This in turn as before does make things feel a bit samey when you aren't fighting a Colossal or Arsenal. Many maps are quite small, and most missions are beaten within minutes and some in under a minute. Certain negative elements of Armored Core basic mission design are still there. ![]() While its art design does help the character and mecha models to work just fine and it's nice to look at (very neat explosion and dust cloud effects), the hangar bay and Orbital area desperately needs more stuff to walk around in and interact with. Very clearly a budget title (then again, that's not exactly new). A choice between character creation in the first place and becoming a faceless cyborg just to try out some of the more interesting options (even if I hear that a lot of people don't like how Blink controls) or have a melee build is kind of a dick move that adds nothing. Similarly, the pilot skill tree is basically ruined by the visual side effects. To me the particular thing is that there should be more Shoulder and Auxiliary parts to use. Another example is that it has only biped Arsenals, which IMO is a good thing because that should be the focus and it has allowed for things like letting Arsenals throw stuff, but you can't help but notice the absence of Tank, Quad, and Hover legs. ![]() While you can technically 'multiply' the number due to the mods each part can mount, it does leave a shortage of weapon variety (an example relevant to me is that I was a big fan of gatlings in 4 and For Answer, and they're absent albeit the Machine Gun Arm does the same function as they did, but it's an aesthetic thing). However, the streamlining does come at the cost of a pretty steeply reduced number of parts. Another good change is that Memory Capacity (the replacement for Lifting Capacity because as a stat it would be silly when Arsenals have ant-like proportional strength and can lift things vastly heavier than themselves) doesn't count against your Hanger units until you wield them, which again encourages variation. + Some of the mechanical streamlining works out, reducing the secondary damage variables from V's three to two in DXM puts more value to loadout adaptability and folding generators and boosters into body benefits the salvage model. + While I'm not a fan of how most of the shoulder weapons look, the aesthetics of the game remain very good which isn't a surprise with Kawamori in charge of mecha design. It gives a little addictive element to Exploration mode, and encountering enemies using weapons you haven't seen before. + IMO the looter-shooter system used for salvage actually works. I have done my Exploration only solo this far. For one thing, it finally makes a more extended and endurance oriented mission type that allows for mechanics to be put to a different kind of stress test, and by being basically arena-dungeon it allows for delivering additional mecha enemies to fight in possibly alternate challenges thrown in. + While it is a bare-bones kind of procgen, there are two things that Exploration mode does that add to the basic formula of Armored Core games. Like, you might as well be like the genre you're simulating without shame. I personally don't mind the extremely cliche and super anime story (delivery is still pretty stilted, just not a mess like in Armored Core), it's nice to have a big dumb adventure once in a while and mecha sims haven't really had something of that scope and style since Zone of the Enders which doesn't even really count since those aren't mecha sims. + The addition of the pilot as a visible and on occasion playable is a small but important touch, and really adds something to these games. Apparently this wasn't quite as balanced in the earlier versions on Switch. + Overall balance of parts in the Steam launch state is fairly decent for these types of games, there's nothing like dual Wyrm or various other ways of cheesing in the spiritual predecessors. + The Armored Core type control scheme actual translates pretty well to MKB, it feels good to zippity-zaggity around in style of 4 and For Answer. In a lot of ways it's a two steps forward, one step back situation. ![]() I liked it better than V and Verdict Day, maybe a bit less than For Answer (as a single player experience it has a lot more meat on it than For Answer, but in some aspects like mechanical depth and part variety For Answer is still unbeaten). I personally had a great time with it so far.
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