Asura's Wrath being the laughing stock of excessive QTE use during the 7th gen has become a bit of an unfair reputation, considering how little credit it tends to get for how successfully it actually manages to pull it off. Described as an "interactive anime" by the developers themselves, it is clear that the people behind this production knew what they were doing, using all the classic tropes and cliches that have turned shounen into such a successful venue for guys being dudes.

So well executed in fact, that soon you forget that you are for the most part just pressing button prompts as you watch long ass cutscenes of big muscle guy punching another big muscle guy. There is definitely an art to making visceral rage and violence this engaging and purposeful, emotions that the japanese have managed to perfect and capitalize on with animation for decades now, and Asura's Wrath pays tribute to that legacy in a grand display of revenge melodrama between gods that puts God of War to shame.

It's an escalation of every increasingly insurmountable odds that Asura inevitably bursts through with his fists, fury and will alone, surprassing the greatests of Platinum Games finales, and it's amazing what a few buttons can do to elevate a story that we have seen told countless times before to new heights of catharsis. The final boss (which is locked behind payed dlc, a decision that sits at the pantheon of bad Capcom ideas) gets his shit kicked in so hard that by that point you welcome those QTEs with open arms.

The bittersweet ending note of Asura's Wrath is wondering how much more amazing it would have been were it a real ass videogame.

I am a simple human being, I see a new FromSoft sequel announced, I go back to replay the series even though there will most likely be very little continuation to be found.

I greatly enjoyed the first title though. Fantastic vibes. Running through open spaces, on water, grass or sand, or crawling through these corridors of abandoned military facilities, never knowing when something will jump out, or something BIGGER will jump out. Sounds of long-damaged technology, warning messages cutting in and out, clicking of organisms or heavy footsteps of robots filling the silence or the darkness ahead.

I actually really enjoyed the story and the individual moments were just awesome. Two dueling coporations, a destroyed world, underground cities, human experimentation, independent mercenary group, jumping between contracts for groups with different interests, uncovering the mysteries of your own organization, betrayal, the truth about humanity's future. There's a lot of clever missions with little tidbits of information in each, making for great worldbuilding. FromSoft always had it. They even have the Moonlight Greatsword and a group called "Dark Soul" here. Crazy how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Since you spend so much time in the menus crafting your robot, which seemed complicated until I just smashed all the best parts together, I would like for that part of the game to be better. It's just an UI after all. I'd love to not have to buy and resell items every time I realize something doesn't fit. You sell for the same price so what's the point, if I have enough money just let me pick it from the menu and use up my money when I head out for a mission. Second, invest in more music, or at the very least a longer loop. It's not terrible, has its charm and all, but it's just impossible for it to not get annoying after so much time.

And this is a yet another very good game with an awful final level. It's very interesting thematically and if you paid attention you'll be hit with one surprise after another, as well as some existential crisis-type beat, but the actual structure is awful. The amount of precise platforming you have to do in that level is nuts, and the main enemy is so fast that putting it in a room with a lot of obstacles in the way makes it impossible to follow with a camera. Running away is an even less valid option, its damage output is insane. So, cheesing it is, bait it into a hole you come out of or leave out of and spam your strongest weapon for close quarters. Unfortunate, because it's a great finale and would feel super tense if it wasn't so annoying. And they were doing such an excellent job of avoiding all these problems too in each and every level. Blegh.

Hopefully this is merely a blueprint of what's to come, and it turns out that Armored Core, as a series, was truly overlooked and underappreciated at the time. Mecha games are never easy to get into, but the satisfaction from a good mission in this chonky, hard to control beast is sublime.

cannot say i am particularly enamored with the idea that we should frame this discussion in any way that pretends it is not ultimately a willful net loss for games preservation. the idea that in order to aggressively push hardware a development team was enlisted to resurrect a long forsaken ip, in the process fundamentally misunderstanding the majority of its artistic sensibilities (sometimes aggressively so) to showcase a console’s power rubs me the wrong way for several reasons. and there’s potent irony here because we must also remember that in essence sony is banking on from softwares death cult to launch a console cycle for the second time in a row now. recall the invective words of shuhei yoshida, 2009: 'This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.' surely what is now a valuable ace in the sleeve for sonys financial strategy in the 9th generation of consoles onwards deserves more respect than this?

as an immediate contrast in the field of remakes, i’ll put forward that at the very least, ff7 is one of the most ubiquitous games of all time - to such a degree that altering its content and expanding on its themes in a rebuild-esque scenario is not only sensible, but appreciated. the same case is difficult to make for demon’s in my opinion.

perhaps bluepoints alterations, seldom rooted in any reverence for aesthetics but instead prioritizing largely perfunctory gameplay, are to your tastes. but they are not to mine. the original demon’s souls is an intensely difficult work to assess, litigate, and reconcile with, to be sure, but whatever your stance on it, it’s difficult to deny how exquisitely it worked with its limitations to fashion something that was entirely inspired and bold, yet quintessentially from software. none of that same evocative ethos is reflected here, and for these reasons i find bluepoint’s iteration extremely difficult to respect - doubly so because im in a position now of having twice been told to give bluepoint a chance on a remake, both times to personally and deeply unsatisfactory results. i only wish more folks had a convenient way of experiencing the original so they were free to pass their own judgments