardest routes. I'm still shaking from the Zinaida fight it's so peak

yeah ok this game exists
i guess the concept of tuning an AI on top of your AC is kinda cool but like you can just manually pilot the AC which feels like it's stronger 99% of the time
the controls are not great cause the PSP has less buttons, and having everything in your garage from the get go kinda sucks, there's no sense of progression at all due to that, i basically made a big tank with big energy weapons and went through the whole game with it.

Some fights can be a pain in the butt depending on your build but that's like in every AC arena fight. None of the fights really felt unique enough for me to remember them tho, at least for once the final boss isn't nine balls ig

yeah ok i played one hour and dropped it, i already knew about it beforehand but this game is just "training missions" that aren't really fun to go through, and an arena that does have an interesting concept behind it at least, instead of going up by beating your opponents you win or lose points depending on if you win/lose and that's about it. There's no shop so you need to have bought everything in nexus if you want to play, i could grind the arena to get top rank and do some missions but honestly i can't be assed to do so, maybe if i thought nexus had the sickest gameplay ever it'd be cool but i don't so eh, i got better things to do