Recent reviews by Midas

They have inexplicably made the game even worse. It's prettier, but it's one of the worst survival games I've ever played. They've dumbed down the game with every major update, to the point that it's basically just an arcady looter-shooter now.

Content is somewhat limited, but game is great overall.

It's seriously lacking in content and replayability unless you really like building nice looking houses just for the sake of building them. The world is reasonably large, with a variety of areas to explore, but it all gets very repetitive and bland very quickly, without a lot of stuff to look forwards to, or complex mechanics to keep one engaged.

Currently would only buy the game on sale, and even then just to see what it's about.

I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.



I guess I should add more detail.

The bad

Narration: It's basically non-existent. Not only is it non-existent, but it contradicts the established story. Talon are suddenly high-tech. Xirax are suddenly fine with helping the UCH. UCH actually has a whole faction presence in one of the star clusters. None of this is explained. You're just told to go to point A, B, C, D, etc, with no reason, no story, no explanation of why or what you're doing. There are objectives that give the impression there is SUPPOSED to be some kind of story about rallying the various factions together to help fight the dark faction, but someone forgot to actually put all the dialog and story in. It's a huge shame because there could have been some amazing implications from the story here, but it just didn't happen. It really sucks to finally see a full UCH faction and high-tech Talon faction and have both be basically irrelevant.

Direction: Also basically non-existent. You're told to read the FAQ, and that's the extent of it. The FAQ only gives very broad, generic information, and does very little to prepare you for what's to come.

Pacing: The game gives you nothing but a timer, and doesn't tell you what that timer is actually for (spoiler: It's actually nothing major). You know it has something to do with the spread of the dark faction, but not what will actually happen. So do you take your time because it's a survival game, or do you rush the objectives because they contain nothing anyways and you're on a timer? Turns out you're basically screwed either way, because either you take it slow and end up having to learn the hard way that the dark field will make your ship sink like a rock on an infected planet and potentially strand you there as if you accidentally stumbled on a 10g planet, or you rush and end up facing down the final POI with nothing but a sword and light armor and end up getting your ship stranded anyways.

Design: The 'galaxy' you are given is absolutely abysmal. It's a tiny cluster of stars that are color-coded to each faction (Yes, those stars are not blue because they're super-hot Type-O stars, they're blue because they're UCH territory stars), most of the systems are just one planet orbiting each star, the playfields are tiny, the resources are scarce, and the neutral POIs are basically nonexistent. It's a chore to even find materials, and salvage opportunities are virtually nil.

Melee: The melee is very basic. It's functional, but it's really nothing special, nothing DLC-worthy. You get a single basic swipe attack and that's it. It's not even a fast spammable attack, it's a very slow, casual, in-no-kind-of-hurry horizontal swipe. No combos, no heavy attack. Attached to the sword is a magic health bubble that costs nothing and gives you 1000-2000 health (depends on sword). You get a bar to see how much of a health bubble you have, but there's no indication of the cooldown, so you have to just guess or mash the button until it pops up again. Oh, and the sword breaks after a few swings and can't be repaired. I have to carry 4 at once if I want it to actually last through a POI.


The Good

Survival mode: The DLC can actually be enabled in survival mode, so that's nice.

The Dark Faction: This is not too bad, actually. The core mechanic of the DLC, the whole terraforming fungal super-virus spreading across the galaxy actually works as advertised, and is overall a neat addition to the game.
Caveat: I worry how quickly it will be able to spiral out of control in a normal survival game, however, with a whole galaxy to consume. It would be incredibly boring to reach a point where every single sector and every single world look the same because it's effectively impossible to hold the spread back on a galactic scale by yourself. So it has the potential to completely ruin saves, and I would be very cautious about enabling it on your favorite survival save without backing it up first.

The Doom Music: Yes, there's doom music when you fight the dark faction enemies. It's so bad it's good, but I'll just file it under 'good' as a freebie.

Overall, the DLC is more bad than good. It remains to be seen if Eleon will address any of these issues, as well as whether or not enabling the DLC in survival is not just a really bad idea.

Solid game, excellent armored core. Feels like they paid homage to various eras of the franchise in different ways to create a definitive armored core experience.

Reminds me a little bit of STALKER, and a little bit of the old classic fps Blood, along with a nice respawn/death penalty system a bit like a souls-like.

The game is only 2 maps currently, but I easily spent 12 hours on each.

Matchmaking is awful. Takes like 10 attempts to get into one game, and every time it fails you have to manually start it all over again.

UI is abysmal. There's massive input delay, and there's no mouse functionality at all.

It's a shame, because there's a solid mech game here, but right now it's buried under the rubble of a lazy port job.

Great game. Will be even better when all the DLC is out.

The game is very raw, but the premise is amazing. Worth checking out and keeping an eye on.

I'm surprised the game had a rating above 'mixed' when I bought it, because it really is a blatantly mediocre game. Even on sale, I'm not convinced it's worth it. Just within the first 2 levels, you can see how shallow the game is. The forced stealth gameplay is shallow and boring, the action sequences are awkward to play and not very satisfying, with swarming dummy enemies and rock-paper-scissors mechanics. It reminded me a bit of playing Prototype, except inferior in basically every respect.