regmcfly wrote:

I kind of want to be tactical in Mech loadout and that help me through it.

Still early days for me and I haven't got access to all the stuff I would like, but that is absolutely what AC is all about. You wanna go speedy hit n run with some brutal melee, or tanky with hard hitting charged shots, or hover around and dish out pulverising AoE? It's all good.

And sure certain builds will be better in certain situations, but as long as you've got a grasp on the fundamentals you should be able to make anything, or most things work.

stormyskiesahead wrote:

The difficulty seems as varied as it always was with AC tbf, and yeah it's not at all Souls. Like, at all. I'm guessing it gets tougher but chapter 1 is honestly fine. You'll blitz plenty of missions filled with regular enemies and then stall at a boss for a couple of tries, like you would in a hundred other games. It's pretty great.

ZMM wrote:

The only mech game I remember enjoying was Phantom Crash. It's up there with some of the weirdest games I've played 

Phantom Crash is seriously one of my favourite games and I still jump in every so often for a rumble. Holly scooby with hover legs stripped out for max speed, no shoulder weapons to reduce weight, Dog type chip, boosted OC, and rocking a Javelin laser and Penetrate Cone for melee. No ammo needed. Magic.

I remember playing it for hours. The core gameplay was solid, customising was addictive. I loved the music too, I discovered so many great Japanese artists from that game (like Kuricorder Quartet).

Blasted through a few more missions and a couple of the newly unlocked training missions last night and it's just feeling better and better as I get more confident and competent with my mech. That tutorial boss is still by far the toughest thing I've faced, and honestly, it's not that bad once you grasp the basics of combat the game was feeding you during that mission. I know there's much, much tougher challenges to come however and I'm all about it. Maybe.

So far it's the other AC's that are the biggest challenge. You can swoop around the battlefield slicing apart the various fodder with a grin, but then you'll see something else out of the corner of your eye. Larger, more threatening. These enemy AC's are the only things that have killed me besides the tutorial boss, and I kinda love 'em. 

At the moment my time with this has been very limited but I'm hoping to put a few hours in over the weekend. A couple more missions and I should have enough money to start properly working on specific mech builds as well, rather than just bodging together whatever I've found.

If you can get past it, I'd say there's nothing as tough until the end.

Try staying really close in the first part, so you can slide under it when it does its big attacks. That gives you plenty of opportunity for sword attacks too.

Aaaagh!

Skerret wrote:

I have this and I have made a little logo for my mech chap that only I understand.

It's good! Like someone mashed Mechwarrior and Vanquish together and made Mechquish.

HULLO

Finally cleared act 1, and yeah the last boss did require a full rethink and rebuild. Balteus is a beast. Straight into act 2 then and in contrast the first boss was a breeze once you suss his weakness. 

Got a decent selection of parts available in the shop at this point and the build potential is really cool, but the systems are perhaps not quite as in depth as I expected. S'all good though, still plenty here to work with. Currently got three different mech builds ready to go depending on the situation. 

The one-on-one Arena mode where you fight AI controlled AC's for upgrade chips has provided a nice little distraction from the uneven campaign missions, but it's already becoming seriously tough and I've only completed the second lowest tier. One fast moving airborne fucker in particular killed me more that any boss so far. And there are five more ranks above this?

This game is great, but when it wants to it can make me feel very old and very slow.

John Linneman really loves this. I tend to like the same games as him so I'm definitely excited to play this at some point, probably around chrimbo if there's a sale. I love Ace Combat and this seems to share a lot of the same feels, glad that it seems to have stayed true to it's old school roots.

Interestingly he's been playing with mouse+keyboard which I wouldn't have thought about doing based on From's previous games and with piloting a big mech which feels like it would be more satisfying with analogue movement and rumble, but from the bits of gameplay I've seen I can definitely see why rapid aiming precision would be nice for sweeping through the smaller enemies.

And that's the very short act 2 done. The last boss wiped the floor with me on my first try so I swapped my shoulder weapons to take advantage of what I'd seen of his movement. Just about pulled off the win on the second try. Felt pretty good.

Skerret wrote:

Enjoying this. I like the dynamic movement which has ZOE and Virtual On flavours. When you pull off a mid-air one-two laser-sword-plus-grenade-to-the-face combo to knock out an AC you get the gamey tingle. Still fairly early on (just knocked off the Juggernaut) so tinkering with entry level weaponry but I do enjoy a dual handgun build so I do.

Aye, it's tingle city. Gonna play around with dual handguns and maybe dual shotguns in the arena tonight, I've been mixing up my builds a lot more post act 1 but I still feel naked without my laser sword.

I really struggled with the invisi-mechs as well. I'd say definitely play around with builds, and get used to swapping your loadout around to deal with certain enemies and situations. 

There are definitely builds that can crush most things, but they might not be the most enjoyable to play in many missions. Having a hanger full of different mechs, and even changing things on the fly, certainly feels more like the way the game was designed to be played.

Definitely tweak and faddle about with builds; I feel FROM didn't intend for players to have one optimum build (though undoubtedly there will be OP configs), rather armoured cores(es) for courses. I plan to have about 40 builds saved to flick between, dress for the occasion sort of thing.

No idea about Ace Combat tbh but mission length varies massively, with some you can blast through in seconds and others being more substantial and maybe featuring a boss. Even then I haven't yet come across anything I'd call a long mission. Checkpoints seem fine, but honestly, you won't need to use them all that much except for boss fights where you'll be loaded in right at the beginning of the fight. Besides the limited number of challenging named enemies most of the general baddies are a walkover once you get the feel for it. There are exceptions, mind. 

Replaying missions for cash to buy new parts is a big part of the game, and besides the regular missions there's a cool arena mode where you go one-on-one against tougher and tougher AI controlled mechs. 

I really do like it, but this is exactly the kind of game I've been wanting for a while now.

The only drag is if you want to leave a mission to buy new parts or if you want to close the game - then you lose your checkpoint and have to do the mission from scratch.

You can switch any weapons you already own at a checkpoint, but if you decide that you need, say, a pulse gun against a boss and you haven't bought it yet, you have to quit the mission. This happens more in the early stages, before you've built up a really wide range of weapons.

But yeah, the missions are short at least.

Just to add to the checkpoint thing. It's also feasible to run one type of build until the boss battle, knowing your build isn't suitable, die and then swap out for something suitable for the boss. On checkpoint restart you get all your healing packs back.

I have done this for Balteus. Not beaten it yet though.

Have enjoyed running previous missions again as a bit of a skill check and to earn some extra cash. More cash = more parts = more flexibility when swapping out builds during missions.

Edit: Balteus is down