Recent reviews by Shadowlet

I 100%'d the game in around 50 hours, those extra four being spent customizing mechs and playing online.

Never did I think a game was as fun as Armored Core 6, enough to 100% it and go through three playthroughs.

Stagger encourages offensive gameplay and I have never felt underpowered for the bosses besides the Balteus mission. Once you get through one more boss hurdle near the end of the game it has pretty much trained you for everything else to come.

Almost perfection. Just hoping FromSoft could make multiplayer lobbies more flexible. No FFA and iirc you can't choose who get's to play next.

Exactly how a Dreamcast/Xbox era game would play. Both the good and the bad.

A tad bit overpriced.

Dev would rather spend 300h every two weeks (whether afk or not) playing Team Fortress 2, Gmod, and Isaac instead of finishing the game. They promised a level pack a week after their comment back in MARCH 2023 and there's still no update for this game since DECEMBER 2022.

Last year I sent in a support ticket to report unresponsive main menu controls and flashing keyboard->controller prompts when using a controller and not even something as simple as that was fixed. Keep in mind their support tickets are sent through a third-party and the ticket took two weeks+ for a response and said something along the lines of "we're/dev is aware"

In the same ticket I also mentioned that Practice Mode (level select mode) categorises levels in a confusing way (themes instead of difficulty packs like Arcade) and that it's difficult to even start a level but that issue wasn't looked into either.

The game wasn't very good looking before and it was "updated" to be uglier in some areas imo. On top of the placeholder UI elements that are still present..

I have zero faith for this project now.

Relevant image:
https://i.imgur.com/QjLm7Qv.png

EDIT:
On August 26th 2023 the Expert level pack update was finally pushed out and yet it wasn't even worth the wait since the declared March date.

All this extra time to put out new levels as well as old ones in order to fit the 100 levels quota for Expert, not all the levels in Expert are even new. The Basic course was removed too so all the courses have been rearranged, some have been reworked too. However, for two years now the main menu is STILL entirely non-functional on controller. Also there's still dev stuff left in such as the Unreal Engine asset loading screen pre-main menu, random timer in the bottom left with default font, and the log controls.

Practice level sorting is still ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up. Why aren't these sorted like the Arcade maps? Some don't even have thumbnails. Arcade levels are missing thumbnails entirely..

Why did we wait all this extra time since March for?

EDIT 2:
Nov 2024 and everything is still relevant. No updates since the Expert drop. Main menu hillariously still doesn't work.

Supposedly one of the game's levels (Soap Box) doesn't even have a goal LMAO.

Made an edit to better explain the Expert update.

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A roguelite with a Blazblue skin. Story and lore have nothing to do with Blazblue whatsoever.

Despite that it's a damn great looking game and runs great (it also has a mobile release go figure) along with fluid gameplay and multiple characters with their own gimmicks.

MP and SP resources aren't entirely clear as you have too look at the (tiny) skill icons to see if you have enough to use that specific skill. You acquire a character's skill moveset over the course of a run and they're either directional or hold inputs on the same button as the basic skill so you can't really bind them to separate buttons.

Two other things that weren't initially clear:

- Heavy attacks exist and can be used by holding the basic attack button or otherwise is used at the end of a combo.
- Entropy is a number that builds up as you go through rooms. Unless you get rid of it through using one of the 10 levels in a zone to Rest then you have a %chance to corrupt and get a negative mod. For why this exists I'm not sure but I saw a few permanent upgrades that activate if you are corrupted. Perhaps it can change?

Cool thing in this game is that your previous run's characters are saved in a catalogue that you can take up to two with you and you'll now have the ability to use one of the two characters' skills which both have a shared cooldown. There's up to three other benefits per character you can get but they need to have a high enough run score.

There's a challenge mode which grants tokens to unlock new characters if you beat them. You need to build up a strong catalogue character in order to beat each mission and you only get one chance per saved character before they become unusable.


Gripes:
- Blazblue game but the characters have reused JP voicelines but the robot characters all speak Chinese. I can't stand hearing the language but either way a Blazblue game should have JP dubbing.

- Dashing out of an attack only cancels the endlag I believe but I wish I could cancel out of an attack earlier as I find myself locked in at times.

- Character sprites and portraits are reused from the fighting games but honestly I don't mind this.

- (Dualshock controller) Game has O to confirm and X to cancel by default (both apply to menus). The interact key is also on O but if you bind it to X your character does a jump before the game moves on. Please fix this, I binded it back to O in the meantime.

- Shader/Storage Drive stuttering. I have the game installed on an HDD and during some boots the game has unbearable couple second long pauses at times and it's hard not to feel annoyed. I'll be running through the gate that takes me to the next room and my character will still be running at the gate despite me reaching it.

- Some boss attacks can be unclear and untelegraphed at times so I'm more reliant on memorizing what poses do what attacks more than using reaction.
* Key examples are the Serpent's sand pillars which track underneath you and barely have a tell.
* Fat guy in the first zone has multiple aoe attacks and enrages that sometimes do damage and other moves that don't despite them looking like they should.
* Arakune's dash attack can start offscreen and goes from edge to edge of the arena. The only tell is the sound effect.

Starting Season 10, the game will now have songs exclusively locked behind FOMO Battle Passes inside a new "Clear Pass+" song category.
https://steamoss.com/steamstore/news/app/960170/view/3660915440960800678

The different exosuits are real fun and unique to play, especially the sniper character (Widowmaker/Ana but bonkers) and the tank samurai Muramasa. Mindless dino clearing is especially satisfying when you nuke a bunch of them.

Supposedly there's six maps total so far but you initially have access to two. Three hours in and I haven't seen one of the other four. These are story-gated and to progress story you just play X amount of games. There's also a lore wheel with I want to say there's 100 different nodes where characters discuss the specific discovery about the island. These are also progression-gated.

The PvP queue feels like a ♥♥♥♥ show at the end when you start trying to kill off the enemy team and hinder their progress. Damage and abilities overload especially when people start blowing their ults like an Overwatch fight. As I mentioned before maps are story-gated but the only PvP final mission I've seen is a Payload mode ala Overwatch/Paladins.

The PvE queue final missions you just have to compete against the enemy team to clear objectives faster. That's basically it.

Apart from the Dino Horde mode there's also another which is pretty much a time trial? I haven't unlocked it yet. But yea there is pretty much only much two modes with maps that have rotating routes and objectives. According to one of the Steam News Posts for the game there's around five regular objectives and five final mission objectives but I've only seen one of each so far. Seems like it'll take a while till I find some variety.

I never touched the Aliens horde shooter but I've been looking for something new and for once it feels like a game with "hero" characters did it right. Unlike other games that shoehorned "Overwatch heroes" into their game.

You can argue that there's not enough content to make it worth full price but it does have that AAA Capcom quality to it. Even the story cutscenes are engaging and characters are witty although I'm barely interested in the overall plot. It was worth my purchase and don't regret just playing it for a couple days on Game Pass instead.

There's cross-play but no cross-play parties at launch although Capcom said they're working to add it. Japanese companies...

On a sidenote, this along with Street Fighter 6 and Re:Verse use the Capcom ID system yet there is ZERO cross-progression across platforms for all three games. PLEASE CAPCOM.

Ranked matchmaking broken, only getting Top 1% of players...

Every character plays fullscreen this ♥♥♥♥ is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sleeper.

Old devs leave (or removed because of snake employees), Autumn Games steps in to censor the game.

R I P

SMT4 Overworld Music > SMT3's and the rest