From Software 'n such

[bcass]

From (gladly) aren't a AAA studio. I define success in terms of gameplay mechanics and design ingenuity, that's why there are games made in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s that still obliterate most modern games. Interestingly, this has not sold as well in its homeland as AC5:

https://gameluster.com/famitsu-armored- ... ous-entry/

But is at the top of the UK charts (UK being the biggest games market in Europe):

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/ ... -and-zelda

And outsold Baldurs Gate 3 (on Steam) on launch day:

https://metro.co.uk/2023/08/28/armored- ... -19407454/

I'm at the penultimate mission on chapter 5 now. If you haven't got this far yet then all I can say is that the art direction takes an even bigger jump into the absolutely amazing by this point. From's rise to become perhaps the most important games developer on the planet in the space of a decade will never cease to amaze me. Having played computer / video games since the early 80s, to my eyes it is unprecedented. It's not just the wild success of the games that matters, it's the manner in which they did it. Big Western studios need to engage in some serious introspection, at this point they are an embarrassment.

[cfx]

From (gladly) aren't a AAA studio. I define success in terms of gameplay mechanics and design ingenuity, that's why there are games made in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s that still obliterate most modern games. Interestingly, this has not sold as well in its homeland as AC5:

That last sentence is likely not true. As your article itself states, the numbers for AC6 do not include digital, which is more prominent now than it was during AC5's release, if AC5 was even sold digitally (that I do not know).

PS5 software in general in Japan just isn't selling very well, so these results seem more than fine even aside from digital.

[bcass]

Unless someone can find some hard stats for Japan (excluding mobile game downloads), then I would be inclined to believe that download numbers on that platform, for that region, will likely not be significant.

[Lander]

Lord, I don't even want to get into what denotes the amount of As assigned to a given studio especially now the conventional major players have been fixing (unsuccessfully, as best as I can tell) to add another one and dilute the metric.

And well, mechanics and design ingenuity don't tend to correlate directly with sales - something the industry could indeed do with correcting. I'd give older AC a bit more credit on that scale, since a lot of its DNA is still present beneath 6's refinements.

I'm both surprised and not to see it top the UK chart; on one hand, our national taste in games isn't terribly refined, and seems to favour whatever is plastered on the sides of buses on any given month. On the other, From games sell like hotcakes now and are marketed as such, so succeeding within those pop-media criteria was effectively inevitable. Though I suspect a certain Bethesda flagship will dethrone it before long.

I'm at the penultimate mission on chapter 5 now. If you haven't got this far yet then all I can say is that the art direction takes an even bigger jump into the absolutely amazing by this point.

I think I know the part:

Spoiler: Chapter 5 Mission 2 Conclusion

The launch of Colony Ship Xylem? Incredible sense of scale, they must have been using some serious cinematic trickery to make it look that good.

For Answer's plot hinged around some comparable flying cities that showed up as maps later in the game, but the presentation this time around is really something else.

What did you pick for mission 3? The finale as a whole is awesome (in the proper non-colloqial sense), but one of the NG routes really goes above and beyond in spectacle.

Spoiler: Chapter 5 Mission 4, name starts with Breach

Team up with the Xylem, and blow up a huge fleet of warships with an infinite energy bar yes! Mecha power fantasy at its finest.

Likely a homage to Zone of the Enders 2, which hands you a giant laser cannon about halfway for the purposes of sinking a similar fleet mano-a-mano.

[bcass]

For mission 3 I picked:

Spoiler

eliminate Carla

Which was quite tough and very nearly gave up on to select the alternative branch (the one you describe). Will definitely do a NG+ run to see these alternative missions.

[Lander]

Man, AC6's S-rank requirements are weird. I was expecting to roll most of the regular missions and get stuck on bosses, but it isn't working out that way at all.

Many of them are what you'd expect: do it fast, hard, on the cheap, and tick off optional objectives. Boss missions are surprisingly lenient, in that you can smash the route to the boss and then merely survive the fight, and still get S.

But there are a few mid-size assault missions here and there that effectively act as rank traps; speedrun no-hit that shit and it'll slap you with an A. Do it slightly less well with the same build, but satisfy some abstruse condition, and get an S.

Investigate BAWS Arsenal No. 2, and Attack the Refueling Base in particular have been a gauntlet of repeated runs falling all over the speed / bonuses / costs spectrum. They seem to have a precise sweet-spot of picking off high-value enemies and side objectives at speed (some of which are hidden, like revealing stealthed enemies via scan), and getting lucky enough to crush any LC / HC duels and midbosses. Osu!

For mission 3 I picked:

Spoiler

eliminate Carla

Which was quite tough and very nearly gave up on to select the alternative branch (the one you describe). Will definitely do a NG+ run to see these alternative missions.

I did the same on my first run. Took enough attempts to make me question whether I'd picked the hard route, since some of the older games hand out brutally punishing encounters in response to certain choices. Thankfully this one wasn't so bad!

In tradeoff, the parts you get from that route are really good - two playthroughs later and they're still on my main AC.

[bcass]

Some questions for the more seasoned Armored Core players:

1. Which of the previous games have OSTs as good as or better than AC6?
2. Of the AC games released on the PS3 / 360, were they all released on both formats, or are there any titles that were exclusive to either format?
3. Of the PS3 / 360 AC games, what is the best platform to play each of those titles (including emulation)?

Currently well into chapter 2 (NG+), crazy how much easier Balteus was second time around. He was easier than the chapter 1 escort mission.

[cfx]

Unless someone can find some hard stats for Japan (excluding mobile game downloads), then I would be inclined to believe that download numbers on that platform, for that region, will likely not be significant.

Direct information from Sony: https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/lib ... lement.pdf

See page 9 and the "full game software digital download ratio" and footnote 12 that explains exactly what that means. That's worldwide and unfortunately not broken down by territory, but with a 67% global number for FY2022 and 72% for Q1 FY2023, if you think that Japan is so far out of line with other territories that this game doesn't have at least that 13.5% digital ratio over any such number for ACV (if that one was even available digitally) that would make it at least even with ACV, then there is no convincing you unless From Software makes some kind of statement.

You also know that ACVI is on Steam in Japan too, right? While Steam isn't a huge thing in Japan, it also isn't nothing: https://www.serkantoto.com/2023/07/07/j ... pc-gaming/

[bcass]

PC gaming isn't popular in Japan, those numbers will be absolutely tiny. That document doesn't really shed any info on this particular situation. My assumption is based on this - AC6 is a relatively hardcore release, and I imagine that those types of players (as witnessed on this very forum) prefer physical releases. The tat that came with the various limited editions may also be another factor for increased physical sales.

[cfx]

Believe what you will; I'm done here.

[Sima Tuna]

Some questions for the more seasoned Armored Core players:

1. Which of the previous games have OSTs as good as or better than AC6?
2. Of the AC games released on the PS3 / 360, were they all released on both formats, or are there any titles that were exclusive to either format?
3. Of the PS3 / 360 AC games, what is the best platform to play each of those titles (including emulation)?

Currently well into chapter 2 (NG+), crazy how much easier Balteus was second time around. He was easier than the chapter 1 escort mission.

1) I like the OSTs of all Armored Core games I've played or seen. When it comes to music, I can't give more of a recommendation than just listen to them yourself. Everyone's taste is different.
2) I don't think so. I believe AC4, For Answer and V were released on everything. Verdict Day as well, possibly? I hardly played AC fifth generation at all.
3) Pretty sure emulation with max framerate is the superior option. Xbox 360 usually fares better in simultaneous releases if you're going the physical media/real hardware route.

[Lander]

Nearly done with S-ranking - just the last page left now, though it's - justifiably - a doozy. Didn't encounter too many more rank traps on the way either, thankfully.

Also, I late-realized something else that got refined out in 6: losing money.
Staying out of the red isn't something you have to worry about anymore, ammo costs for high-power weapons no longer have the potential to eat most of your earnings, and you don't lose any money in selling parts.

Good and bad, I think - on the upside, it frees the player up to experiment a lot more, which plays to the core strength of AC customization. On the downside, fighting against an economy lent the older games a 'sim' kind of feel, which is a shame to lose.
Seems like something that would be well-served by a MechWarrior-style approach, where the mainline titles provide easy access to parts and tuning, and the Mercenaries expansions are used as a platform for the more simmy pay-your-way style of campaign.

1. Which of the previous games have OSTs as good as or better than AC6?
2. Of the AC games released on the PS3 / 360, were they all released on both formats, or are there any titles that were exclusive to either format?
3. Of the PS3 / 360 AC games, what is the best platform to play each of those titles (including emulation)?

1. 6's mostly-ambient OST is quite different to the rest of the series, so while there's no direct comparison, the 4 games (mostly 4A) have a genre-defying Zuntata-ish feel to some of their tracks - Remember and 4 the Answer are favourites, and Twist It is worth a mention. 1-3 are relatively straightforward old-school techo, though 1 is a lot less suble about it

2. AC4, AC4: For Answer, AC5 and AC5: Verdict Day all released on PS3 and 360.

3. I can only speak to 4 and 4A, but 360 has a much more consistent framerate on actual hardware. I've seen Xenia recommended as the gold standard to emulate them, alongside some recent reports of RPCS3 (which wasn't very good, for a time) having improved significantly.

Xenia is probably the safer bet if you're on a Windows machine. RPCS3 is more polished as a whole, so could in theory end up the better experience if the performance and stability have been ironed out, but I've yet to confirm that one way or the other.

Currently well into chapter 2 (NG+), crazy how much easier Balteus was second time around. He was easier than the chapter 1 escort mission.

Definitely - it's crazy to think back to the life-or-death slide strafe duels of NG once you have builds that can soundly humiliate the early bosses. Though Sea Spider is still a force to be reckoned with unless your AC can stay in the sky.

Did you do the NG+ thing that shows up early in Chapter 1?

Spoiler: NG+ Chapter 1

Walter and Michigan's little Bill me for the AC repair fees exchange after you finish betraying the two Redguns in Attack the Dam Complex is deadpan gold

[Lander]

And done! AC6 in totality after 66 hours



Those final boss S-ranks were no joke - I had to put together proper counterbuilds instead of relying on my existing roster, on top of giving each encounter the proper Souls-adjacent respect it demanded.

NG/+/++ Spoilery Bonus S-Ranking Builds

AC-LN-EX1: AYRE BUSTER
Witness the power of the Ayre Busterrr!

Custom build for Shut Down the Closure Sattelites - heavy bubbleguns to pop her shield during phase 1, and dual shock lances to pile on direct hit damage, as well as stagger during phase 2. Beefy long-duration booster and capacity / recharge generator to make sure dodges are long enough to cause whiffs, and pulse armor for refreshing and opening new stagger windows.

The key here is to stay hard-locked and play keepaway; her core strategy is to dash around, release a wave of homing missiles, then either walk forward while firing lasers, or go for a melee lunge.

You can push forward with bubbleguns during the walk, and dash backward to evade the lunge. Phase 2 adds more attacks, most of which can be evaded by staying on the move or dodging on cue. Pile on shock lance fire once she's staggered, and the fight will be over before long.



AC-LN-EX2: MAXIMUM BOOST

There's only one person that can keep up with me.

A concept model I put together for funsies and ended up using for Regain Control of the Xylem. As per the name, sacrifice everything to maximize the Boost stat (base move speed) while still being combat-viable. You could wring out a few more points with a coral generator, but the recharge delay is untenable.

Super fun - this baby is fast like For Answer, able to zig-zag across the field effortlessly, 180 around bosses with nothing but vertical thrust, and has a perfect cadence between the needle gun and laser dagger cooldowns that allows it to be constantly blading or shooting. I only wish I'd built it before hour 66!



AC-LN-EX3: SEWING CLUB

Iguazu. You were a mistake. An irregular.

The apex of my building powers. Custom built for Coral Release: An ultimate god machine fit to crush the king of scrubs and send him back to embroidery school. OO-RAH.

Similar base idea to the AYRE BUSTER, but with chainguns exploiting regular stagger instead of bubbleguns exploiting a shield. Heavy biped legs for additional maneuverability at the cost of stability, since the second phase's melee rush can get pretty ridiculous.

Rushdown is the order of the day; ignore the supporting enemies, stay close, pile on the damage, and shift to an Ayre-style keepaway-and-punish approach when phase 2 begins. As before, you should have enough total kill power to bring him down before he kills you.

Not sure there's much more to say. Cracking AC game, worthy of carrying the name into the latest iteration of the medium I hope we see a standalone expansion or DLC at some point.

[Blinge]

My assumption is based on this - AC6 is a relatively hardcore release, and I imagine that those types of players (as witnessed on this very forum) prefer physical releases. The tat that came with the various limited editions may also be another factor for increased physical sales.

baseless conjecture.

[bcass]

As are assumptions to the contrary based on a complete lack of digital sales figures for the game.

[bcass]

Did you do the NG+ thing that shows up early in Chapter 1?

Yes,I have now done all the extra missions for NG+. I've had a look at a guide, and it looks like there are tonnes more extra missions for NG++, although I am not sure I am relishing the prospect now as some of the NG+ missions were not especially easy. I don't think I will have the patience to S-rank all the missions. Thanks for the suggestions BTW, my intention is to play the older games in chronological order, starting with AC1 on the MiSTer FPGA PS1 core (on a CRT).

[Lander]

I'd put NG++ around the same difficulty as NG+, maybe a little tougher thanks to a couple of specific missions dragging up the average. For the most part I didn't have to switch up my builds until going for the 100%.

Another note on 4 / 4A - I went through the RPCS3 setup process last night, and it turns out you have to hunt down 'regulation files' (essentially balance hotfixes that are distict from versioned patches) in order to get the most up-to-date experience.

The latest PS3 4A one is still available on PSN (and thus on the various third-party sites that exploit its historic lack of HTTP security to provide direct download links), but it seems you have to hunt around around less-direct sources like YouTube descriptions and the AC Discord in order to find the rest.

[bcass]

This mission (chapter 5):

Spoiler

Breach the Karman Line

Makes me think that From could do an amazing Star Fox.

[Klatrymadon]

If you're interested in the older soundtracks you should definitely check them out, yeah! While AC6's sound design can really shine when the radio chatter stops long enough for you to hear it (and it is so good to hear the use of melodies outside of orchestral/choral boss pieces in a From game for the first time in ages), the soundtrack is quite one-note compared to the older stuff. It's much more self-serious and uses a lot of resonant warbly synths to create senses of intimidation and grandeur, occasionally with some Vangelis-style arpeggiation, and for better or worse it's fully committed to this one form, which it does well. Meanwhile the early games are like stepping into a club at various points in the 90s, their music heavily drawing on breakbeat, drum 'n' bass, Detroit techno, acid jazz, trance, you name it. The variety and difference is striking, and while there are a lot of games to look into, I think they all richly reward the time investment.

(I don't want to rob anyone of the joy of banger discovery, but here's one to get you started.)

[bcass]

I will check out all the games soon so will be exposed to the OSTs as I go through. I thought the AC6 OST took a lot of influence from the Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack, which itself riffed on Vangelis.

[guigui]

Elden Ring quick question, dont want to look that up on a wiki : I guess there is a way to add elemental damage to weapons (fire, lightning, more). But how would you do that : is there a specific item/blacksmith needed, or is it done only via the Ashes of War that you tie to the weapon ?

[Sumez]

It's related to using Ashes of War on a weapon, but you need to find a specific item to get the lightning property first. Once you have that, I think you can pick it no matter which Ashes of War you're using.
It's a bit of a weird system, since you'd think the two are unrelated.

[guigui]

So lightning is a bit different than other elemental damage if I understand correctly ?

I already found an Ash of War that adds holy damage and it works by itself.

[XoPachi]

I didn't know Otogi was only published by Sega. I remember really wanting that game as a kid, but I didn't have an XBox. I played it on a demo kiosk as a kid in 2003 (back when video game stores were cool).

[evil_ash_xero]

Just to compare, I've been playing For Answer on my PS3. My system's modded, so I didn't have to shell out a bunch of cash.

This is.... well, it's how I remember the demo. Hard to control, bland graphics...etc.. Metal Wolf Chaos was easier to control and looked much better.
Is this all about just "making the right build", and not so much about being fun to play?

VI is VERY fun to play. I understand that For Answer is old, but ZoE2 is older, and despite having some odd control quirks of it's own, is a lot of fun.

Just a question. Don't take this as attacking your game. Not everything is for everyone.

[Sumez]

I understand that For Answer is old

[Volteccer_Jack]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6IpcH_HqzY
For Answer is extremely fun to play. I was never on the level of the dudes in that video, but I've no idea why someone would find 4A hard to control. It's not like the ancient PS1 AC games.

[Lemnear]

I can't really like the OST of AC6...

I prefer this from For Answers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl9FQIT-6iY

[Angry Hina]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6IpcH_HqzY
For Answer is extremely fun to play. I was never on the level of the dudes in that video, but I've no idea why someone would find 4A hard to control. It's not like the ancient PS1 AC games.

I like AC fA a lot but I think too, that its a bit complicated to control. The controllers barely offer enough buttons and triggers for the control concept.

The classic Acs (PS1 PS2) are more simple to control if you manage to accept the non analog stick idea.

[bcass]

I can't really like the OST of AC6...

I prefer this from For Answers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cl9FQIT-6iY

Oh god, that's awful.