FA Discussion

[Lord_Leperman]

Know what, just play the 1st AC games and work your way up to what you have. Its gonna be easy for you since you already have the option to play further installments. But imagine playing AC2 till LR for the very least, one year for each game, hoping for improvements each time and sticking to it even if it did fail us at times, its still the game we know and love. For us who have waited for "The AC game", we were all just met with unfulfilled expectations and have become jaded to new features implemented to "improve the game" but we still played because it still had that feeling that its still AC. AC4 changed that, the ACs there don't feel like the ones we knew and loved.

For an analogy, let me start by saying that I am a long time Gundam fan, and I liked the Universal Century series. Then they started making the Alternate Universes. While the Alternate Universes still carried the Gundam name, it didn't really feel like the Gundam series that we knew and loved (Compare and contrast the Universal Series and Mobile Fighter G-Gundam, Turn-A-Gundam, and Gundam SEED, for example). The newer series was more flashy, and had multiple invincible Gundams (A no-no in the Universal Century Series, with the exception of Victory Gundam perhaps). The Gundam's pilots were all androgynous pretty-boys (The trend started with Wing and continues till today), and they also downplayed the role of mass produced weaponry in order to further the image of the Gundam as an invincible fighting machine. The Alternate Universe series was catered to a newer, younger generation, and thus the old population who grew up with the older series still remained loyal to what they loved, as the new Gundam series' were nothing like what they once knew.

Here's the big difference between Gundam and AC. The Gundam series didn't alienate its older fans, but instead continued to nurture the older generation by continuing to produce various media that cater to Universal Century enthusiasts (The Zeta movie trilogy, MSIGLOO CG movies, and the Gundam Unicorn novels, just to name a few and all of which were still based in the continuity of the Universal Century). At the same time, the producers created new media that's targeted for newer and younger audiences (The Alternate Universe series'). Both universes cater to different people, and everyone's happy because they got what they wanted in their perception of the perfect Gundam Series.

While AC4 might be good, for the people who grew up with the older games the love simply isn't there. AC has become far too different from the AC that we knew and loved. That's why people here tell you that AC4 is ZOE/Gundam SEED game that's masquerading as an Armored Core title. I will not go to specifics to as to what has changes as they are too many to mention, but they are easily felt by those who have played the older generation of AC games. The best suggestion I can offer is for you to try and spend some time with the older games in the hopes that you'll understand the situation.

That's perhaps why some of us still go back to the older generation AC games. Heck, Nix will tell you that his favorite AC game was SL despite playing LR extensively. Serene will tell you that playing MOA were good times. All of these, despite being different titles, were similar enough for people to transcend to each other title easily, which is why we all play LR. While we still might play AC4, but we're gonna play it as is, and don't expect people to play it with the dedication that they had for the older titles.