Oni

A lot of traditional AC fans dislike the increase in speed and the reduction of movement restrictions in AC4/ACFA. In that you can stay airborne indefinitely in the newer games. Personally, it doesn’t bother me that much.

As for ACFA being a bit ghetto, the tech would be close to four years old now. So it will look rough around the edges. Collision was a big issue in AC4/ACFA too, due to the speeds, so it ended up being very simple.

At first I was a little disappointed at the ghetto-ness of it all, compared to your rather exciting descriptions here. The environments were sparse, the VOB segments were pretty lame, and the damage effects and logic were laughably game-like, especially against the Arms Forts.

The customization however was intriguing and full of neat possibilities. Changing up equipment and strats to beat missions or arena matches felt good. I decided the game was conceptually brilliant but lacking in execution.

I’m on my 3rd playthrough now, and I’ve concluded Armored Core is a pretty sweetass series. Unlocking new mech designs, using new parts and being able to actually feel the difference is deeply satisfying. I believe your suggestion of thinking of it as a mech simulator is key to enjoying the game.

Seeing White Glint’s boosters unfold for an overed boost for the first time by my hand gave me new appreciation for the animation and mech design.

However, it does seem that a lot of hardcore AC fans hate AC4/4A. I’m a little confused as to why. I assume it has to do with game balance in competitive play.

In any case, I’m pretty excited for ACV now. I hope you write lots about it when it comes out!

To be honest I probably should re-write the review to be more technical – like the others on this site. It’s just finding the time though.

As for the online issues, it’s been discovered that these are US specific and to do with Ubisoft’s patching discrepancy with the Japanese original. Considering I only covered the Japanese versions, I’m not sure how I could really mention this.

The reason I say this is that having not played it, I was looking for information on it, and through a few boards, acgarage.com and armoredcoreonline.com, the latter being what linked me to this blog, there seemed to be fundamental things wrong with how this game was made. The biggest issue from players was the laggy online play, especially on the PS3. Also I read a user complaining on how difficult it was to customize your AC while you were playing online.

Having said that, I read the about me page and read that a game will also be judged on how well the mecha mythos was implemented. My inquiry is that after having read the AC 4 and 3 and Last Raven reviews this one seemed of a different vein. And also, the AC: LR and 3 portable reviews were criticized purely based on practical concerns in terms of control setup.

Where is that line drawn that separates practical game concerns, and the implementation of the mecha mythos? Or is it that in this specific game that the mecha spirit was so great that it eclipsed the critical issues dealing with how well the game played?