Recent reviews by maru

minthara baby just one chance

silly, arcadey, goofy fun. a breath of fresh air in the racing scene.
this game fills me with childlike whimsy and joy i haven't felt in ages - it just makes me want to keep playing more and more of it until i burn myself out.

i do not regret getting this one.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOO DON'T FORCE ME TO MAKE A PSN ACCOUNT BECAUSE SONY STEALS MY DATA EVEN THOUGH I HAVE 6 KERNEL-LEVEL ANTI CHEATS THAT DO EXACTLY THE SAME THING!!!!!!!!!"
gamers are stupid. especially PC gamers.

anyways good game, gets infinitely better when you don't listen to the community.

solid improvement from last year's mess, genuinely fun to play and such a joy to drive - even on a controller
probably the best F1 game we've gotten since 2020, heavily recommended!

blue dragons when

If i could give an "Inbetween" option for this game, i would.

It's good, just not as good as prior entries in the series - and come on now Fromsoft, you can do better with the franchise that gave you everything.

Starting off with the good:
-The Gameplay.

It's definitely one of the highlights of this entry, although it was simplified for better accessibility, it still retains that Armored Core charm from prior entries in the series, being able to move at lightning fast speeds without having to bounce around with my controller's inputs feels incredibly nice and responsive (and this entry, ironically enough, feels even better being played with a mouse and keyboard) and old strats in the series such as Bunnyhopping still being viable to do.

Although, i'd be lying if i said that i didn't prefer the overall complexity of the prior entries in the series, especially the PS2 era ones - having to quickly decide in the middle of combat between bunnyhopping and firing your weapons and drain energy and create heat in the process, or normally strafe and run while firing at the cost of your HP to conserve more energy and cool off your heat - was an interesting scenario that was all too common in the prior games, but sadly, these sorts of tactical decisions in the middle of combat are missing from this experience, to my own and many other players' detriment.

I will say though, the melee overhaul is nice - for once i'm grateful that i don't have to manually aim a melee attack against someone or something.

-The story.

The story, as always, is one of the major highlights of any AC game save for the 5th generation of games, it being sadly being pushed aside in those to favour online competitive gameplay over it.
This time we're back to branching story paths and multiple story endings across multiple playthroughs, something that hasn't been seen in the series since For Answer, and even better, Last Raven - the latter having SEVEN different endings across multiple playthroughs - the most content in the series story-wise to date.

The story's simple, and it draws many callbacks to prior entries in the series such as having a rogue AI as a main antagonist, or a mysterious Raven the player or main character can call their "equal" - alongside minor callbacks such as Raven's Nest being back once again, or series' standard anti-capitalist anti-war messages. (Would have loved it if the first mission was just "kill striking union workers" once again though.. it's a series tradition at this point, come on!)

To go along with this new story, there's also a bigger focus on characters and the voices speaking to you in missions, with many fan favorites to go along with it, such as your Handler - Walter, or "Cinder" Carla, or G1 Michigan, or Iguazu, possibly one of the best villains this series has ever seen.

Sadly, it has it's flaws. such as the mysterious pilot - Raven (that's her name, and sadly, it is not an overall title for AC Pilots anymore - like it should have been) barely being fleshed out throughout the story, and she comes and goes without any fanfare unlike prior pilots in the series such as White Glint, Zinaida, J or Nineball.

One of the corporations - Balam, is barely fleshed out too apart from having a charismatic leader and like i said before, possibly one of the best villains in the series. Iguazu.
After a mission in one of the halfway points in the game they just vanish without much explanation other than "they were defeated lol" even though they were doing alright a couple of missions ago...?
They also don't have an ending too, unlike the RLF, Arquebus and Walter's faction.
I just hope these blatant issues in the story can be addressed in a future expansion, please god Fromsoft, how did you let this slip past you?

Before we start with the negatives, i wanna list off two other positives. Customization and Accessibility.
AC Customization is possibly the best in the series yet, thanks to it's livery and emblem editor and minor additions such as weathering effects and different paint materials - the creativity you can express here is insane, and i've seen beautiful emblems and liveries created by the community, alongside more.. memey, and questionable ones.
And like i said before, the accessibility in this title is also incredibly good especially gameplay wise. thank God for Fromsoft deciding to make a PC port too, the first in the series to officially have one.

But sadly, here we go with the negatives.
-The OST.

"but maru, something so simple and minor as a big bad negative point!?" yes, yes actually.
OST's were a highlight of the franchise even in Generation 5, prior entries taking heavy inspiration from genres such as Breakcore, drum n bass, techno, rave and EDM of the time and etc - while generation 4 onwards approached the series with some gritty yet bombastic rock tracks made by Hoshino's FreQuency, with melodic orchestras to boot.
These titles and generations had legendary tracks such as Remember, Mechanized Memories, Apex in Circle, Pride of Lions, Vague Smoke, Cosmos, 9, and even the incredibly underrated PSP spinoff Formula Front had some bangers to go along with it, such as Isaku No. 373, Alpha-Shaped Formula, etc, etc, etc

but in this title...
the OST just feels, generic action-gamey and forgettable, it's like they went with a safe route instead of deciding to experiment again or bring back FreQuency.
People keep talking about Steel Haze (Rusted Pride) or Contact With You and others, but i just don't see it, i barely remember any of those tracks or how they sound like, i barely remember any of the tracks in this title and i've played nearly 40 hours of it.
It's such a disappointment, man.

-The boss design.
They're just souls bosses reskinned.
They don't feel like AC bosses at all, old AC bosses had some degree of unpredictability to them - although they followed set paths across a map sometimes, but they were aggressive and chased you down if you tried to put distance, etc, things like that.
but in this one they're just, big predictable messes with predictable and slow attacks that are easy to dodge.
The only highlight was the first Balteus fight on my very first playthrough pre-nerf, and even then i could already see a lot of issues with it and it's boss design.

The AC fights themselves too - it feels like they dumbed down AC fights to make the reskinned souls bosses a bigger highlight but i just.. don't, see it.
Enemy AC pilots just die incredibly easily - even the big bad hyped up ones later on in the story, and it's such a huge disappointment and missed opportunity, it's like they were afraid of making AC fights difficult out of fear of overwhelming the player or something, blegh.

This leads to another one of my big negatives, the stagger bar and it's mechanic.
I don't like it, i hate it, i f--ing hate it infact, it feels like a reskinned souls mechanic (Sekiro) and it shouldn't be in an AC game, period.
I hate the type of combat it presents, i hate how it feels, i hate how it ties into the bosses and how it's the main way of dealing damage against them, i hate it.
It's just not fun, i wish i could explain it better but it's just not fun, period.

-The lack of parts.
I dunno man, only 2 automatic weapons? like 2 pistols? the rest are just explosives, melee or semi automatic rifles? no sniper rifles while linear rifles act as a replacement? come on.
No hover legs, no weapon arms, the removal of parrying blades? no reintroduction of radiators and their heat mechanics? really?
hell, even stabilizers aren't back, they weren't really a huge part of 4th gen but come on, you could make your AC look cooler with them! and they provided some bonuses too! come on!

If i could, this review would be much longer, but sadly the word limit is getting to me.
Overall, AC6 is a 6/10 to me, its a good comeback for the franchise but it could have been so much more.
I hope an expansion and a possible 7th entry are better than this.

If Steam had an "inbetween" option, i would use it here.
I really like this game, it's a slow paced grinding brutal slog of a game that makes me feel guilty everytime i lose one of my companies to a hidden MG i couldn't spot in time, but at the same time its insanely boring and repetitive and frustrating at times.

It's performance is horrid, the intel system doesn't make sense and isn't even that relevant to begin with, the AI is dumb as bricks sometimes and ontop of that, it's overpriced and has Denuvo. (Which is one of the main culprits of this game's horrible performance)

But even after experiencing all of these negatives first-hand.. i still find myself coming back to this game over and over and over again.
It captures the first world war experience like no other, it scratches every itch that NTW's WW1 mod cannot scratch, it makes me feel things that i cannot even describe in a short review. Sending young men to their deaths has never been more fun..
War is hell.

Do i recommend it? maybe, on sale for sure (maybe on a bigger sale than -25% off right now though..) and after more time has passed since it does need to iron out a lot of issues and include more content, give it maybe another year or so.

I'll give this one a 6.5/10, maybe even a 7 or more after some more time passes.

(please for the love of god remove Denuvo, the game runs like ASS because of it!)

its fun for a bit before you realize how small the map is
reused assets everywhere, no new cars other than reused ones from older entries, 20 dollar pricetag, pacenotes are not accurate to irl rallying, barely any events to keep you engaged...
what a lazy, half-assed piece of junk.

hard pass from me.
atleast the antilag/misfiring system is a cool feature i guess?
2/10, would have been a 1 if not for the antilag.

BOBR KURWA!!!!

project reality is better

and free

and only 10-ish gb in size

and completely standalone from battlefield 2

go play that instead of this piece o' crap