FromSoft dropped a new game yesterday. Normally, that would mean I would be super-hyped and jumping out of my skin. I mean, I bought a whole new desktop 10 days before Elden Ring came out specifically so I could play it. Granted, I need a new desktop, anyway, but I didn’t push myself to get one until the prospect of not being able to play Elden Ring hit me. I was not happy that From didn’t drop the specs needed for the PC until 10 days before the game dropped.
I do understand that ti’s more difficult to assess what is needed for a PC than a console because the specs are much more diverse on the former and not limited by hardware the way it is on the console. But 10 days before the game realesed was cutting it close. I was fortunate enough that I could buy a new desktop just like that, but most people cannot.
This time, I didn’t even check the specs before I bought the game. If my computer could play Elden Ring, it should be able to play ACVI. Even with my beefy rig, Elden Ring had some microstutters on release. I had two hard crashes, too, but that was it. It wasn’t enough to dampen my enthusiasm for the game, but it was a thing. And I know that many people had it much worse, even people with beefier PCs.
I will be brutally honest. I am not a sci-fi person or a mech person. I don’t give a flying fig about robots, so I would not have even blinked about this game if it weren’t for the fact that it was made by FromSoft. I have never played an Armored Core, but I know that this was their bread-and-butter back before they became known for their brutally hard action-adventure RPGs such as Dark Souls.
Fun fact: Patches first appeared in an Armored Core. I don’t remember what his epithet was in that game, and I hesitate to look it up because I don’t want to spoil what it is in this game. I found it by looking for the first game he was in. The thing I thought was a spoiler wasn’t. He was a Lynx called Patch the Good Luck, and apparently, it’s a game Miyazaki directed. This was in Armored Core: For Answer (which is an interesting choice for a name).
He has been in every game since, either directly or implicitly. There was a character called Pate in the second Dark Souls game that was clearly Patches. And there was a merchant/thief in Sekiro who reminded me strongly of Patches. In Demon’s Souls, he was Patches the Hyena. In Dark Souls, he was Trusty Patches. In Dark Souls III, he was Unbreakable Patches. In Elden Ring, he turns up as Patches the Untethered, and his questline is filled with pathos in a way it’s not in the others. Although he does have an interesting qusetline in the second DLC of Dark Souls III. I cannot wait to see WHEN he shows up in ACVI.
If I get to him.
Here’s the thing. I did the first mission. It’s a tutorial and teaches you which buttons do what. Ian warned me not to expect it to be a Soulsborne game, which I knew from other reviews. I don’t think it’ll stop people from expectting Elden Ring with giant mechs, but then again, nothing will do that.
It looks great. There’s a short cutscene, and then you just jump right in. I knew before I started that the mech is called Raven so I called my pilot Shadow. Raven and Shadow back together again. Normally, I call my character Mulan Rogue, but I did something different this time because I wanted to honor my cats and because it felt right. Of course, i made my mech all black, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The tutorial is brief and a tad…not confusing, but the buttons aren’t intuitive. At least not to me. There are two boost buttons which is odd, and I never managed to use one of them (X). That’s normally to use a healing potion in the other From games (except Bloodborne, which was up arrow. Which is the same in this game).
Here’s the problem for me. I have terrible spatial issues. My periphery is shot, especially since my medical crisis. So going vertical in addition to forward and backwards is….a problem. There are three weapons to begin with. Right Trigger is like a rifle shot. Right Bumper is a rocket launcher that supposedly can target different targets? I never manage to get it to shoot different targets, though. Left Trigger is melee. A kind of laser sword. Clicking in the Left Stick is an attack boost and X is a boost boost. B is to run faster (much like in the other From games) and A is ascend, much like jump.
Clicking in the Right Stick is supposed to target enemies. Supposedly, it clicks onto the nearest enemy and you can flick to change, which is like the Souls games, too. But when I was fighting the first boss, it did not seem to click onto the boss for me. I don’t know what I was doing wrong.
Actually, I have an idea what I was doing wrong. One of the side effects of my stroke is that my ability to click a mouse or a controller button has worsened. I can’t do a quick click, apparently, which is wild considering that my typing is roughly the same as it was before (over 100 WPM).
So in the case of this game, when I thought I was clicking in the RS, I probably was clicking it in and out at the same time. It’s not a big deal with the face buttons and the shoulder buttons because for the most part, I’m just holding those down. But for the RS and the LS, it’s different. Also for the healing. Since that’s up arrow, er, button, and you need to click it once. I’ve accidentally clicked it twice. So maybe that’s the issue with the RB not being able to target multiple people.
The mech handles smoothly. So damn smoothly. It’s silky, like butter. I have no complaints in that. My complaints are with the fact that you have to keep the camera focused on the mech and shoot it at the same time, which was not easy for me. The lock-on would break, and then I would have to find the boss again and re-lock onto it. I kept running into the out-of-bounds red flashing warning sign, which was frustrating, too. I can’t keep track of all that at once.
With the boss, they wanted you to learn that you should be hyper-aggressive with it. The first time I fought it, I hung back and tried to pew-pew it from afar. When I realized that I was dead meat that way, I got more aggressive. That was the key, and I was able to get it to the ‘we got what we want’ point fairly easily (from the guy talking to me. The handler, I think?). But then he told me to tie up the loose ends. which I took to mean to keep attacking the boss until it died.
Which I tried to do, but couldn’t manage. It would be a war of attrition, and it would eventually get me. This happened a handful of times until I got a good run on the boss in which I got it to the ‘finish him’ stage really quickly. Then the game froze, and I had to quit out of it. Which meant restarting the mission. Yes, it’s a short mission, but that’s still annoying.
I kept at the boss and got it in like 20 to 30 times total. I will admit I had feeling of euphoria when it exploded, but I had no idea what I did differently that time except outlast it. I got it with a sliver of health left and no heals. Great! I’ll take it. Then, it was into the garage and I got the ability to dress up my mech. That’s what I’m playing the game for, anyway. FashionCore!
It’s a good game. The mech is so slick to handle, but I’m grappling with the mechanics and the fact that my depth perception is shit. I’ll play more, but I’m not really into it yet. I do think if you like fighting mechs, you’ll love this game.