Aetherus Zhou

The most boring game I've ever played. How I wish I could have a refund.

TL;DR, this game is not as good as other Armored Core games. The worst part is the stagger bar. Punishing the staggered enemies is too rewarding, it puts a huge constraint on mech-building concepts. Heavy mechs are too strong due to the removal of turning performance. As for the storyline, it's also inferior to the other Armored Core games. The main theme of Armored Core games are always about the struggle for resources among corporations. The alien intelligent creature, aka Coral, tuned down the theme quite a bit, which I don't appreciate at all. Is it an enjoyable game? Yes, but it's just too easy. Am I waiting for another Armored Core game? Absolutely. It's just that it'll be better without the Miyazaki's influence. I'm not saying the Souls games are bad. I'm just saying Armored Core should be Armored Core, a game that focuses on customization and tuning, not another Souls-like game, and I feel that Miyazaki totally missed the point.

This is the kind of great game I will NOT play twice. The story of this game is pretty good but not great. The characters are interesting but lack their own history. The combat system is thrilling but not that strategic. The music is good but not that rememberable. The most fun part of this game is the collecting process. You need to recruit the members of your resistance organization, weapons and armor, recipes, cards, etc., and you know that there's an end of collecting all of them and you are constantly approaching that end (unlike the parts collecting process in Daemon X Machina, for example). That always makes me feel good. Also, unlike the collecting process in Yakuza 8 that you collect unnecessary things when your mom's life is at stake which feels absolutely wrong, collecting members and things in this game is part of the job you, a resistance leader, needs to do. It feels right to collect all the things, but do I want to collect them all over again after finishing my first playthrough? Absolutely not.

This is a game I both love and hate. PROS - Visually stunning - Deep Buddhism CONS - Bosses attack with no pause, and their attacks are fast, powerful, wide range, accurate, and frequent. - The window of perfect dodging is too tight. - Invisible walls. - Some bosses seem to have invisible walls in front of them that are thicker than the length of The Chosen One's staff.

Why do I have to date the maybe-girls, take photos of the weirdos, deliver burgers and pizzas, etc. when I need to rescue my mom?

Despite the censorship probably forced by Sony, Stellar Blade is still a great game. The main characters are just gorgeous. The post-apocalyptic scenery is beautiful. The story is philosophical. The music is divine. The battle system is addicting. Everything is perfect. However, there are still some flaws. The 3D platforming part is not my favorite. There's no minimap on the screen, and half of the places don't have a map at all. Most of the hints by pressing the left key of the d-pad do not help solve the puzzles. Though flawed, it's still a fantastic game. If there's no censorship, it could be my GOTY (actually I don't mind the relatively a little bit conservative design of the clothes compared to their original design. It's the censorship without the concensus that pissed me off). What I want is a music player and a photography mode like Armored Core 6.

I can't help but compare this game's battle system to Final Fantasy 12's. Both proceed automatically, both let you set the priorities of skills, and this game's battle system does not even allow you manual intervention, but it is such fun, while FF12's just bores me to death. I think the key points are how long a battle lasts, how different the combatants are, and how scarce the resources are. The creators made a very clever decision to make each combat very short (just like conventional SRPGs), and each move consumes some very scarce resource (AP or PP) in that combat that resets after that combat. Just like any SRPGs, each job has its own strengths and weaknesses. The characters in this game are not allowed to change their jobs, only promote their classes. These factors combined force me to think carefully about the members of each squad and their skill sets from the very beginning. So my advice is, don't steal others' squad builds. Build your own squads and have fun.

I think I have no right to judge this game. It's truly a piece of art. Thank you, the creators, for bringing us such a meaningful and touching game.

If you are a physics fan but not so fond of politics, then this movie may make you disappointed. Too many politics, almost zero physics.

This game looks awesome, and I had a lot of fun with it, especially in the years that there's no news about the Armored Core franchise. The story is okay, but not as deep as Armored Cores'. However, there's something I don't like: grinding. In Armored Core, you don't need to grind for anything. Everything is available to you as long as you achieve some non-random conditions. And when you sell something, you get at least 50% of the money back. But in Daemon X Machina, you have to grind for equipment with additional decal slots, you have to grind for decals, you have to grind for blueprints, and you have to grind for money because you can only get less than 10% of the money back, and there are too many things that require money.