Recent reviews by Kiwi

Updated review as of finishing the game: 8.5/10
Mandatory reminder that this game was review bombed by chinese players so the % of positive reviews does not reflect the reality.

TLDR: Great strategy game, beautiful visuals, story is great, gameplay is solid, almost fully voiced act. Most* of the negative reviews have nothing to do with the actual game. ~100 hours fully offline in 2024? Take my money.

Pros:
- GREAT story tied to a multi-media world created by MICA.
- Good characters overall. They feel more... grounded, compared to usual anime games.
- Extremely pleasing visuals. The art is top-notch, both the character portraits and ingame CG's. The 2D-chibi animations are great (really expresive and fluid).
- Good XCOM-esque combat system. Characters have defined personalities gameplay wise, varied enemies, positioning, preparation and terrain matter A LOT, a ♥♥♥♥-ton of items to use that have a huge impact on the gameplay, etc.
- Great character progression. It's not just stats or one/two skills. With levels you get more skills, more passives, even more passives by upgrading the weapon.
- Great music/sounds overall.
- "Challenge mode", the hardest difficulty is... actually challenging. Which is good on my book.

Cons:
- Stealth missions/puzzle missions are... not great. Story-wise I get why they exist, but gameplay wise I am more on the side of "why?"
- Midgame has a bit of balance with enemy range/movement.
- You will end up with post-game depression.

This game is so, bloody, COOL.

Gameplay: Swooshing around dodging missiles, lasers, a barrage of bullets while handling 4 separate weapons of your choice on a custom built giant mech with great mobility? I rate it 10/Fire of Ibis.
Mobs are ... not really engaging. But bosses and AC vs AC (translator note, AC means Armored Core) fights are great. Which includes PvP up to a point.

Story/Characters: Honestly when I began the game I expected nothing. Now, I have about three names on my personal Death Note, and I would die for Rusty, Ayre, and another character I don't wanna mention cause spoilers. Also warcrimes.

Replayability (Or however that word is written): I just finished one ending. Apparently there are three, and there is like NG+ and NG++? Thats golden.

Did I mention just how bloody cool the game is?

Infinite hours and you could keeeeeep going and going.
Also gets you salty.

I hope you have galaxy brain friends, or you are a masochist, cause this game gets hardcore like FAST.

All initials problems now gone, hop on aboard the game that got me into fighting games.

Good things:
- Characters are quite different from each other, having their unique playstyle. There's even the "Look at my special stuff" button (Drive)

-Flashy as ♥♥♥♥. No kidding, combos dont do just damage, they are stylish as heck, you got Overdrive (Power up) to add more salt to the tears of your enemies while looking even cooler. And yeah, characters shout the special atacks.

-Mechanics are good, and there are a lot (Dont be scared, the tutorial teaches them, nothing hard for the mind). Normal defense, instant defense, barrier, airdash, superjump, reversals, command grabs, grab reject, 4 types of ground wakeups, tons of ways to use your heat gauge (good ol special gauge), rapid cancel, counter assault, crush trigger, distortions.

-Waifus?

-Azrael?

Bad things:
- You may end up mad about your opponent winning and end up playing till 4am.

About online:
Not the best, both in netcode and other things. But it's not bad, i recommend adding every player you meet that doesnt lag heavily, and playing a ton with those not lagged at all. Lag is bad as in any game, but here is worst.