Castlevania 64, Legacy of Darkness, and How We Re-evaluate Action Games Released in the Pain Zone
June 22nd, 2024At what point is a game unjustly maligned? When is a Flawed Gem merely a stone? When we say a game was brave and experimental... was it? Or was it a predictable failure of the times it was made? Does a failed product need to be secretly kinda good, or important, or influential to deserve respect?
No. And while I am unsure exactly how I fall on Castlevania 64 and it's strange seque-xpansion, I walk away respecting these games. I find myself dwelling on how people try to rehabilitate flawed titles like these. Because does a game need to be good to be enjoyed? Does it have to be good to appreciate the high level of skill that made into making it? Does a game have to be good to be under appreciated?
No.
Castlevania 64
Castlevania 64 is a miserable game to play. Not in a "turned the limitations into a feature" way like Metroid II. Not even in a "the combat is crummy, but you can work around it and that's not the point of the game anyways" way like King's Field. Unfortunately, combat in this game is both bad and a central focus. As is platforming, complete with a poorly controllable, sometimes downright ungovernable camera.
Reinhardt moves like a bus. You can lock on, but rotating fast enough to actually use that lock is a challenge. Enemies in the abysmal first area, the Forest of Silence, spawn constantly. It feels like you're playing Spartan-X/Kung Fu, walking a few steps, whipping a few foes, trying to turn to get the ones behind you, walking a little farther, hear a skeleton spawn, turn and whip again.
Your reward for trying to explore and puzzle solve in this samey brown space is awful, high stakes platforming. With temperamental jumping physics. On blocks that look like they were taken from a developer test level.
Castlevania 64 does not put its best foot forward. This is not so much a factor of developer skill, but industry knowledge. Even in 1999 we were still trying to figure out these 3d games, especially these types of console action games. Most games of this era with camera control were slow and lower stakes. To make navigating these 3d worlds tolerable, a lot of these games needed to be about movement. Action games had a different issue. Virtually all successful action games of this period were some kind of shooter. An FPS like Goldeneye ties your camera to your movement, a game like Metal Gear Solid locks things into a virtual 2d playspace. A game like Omega Boost uses rail-shooter like controls and homing weapon lock-on systems to lesson the controller load on the game. Melee games? Early 3d fixed camera beat-em-ups, or slow, more adventurous games like Zelda, which also have less of an emphasis on platforming style movement. Even much later, genre defining games like Devil May Cry, which finally began cracking the code, did so with limited camera movement. There is a reason this era is dominated by Collectathons, Racing games, and FPSs(For real, look at the top 100 selling games from this era).
To make intense action work, often something has to be taken away. Even in 2d, the intense, high stakes action of a game like Contra is made manageable by removing the player's ability to control the height of their jumps. This is something most players don't even realize. Players can't manage everything, you design around what you want your players to focus. We can't expect you to feather the jump button while shooting at the same time!
Castlevania 64 has big ambitions, so it tries to offload a lot. Reinhardt's whip as a massive range to it, while Carrie's projectiles home-in belligerently. The Lock-on button, while fussy, is trying to move your focus onto movement and timing rather than aiming. Even the multi modal camera, while a failure, was an attempt to solve a difficult problem that we struggle with even decades later.
Games do not progress forward by bad designers making bad decisions, waiting until a good designer shows us how things are done. We need good designers to try and fail too. Like a scientific paper that fails to prove its premise, this failure is important. You can't know if you can make a fully 3d castlevania without compromise until you try and make one.
These were risks that made sense for the times and it is important to contextualize these failures in their era. While the game was seen as having problems in it's day, the game was still largely well received. Reviewers liked it. My friends at the time had a more... luke warm response, but nothing approaching hate. The abysmal reputation this game has came after a few years time, as games continued to evolve at the breakneck pace(Devil May Cry comes only 2 years after this). A curious, if flawed attempt at 3d action that became a miserable, backward experience only a few years later.
It's hard to imagine design moving that fast when in 2024, when we've been making the same genre of AAA games for over 10 years. I could write a whole essay how this pace damaged the brains of those who lived though it, numbing our abilities to reassess what is old, outside the lens of nostalgia. So what does Castlevania 64 do that is worth reassessing?
It's hard to understate how much damage the Forest of Silence did to me. Where many games try to start on their best foot, Castlevania 64 starts by highlighting all of it's flaws, a painful preview of what this game could not succeed at being. I almost quit the game right here when it turned out I didn't make a save file properly(The game defaulting to NOT making a save file is such an insane decision through a modern lens, but it makes sense in the era of memory cards) and had to replay most of the first level again. This game is even worse than people say it is!! Your failures rarely felt like your own. Even the cool giant skeleton boss struggles with the systems of the game. You can't tell if you're not hitting him because of a failure of the lock-on system or some invulnerability. The fundamental, reliable feed back that made the old Castlevanias work was missing.
Switching to Carrie helped a lot. While she didn't make combat good, she helped to minimize one of the worst parts of the game. Getting out of the Forest and to the Castle Walls was a relief. A slower paced stage, with platforming that, while still questionable, was kinda the right fit for the game and it's physics. Still the same respawning skeletons and dubious lock-ons, and bizarrely implemented Medusa heads, but a step up enough to get a little farther...
The Castle Villa
The Villa is what changed my perception of this game and what it could be. Combat and platforming were de-emphasized, a small nuisance to keep you on your toes as you explore. The Villa is about vibes. Peaceful yet eerie music plays, giving relaxing you while giving a slight hint that things are unwell. A gentle storm blows by, lighting gently flashing silently in the distance like a hot summer day.
... It's melancholy. You explore listlessly. You find a few NPCs to talk to. The little fighting you do is against frail Stained Glass Knights(Clearly a CV style movie reference to Young Sherlock and the first ever CGI character) and ineffective Ghosts. You encounter a well dressed man, a demon, who wishes not to fight, but do business, selling you goods as he sits, legs politely, legs casually crossed with comfortable sophistication. He's ready to aid you. He knows what the contract says(Spend 30,000 and he'll lay claim to your soul)...
This is one of the few places you use the day/night cycle. Its overall inclusion feels half baked, but in this moment, in this thin slice of video game, we see the vision. A living world, moody interiors, solving puzzles in a haunted house. NPCs with routines. Vincent, the Vampire Hunter, sleeps during the night and walks around during the day. Rosa shows up at dawn to water her white flowers. You can use the mirrors about the rooms to identify vampires. You can visit the hedge maze (and, you know, get chased by a guy with a chainsaw). In this small section of game there is so much atmosphere, so much intrigue, a deep wanting for something larger. It feels bigger than it actually it. It feels like the team had 3 different ideas of what Castlevania 64 should be. This is the vision of Castlevania 64 that lost, but this small shard of it still remains, a beautiful, fleeting moment. This is what won me over. It was walking in to the Villa when I thought, for a moment, that maybe, just maybe, this game was actually great.
... And then it was gone.
Teased Highs and Crushing Lows
The game never reaches this high point again, though I did not know it as I played through the game blind. I went into every stage with a little hope that we'd see more of the other Castlevania 64 that I just saw.
You get a bit of it in the Castle Center, a sprawling map that represents actually being in Castlevania. You explore rooms, finding Pre World War I technology in development. You find Lizard-Men cloning chambers. You find crude electric engines, radio equipment, and scale a scale model of a zeppelin. It feels like Dracula is preparing for war. You realize the era this game is in. It is, for its faults, immersive. You look at all these devices with deep curiosity, knowing some of them will be important at some point. Despite not being the Villa, the game is succeeding. Hell, you find an ASTROLAB!
... And then you pick up the Magic Nitro.
This is easily the lowest point of the game. You carry a volatile explosive, that will explode if you jump, fall, or get hit, through this whole sprawling level, taking roundabout paths to avoid obstacles. You spend minutes in slow moving gears to avoid climbing a waist high wall. You do all this and find the detonator and go to set it off, only to realize... you did it too soon. It can't blow up the magic shield on the wall. I thought this WAS to destroy the magic shield!
You have to go, blow up another wall, find another secret(It's the Astrolab, so at least that's cool), and then do this long, arduous path all over again. It is miserable. It is boring. It is frustrating. It sucks. Most flaws in this game are explainable. Making games is hard! But this... this is a place where they fucked up royally and the game suffers massively for it. Many players have quit on this exact spot, deciding that Castlevania 64 wasn't worth the effort. They didn't miss out on much after this point.
Your reward for this is fighting a behemoth, whose body crumbles and melts as you harm it(A clean Rondo of Blood reference), who would be a cool set piece if he wasn't designed to be almost impossible to dodge. A high point gets ruined by a boss you have to beat using stage collision exploits. What should have been the stage that made the game becomes one of its biggest flaws.
From here, things get more even. The "Towers" are mostly okay stages, but they are about platforming and combat. There is some atmosphere to be had. The Tower of Science had a pretty cool vibe! The tower of Sorcery... sucks. But it sucks in the way late 90s platformers suck. Reinhardt's stages focus more of combat with few, larger enemies. That's the type of combat that works the best with the systems of this game. These stages function, but they feel like filler.
Time
Then it's time for the Clock Tower. You enter the Clock Room, go and fight your character specific boss, and then brave the clock tower. The Clock Tower feels like it had to be included. Aesthetically it doesn't really fit(The Clock Room is bitchin' though), and the dicey platforming is mostly just asking players too much of the limited control they've been given. Like the other towers, it's not terrible, and a few rooms(I like the Dragon Skeleton Head Room) even begin to feel like they might have a sense for what future platforming challenges in the genre might look like.
You reach the Castle Keep, one of the saddest renditions of it in any game. Still, it has some majesty. It's just you vs Dracula... well, unless you bought too much from the shop. If you did, Renon will show up in one of the 'sub-keeps' to lay the terms of the contract that you didn't read. He now has claim to your soul and is ready to fight for it. If you didn't, he politely says farewell. World War I is coming after all(The Zeppelin imagery clearly indicates WW1, but Castlevania 64 takes place right before the Crimean War. that said the Crimean War was the first 'modern war' of that era, going from 1986 to the end of WW2), and the death of millions is a time of great business for a Demon.
You continue further, another sub-keep to pass through... unless you took too long to get here. Then Vincent shows up as a vampire. You took so long that the old hunter beat you here, only to be defeated and turned. You put the old man down.
Now, on to the proper Keep. You fight an... honestly pretty decent 3d rendition of the classic Castlevania Dracula fight, a boss fight more functional and varied than most you've fought throughout the game. Dracula is dead, The Keep is collapsing, and it's time to escape!
I don't want to get into all the plot details(though some of it in this, and Legacy of Darkness, seem fun for Castlevania lore nerds), but it turns out the mysterious child thats been floating around is the real Dracula. Only you wouldn't know it unless you beat the game fast enough to keep Vincent alive. The old man throws holy water at a child because he's a professional and he knows something is up!
This is the greatest use of the Time mechanic in the game. It makes sense, in a fun, immersive way. The time mechanics are generally underutilized, but this usage is beautiful.
The last boss is fine, a weird centipede desert Dracula. It does its job. The games ending cinematics fairly in depths. Slow by modern standards, but they have some of that mood and attention to detail the best parts of this game have. The people who made this game cared deeply about it.
Time has not been kind to this game. Both because of the era it was released in, the Pain Band, but also because of us. It is an easy game to hate, especially if you only played the first stage. If that isn't enough, Magic Nitro might be what breaks your spirit. It's easy to magnify these issues in our head as time goes on. It's harder to stop and look at this game and what it tried to accomplish.
This game was made by talented professionals with opinionated, forward thinking ideas. This was a KCEK's first 3d game and the fact they managed what they did is a miracle. They couldn't quite bring their vision to fruition, but they still managed a good critical response, and... possibly decent sales?(Source: Some guy on Reddit with numbers I can't find anywhere) This is a game that succeeded in its time. Like Vincent, it was time that killed it.
We don't, in 2024, need to say it is a good game... but it was a good effort. I respect Castlevania 64.
Legacy of Darkness
Legacy of Darkness is an updated and remixed version of Castlevania 64, adding in material and characters cut from the original development. It comes off feeling like an expansion pack, down to including slightly revamped versions of Carrie's and Reinhardt's quests. There are arguments on whether or not this is a straight upgrade to 64, or more of a side-grade. Conventional advice is "Just play Legacy of Darkness" but many of the people who've played both prefer Reinhardt's and Carrie's original stages in 64. Both need to still do the awful Magic Nitro segment that mostly seems unchanged, unfortunately...
I didn't have it in me to play everything, but I figured I'd owe it to the game to at least try Cornell's story. A benefit to this is the fact his versions of the "towers" are what replace Carrie and Reinhardt's so I could see all the redone content.
Cornell is pretty cool. He looks like Yoshiaki Kawajiri character. He does Hokuto Shinkin in his opening cutscene. He's a complete wolf-whore of a man, in his slutty plunge shirt, and his tiny little waist cincher. Waist training is how one controls the manbeast inside us, after all...
Cornell is, compared to the others, overpowered, but in a way that benefits the game. He's so strong that I never even realized you could transform into a werewolf and still breezed through the game. The combat in the game isn't great, so being able to air slash your way through everything just helps with the pace. No longer is the first stage the dreadful Forest of Silence, but instead a ship that you freely explore. It's low stakes platforming, the type that makes early 3d platformers fun. It lets you enjoy being somewhere, with sprinkles of action. A serpent pierces the ship's hull and it begins to sink, forcing you to escape. You jump off and fight it on a bridge(Another Rondo callback). The game feels like it should be made up of stages like this. Moody open action areas, mixed with in-between segments like the Villa. The Forest of Silence is overhauled. It's not a great stage, but a fine one now. The respawning skeletons have been removed, allowing you to clear out areas and breath a little. The stupid platforming is a bit more reasonable, and looks a bit more integrated into the stage.
The game starts throwing more time puzzles at you, but these are mostly a matter of opening special doors. As Cornell has no time limit on his route, using the magic cards that change the time of day becomes of no consequence. It fixes the mechanic in only the driest sense. One later stage sees you burning through dozens of these cards... while inside, separate from any actual day and night cycle. It's a completely abstracted lock and key "puzzle", without any actual puzzling. The area, the Tower of Art, is at least one of the somewhat immersive areas of Cornell's quest. He has no Castle Center equivalent(Which at least means 'no Magic Nitro'). His renditions of stages are much cleaner, much more focused on action and platforming. They improve the weakest parts of the game, while doing nothing for the game's strongest aspects. The majority of Cornell's story mode feels like disconnected stages. One of them is like a strange Egyptian tomb for some reason? The game is more technically competent, but less inspired, focusing less on experimental ideas and more on making sure the content was decent.
They had to give up on their other visions. This isn't a bad choice. It's the most realistic one they could have made at the time.
The game ends with a horrible final boss where each attempt you desperately try and figure out what the hell the game wants from you. The camera is fixed, your range of motion is small, and Not Dracula's attacks are so powerful that you'll die quickly.
The boss is, in actuality, quite easy once you know what it wants, but to figure it out you have to go through his first phase over and over again. Oh well, at least he looks cool as all hell. There are some fun story beats and details, but they're all back-loaded. Still, they work, and certain reveals and twists felt appropriate, clever, and well earned for a game of this era.
I didn't have it in me to try Henry's story mode. Most people seem to hate it, but the free exploration aspect to save children seems interesting! The fact it plays into Cornell's story mode(Henry is a child he saved in the VIlla) and actually uses the time system in a meaningful way(You have a real, hard, time limit that is clearly presented to you) is all pretty neat. Even the aesthetic of 'armored knight with handguns' is cool, creative, and fitting of the era the game is set in.
Legacy of Darkness shows that most of the gameplay ideas of Castlevania 64 could work. It's not excellent, but by focusing on a few solid goals, it ends up mostly(It still has Magic Nitro) a competent game. It feels weird, mourning a game being competent, but playing Castlevania 64, it was clear all the different ways that game could have turned out. A glimpse into dozens of alternative futures. But no, Legacy of Darkness is the timeline ended up with. It's fine, worthy of a playthrough by the curious.
It's weird, a few people told me to skip Castlevania 64, but by playing it first I feel like I appreciate both games more for what they are. Most of the important elements of Castlevania 64's identity are in Legacy of Darkness, but I don't know if I would have felt the same way about these things if I had to play through Cornell and Henry first. It was important to play through the original content first, to see the unsure, unfocused initial attempt. Playing 64 let me play through Cornell's story and feel what was improved, and what was let go of.
Castlevania 64 is a malformed attempt to try and imagine a new kind of future for Castlevania. Legacy of Darkness is a game about having reasonable expectations and a clear vision.
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Game Journal: Replaying Mega Man X and Simon's Quest
June 17th, 2024I think I'm going to do it this time and actually keep it short, but I've been doing more replays of games I haven't played in like 10 years, so here we go.
Mega Man X
I'll be honest, I don't really like Mega Man? No fault of the games, but over time I've realized my taste for shooty games is more in the area of Contra or Metal Slug(much more high damage, low health, volatile games(Oh wait this is why I like Shmups even though I'm bad at them)), so I tend to go back to them less.
Some people might be like "IWBTG is basically megaman, you have like the same type of movement and shooting!" but let's be real, how much did that gun actually do?
Still, X1 is probably my favorite Mega Man. Like me saying "I don't really like Metroid Prime" it's one of those situations where I'm still playing the game like "Damn this is a well made game"(Insert Jeff Gerstmann asking 'But what does the Science say?'). It's fucking Mega Man X. It's great. Even if I don't love the style of game, it's still just so... rawly excellent. It's easier to enjoy a classic that's not exactly your thing when the commitment is basically that of a long movie.
One thing that stuck out to me is how hilarious sparse Zero is. His(Young me thought he was a girl and this gave me TONS of confusing thoughts) entire presence in the story is basically...
- "I saved you! Get strong, X!"
- "Lets Attack Sigma's Fortress Together!"
- "[Incomprehensible Explosion Noises]"
No Z-Saber, no walking animation, he just stands there looks cool, maybe dash shoots and... It works? It's funny because I think Protoman is an easier sell because he doesn't talk and you actually directly interact with him. Zero just bypasses all this weirdness by being so cool that none of us cared.
Anyways, the quick notes...
- I remembered so much of this game despite not playing it in years. Like as soon as I saw the start of a segment I kinda forgot about, I remembered the whole thing. Baked in my brain.
- I forgot about the cool map that shows you were all the stages are in relation to each other. It really doesn't make a ton of sense, but it's cute.
- You could KINDA say "Hey look these stages are next to each other, which is why Storm Eagle's ship crashed into Spark Mandrill's stage!" but how the hell did Chill Penguin affect anything??? 🤔
- I'm nitpicking, it's very cute. The fact the stages even affect each other to begin with is so cool.
- I was surprised how sketchy some of the jumps to get power-ups in this game were. Some of heart pieces felt so janky to get that it felt like I was doing it the wrong way.
- ... I kinda dig that kind of friction? Especially for the ones that had multiple, increasingly jankier solutions.
- Also like that a lot were found through dynamic stage changes, like the ship in Launch Octopus breaking through the floor.
- Hadouken is the fucking stupid, dumbassed extra, with the dumbest way to unlock it and I fucking kinda love it???
- It makes the boss re-fights much funnier, yet also tense.
IDK it's fucking Mega Man X you dash and wall jump and it feels cool and good. I'm kinda tempted to give X2 and 3 a second try. I didn't like either when I played them years ago, and they've solidified themselves as solid classics since. Kinda interested in MMX4 and Zero's gameplay, as Mega Man's style might vibe for me more as a melee game. I enjoyed a few of the Zero and ZX games, so maybe??
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Well, it was overdue. Part of it was coming off of Metroid II, one of the 8bit "Weird Sequel" triplets(The third being Zelda II). Part of it was a video essay defending the game(I'll be honest, while I think it's a good video, made in good faith and with a good methodology, I inherently disagree with Rag's premise that we're all just tainted by the opinions of video essayists. The discourse on these games goes much deeper than that, and many complaints are actually somewhat justifiable, if simply short sighted. Most peoples complaints, for example, with Metroid II are VALID, but they miss the forest for the trees. They fail to engage with the game's actual premise and goals. Not because the AVGN said a game was poopydoodoo, but because most people are just BAD at engaging with weird games. Also saying we didn't complain about these things when we were kids is a bad argument because oh god I would play LJN games and assume I was the one screwing up) and unfair preconceptions people have about it. The idea that the game is janky, confounding, and just poorly made. A shitty, frustrating game, filled with pointless grinding, stupid traps and impossible puzzles, needlessly throwing Holy Water everywhere...
Outside of issued emerging from the translation, I find most of these criticisms to be unfair, but instead of finding a maligned gem with great vibes and an engaging 8bit world, I found... a kinda dry, historically important, okay game.
Every problem with this game is largely overstated. You barely need to grind hearts. While the action and enemy layouts are much weaker than CV1, they're fine, still more competent than most NES games of the era. Competent and simple. With a translation patch, most of the puzzles are pretty clear cut! There are still red herrings, but that's fun! Breakable bricks and secret passages are pretty well telegraphed! About the only stupid thing in the game for me are the fake floor traps(I bet Sylvie likes these), which aren't really telegraphed and encourage really boring play. Even then, the punishment is usually mild. An annoyance, not something that ruins a game.
No, the real curse of Dracula is that the game is just... kinda boring. Even engaging the game under it's own terms, in its own era, it doesn't... really do anything exceptionally well. I can say it's a historically important game, and it is, especially for Castlevania as a franchise... but even just as a game, Faxanadu(They're not trying to do exactly the same thing but still come on) came out within a few months of Castlevania 2, and did similar things with a lot more ambition and with a lot more flaws. Faxanadu has vibes. Faxanadu has weirdness. Faxanadu has a map where you literally end up climbing the fucking world tree until the levels are visibly tunnels within its branches. Faxanadu is the flawed proto-metroidvania that is hard to love, but has a lot to give. Castlevania II on the other hand is a... competent expansion of Vampire Killer.
The biggest disservice to Castlevania II when going back to re-evaluate it is that the game is designed for its highpoints to be solving puzzles. If you already know to crouch by the cliff, or to crouch by the lake, or to drop garlic in the graveyard, then... the game is largely flat? You just keep repeating the same patterns. You have the same few types of zones, repeated over and over. Visit a town, find your items, continue on, enter a manor, get a stake, get a piece of Dracula, repeat. Mix this with a few overworld puzzles and the worst bosses in the series and... there isn't much to love. There aren't many points in the game where it is allowed to sing. It feels like one long, sustained note. If you find all your whips, it doesn't even get much harder. The enemy design, the opposite of jank, seems to be almost too fair, with only a few exceptions.
While you can't recreate that true, first time experience where a game like this would be it's strongest... that's kinda a negative in itself? That the games few high points are super expendable?
When you can't re-experience the mysteries of the game, the most interesting thing you're left with is the conceit. This proto-metroidvania with a melancholy plot and weird liars everywhere and a day night cycle. Collecting the pieces of your eternal enemy only to destroy him again, in the hopes of being free of his curse. It sounds wicked cool when you say it out loud, but ultimately you don't get much more from finishing the game then you do from doing two mansions and giving up(This might be the optimal way to enjoy the game).
It's not a problem that the overworld is simple and repetitive. There is a sense to how things are laid out. Of course there ares another set of woods, or another graveyard for another town. Bridges make great landmarks, and we even have some poison swamps to mix it up!(I know we wanna go 'Like Dark Souls! :)' but the laurels stuff sucks in practice, even if I don't totally hate the idea) It's okay the combat isn't the focus. It's okay that the bosses are nearly non-existent(I am so mad I, in story, died from my wounds finding Dracula when the dude couldn't even get a hit in). The repetitive nature of the manors could be a way to sorta focus in on one particular design pattern!
... But it does all of these things, at the same time. All parts of the game take a back to some puzzles that are either too hard or too easy, depending on which translation of the game you play. Puzzles that lose their impact past your first playthrough...
I hate to say it, but while this game has a reputation of being too weird and obtuse... I feel like it's not any of those things nearly enough?
To hit some extra points, positive and negative:
- I played the bisqwit translation to help with the hints. Turns out this was unnecessary, since it's hard to forget the few roadblocks this game has.
- More importantly though, the hack adds a pixelized map from the Japanese manual which contextualizes a lot of areas and paths.
- This doesn't necessarily help with navigation a ton but it's super cool and makes certain screens make more sense.
- You actually don't have to do much navigating in the game at all???
- I like how a very 2 linear map actually conveys a 3d space extremely well, especially with the map.
- I do like that the game has a lot of weird dead ends and pointless paths. The marsh at the end of the game is visibly interesting and completely useless.
- Considering the game looks extremely samey though, maybe somewhere else should have looked like that.
- I like the townfolks who are mad at you because you're bringing in demons and monsters due to your curse. You are the problem and it's almost selfish of you to not just curl up and die when you might be putting others at risk.
- One of the few highpoints is also a low point. Walking into the empty Casltevania, through the broken down, overgrown entryway, breaking down the foor to descend into the rubble of the collapsed, empty castle, all to refight Dracula is cool.
- Demon's Souls downer King Allant boss fight kind suffers if you do something like... Storm King last. You don't get high point to come down from. The same goes here. This setpiece rules, but it's kneecapped by the fact the game can't come down from anything. It's hard to have a purposefully deflating ending when there is nothing to deflate.
- Also Dracula being a lame last boss suffers because it doesn't seem to be trying to. He teleports around like crazy, you whip him a few times, and he dies. He's less engaging than Camilla, yet not so purposefully simple and boring as to seem intentionally weak.
- The moving water block platforming shit sucks ass. That's actually probably the hardest shit the game actually asks you to do.
- I missed the morningstar until way way late and while enemies took a lot more hits, the mansions I did without it were still easy.
While I'm largely disappointed with this game, I think it's important to go back still. Not every retread of a weird blacksheep game is going to reveal a beautiful secret gem. Nor does my disappointment mean we were right, and this was a bad game designed by bad game designers. No, it was a cool, experimental game for its time that influenced games after it positively. I'm thankful to Castlevania II... but playing Metroid II, I was confronted with so many design choices that ruled, and so many vibey motions that games now fail to reach.
I just can't say that about Simon's Quest. It's okay.
Nostalgia vs Having an Active Relationship With Your Media
December 15th, 2023If you worked with raspberry pi emulators, or retro gaming handhelds you'll notice a common theme pop up a lot in comments and on reddit boards. Setting up these devices can be a hobby unto themselves. Curating roms, downloading logos and screenshots, scraping data, picking themes, tweaking and customizing until... you realize your done. Maybe you should actually play a something.
... And then you'll see threads of people talking about the same thing.
Hey, have any of you guys actually played anything? I mean I messed around with mine and loaded a few classics, but now that I'm done, I... don't know what to do with it. I feel like I had more fun setting it up than playing with it.
Now, there is nothing wrong with enjoying the process more than the end product. A garage carpenter doesn't necessarily make a chair for the pleasure of sitting. They can make it for the pleasure of making. Sitting is a bonus. That part isn't the problem. The problem is... the sadness that comes after, the sense of loss someone feels when you're not prepared for this.
You'll see this with nintendo themed "man caves" or whatever, where having the games... having the right screen and the right connectors, isn't enough... having the games of your childhood aren't enough. Gotta collect more, gotta try and get everything. Satisfaction isn't playing a new game, satisfaction is "New in Box". The hobby switches form. The hobby is no longer playing video games. The hobby is paying tribute to the memories of your past, the aesthetics of video games. What they can't force themselves to play anymore was still, at some point, formative and important to them. They can't let it go. The music, the pictures, the symbols of these old game still resonate in their heart.
So instead of actually playing, they construct shrines of worship to the warm, comfortable memories of their youth. This is, of course, nostalgia.
I hate on nostalgia a lot but there isn't anything inherently wrong with it. In most places, it doesn't matter. The people whose love of Star Wars hasn't grown in decades can still watch the movies they like and enjoy them. A few hours, a few times a year, relaxed on a couch...
Gaming, on the other hand, takes some stubbornness. It takes some skill. Investing Effort. Investing the increasingly scarce resource of time.
It's more than understandable. We grow an change with time. The problem is when that they don't recognize any of this. So when they go back... there is nothing but a weird emptiness and frustration. For those who don't even realize they've grown out of gaming entirely, gaming becomes an endless line of disappointing games, and growing backlogs, scattered with a few high points. We don't know how to manage nostalgia in the gaming space.
Hell, by we, I feel like I'm only speak to my fellow Millennials. Those of us who have been on the content treadmill from the start, back when games advanced so quickly, year by year, that we never had a moment to stop and collect our feelings. Deeply influential pieces of media in our lives got let go off within years, or even months, because the next thing was that much crazier. Whenever I look at the release timeline of the 90s I feel like I'm going insane. "All those things couldn't have happened that quickly."
We call things retro and they feel retro because our whole timeline was stretched by the insane technological race we grew up in. We'll argue up and down, comparing eras and design styles but... I don't think I've ever seen a Zoomer refer to a game as retro. Some games are merely old. These new gamers exist, seemingly, at the end of time, free to pick from the fruits of the past. A lot of them aren't too technologically savvy, but those who are use emulators end up using them more freely and explore more deeply than a lot of my peers. The peers who don't emulate "because it just doesn't feel right". On their couch, in their pajamas, on a sunday, playing on a fuzzy CRT. They're not burdened by our memories. They're us, picking through our parents vinyl, free from context. Their childhood memories aren't being rushed out the door for the next thing like ours were. They're... kinda free?
But we exist at the same time as them. At the end of time. The freedom to reach back to the past at our leisure has been there since NESticle came out in 1997.
I'm not even sure who I'm talking to. While I personally know too many peers who have fallen into this nostalgia trap, most of them don't follow me in places like this. And not every zoomer is some super media literate history hunter either. Most aren't. Most people aren't. But my interactions with these groups and how they contrast each other keeps rattling in my head. I'd much rather talk to a 20something about the SNES than someone of my age group. Because if a 20something is playing old games, they probably have a cool attitude and curiosity while... many of my peers cling to the past like a childhood blanket they've long outgrown. They don't need to throw the blanket away -- it's a precious memory. But they also need something to actually cover them up. They don't realize they're freezing to death.
I said on twitter (those threads are... here, here, and here) that if your favorite NES games now were the same as they were 30 years ago then I don't want to talk to you about old games. Not that you're hurting anyone, not that you're taste must be bad, but... 30 years is a long time. The games might not change, but you will. If your opinions haven't changed in any major ways (even if it's as simple as 'I played Mother 10 years ago and it's in my top 5 now!') that implies that... you haven't had any active growth in your gaming tastes and opinions.
Which is fine! We can talk about something else! Not everyone should care about old games, but too many people who say they care have let their emotions stagnant for decades. They say they care because gaming became their identity and now they're stuck. Stuck regurgitating the same canon they are too incurious to stray from and that they themselves can barely manage to replay. You have to let the relationship you have with these games change. You don't have to throw out your blanket, but you can't rely on it to keep you warm. You've grown too much.
The biggest issue with those twitter threads was... accidentally implying that the change was the point. That you need to cast away everything you loved, painfully, to grow and to find the 'correct opinions'. Instead what I'm saying is... the change should be unavoidable. The relationship you have with your long term friends, the family you still have in your life, changes, year to year, decade to decade. You both change, and the context of your relationship changes. You feel like nothings changed, but the vibe now vs 10 years ago has shifted. You can't stay the same. At best things are similar. Heck, if it hasn't changed at all, something is probably wrong. Every interaction is a chance for tiny changes that enrich and build upon what was there before.
I always hated the notion of "wishing you could experience something again for the first time". To me, it always felt like wishing you could start a friendship again from scratch. My relationship with media is active. Each time I replay a game my experience with it grows. Our relationship grows. People say you only get to do something for the first time once, treating your first time like this precious, ephemeral experience that must be protected at all cost. But how can that compare to an experience developed over years or decades? Like sex, the first time has all the memories, but it's also usually some of the worst you'll ever have.
Every game you play, every movie you watch, every book you read is context and experience that changes, even if only minutely, how you feel about everything else. You don't have to replay something a million times, you can think about it after new experiences, wondering about how it re-contextualizes what you felt the last time you played. As you understand the history surrounding things, as you get better at judging, appreciating and naturally enjoying things with their context and historic place in mind... your opinions on other things will change. It's not that 8 year old you liked dogshit and now you like The Good Stuff -- you will probably like some good things less while developing an appreciation for things you used to hate. Hell, you might end up loving a few things that are objectively bad. But you'll be somewhere new, emotionally, exploring, and developing deeper, richer relationships with the things that are important to you. Nothing gets thrown away, it simply changes. Just because an old top 5 favorite game is now in your top 50 doesn't mean that relationship is gone or that you hate it. Things simply change. People change.
I make new games that draw from old games... but I can't say I really feel nostalgia for these titles because to miss something, it has to go away. IWBTG isn't about games I loved in my childhood, IWBTG is about games I love. I didn't like NES Castlevania games until I was almost 30 and now I'm 40 making the same quasi-fan game I've been making for over a decade.
(If you think an opinion on a game can change a lot in 10 years, imagine how you feel about a game you started 10 years ago)
I still feel nostalgia. When I go to upstate New York, to my grandma's house I barely see, laying in the moss I barely get to touch, looking at the sights I barely get to see, I feel something. When I hear a pop punk song that meant the world to me in 95' that I haven't thought about in 20 years... hearing the opening notes when I'm not expecting it hits something deep inside me. There is nothing wrong with nostalgia. But if I love something enough to make it an active part of my personality, to make it a part of my whole life... I owe it a real, active relationship.
Why would you make a Hard Game Easier???
October 3rd, 2023So Lies of P had patch that adjusted difficulty and I haven't played it, but I have played though AC6 who had the same thing happen and the discourse seems to be... about the same and it really just got to me how poor the nuance around difficulty discussion can be. Maybe it's more accurate when talking about Lies of P, maybe it's the same crud, but whatever.
Now, I'm very much on record saying the AC6 patch stuff is massively overblown. Only one thing really seems like a significant nerf and that was probably warranted but like... whether any of these changes are good is definitely something you could talk about. The changes, for example, (especially including the weapon based changes) seems very much designed to make more builds viable in more situations. You could easily make the case that "Even if the changes are kinda small, this is a game about building mechs, sometimes a build shouldn't viable for a situation to encourage you to use more options and explore the game" and I wouldn't agree with you (I think you're still rewarded plenty of tweaking a build for a mission you always could beat AC6 with one design anyways) but like... that's a discussion, right? Where do you draw the line? My line isn't right and talking about our lines is a great way to build perspective.
... But most conversations aren't going like that. It's a lot of ARGGGGHHH BABY MODE!!! PEOPLE CAN'T HANDLE HARD GAMES!! THEY NERFED IT!! NERFED IT TO THE GROUND!!! They have to sell more copies so they RUINED IT!!! People will only be able to play the BABY version!
... like come on, how many more copies do you think they sold because they made Balteus's missiles track a little less?
There is a lot to unpack here. How people mythologize their own experiences as The One True Way, how any backward slide gets exaggerated by communities and repeated so often they become almost permanent lore. Instead, we're going to talk about people not understanding the many reasons why a designer might change their game to be easier. Why they might make these changes for reasons besides public pressure.
I think a thing a lot of gamer brained players don't realize is that Making is hard game is actually really really easy. It's so easy, that if you're making your first game, there is a good chance it's going to be way harder for other people than you think it is. It's so easy you'll do it on accident!
Making a hard game people want to actually play is the hard part.
I think it's hard for some people to realize that there is, almost certainly, a harder version of their favorite hard game that the devs had in testing and never released. That they are, by their own logic, even immediately from release, receiving the ""baby mode"". That outside of shitty as old LJN 8 and 16 bit games, that devs, even when they were making balls to the walls hard games, were... focusing on trying to give you an enjoyable experience. That the released game isn't some pure artistic expression that exists naturally, only to be corrupted against the devs wishes by player feedback.
Games are, largely, unnatural experiences. A lot of us designers try and make the unnatural feel as natural as possible. Some people hunt for really obscure, poorly made games, enjoying the weird emergent "natural" challenge that comes accidentally from naive design. But they are still, largely, an unnatural construct.
These constructs are, for the most part, made for our enrichment. We can argue the value of changing something, but we have to remember, even with the most Hardcore no normies, skill only!!!! games that these are constructed experiences. There is no true difficulty, no "real version" of the game. There is just the what we ultimately play.
I saw someone ask "Why would you make a hard game easier?" and I think if you're a gamer, looking for challenging experiences, that... makes sense. It's naive, but like, yeah why WOULD YOU? Well, here are are a few that have been stewing in my head!
It's Hard but it Sucks
This is the simplest. Pre-Patch Lost Izalith. A rushed area, filled with reused, rare mobs. "Hey this dragon butt only got used one other place so why not, we're in a hurry."
Pre-Patch Izalith has the player basically playing a poorly made stealth game to not get gang stomped by a dozen giant dragon legs. Later patches decided instead to turn this early Izalith section into a bit of a non area. It's not that bad, there are still things to kill you if you go exploring but the Dragon Butts are so hard to aggro.
If something sucks there usually isn't much of a pushback, but I've actually seen people defend pre-patch Izalith BECAUSE of the weird "stealth" gameplay.
... It seems to largely come from the same place as other difficulty arguments. "I had this happen to me so if other people don't, this means they were denied a complete experience"
Real proof that any changes, no matter how stupid the original behavior was, will be decried by someone as giving into babies.
The Curve is Wrong
A lot of dragging peoples asses through a hard game is tricking them to get in and into the game before tightening your grip... then releasing... and repeating. I Wanna be the Guy tried to have different, but reliable pulses of actual difficulty to keep things feeling fun in between the sections that made you want to die.
It's basically fixing a pacing problem. Usually people don't complain too much about these because their minor. I feel the AC6 weapon buffs hit this, giving better and more varied options early game. This certainly made the game easier, but no one talks about that aspect of the "difficulty nerf" because... well okay it's because people are bad at talking about difficulty as a holistic thing.
Anyways most games usually don't have that much of a mis-step here. When the first boss is way too hard that's usually not an unexpected bump in the curve, that's usually an intentional crest. That said, sometimes that difficulty spike doesn't quite work out how you wanted it to and...
The Wrong Thing is Hard
I feel like Balteus's missiles fit this. Watching my friend (hi Miko!!!), a hardcore AC vet, 1-shot Balteus pre-patch on her first playthrough, could kinda trick you into thinking the missiles were never that big of a problem to begin with. It seems the type of thing where, when you know how to play and move, it's not that big of a deal, but when you're new, it's a monstrous hurdle and that hurdle existing can be easy to miss.
"Oh we wanted to teach about pulse armor and want to encourage movement so this isn't just a slugfest but whoooops for some players and builds, this might as well be touhou."
This is one of one of the most common reasons for things to be hard, by the way. The designers, or testers, or whoever get too good at their game and underestimate certain elements because they're so much better at fundamental things like movement. Blind testers help but you're still trying to extrapolate a lot of data. For indie games, this can get super stupid. There is a 1-frame jump in IWBTG that's optional, but exists because I tested it once and got it the first try. Can't be THAT hard...
By reducing the difficulty in one area, you can allow the player to focus on the enemies you were meaning to highlight.
You Don't Want Them to Google it!
AC6 works great here again. Sea Spider was made vulnerable to more weapon types and while you can make the argument that the game is about builds!!, that type of attitude is what leads to someone going on reddit for help, realizing Double Zimms, Double Songbirds are strong, murdering the boss, and then never really switching.
Fighting a boss and not doing enough damage is generally a sign to a lot of players that they're doing something wrong and the response to that is often to look some stuff up. Easing certain parts of a fight, or making more builds viable can actually, in a weird reverse way, encourage to explore more, or use off the beaten path builds. You increase the likelihood of a player just endures and actually tries to learn on their own. That applies well to situations like Sea Spider where the biggest barrier was a knowledge check that... wasn't even a very good knowledge check (varied weapon type defense isn't well established in a game, and a lot of people are going to get to the fight with a build that already passes the check and not realize they were checked at all).
You Want to Make it Easier to Learn
Sometimes an early attack is too strong, or a boss does too much damage, or a checkpoint is too far. All these things are things that can be fine, or lead to a great experience, but other times you're like... Oh god wait no, it's taking people way too many attempts to get to phase 2, or to this hard jump or whatever, so you make that easier. I Wanna be the Guy had a lot of difficulty tweaks in both boss behavior and is save placement to try and help this along.
Brave Earth Prologue used to have lives, a feature I really wanted and defended to a lot of people who tested early versions of the game. Whenever the game is released though, it won't have them and part of the reason was because "While the repetition created by lives creates a novel learning experience in modern gaming... if I wanna have cool complicated bosses, I need to give people permission to fail". Making that area easier allowed me to make other areas harder because it gave players more chances to learn hard things.
To go back to AC6, I think this is where the IBIS damage nerf comes in. I feel less certain about this one, but I feel like, at least personally, when I finally beat Ibis, it wasn't by an inch, it was a mile. Her damage wasn't relevant for my eventual victory. Where it was relevant is... each attempt allowed me to get more information and to experiment more. The boss felt like she was going to murder you unless you learned her patterns anyways, so easing up on damage just seemed to encourage learning them more.
Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon
September 20th, 2023Back with Spec Ops: The Line I said I was going to try and make these more informal, but they always seem to spiral into something review-esque, which was never my intention. So this time we're going to go even further. I'm going to start to bust out the bullet point lists to try and get my thoughts out without having to worry about how one point leads into another. I'll have my paragraphs (reading this back, I have a lot of them), but I just need to dump thoughts sometimes. Also, while this is nothing new, I'm going to be talking about the story with no mind toward spoilers. Usually I get to games so late, this doesn't matter, but since AC6 just came out, let me just make it clear. This is not a review. This is a game journal.
Anyways, I liked Elden Ring a lot. Loved that game. Had lots of feelings about the game, but I played it earlier this year and never quite felt compelled to write anything about it, because what is left to be said about Fromsoft's soul-style games? Like okay sure there is a little bit to say there and I'm sure I'll say it when I do whatever year-end wrap-up I do, but AC6 is fresh and by fresh I mean an unopened PS2 game hidden at the bottom of a crate.
Like SF6's World Tour Mode we seem to be in The Great PS2 Revival.
The exact mix of polish of Armored Core VI is kinda remarkable. Parts of it are the slickest, smoothest feeling version of the series up until this point, but the structure, the missions, the general movement of the game isn't unpolished as much as it is remarkably bare, peeling up the carpets and exposing the hardwood floors that hasn't been seen for decades. You don't need doodads or a million map icons (or a map at all, it turns out), and fancy glory kill animations (a tasteful slowdown will suffice!). Maybe you can just make a mech game while never showing an actual human. It allows itself to have modern polish, without having all the modern styling and design patterns people confuse with polish.
A friend of mine said something like "Companies finally realized they could just make games like the used" and From has known this for awhile, but it's nice to see this not be isolated to a particular genre. These new games are also interesting to me, because I remember thinking at some point "We don't have a lot of retro PS2 style games because the graphics look good enough to not have a distinct style". I'm not quite sure of that anymore, but I what I definitely didn't expect that the retro thing was going to be the design philosophy.
This game seemed pretty story heavy compared to the PS2 era AC games (I can't speak for 4 and 5). Now, heavy is probably the wrong word. There is plenty of story even in AC1. Instead, AC6 is very story forward. NPCs in souls games almost feel like observing an animal enclosure sometimes, but like Sekiro, AC6 has some like... real ass characters your feel like you have a relationship with? When I first played Sekiro I assumed it was because Wolf was an actual character, but AC6 shows that was only part of the equation. As brain fried mech savant with little direct will of their own, your agency can only really be displayed through your relationships with others. I find the fact that most group have a different nickname for you to be endearing but also important. You want even the characters you don't like to have relationship with you to add weight to the few (but key) decisions you get to make.
Sophie, from the Sinclair Lore youtube channel predicted something from the trailers that turned out to be very much true. Most AC games start with you feeling like you have freedom before realizing you are being controlled. AC6 is about being controlled, but then realizing you have freedom. This works out powerfully because the early part of the game sets up these relationships you frankly don't have much say in but that you get exposed too, but then seeing them strengthen or fall apart based on your later decisions. Even the early decision you can make... you don't actually get to make it until NG+. This makes it feel more impactful than say... whether Murakumo or Chrome fall during the story of AC1.
Also this is interesting in how it worked with the arena. It was normal to see arena mechs on normal missions in older AC games, but it's another thing to coldly fight an AI simulation only to then murder someone on the battlefield, hearing their frustration, pride, fear, and disdain. Like oh these aren't just names you saw on a list, these are people you did business with, who you are now in a life or death struggle against.
Some character notes...
- I was surprised about how... not a scumbag Walter is. Like he's very scumbag coded, both in voice and presentation but I like how you slowly see that he cares and he's just... not that warm. At first it's not clear if he wants people to respect you because you're his, but as time goes on he puts more trust in you, even when he realizes it might be to his detriment.
- It's like he dehumanizes you because he feels like he has to but he's not very good at it. You can hear how tore up he is at the loss of his other hounds.
- Even if his goals were... under-informed or misguided, turning on him gave me no pleasure. Come on Walter, you don't have to carry the same burden!!
- Same with Carla and Chatty like ugh. Carla gets established so well and so fast and Chatty is so subtly likeable for a dry AI.
- lol god Michigan rules. I like how complimentary he is of people, while hassling his poor Guns. From trying to hire Rusty during the Ice Worm fight to pumping you the hell up during the mission to destroy the Red Guns.
- You're also still G13. Like that's part of your LORE, even while you're killing them. BOYS, YOU'RE FIGHTING THE G13 THAT DIDN'T DIE!!!
- Iguazu is such a perfectly shitty pissbaby of a boy. Gloriously petty. Loved blowing him up every time. How'd that dumbass even afford an assassin???
- On that note, GOD, RUSTY, what a sweetheart. What a golden boy. Calling you buddy, even when he's hurt by where things have brought the two of you. So confident, skilled and earnest. A perfect boy.
As for the actual plot...
- I like the 3 endings and where they end up, but I don't really like the Allmind Route, at least in the context of the sorta '3 play through' structure.
- Ayre asking to see what you'd choose and then having the 3rd route being the most bungling dumb nonsense choices definitely feels a little lame. I feel like it would make more sense in a scenario where all 3 endings were available from the start and it was likely written with that as the intention.
- "Surely trusting and following this creepy AI will pay off!" even if it... kinda ultimately does.
- That said, I think the 3 evolving playthroughs works great and it was, I think, the right decision, even if there are some warts.
- What the fuck is up with Branch and Raven's Operator? That felt like setup that never got payoff. Like yeah, gonna keep an eye on me I guess, Operator Lady???
- ... DLC?
- While there is a lot of soulsy 'read everything and read between the lines', I appreciate the game is also pretty direct and clear while also still having some restraint.
- Though the actual indulgence is pretty good. The Liberation ending definitely pours it on heavy, but since the game was so restrained and almost doomery, it feels really good. A real earned payoff.
- Him and Ayre contrast the rest of the game and each other very well. Where Ayre is as confused as you are, there is something great about having confidence that Rusty seems to know whats up, even if he can't really tell you exactly what's going on.
The Real Armored Core Starts... on the previous Patch??
It should be important to say I played the whole game "post patch". Literally was gifted the game the day of. A lot of lore has been built up over things like Pre Nerf Balteus, how he was nerfed into the ground, etc etc etc, even though... people have pretty much confirmed they just made his missiles home a little less (which, honestly, only barely seemed like the "problem" with him to begin with). I felt engaged by all the boss fights people said were supposed to be hard. I really wasn't sitting there for any of them like "Gosh this would be better if I had to put in another 20 attempts". Nor do I think any of the three are so easy to numerically nerf. Instead they're hard because they introduce new problems.
- While I can never TRULY know how release Balteus felt, he seems like he was fine? He's definitely there to teach you shit and he took me a good hour to punch through, but by the end of it, I felt more comfortable understanding what the game wanted from me.
- A pulse gun. It wanted a pulse gun.
- And like everyone else playing Balteus with all their girl, NG+ felt like a joke.
- It's honestly kinda embarrassing how many people I've seen say "They nerfed him so bad! I fought him in NG+ and he died in like 15 seconds!!" like no shit, you're on NG+ and also a million times better that's just how videogames work!!
- Sea Spider and IB-01: CEL 240 both took some build and strategy adjustments, as a boss in these kinds of games should, but those changes made them easier.
- Yeah, I'm gonna pick 2 song birds and blow up Sea Spider.
- The nerf is probably better, because without it I just would have counterpicked him even faster.
- IB-01 got lance and pilebunkered. Which really puts the damage nerf into perspective. She killed me a lot, but when I won, she melted. Doing less damage didn't so much make her 'easier to beat'. It made her 'easier to learn' by extending each attempt.
- The damage nerf was almost certainly deserved.
In general people overvalue their experience as the 'the right/best' way, which is a problematic attitude people have with a lot of things, but ESPECIALLY Fromsoft games. Including me when DS1 came out. "If the missile pattern isn't exactly what I felt the experience is RUINED" or w/e just isn't reasonable.
- On other boss notes, Ice Worm sucks ass. Oh god so much fucking waiting.
- But Rusty is so hot in this mission.
- The perfect man for me is apparently one without a canonical form that I have to look at.
- okay sure, the fight DOES look cool though.
- Ayre probably gave me the most problems, but maybe that's because I was rushing to the finish line.
- Heal-skipping Boss AC's by pilebunkering them kicks ass.
- Okay I also fucking hated shooting into that fucking smoke stack like the boss wasn't hard but that was so annoying!!. That was one boss that was equally annoying every time I've refought him.
The patch and difficulty discourse gets into another conversation, people talking about 'easy weapons' being 'easy mode' and... well okay that's not wrong. I definitely pick up certain combos when I'm just done with a boss. But there is a weird undercurrent to this whole conversation like "Yeah, you can do double zimms, if you don't want to REALLY play the game." but like... what is really playing the game? Circle strafing for 10 minutes while plinking an enemy with a mediocre weapon out of some weird sense of pride, like that's the intention of the game about customizing mechs? Sure, take on King, Chartreuse and Raven on at the same time with SMGs and no burst damage. That's sick as hell! But the game isn't asking you to fight 3 high-end ACs because they expect you to nobly boost dodge around. It's because the game gives you options. You'll find the one that fits you.
I just find this conversation weird. The AC community and DS community are very separate, but both have this weird hangup over this same kind of stuff, even though both series are made by a company who LOVES to design around and embrace "cheese".
What do you want to get out of a game? I like the speedrun mentality. I like big damage and I like playing fast. I don't just wanna pound and tank with a cheesy build, I wanna optimize the start, I wanna maximize my chances, I want IB-01 to lose 3/4ths of her first health bar before she even gets to make a decision. "Okay this boss is fast, but does it do anything where I can pilebunker it for free"? Which is also why I've always enjoyed watching speedruns more than "Fists only, no hit!!" runs, even though those runs are undeniably extremely skillful... They're just also boring and repetitive. To me, at least, but that's kinda the point.
Personally I don't think there are many games where I had more fun because I did less damage. Of those few games, I'm pretty sure 100% of them are fucked up combo/character action games that would give me more time to beat up and combo enemies. A game like this? Naaaah. I've had more fun taking more damage. I've had more fun having to fight stronger, smarter enemies! I've enjoyed weapons that do less damage because they're fun and mechanically different, but not because they do less damage.
Some people like the slow stable long game. They pride themselves on dying as little as possible. Some people like me want to play intensely correct and absurdly aggressively for 30 seconds, in a burst of planning and execution... and the game supports both of these things. One isn't particularly more right or intended... and honestly, I don't feel the need to prove myself to a single player game that isn't going to be impressed either way.
The game doesn't care how you get through it, so why care about anything other than what you find personally enriching?
Relatedly, the weapon balance has some issues, and some of them are intrinsically hard to solve. A big issue is, for the Single Player at least, a lot of weapons are just... not compatible with fighting strong enemies. Projectiles that are too slow, charge shots that are too punishing to miss, etc. And missing is more punishing in this game because of how the stagger system works. Now, I don't hate stagger, it feels good, but it does strongly encourage burst, reliable stagger damage. The problem with not having it is your DPS ends up getting exponentially punished and makes strategies like long range plinking much worse. There are surely ways to build around this and make more weapons work well and feel good, but the reason a lot of people move toward a lot of strong "meta" weapons is because they fit the system better. Which is likely also why weapons were buffed and not nerfed.
The problem there though is... how do you buff a lot of the less rewarding weapons... or do you worry about it? Are they maybe better in PVP, with more human fallibility? That'd be fine. But it seems the buffs a lot of stuff needs is more in the realm of projectile speed, better tracking or even maybe nerfed AI dodging. The problem with the last one though is that only makes the good stuff even better so it's not really an option. I feel like anything with a charge attack shouldn't have an overheat cooldown. Like you're giving up a weapon to try and make a precise attack that is likely to miss, double punishing you. Maybe it'd be a way to make laser rifles better than (or at least interestingly different from) laser handguns.
I also feel like the game lets you do too much on a fast build and there is very little armament reason to go super heavy. There are durability reasons but most of the heaviest gear is kinda... eh? So you kinda get to have your cake and eat it too. On the other hand... you can have your cake and eat it too? That's not always a bad thing.
In other system stuff...
- I like the free mission replay stuff a lot. It's kinda weird to farm money, especially when money in AC games is kinda weird, but whatever.
- ... I kinda like that you can't buy and sell when you restart? So having money and having parts in your inventory actually matters to some degree.
- It feels like a little weird unpolished friction point but who cares?
- OS Tuning felt kinda lame. I hated how it was just an 'upgrade card you will eventually fill out' and not another place you could do meaningful tweaks.
- I need to play with more than the pulse shield and terminal expansion cards though.
- I kinda miss unique FCS reticle/lock-on stuff. Like I'm not saying they should have brought it back, but I do mourn the loss a little.
- I wish there were more mid mission decisions. What are there, two?
- The R3/Hard Lock-on felt weird like it changed your lock-ons to be more aggressive but in the moment, the effect wasn't enough to realize (for me at least) if it was on or off.
- WAIT HARD LOCK GIVES YOU A WORSE LOCK-ON TOO????
- I love that this game can actually show me Playstation Button prompts.
- I WISH THE GAME WOULD STOP DEFAULTING TO SHOWING ME KEYBOARD PROMPTS FOR SOME REASON
Most of these issues aren't that big a deal. Far less than what I'd expect in the older AC games. Fun to think about, fun to think about how they could do things differently, but if they never change another thing, the game still rules.
Okay now for the dumb stuff you're allowed to skip.
These aren't heavy roleplay games, but I almost never make myself "Kayin" in a game. So far in every Fromsoft Souls game I make Naomi for my first play through. Cool knight girl, usually sword sword of claymoreish sword on the first run and maybe a bigger one and some magic in NG+. Perfect fit. But she felt weird to in mech games. She kiiinda worked in Battletech, but I ended up using the Brave Earth Succubus, Vayn, for later playthroughs of that and the earlier Armored Core. Kinda just needed someone a little bit more... morally ambiguous. Also it helps that she too spent years an a brain fried fog, used as a tool with little agency
This less informs my gameplay and route choices and more aesthetics.
(I mean... I have my own head canon stuff but I'll spare you)'
Emblem
I wanted a cool ass emblem. I wanted something that you'd see in an old AC game in the arena and be like 'damn what's their deal??'. The roses, exploding out the back of the head beautifully like an exploded brain??? I'm pretty proud of it, okay!!
I messed with a lot of variants with the text. From vertical instead of rotated, to arched, on a circular emblem, whatever, but found that simpler was better. Helped that I gave up on using it with the text on the ACs. I'm honestly loving how the emblem system works. Doing stuff on the the blood splatter on the skull with masks is so fun and powerful, and the ability to nest these things together is incredible. As far as Emblems go, this is a very simple one, using assets as they're intended without a whole lot of fancy tricks going on, but I'm super happy with how it came out. I might use similar iconography for Vayn with something else at some point.
ACs and Aesthetic
White and Black is like the key colors for Vayn and most of her costumes, so went with that and very gundamy wear patterns. I ended up with the pale pink to make it undeniably also femme. I tried doing the seriffed text on the mech but it never worked so I went more 'racer' and added the checkers and more sleek font. The seriffed "Vanity" does sneak in sometimes. The V on one shoulder and Raven on the other kinda is embracing the dual identity of 621.
I also have ended up using 3 AC styles for her across all these games. LILITH, usually my go to mech and middleweight, DRIDER, usually a heavy quad but sometimes hover or tank bodies, and BANSHEE, something light and fast.
LILITH got me through most of the game. You can see serial labels around in the pics too. This is actually between the first model early in chapter 1 and the NG++ model, LILITH 03. There is also LILITH DD which was my favorite build to use when I can get away with it which basically was built on lancing into pilebunker. Occasionally I'd work in plasma stuff or missile pods or whatever. Early on, with LILITH 01 I was running the RANSETSU-RF and the Curtis. 02 also has badges from all the factions she got along with. Sadly after the last redguns mission, that logo had bullet holes put in it.
DRIDER first showed up to kill Sea Spider. Hovering over things to rain songbird shots. This is basically also also the "fuck this" build, especially the special DRIDER W which used wheels. I'd basically throw whatever a boss seemed weak to it on it and just go nuts. DRIDER W showed up to kill Ayre. The original DRIDER 01 basically was the same idea but with the lighter quad legs, and 02 just had a different torso. One annoying thing is it's really hard to place nice decals on quad legs! Or legs in general!. Loved the headpiece on this one, giving kinda a spider look.
BANSHEE Was definitely the fun build. Also where the serif text shows up. I love the huge shoulder skull. Mostly used this for double laser handguns. Usually built with the weird generators that recover fully from redlining and a good booster for infinite flight. Surprisingly a variant of this, BANSHEE BOLD, which was a little heavier and with a songbird and a stun needle cannon, is what I used to get through Destroy the Redguns due to having great ammo. Alternative versions used reversed legs too but the mostly ended up feeling unnecessary, but did give a nice insect look.
It was fun to mess with all this stuff and save old builds. While I mostly ended up on fairly typical weapons, the difference in mobility between the different builds was a lot of fun. Honestly, armament could just change with the mission like yeah sure lets try double BADCOOKS or whatever. While I tried to pay attention to stats somewhat, in the end, I was playing Fashion Souls. Compared to the PS1 and 2 games, these are aesthetically my favorite set of ACs.