#in ng++ Carla and Walter also appear

[divine-bloodlines]

Here’s the job 621:

“This job comes from Schneider, a subsidiary of the Arquebus Corporation. Our rivals at Dai Feng say you can’t get a tgirl pregnant, but we here at Arquebus believe that you simply need to keep coming in her gay ass. To prove this, we propose a joint field test where you’ll be joined by V.IV Rusty and V.VI Maeterlinck. I’m sure you can guess what their purpose in this mission will be, and what the conditions for a successful mission are. We look forward to hearing your response to this request.”

They’re offering good money for a relatively simple job, you should take the offer.

Don’t come back unless you have a litter in you 621

[reneelovesrobots]

Beat Armored Core 6 NG++ and I have Thoughts.

For the most part I really like how everything goes to hell compared to the game you have to be familiar with by this point and finally seeing ALLMIND make some big moves. The changed coral convergence mission, completely missing Walter's big message, it's cool as heck even if it does shortcut past you already knowing stuff in places in a way that must be weird for 621 if nobody explained it to them offscreen. Like, Xylem is just in the sky now lol

And jumping Snail is incredibly satisfying! It's absolutely perfect to finally get to just gank him with no big boss machine or anything.

The whole new ending is just full of great moments - the dialogue between Walter and Carla, Red (correctly) blaming you for everything without actually knowing the background or anything, the final boss fight entire, it was a blast. And while unclear the ending is very neat and intriguing.

But I don't think it hangs together as well as the other two routes? Iguazu gets a lot of subtle foreshadowing through three playthroughs to be fair, but the NG++ specific stuff is a bit less solid. "Kate" is obviously ALLMIND, for example, and there's a lot of focus on how mysterious she is when she appears. But nothing really comes of that? Like she could be replaced with Little Ziyi or Johnny Young Bosch's Redgun and it wouldn't change the story. The AC AI/VI voice thing calling ALLMIND "Master" also never comes to anything and tbh I was braced for something to happen there like Ayre needing to deactivate it and take over or something to let you actually fight ALLMIND. ALLMIND's inevitable betrayal also feels pretty abrupt tbh, like I don't quite get why she didn't just... not do that. Did I miss something? It can't have just been Iguazu being Iguazu.

Overall it was a fantastic experience and all the levels were a blast, but narratively I prefer the other two. Personal ending rankings are Liberator of Rubicon, Fires of Raven, and then Alea Iacta Est.

So I guess AC6 is only nearly perfect (still going to spend hundreds more hours in it probably)