...and I'm not even done.
this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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It's a Dark Souls boss, not an Armored Core boss. AC bosses in previous games were usually (with the exception of For Answer) just other ACs with really good AI piloting them, not giant, unique things with mechanics that you don't see anywhere else.
That alone is enough for me to wish they'd called it something else.
I mean, there are actual ACvAC fights, too.
Though I do wish the arena AIs weren't mental three-year-olds. They go down like wet paper.
Yeah the arena disappointed the very shit right out of my ass. I just finished it last night and expected the S-rank contenders to be even slightly more difficult than the D-rank ones, but they weren't.
Arena should have been increasingly demanding fights that each require a unique build to conquer. Or even better, each fight should have made you use a pre-set loadout, so you'd have to explore and learn new builds, and that knowledge could then be carried into designing mechs for the campaign missions.
I bet theres a lot of people out there not changing it up at all, missing out on an a lot that the game has to offer.
Ideally each one could have made you adapt to and learn new mechanics.
But it seems each one is just a randomized loadout or a character from the story, with the exact same AI slapped on.
The arena is honestly pretty close to how it was in the old games. Hell, in 4A, if you beat White Glint in the story missions before beating her in the arena, you got to skip the arena fight entirely on account of her being dead.
Forcing players to use a specific build goes against the entire spirit of the series, though.
It's just an idea I had from a game design perspective.
Nier: Automata is one game with which I saw a lot of people complain, as the game does nearly nothing to get you to actually experiment with different weapon combinations and plug-in chips, and a lot of people overlook those systems because of it. And hence the experience of some players suffered.
Pre-set loadouts in arenas could have been used to address that design problem by showing players the possibilities.
Although, it wouldn't necessarily need to be mandatory. Each arena fight could come with a "recommended AC" for countering the opponent, while still allowing players to take in their own mech should they want to. This could have come with the fights being a lot harder as well, making using your own design viable only if you know what you're doing.