A gigantic, triumphant improvement over Armored Core V, Verdict Day beats the odds to merely be very bad.
I already went on an unhinged rant about my problems with ACV, most of which were just barely less severe this time around, but I do want to say that Verdict Day has plenty of content laid over this totally irredeemable framework that I would love to have experienced in pretty much any other game. Like... there's some pretty decent writing, in an old-school AC way; you get character profiles of AC pilots after killing them in missions, which is a small thing that does (relatively) a lot to make the campaign feel less like an afterthought. Missions are also no longer atrociously long and samey (though the difficulty has been ramped up considerably), there are better and more varied maps, some of the new frame parts they added aren't as ugly. Strides have certainly been made.
The final boss gets hyped up a lot and: genuinely yes, it's an absolute standout as the best thing in the game visually, conceptually, and even mechanically. It's a pretty fun fight! I liked the actual gameplay of it! But like... I don't know if it's "play all of Armored Core Verdict Day for this" good. You can watch it on Youtube, frankly, it's not like the context of the rest of the game adds much. (The context of having played For Answer, however...)
If it wasn't obvious, I didn't fuck with multiplayer at all. There are a variety of reasons for this, but there's only a couple of months left that the multiplayer will even exist, so if the idea isn't as repellent to you as it is to me, you should probably hurry.
I already went on an unhinged rant about my problems with ACV, most of which were just barely less severe this time around, but I do want to say that Verdict Day has plenty of content laid over this totally irredeemable framework that I would love to have experienced in pretty much any other game. Like... there's some pretty decent writing, in an old-school AC way; you get character profiles of AC pilots after killing them in missions, which is a small thing that does (relatively) a lot to make the campaign feel less like an afterthought. Missions are also no longer atrociously long and samey (though the difficulty has been ramped up considerably), there are better and more varied maps, some of the new frame parts they added aren't as ugly. Strides have certainly been made.
The final boss gets hyped up a lot and: genuinely yes, it's an absolute standout as the best thing in the game visually, conceptually, and even mechanically. It's a pretty fun fight! I liked the actual gameplay of it! But like... I don't know if it's "play all of Armored Core Verdict Day for this" good. You can watch it on Youtube, frankly, it's not like the context of the rest of the game adds much. (The context of having played For Answer, however...)
If it wasn't obvious, I didn't fuck with multiplayer at all. There are a variety of reasons for this, but there's only a couple of months left that the multiplayer will even exist, so if the idea isn't as repellent to you as it is to me, you should probably hurry.