What are we thinking about this one KIA2?
After sometime with it. Regardless of if/if not you believe it's woke trash I will absolutely hand them credit for not having MTX and having a (mostly) complete game at launch.
Now on to the other shit...
Wokeness - Honestly? Sure there's a bit of it sprinkled on (Pronouns) but I can confidently say at this point that it never felt like it was forced down my throat or that woke topics were an inherently "positive" thing to witness. Even the flamboyant gay characters like Astarion seem to be there for comedic release and "playersexual" has been a thing since Dragon Age: Origins.
It appears to me that the dev's cared a little less about pushing a message and more of: "I'm going to just throw my hands up, do what you want!" All of the interactions in the game seem less set to follow "ThE MeSsAgE" and more to allow the player to "Have at it!". I mean hell, if I see some faggots or some niggers I can straight up delete em cause Paladin go brrrrrr.
All in all, I've been enjoying it. More than Armored Core and Starfield thus far.
(Armored Core VI fucking blows donkey dick also. Not a bad game, but sure as fuck isn't AC.)
I have only watched some videos of it and have no interest in it at all. It comes off as very ugly to me. I've been playing Armored Core 6 and enjoying it a lot. If you consider it to be "Not AC" I wonder what you do consider to be Armored Core, using one analog stick? It's less crazy than 4 was in terms of movement, but more restrictive in terms of weapons.
Correct, the art is bad and I've noticed as well that there are even raycasting issues in the game. Especially in the city with so much junk and collision it's very easy to misclick in the narrow alleyways because they didn't think about the camera angles at all.
From an artist perspective, you have to think about how game mechanics interact with your models. However it's like they simply built their landscapes and cities and then just went "Fuck it" instead of checking anything worked which is a really bad look for them. Also, their hair is still buggy and weird, I would rather see static hair than whatever this crap is I don't like many of the hairstyles that were on offer either. I think they heavily relies on some kind of transparent textures for their hair especially the short styles because they don't seem to be rendering correctly even at ultra settings.
The NPCs themselves are just generic human models they've edited up, some of the companions getting more attention to detail than others but even the other races sometimes look like they've just had horns, ears or tails stuck on them to make them look more 'fantasy'. I don't like as well how much background detail there is in the game. It's not only confusing about where you can actually go because they haven't clearly marked the out of bounds but also I'm convinced that's one of the main reasons their FPS is so chuggy.
Issues with it:
Lack of customization options to do various different builds in fun or unique ways.
Only a few weapon sets are really viable.
Disgusting "Souls" stagger mechanic.
Enemy types are boring as hell.
"Souls" Boss Fights.
Armored Core 2 was my favorite. I also love the Souls games, but this ain't it for me.
Yeah I wish there was more weapon variety. Some things are way stronger than others.
Souls does not have any stagger mechanics like that, only Sekiro really does.
The small enemies in levels are pretty boring. But I've enjoyed most of the boss fights with a few exceptions.
I never played 2. Just some of 1 and 4 before this. I hope they use this as a good base to build off of for an expansion or sequel. It is a bit thin, but I enjoyed my 1st playthrough a good deal.
Elden Ring, Bloodbourne have it as well.
Yeah I'm not shooting em down for a sequel, but I was rather unimpressed by this entry.