#early thoughts

I find it interesting that Clark (New EAPS show) describes his fusion into an Eclipse was by surprise due to a device an unknown kid used on him in the daycare.

Vs Ruin who purposely merged Sun and Moon as a mean to make the two co exist without the pain the OG SAMS Sun and Moon experienced before separating.

While Ruin's fusion was a mutual agreement and became one, his own being with nothing left of Sun or Moon (or even the killcode) as individuals.

While Clark describes how Sun and Moon still actively tug for control now and again to be the dominant personality, even if just by having their quirks appear in Clark's behaviour. Meaning they are still there.. and future plots may have them appear, for Saturn to deal with.

We don't know how the relationship truly was like between Clark's Sun and Moon, before the merge. He hasn't spoken of that in details. But as he said to Saturn, they both still have a lot of things they don't truly know about each other. Mere married to be equals, as Saturn discovered a world so new and unknown to her, through Clark. She was possibly the one needing the marriage to truly treat him equal, just to keep herself at peace for falling in love. As her flustering and having feelings not about her duty seemed so alien to her.

Already we get tidbits that setup possible stories in the future.

Sun and/or Moon forcing their way through to appear and give their piece on things. And Saturn's family and what their mission in life is - to conquer. Her sister most likely gonna appear one day, to throw things into the plot.

Either way, it's gonna be interesting. The show setting up a presence for them to learn of each other and be in love - and flashbacks to parts of their lives the other may not know about.

I'm looking forward to learn more. I'm as sad as the next person, that EAPS ended. But glad to see this replacement clearly got lots of ideas in the working already. The writers know how to capture the audience.

the narration style really sticks out to me immediately. i'll try and spare the analysis for a full review, but First Person Plural POV Narration is a really unique and interesting choice, and i'm intrigued to see how it fits with the themes of the game.

i first learned about this game through a friend sending me their fanfiction where they took characters from a musical and put them in the plot of this game so now i cant stop thinking of the characters as being musical characters. such is life sometimes.

Recently, I picked up Armored Core 6 during the Steam Sale, and I'm about 6.5 hours in as of writing. The thing that I'm enjoying the most about it is how meaningful my gameplay choices feel. The freedom and level of customization AC6 gives the player is immense, and all the choices you make when building your mech feel so connected with the moment to moment combat.

Your mech's build can and will affect how you go through combat. The range you play at, your movement speed, deciding if you prefer going for small windows of big damage vs sustained fire and striking a balance between the two, using that rhythm to take advantage of the movement downtime of enemy mechs, etc., all feel very meaningful and purposeful.

Difficulty

You cannot simply throw yourself at the game until you succeed. This isn't Dark Souls, or Elden Ring, you can't level up and come back later. You have to think about how you play the game, decide whether you need to optimize your current strategy, change it slightly, change it completely, etc. AC6 is a lot like Sekiro (best Fromsoft game) in that regard, though also wildly different in its own way.

the combat system is a little jarring at first and i still miss at least being able to switch to and play as party members if your character dies (instead of the god of war style of full wipe), but i've gotten used to it (it's more annoying for boss fights, regular combat it's very zippy and fun). the targeting at least on controller is kind of annoying sometimes- i'll think i'm pointing at one enemy only to have rook turn and fire at nothing or companions to hit an add instead of a boss. I wish we at least had more control over how it queued who it was hitting. some of the arenas are obnoxious design wise - there's bosses that teleport to you and they give you like a tiny little box to dodge around, not the most fun. i do like that you can punch way above of your weight class sometimes which reminds me of DAO a little bit (like how you'd just wander into a fight or hit a gong and be like oh no, those enemies have skulls over their heads, oh well YOLO). sometimes it doesn't work out but when it does it's very satisfying. It's nice to be able to conquer something mechanically even underleveled (smol fromsoft vibes) Having always been a big fan of the strange composition parties (i.e not just war/rogue/mage), i like that this is now even more viable (and not just me being cheeky "we're having a leather party!" of all squishy rogues). but like the main thing about bioware games is the companions/interpersonal shit and i'm enjoying the heck out of that .i only do main quests to get more side quests from companions (or more side quests in general so we can troll around for more banter). i like petting griffons (and cats and dogs) and playing games with manfred*. I wish the gift system was more interesting like DAO or DA2- i was so excited to see it again and then it was a little disappointing to have them barely react when you get them stuff.

my current fave party are rook and the poison boys (emmerich and lucanis) since they're a rogue too and we just stack necrosis, bleeds and other elemental effects on things till they disintegrate. i like the lighthouse, it feels much cozier than skyhold. I love that you can just wander up to companions having convos and awkwardly eavesdrop. I do miss the little interactions/quests you could get with cole esp*** i think the animations are a little lack lustery? Idk there's something with the face model morphs that sometimes feels weird but the voice acting is strong enough that I don't notice too much. i do miss some of the more bioware-y cheeky things like item descriptions or weird notes near random silly environmental tableaus (there's a little but i just want to read all the notes! there's some in the grey warden areas where i was just like WAIT I HAVE QUESTIONS but there was no plaque about them T.T). where are the stacks of cheese (i do appreciate the fereldens love cheese jokes tho and harding getting so excited when someone says something nice about ferelden) i was esp bummed that there were no random things to read in the black emporium and it's all codex entries instead (that's my favorite tiny bit in DA2 where there's junk you can click on and xenon says weird shit to you). i also wish more had been done with accents of npcs- like i wish all the antivans had similar accents or your crow rook had an antivan accent, stuff like that (having a lot of "ferelden" generic british accents everywhere is disappointing. takes you out of the immersion a lot) My biggest gripe is probably the pacing - I wish it had more horror/mystery pacing like dao and da2 had- the reason we're all scarred by the brood mother is b/c the build up to that was so so creepy (also the necromancer bit w/hawke's mum in DA2). They gave us time to be unnerved or afraid and I do feel the evanuris reveals have been a little rushed so you can't really feel that worried about them (some of the side quests get close to this but still not quite there**). I wish they'd let them breathe a bit more instead of rushing from one giant world changing event to the next. Some of the reveals have been not so great- like lore that the fandom has poured over for 15ish years explained in one line?? i wish there'd been more build up of rook as a character too, maybe even a time skip from a prologue to finding solas kind of thing. the first trailer made it seem like that's what was going to happen but then it in media res'd us in a strange way. the first 10 hours of the game are probably the weakest imho, it took it a bit to get rolling and feel more natural. I appreciate that the first major decision doesn't really let you scum save for it (bit of a jump scare for me lol).

I also don't really need this much varric anymore, i kinda wish we had a different narrator if we have to have one. He feels really awkward to just have there and not doing anything(and not just kill off or have something happen to him? he got stabbed by the dagger and harding only touched it is what i'm saying). at least let him get better pjs and slippers or something Idk it does feel like bits of previous iterations they were working on are still there and they don't completely serve the plot well. And ofc there's the decisions not meaningfully carrying over thing- which is a huge bummer. But in reality they've never been good at that- the characters from previous games we see in new games don't really carry through their plots/arcs that much (it's more like cameos or they're a new person now) and the world states are usually effectively the same just with aesthetic faction swaps. I was sort of hoping we'd get some solavellan SOMETHING but it doesn't look like we will get much at all past the stuff in minrathous. i feel like if they were going to only include the one choice it really should have had more impact on the story. (i am also still a clown and want to talk to solas constantly still even tho he has no reason to talk to my rook at all, i do not care, i love a sad woof. i wish we could just casually visit him in the fade. i wish we could switch to lavellan and visit him in the fade, idk something. need more gareth david-lloyd pls) the interpersonal character decisions have been the only ones that mattered much and then only within the constrains of their own games- the bigger world changing stuff is usually the illusion of choice. It would have been nice if they let us have one protagonist carry through but i can also see why they liked changing it up and felt stuck in that format. tl;dr: i'm really like it for what it is but it's def got flaws. Parts of it feel super polished while other bits do not- i think knowing how game dev works that they had to make decisions on what was going to get prioritized and some of it works while others not so much. I wish the pacing was better for sure but i love the characters/companions which is generally what bioware is best at. sad it won't get meaningful dlc, i don't really care about mass effect 5 tbqh. So far I like it better than inquisition for the most part- it feels like a bigger/more polished DA2 in a lot of ways if that makes any sense (with similar budget/pacing issues, but the environments are more fun). as i mentioned in my other post, i really appreciated the trans/non binary inclusion into the story/cc tho. like that can't be discounted, even if the rest of the game has issues. (all the holes in the narrative make me want to do fan art and fan fiction tho so idk, maybe that's an okay thing. maybe dragon age is best at inspiring us to sandbox around in it)

*side note, i am surprised at how much i like emmerich like holy shit what a lovely soft nerd of a man! going to have to play through a few times and romance him and also bellara for sure (romancing lucanis this time round) i find myself shipping my companions with each other more than i normally do too. I just want them to be happy! I wish they'd let us have polyamory, like i could see little polycules in this squad so easily. i need to give bellara hugs and lucanis head pats. taash deserves head pats too, but my rook will need a ladder.

Wonderful 101: got through the tutorial and while I conceptually like the drawing gameplay, I don't really feel particularly hooked by any aspect of it. I know the ending is bananas, but I don't know if that will be enough to pull me through.

1000x Resist: hooked within the first minute of the game. The writing is weird and jilted, but it's clearly done so on purpose with a reason, and understanding that reason is driving me so much. The game has a kind of contextual horror of a seemingly stable utopia upheld by a house of cards. The dramatic irony as a result is delicious, and I can't wait to play more.

Bright colors under cut