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ARMORED CORE VI: FIRES OF RUBICON features mecha carnage not seen in any game before it. If you're one who enjoys barraging your enemies with missiles, gliding over land in a mech, or ramming a pile bunker into your foes, this game is for you! Combat is fast, fluid, intense, engaging, and three dimensional. There's no time to rest as you're constantly dodging and unleashing your arsenal. You can't play the game mindlessly. You must consider projectile speeds, elevation, time your quick boosts, and energy management. Enemy encounters require you to adapt your playstyle and construction. Customization of your AC is deep with many varieties of weapons, paint options, and you can make a personal emblem to represent you. Of all From Software games, AC6's story is the one I'm most connected to. As Augmented Human 621, you are a person who's humanity has been robbed to become a loyal servant to the mysterious Handler Walter. He sends you to Rubicon 3 to find out where the greatly desired resource "coral" is converging. Along the way, you partner up with more sketchy characters and learn the many reasons so many factions are involved with it. The planet Rubicon 3 looks pretty dead. The landscapes are cold mountains, abandoned cities, and giant deserts, but this science fiction world has insanely huge concrete megastructures. If you're fascinated by brutalist architecture, this game can fulfill that interest. Keeping with the theme of colossal sized structures, there's a mech called the Strider thats scale puts the AT-ATs of Star Wars to shame. You don't get to see any people directly, but you can hear the world is an awful dystopia with some people left to starve through war, people are experimented on, and there's coral-based drugs. Those elements make Armored Core my favorite cyberpunk franchise. Pulling these elements together is the music that ranges from emphasizing loneliness, to haunting. Its industrial sound reminds me of AC: Verdict Day's music. I highly recommend rebalancing the audio by bringing music, and voice to max settings. One improvement over the previous games is mission area borders are now solid, so I can't accidentally go out of bounds and fail the mission. There's just a few things I wish were different about the game. I wish the English cast was larger, I miss battling so many arms forts of For Answer, and I wish there were a few more sharper AC designs like the Aaliyah of AC4. To progress through the game, it's required that you use your cranium organ. The first boss was as hard as it is intimidating. It's certainly a daunting situation when you see the size of it, but your AC is very capable of taking it on; it just comes down to the player to strategize how to defeat it. Be fully aware of all that your AC is capable of, and take advantage of every ability. Use good judgement when using your quick boost to dodge missiles, and assault boost toward the chopper with consideration for you energy capacity. Some older fans believe this game is uniquely hard compared to the older games, but my belief is that they've become too comfortable with the older generations, and are scared to venture into a new world. Some people went into the game with the wrong expectations when you must come into the game with a fresh mind. DON'T GIVE UP! YOU CAN DO IT! This is ARMORED CORE - the best in the series yet.

AC:VD was my first Armored Core game and then I learned AC:fA is far funner than this one. -The missions are very trial and error based. You can enter a mission to find out the enemies are tanked ACs with massive amounts of armor/defense. To prevent yourself from using ALL of your ammo, you have to exit the mission and then return with bigger guns. You'll always want to bring big guns otherwise you'll be told your attacks are INEFFECTIVE. -The arenas you fight in are very tiny. You'll regularly go out of bounds and immediately get mission failure. It's nonsense. -Bosses regularly go far out of the boundaries, so are then untouchable. -Rarely, enemies you need to destroy are stuck out of the boundary. -To earn an S-rank for a mission, you will want to have a high profit. There are side quests with the missions that can boost your profits, but ultimately sink you if you are reckless fulfilling side quests that have silly demands. -One comparison I heard was that the mechs look like dumpsters. Pretty accurate to me. Highly agile, well-armed dumpsters. A lot of recycling of content with minor changes among them too. Some of the designs are pretty cool though. -The publisher is holding out on how good the game can be. So many expensive microtransactions are available.

At first glance, AC6 looks like it lacks content as its campaign is only made of 15 missions with no arcade mode, but each of those missions are long and have replay value being made up of several operations that you can take part in across several playthroughs. You're often times given the responsibility to cover allies as they advance towards their objectives. Radio chatter from your allies fills you with urgency to support them as they are very dependent on you. It is a bit ridiculous how much responsibility is put on you, but it makes for a challenge. Those missions you're deployed on are set on MASSIVE battlefields, so you'll never risk accidentally leaving the mission area. Every single mission is unforgettable from the opening, to the attack on San Loma, destroying the Estovakian aerial navy, the assault on Ragno Fortress, to the Chandelier. The soundtrack is iconic too. When you hear it, you know where in the story it belongs. I've played through the campaign maybe 35 times. I enjoy all of the characters even when they say the cheesy phrase: "Go dance with the angels!" I highly recommend flying the iDOLM@STER A-10, and arm it with rocket launchers for ground attack missions. It's got a very unique flight model that's very fun to fly. I also enjoyed flying Yukiho's F-117 when attacking Ragno. Her plane lacks agility making dodging missiles much more exciting.

+1 point for THE iDOLM@STER and The Magnificent Kotobuki emblems. -The game severely lacks content without DLC. The season pass content should have been in the base game, or be free. Making the content shouldn't hold back the release date of the game because they likely stripped the content from there to sell back to me. I bought the game at launch, so I paid full price to experience it first hand. -The story of the game is the weakest in the franchise (PS2 onward is as far as i know). I don't care for any of the characters as they're a bunch of random strangers. The cast changes too much with not enough time to learn who the people are, so I don't care when they die. The plot is good, but the delivery is bad. -No arcade mode. -There are no flight dynamics except wind that lasts a couple seconds in like three missions. Otherwise, the "flying" is rigid. -Take-offs and landings are simplified for toddlers to enjoy. Take-offs have no suspense. Landing in the previous games required some skill. -The speedometer is wildly inaccurate. -Not many attacker aircraft. No Frogfoot, Nighthawk, or Tornado. -Little variety of weather. They probably held back on weather types because clouds affect gameplay. -You can't rewind replays. -There are trophies/achievements/medals/skins locked to multiplayer. Some of those trophies are time consuming and rely on the multiplayer community existing, which there really isn't any. -Multiplayer team deathmatch has teams maxed at four players. 8 vs. 8 with closer spawning would have livened up the matches and allow more opportunity to turn the tides. Otherwise it becomes a flow of 4 vs. 1. -Team deathmatchs should have a waiting room for those who want to join a game. -I strongly disagree with their idea that the MVP of a team match is the highest scorer. That task is important, but so is being a decoy. My team wins even when I score very little because I can effectively attract opponents for a long time, allowing my team to cover me while the enemy's distracted. My role is similar to Kuroko of Kuroko no Basket. Kuroko isn't in the spotlight, but he's equally as important as Kagami. -There should be a multiplayer option to exclusively have missiles with no direct fire weapons except guns.

Excellent mech sim, but very reliant on mod support in order to be fun. I recommend you buy the JumpShip Edition while it's on sale to get a good amount of content at a more fair price. The graphics meet my expectations, though I want rain drops on the cockpit glass when the weather matches the conditions (rain/snow/fog). The cockpits look good, but some of them appear to be really weird nonsense. I wish there were more modern displays showing in the cockpits. It'd be really cool if cockpit displays were actually functional for a VR experience (though there's no official VR support). Below is my list of how they could improve this game or implement into the next. -Let me change cockpit glass color -Let me change HUD color -Let me change Dropship color -Immersive cockpit glass -Enemy dialogue is unintelligible because of too much audio distortion making it into just noise and then relying on tiny subtitles. I really like dialogue and want to hear what the enemy is saying. Ace Combat should be your role model in this regard. -Faction reputation shouldn't tank by +2/-8 in low difficulty missions. -All pilots should have maximum potentials, especially unique ones. -There should be official VR support. -A very detailed in-game manual explaining faction reputation, all of the different weapons, and mission types. -The deployment screen should state in words the mission type, and setting. I don't like being reliant on mods. Maybe because I have mods, I'm not seeing some updates that were supposed to affect artillery fire rate, salvage options, and many more options that were supposedly added.

The game had potential with fine gameplay, but it severely lacks content and features bad multiplayer game designs leaving you feeling empty of enjoyment. -The multiplayer is all team based. There's NO FREE-FOR-ALL game mode. If you are a newcomer who will get killed by the other team, you could get shunned by your own team mates for "feeding" points to the other team. I don't care if my team loses because this game needs work. -5 vs 5 deathmatch can turn into a flow of 5 vs 1. If they'd done 10 vs 10 with closer spawning, that would have created more opportunities to change the tides of battle. -The kill cam that's supposed to show how I died isn't helpful to telling me exactly how I die. Sometimes it's simply I'm shot by laser fire, but other times all I see is my ship's buttocks get hit by a mystery kind of missile, but I have no idea where the missile came from. I get one shot killed by who knows what, and from who? Is it a mine? I see some players don't hunt anyone down, but fly around at random, maybe just to drop a mine. If that were the case of how I died, then that would be lame. -The scoreboard should show up immediately after a match automatically. -The game should have had a dozen more maps. -When I try to divert power to different places of my ship, the game doesn't always acknowledge what I set it to. It's a fast paced game and this lacking has me attempting to set it quickly to as I want it several times until it works right. I could be killed in that time span. -Some of the online challenges require doing fleet battles, but there's no one doing fleet battles except in custom games. In the custom games that people set up, you can't earn any XP or progress through challenges. Stupid set up. -Sometimes I complete all of the challenges available for the time period and I'm left with no more challenges until it updates. There's very few offerings for challenges with a pathetically small reward for each. -It's a long grind to obtain XP to level up and gain credits to buy the cosmetics that you might want. The grind will get worse as time goes on with the game's population decreasing more and more. At least there are no microtransactions. I wouldn't support a game that's starved of content and then pushing for more sales of base game content. -I get disappointed when I find my character's features (cosmetics) get reset very regularly by a glitch. -The campaign has an entertaining story, but it's really a glorified tutorial. Terribly short with only 14 missions or so. You're locked to using the specific ship the game chooses to give you except for the very last missions. You can't even customize the paint scheme of your ship for campaign. -Several reviews state the campaign has forgettable characters, and I agree, but those reviews go as far as calling it propaganda just because there's a gay character in it. They are stressful that they aren't homophobic, but if they really weren't they shouldn't even acknowledge this as a sort of problem for them. There are no politics in the game. It's accurate to real life that people are different from one another. I can't see how they can say the story is ruined entirely by a character having a different sexuality than them. The game does have weak characters, but it's not because they're LGBTQ or different races. They just needed more personality.

Elden Ring is very fun! It's the best adventure gaming experience featuring an exquisitely crafted world with so much verticality, and amazing locations to explore such as impressive castles, creepy swamps, fun dungeons, and alien zones. Sometimes I find myself just looking at the beautiful scenery. Dynamic weather makes it all even more lively. There's like a hundred unique enemies including giant enemy crabs. Attack their weak point for massive damage. Also the characters are very interesting and they're all excellently voice acted. I also really appreciate the ability to change my character's appearance during a playthrough. The reason I'm mad at the game is that I put 14 hours into my first playthrough attempt stuck as a level 1 Tarnished. I defeated Godrick and made it as far as Royal Knight Loretta. By that point I was thinking I'm missing something because Loretta is defeating me in two strikes. I died to her about 15 times before I decided to research and find out I missed Melina who's stuck at one very specific bonfire (site of grace/whatever). I had to go to ONE VERY SPECIFIC SITE IN SOME RANDOM, SMALL, DESTROYED CHURCH. It doesn't stand out to me at all! One very specific destroyed building among a thousand?! The guy in the beginning told me to follow the light and I did. I went in the general direction and the light keeps pointing all the way to Loretta! Something as significant as that shouldn't have been passable so easily. If the Tarnished is so important, Melina should have been hunting me down like Mr. X in Resident Evil 2. I've had this exact same problem with Dark Souls 2. The world is too good looking. It made me run passed the church in a hurry to devour such delicious, yummy, shiny, trees. Otherwise, typical of the Souls games. I'm not sure what's the best route for leveling up my character. I'm always scared to put points into either strength or dexterity because I don't know if I'll come across a weapon that can fulfill my playstyle and stats. Same problem with choosing which weapon to upgrade. How will it's stats turn out in the end? I also wish for simplified item names. Antidote = poison cure. I'm not interested in the lore of fruit or moss or stuff, but I suppose that's how they make items naturally occur in the wilds. The dodge button doesn't always register in some moments like during the Crucible Knight's flying charge attack, or Elemer of the Briar's grab attack. Beyond that I can now level up, and I have my magical donkey to traverse much faster than I did. Other than finding a shiny tree to eat, I'm also seeking out bikini armor. So far I'm disappointed with not finding any bikini armor.