I forgot to talk about the emulation stability of Gen 4 since that's been a more recent development. I played both games on RPCS3 using the recommended color buffer settings. AC4 worked almost completely without a hitch. I think there was just one time in which my AC failed to load a part texture. 4A, on the other hand, had a more significant issue with occasional crashes in the garage. It's an uncommon occurrence, but it did encourage very frequent saving as I have lost progress to it. Failed texture loads also happened more often than in AC4, but it was still rare, perhaps once out of every forty Missions/Arenas.
Armored Core V
A very startling jump from Gen 4 to 5, possibly more so than Gen 3 to 4. Not that I'm against it, though. There are things that I appreciate about the aesthetic of Gen 5. In particular, the ACs go back to feeling more like mechs rather than aircraft, and I feel that this game has done the best at relaying a sense of scale. Much more than in any previous game, there are familiar man-made structures and objects all over the place to compare to your AC in size, and because the ACs are smaller than usual this time around, you can still feel that normal buildings are big as well.
I played through all of the Story and Order Missions and took over the whole Conquest map. At this point, I'm fine with not getting all of the S-ranks and subquests, which seems like a slog to do even if there's more parts to earn from it.
Gameplay is a mixed bag. Overall, it plays fine. On the plus, terrain matters more than ever, adding a navigational and positional aspect to combat that has usually been absent in previous games. This is especially so with climbing, which I think is a good alternative to outright flight, though sufficient collision with walls can sometimes be a bit finnicky. I think Scan Mode is adequate to grant situational awareness, though I can see some preferring the classic radar. Kicking enemies is also very fun.
There are two main points for downsides. First, the game can sometimes be a visual mess. In general, it feels like it struggles to run compared to the smoothness of Gen 4, but it's the worst when there's a lot of incoming projectiles and particle effects cluttering up the screen. Second, I can tell that sacrifices are made to the single-player combat experience in preferences for team combat. While there have always been two damage types before (solid, energy), AC5 has three (kinetic, chemical, thermal) and seems to make them much more important to combat effectively. The game makes it very clear when your weapon is suboptimal against a particular enemy. You then have four main weapon slots to allocate the three damage types, and larger weapons can only be assigned to the primary arm slots, unable to be switched with back slots until exhausted/purged entirely. It's pretty clear, then, that it's intended for a player to focus on a select combat style and damage types while leaving weaknesses to be covered by teammates. In my solo playthrough, I felt largely restricted into carrying two pairs of rifles for two damage types in order to have bases covered well enough.
AC5 has a more straightforward good-versus-evil story that reminds me of Project Phantasma. Definitely a step down from 4A and not particularly interesting. AC3's city-focused setting is more intriguing, especially because it still has the aspect of factional corporations that's absent AC5. What AC5 has instead is a single Corporation that doubles as the traditional enemies of mysterious alien tech that I had already expressed my dislike of before, and that remains the case here. The final boss looks especially goofy, a big cyber bat with
a mean vampire face. At least the main villain Chief is a bit entertaining in his hammy mania. Thank goodness name labels return to the subtitles, else I would've had a hard time distinguishing characters by voice. Also generous for the Order Missions to have a few (albeit simple) storylines to progress through rather than exclusively being filler Arena battles and "kill all enemies" Missions.
AC6 is out now, but... I'm compelled to put that aside for a bit to finish what I started with Verdict Day.
