Yeah, the ability to go through and see what each stat means has been a godsend, but I’m really curious as to what hidden stats crop up over time. For example, in 4Answer (presumably 4 as well, but IDK) every frame part had a hidden aerodynamic/drag stat that affected the speeds you could reach.
You can also access the build menu mid-test and change swap any parts around you want, so long as you own them.
I beat what I think was the mid boss of chapter 1? The first mission where you get a supply drop. It was way easier than previous challenges, but now I’ve hit a plateau with my AC design and will probably have to grind until I’m comfortably upspecced.
game whips ass, i love turning myself into a shotgun wielding cannonball and blowing up a bunch of robots
also i clipped this from an admittedly pretty easy ch1 fight because i felt really cool noticing a missile right on my ass and nailing the dodge like that
this is all i’ve been playing really, since it came out.
i’m stuck on the chapter 2 boss, so my main goal right now is just buying all of the available parts until i find a configuration that works for me. my heavy tank build wasn’t really fast enough for the boss, but my lighter and more agile build can’t seem to do enough damage to break its stun meter, so i figure the answer is…something in between!
I had to grin when I found the Moonlight Sword guarded by wheel skeletons.
this person may not realize that you could almost always just savescum if you fucked up a mission rather than paying the repair cost. don’t tell’em that’s how most people played these games! it’s a secret!
That is what i remember of my playthrough of vanilla ac4 and that i just went straight to the double grenade launcher build asap just to see the story.
Also echoing that i appreciate how quick it is to jump in and test new builds to see what’s affected. All these stats seem as inscrutable to me as ever but that there is no cost to sell and buy back parts makes it low stakes enough to try out things i otherwise wouldn’t have in what i remember of the old games
imo the stats in this are honestly the clearest they’ve ever been, the contextual help is actually coherent this time
bless you adrenaline perverts who are allergic to the garage tho. i need a few minutes of tinkering and looking at numbers between these missions 
Yeah i need to read the help for once. I look at generators, cores and EN shortfall errors and just keep swapping out until it works lol
i don’t know if this has been the case with other fromsoft games because I haven’t actually played one since dark souls but i really love how the fantasy of this game plays out
like, if you want to go in and find the absolute pinnacle of build for every mission that will result in you taking 0 damage and killing every boss in 5 seconds you can do that, but for me a lot of the enjoyment is around trying to shoehorn what I like playing (an average-ass gundam guy with a gun and sword and missiles) into every mission and seeing if I can do it, making slight changes if needed, and it feels like you could do this process with any build you like, so if super-speedy machine gun guy is your thing then why not try to play it through the whole game
and the thing that makes this process so nice is that the friction around changing things up is so low - you’re never taking a loss on buying different parts and it’s really easy to go in and test things out, so if it turns out that you actually need to switch things up for a boss or whatever you can just do that and then go back to what you were doing before pretty easily
maybe this is also the case in other fromsoft games but i always felt like i would have to lock myself into a build for a specific character and if i wanted to change it up later on i’d have to do a bunch of work to do so
game is so good. i keep replaying missions until i get A ranks in them. the early game stuff where you’re blowing up rebels’ lightly defended infrastructure, a fast, lightweight build with a bazooka in each hand, shoulder missiles completely optional, can just zip through and ignore everything but the targets. got my first s-rank using this strategy on the first mission where you have allied ACs. i am looking forward to finally hitting a wall with it and having to switch things up
the anime dub style voice acting is a pretty big turn-off
To me it plays as very ace combat radio dialogue which i am very into but can see how it can be grating
yeah the translation is really awkward to hear spoken, i wish there was an easy way to switch it to japanese
small example, it’s weird to hear a marine stereotype utter the entire phrase “mass produced MTs” when the military fucking loves acronyms and would immediately turn that into “MPMTs”
I find the dub much more palatable when there’s a bit of distortion to it and I wish it was applied to all the VAs all the damn time
i’d be curious to hear what the japanese VA is like, yeah (disclaimer i am not playing the videogame, just watching the videos posted here)
isn’t it just an option in the menu?
personally, i’m finding the USA dub to fit the mood of the game, especially since it’s all radio communication
thanks, i was button-mashing my way past this menu without even reading the options
