Recent reviews by Ms Placed Optimism

The game is monetized in a very predatory manner, the USSR/Russian Bias is ludicrous at times and the developers seem to be unable to add anything without breaking something else. The recent bundle deals are very good value comparatively, but given the fact that they just (at the time of this review) broke almost all guided missiles and explosive shells, the game is in a terrible state.

I got this for Christmas.
I do not currently recommend this until a bit of rebalancing is done.

Right now;

1] Things spawn out of mid-air far too close to the player. Suddenly a billion dogs right up your left nostril.

2] Things soak damage too much. You need about 12 headshots with an assault rifle to kill a bloodsucker. It will take 3/4 of your health with one swipe. Dogs also take 3 rifle rounds to put down. They often attack in packs of about 9. Lowering enemy HP by about 50% would be sensible.

3] Stealth is entirely broken. You can be spotted while stationary in pitch black, through trees and bushes at a range of 200m or more.


The game is otherwise quite a lot of fun. Beautiful scenery, runs quite well, fun to explore places.
Give the team a bit of time to polish this game and it'll be really awesome.

I think the title for this game should be changed to:

Stormworks: Build and Spend Hundreds of hours trying to figure out how to build a simple vehicle.

Stormworks has lots of scope for creativity, but is very fiddly and difficult to make anything work nicely. It is incredibly difficult to actually build a working, useful vehicle for the missions.

The missions themselves also have basically no contextual value to them, If you build a helicopter you might get underwater rescue missions, or right after starting the game on an island and building a small boat, I've been asked to travel onto dry land to put out a land-based forest fire.

The size of the world is immense and due to the difficulty of perfecting a vehicle you may find your aircraft just gets struck by lightning, all the power goes out, and you fall in the ocean, or your vehicle isn't fuel efficient enough and you've spent a full real-time hour travelling towards the mission only to run out of fuel.

Normally this isn't an issue with games, but the time taken to discover issues is compounded on top of the other issues with the game that makes it just a very frustrating experience.

For at least the last 10 times I've launched this game, I've started a project to build a vehicle, only go give up after getting bored because it takes longer to try and wire up vehicle logic or troubleshoot an engine than actually building and designing the vehicle itself.

On top of all of these gripes, the developers don't seem to really care very much about issues, streamlining or enriching existing content and have been simply churning out DLC or features that do nothing for the original core concept of the game.

I wanted to do missions to rescue people, but now apparently I can shoot guns, go to space and now go fishing. Great... /s

Personally avoid, unless you're a galaxy brain creative genius, at which point, I hope you know LUA.

I was hoping that this would be a return to the excellence of Armored Core 1-through-3.

Generally, it proved to be so! I was very much excited by it and gameplay generally felt a bit like older AC titles even though you slide around a bit more. Weapon selection, general feel of gameplay is solid.

Then you get to the boss fights.
I have no problem with the concept of a souls-like game existing. I even have a few 'souls' games AND Elden Ring. I generally don't like them that much and, unfortunately, they used a giant robot shoehorn to wedge Dark Souls' boss arenas into Armored Core VI.

I haven't had 'trouble' eventually beating various bosses, but what it hasn't been is fun. I get no fun from repeating the same arena battle against a bullet sponge enemy, especially when a mis-timed jump has you eat a heavy attack from the boss. Good luck winning if you get hit before you get the boss below 50% HP!

A lot of bosses are also extremely absurd to deal with;

In the case of Balteus, he fires so many rockets in all directions that make it excessively difficult to actually dodge them, especially when the actual rockets are OFF THE SCREEN when you're looking at the boss.
Even perfectly timing the dodge mechanic wasn't useful. The best option was simply to run my AC right at him and eat all the splash damage. If you can do it at just the right angle, you don't get staggered and you don't take 3500 damage.

Cleaner is also just a pain in the ass. You are in a small arena. There is a weak-spot on it's face, and one high up on it's back in a sort of smelter that looks a bit like a hermit crab shell. The ceiling, however, is very low. The only way to beat it is to repeatedly restart at the checkpoint over and over and over again and dodge everything perfectly all the time, because with the boss's movements, attacks and small weak-spots, you need to survive for about 15 minutes straight.
He's not even really difficult mechanically, he's just such a bullet sponge that it takes forever, and if you make a mistake, you are probably screwed immediately, because even CONTACT with the boss knocks your AC back, which means you get hit, you try to dodge, graze it's claw, get staggered, right into another claw hit. practically instant death. This usually happens because you're wedged against a wall.

The SEA SPIDER is the latest boss, not too soon after the Cleaner (within about 10 minutes if you keep playing and do the short mission in between quickly). It's quite easy to deal damage to, the problem is it's a laser light show of missiles, charge lasers and regular guns spewing everywhere all the time. That you can't see because it's off screen all the time. It's at that point that I call it quits for now.


Armor mechanic means you have to be close to a boss to actually hurt it, up close means the camera is an absolute waste of time, because you will see nothing and you will not be happy.

Dodging doesn't actually seem to give i-frames for dodging the ridiculous missile-massacre spam the bosses throw out.

Hitpoint sponging is annoying. Fighting the ACs is fun, they dodge and hit hard, but the fights are shorter and sweeter. ACs are much more interesting and fulfilling to fight and even more fun to lose to. The bosses are just rote repetition that kill you by making you do the same things for 10 minutes till you screw it up.

Fighting the heavy MTs is generally lots of fun too! They stand up to a good bit of damage, and can definitely kill you if you mess up, without being total bulletsponges.


I'd like a mod to remove most of the boss arenas. If it had that, it would be way more entertaining and much more 'Armored Core' of old.


TL;DR

The game puts un-fun roadblocks in the way of the fun content.
Wait for a sale.

An MTX-ridden game, barely supported by developers who only care about you as long as you're paying. Fun enough for some occasional fighting but not particularly well balanced. Also, the devs have a nasty habit of bait-and-switching their sales. If you play this game and give them any money, expect your promises to be broken. I can only suggest this title to people who already love Mechwarrior as a franchise and just want a way to play with friends.

I cannot currently recommend this game. As of writing this, I have 63.1 hours on record. ALL of that time has been spent trying to download the game, with downloads hanging, restarting or interrupting themselves. Avoid if you're forced to use a Wi-Fi connection, as it seems like people using ethernet have less trouble.

I've been invited to amend my review after 18 more hours. That's 18 more hours of downloading. I've got approx. 20Gb left to go. Unless they can fix this, steer clear if you NEED to use Wi-Fi.

Update #2. It took almost exactly 100 hours to finish the download. The game is playable, but has quite a few bugs. In most games, a bug or two isn't much of an issue, but you don't want to fly an airliner for four hours only to have the ailerons stop working properly as you come in for landing! (A new known issue.) -

I would suggest avoiding the game for a little while, until they get some of the big issues fixed. They update every two weeks or so, which means you can be stuck with game breaking bugs for an extended period.

This game has proved to be an IMMENSE amount of fun. It's great to pick up and play when you've got 15 minutes free. Pure unadulterated FUN!

Just be aware that the game is way more popular than the devs anticipated so the servers are up/down and connection issues are abound. They're working on it, so let's be patient! When they're stable, the game is a real gem. Worth the wait!

The camera is terrible and there is no way to play a private game without setting steam into offline mode.
Also they added micro-transactions since I bought this in early access.

Lastly: Screw Gearbox, Screw The Unreal Engine.

There's nothing quite like hitting the open road and going for a long drive. Nothing except this game! I love hitching up my trailer and then just cruising for hours.

I cannot knowingly allow someone to purchase this game without knowing that the latest EULA update allows TakeTwo Interactive to collect and distribute your personal data. This data includes your home address, phone number and even your payment information.