This game grabbed me immediately upon playing the demo, and I hawked sales for six months before I gratefully bought the hard copy for half price on eBay.
My momentum with this game didn’t last long. The missions start repetitive, simple, slow, and boring. They don’t mix up the variety of enemy or mission types at first, and it’s easy to sail through the opening hours of the game with few armor or weapon upgrades/unlocks to show for it. The whole allure of the game to me was the radically deep customization options and mastery of the game’s systems, and it wasn’t giving me enough of that to keep coming back.
As I muscled through, I was rewarded. The mission variety improves, and they eventually get somewhat challenging, at least in parts. A big way to improve the difficulty and rewards is to have the player engage more enemy mechs (Arsenals) instead of lesser enemies. There are whole chapters of the game seemingly committed to just that, which was a nice relief. Additionally, I revisited the armor and weapon development menu ten hours in and found it well worth diving into, as opposed to the other times I had checked it too early in the game.
So many of my qualms got addressed with a little patience. Other things, not so much. The writing is among the worst in any game I’ve played. Both the general story and the individual dialogue lines are all written like a really bad anime. It’s hard to get invested because the story is gibberish, and the characters are almost entirely insufferable. They are horribly overwritten, with people routinely saying things only anime characters would ever say or think they could get away with.
The pacing of the game is dire. Every single mission is bookended by either cutscenes, dialogue sections, or both. Missions are frequently voiced over by more dialogue, and interrupted still more by cutscenes and dialogue reads mid-level. I’m pretty sure some if not all missions are wall to wall dialogue, hardly if ever giving you a chance to appreciate the sound effects and music without talking. It’s as talky as an MGS title, but not nearly as interesting, and the game probably takes as long per mission as it does for each accompanying cutscene and dialogue break. I’m not making this up. I had half a mind to skip it all, but I was invested enough that I did want to find out what the heck is happening in this game. It’s about as considered as what I was writing in middle school, so I was not expecting to be blown away at time of this writing.
Controls are good and fully customizable. Gameplay is good when it’s good. Graphics are a nice lightly cel shaded style but technically developed as well. I think the visual style is VERY cool. Customization is deep and confusing. Maybe impenetrable might be a better word.
The presentation as a whole is good, with tons of HUD elements and gauges to dress everything up, nice effects and particle stuff to catch the eye. It looks good and feels good to fly and zip around and shoot stuff up. The guns suffer from feeling a bit weak, shooting a bit slow, and not locking on from enough distance. I realize these are things that can be balanced and tweaked, but even when optimizing for these things, you still feel sort of impotent sometimes. I thought maybe that would get better as I keep bumping up my kit, but it never truly does.
The story is absolute hogwash, but it’s delivered with such conviction. The stakes get more and more dire as the game goes on, and by the end it’s utter catastrophe. But I never feel threatened or intimidated by any enemy or mission. (Until the final boss, woof.) All the emotion and drama is confined to text messages, dialogue exchanges, and cutscenes.
So far I’ve only spent one short paragraph praising the game. Of note, the presentation is really terrific. PMCs and characters send you chat messages between missions, with a smart and simple interface that even includes ellipses of the next message being “composed” before you click A to show the next one. The main hub area is a hangar bustling with screens, activities, your unlocked weapons, and dominated by your giant Arsenal.
The hangar music, which extends to the menus around the main hub like your armor and weapon customization, is extremely good and catchy. It fits the mood perfectly. The soundtrack is pretty terrific, although it occasionally veers into some screamo and metal territory that doesn’t always work for me. But a lot of it is just great stuff.
I’m really impressed by the graphics. I mentioned them earlier but they strike a nice balance between artistic and technical. Honestly I’ve compared them before to Breath of the Wild. I think there are some aesthetic similarities there, but BOTW stretches its visuals much further by constructing environments that are vastly larger and full of things to do and look at. DXM’s environments are bleak on purpose, but they’re largely barren, devoid of anything to look at. Sometimes you get some city blocks or a bombed out sports stadium; other times you get vast empty desert scapes, big military bases, or subterranean tunnel networks.
The cutscenes are surprisingly dynamic and well directed. They use a lot of flash camera moves and effects. They feel high quality.
I love how they portray the inside of the cockpits. The empty blackness with floating holographic screens is super cool.
It took me multiple years of playing on and off to beat this game. I finally had to look up how to beat the last boss, which was wiping the floor with me before that. I remain a bit flummoxed by this game.
Strip away the story and writing and when you’re just PLAYING it, it feels like one step forward and one step backward everywhere. Controls well and combat seems like it should be fun, but it’s dull a lot of the time with brilliance sprinkled in here and there. My Arsenal never felt incredibly lethal despite seldom meeting a challenging opponent; I would rather have had a more capable mech and tougher enemies than playing a game that always felt like one of the training wheels was still on.
I was looking forward to deep diving the customization, but a lot of it was too much fussing and not enough impact. Plus, aggregating parts and weapons took much longer than I would’ve wanted to hold my interest. I basically just subtly tweaked my mech to keep it well rounded every time I obtained new kit. Oftentimes I’d unlock a part or a weapon and never use it. I just wasn’t hooked like I wanted to be.
That’s what it really boils down to. I wanted to like this game, and I overall did…barely. It just could have and should have been so much better.
…which is EXACTLY why I’m stoked for Armored Core 6. BRING IT.
My momentum with this game didn’t last long. The missions start repetitive, simple, slow, and boring. They don’t mix up the variety of enemy or mission types at first, and it’s easy to sail through the opening hours of the game with few armor or weapon upgrades/unlocks to show for it. The whole allure of the game to me was the radically deep customization options and mastery of the game’s systems, and it wasn’t giving me enough of that to keep coming back.
As I muscled through, I was rewarded. The mission variety improves, and they eventually get somewhat challenging, at least in parts. A big way to improve the difficulty and rewards is to have the player engage more enemy mechs (Arsenals) instead of lesser enemies. There are whole chapters of the game seemingly committed to just that, which was a nice relief. Additionally, I revisited the armor and weapon development menu ten hours in and found it well worth diving into, as opposed to the other times I had checked it too early in the game.
So many of my qualms got addressed with a little patience. Other things, not so much. The writing is among the worst in any game I’ve played. Both the general story and the individual dialogue lines are all written like a really bad anime. It’s hard to get invested because the story is gibberish, and the characters are almost entirely insufferable. They are horribly overwritten, with people routinely saying things only anime characters would ever say or think they could get away with.
The pacing of the game is dire. Every single mission is bookended by either cutscenes, dialogue sections, or both. Missions are frequently voiced over by more dialogue, and interrupted still more by cutscenes and dialogue reads mid-level. I’m pretty sure some if not all missions are wall to wall dialogue, hardly if ever giving you a chance to appreciate the sound effects and music without talking. It’s as talky as an MGS title, but not nearly as interesting, and the game probably takes as long per mission as it does for each accompanying cutscene and dialogue break. I’m not making this up. I had half a mind to skip it all, but I was invested enough that I did want to find out what the heck is happening in this game. It’s about as considered as what I was writing in middle school, so I was not expecting to be blown away at time of this writing.
Controls are good and fully customizable. Gameplay is good when it’s good. Graphics are a nice lightly cel shaded style but technically developed as well. I think the visual style is VERY cool. Customization is deep and confusing. Maybe impenetrable might be a better word.
The presentation as a whole is good, with tons of HUD elements and gauges to dress everything up, nice effects and particle stuff to catch the eye. It looks good and feels good to fly and zip around and shoot stuff up. The guns suffer from feeling a bit weak, shooting a bit slow, and not locking on from enough distance. I realize these are things that can be balanced and tweaked, but even when optimizing for these things, you still feel sort of impotent sometimes. I thought maybe that would get better as I keep bumping up my kit, but it never truly does.
The story is absolute hogwash, but it’s delivered with such conviction. The stakes get more and more dire as the game goes on, and by the end it’s utter catastrophe. But I never feel threatened or intimidated by any enemy or mission. (Until the final boss, woof.) All the emotion and drama is confined to text messages, dialogue exchanges, and cutscenes.
So far I’ve only spent one short paragraph praising the game. Of note, the presentation is really terrific. PMCs and characters send you chat messages between missions, with a smart and simple interface that even includes ellipses of the next message being “composed” before you click A to show the next one. The main hub area is a hangar bustling with screens, activities, your unlocked weapons, and dominated by your giant Arsenal.
The hangar music, which extends to the menus around the main hub like your armor and weapon customization, is extremely good and catchy. It fits the mood perfectly. The soundtrack is pretty terrific, although it occasionally veers into some screamo and metal territory that doesn’t always work for me. But a lot of it is just great stuff.
I’m really impressed by the graphics. I mentioned them earlier but they strike a nice balance between artistic and technical. Honestly I’ve compared them before to Breath of the Wild. I think there are some aesthetic similarities there, but BOTW stretches its visuals much further by constructing environments that are vastly larger and full of things to do and look at. DXM’s environments are bleak on purpose, but they’re largely barren, devoid of anything to look at. Sometimes you get some city blocks or a bombed out sports stadium; other times you get vast empty desert scapes, big military bases, or subterranean tunnel networks.
The cutscenes are surprisingly dynamic and well directed. They use a lot of flash camera moves and effects. They feel high quality.
I love how they portray the inside of the cockpits. The empty blackness with floating holographic screens is super cool.
It took me multiple years of playing on and off to beat this game. I finally had to look up how to beat the last boss, which was wiping the floor with me before that. I remain a bit flummoxed by this game.
Strip away the story and writing and when you’re just PLAYING it, it feels like one step forward and one step backward everywhere. Controls well and combat seems like it should be fun, but it’s dull a lot of the time with brilliance sprinkled in here and there. My Arsenal never felt incredibly lethal despite seldom meeting a challenging opponent; I would rather have had a more capable mech and tougher enemies than playing a game that always felt like one of the training wheels was still on.
I was looking forward to deep diving the customization, but a lot of it was too much fussing and not enough impact. Plus, aggregating parts and weapons took much longer than I would’ve wanted to hold my interest. I basically just subtly tweaked my mech to keep it well rounded every time I obtained new kit. Oftentimes I’d unlock a part or a weapon and never use it. I just wasn’t hooked like I wanted to be.
That’s what it really boils down to. I wanted to like this game, and I overall did…barely. It just could have and should have been so much better.
…which is EXACTLY why I’m stoked for Armored Core 6. BRING IT.