I'm one mission away from finishing Chapter 4 of my first playthrough and I just feel the need to share my thoughts so far. I fully expect many people in this thread to disagree with me and thats all right.
When AC6 was announced, my impression was "Good for AC fans because they've been lacking for a long time, but I'm going to pass, since I just don't care for mech games." Eventually, after enough of gameplay trailers and marketing hype, I went against my initial gut reaction and pre-ordered the game.
When I started the game up, I went in knowing AC6 is not a Souls-like, so I've not been holding it to any Souls-like standards. That being said, I'm struggling to finish this game, not necessarily because of the challenge, but because of boredom and lack of interest. The following paragraphs are some of thoughts on the game and would love to hear from people who have other perspectives. My hope is that someone can help shed light on what makes this game special, because I'm not seeing it and I'm about to just put it down for good
I struggle to understand the appeal of mech games. Every mission feels the same. Fly through similar looking environments, mowing down a bunch of nameless, faceless goons that are of no challenge or consequence, until you get to another AC or a boss, wherein you engage in some minor strategy. That being said, skill seems to play no part in the opponent ACs and bosses. Rather, what matters is your load out and I'm not having any fun tinkering with parts between and during missions. The non-AC bosses generally look cool, but aren't all that complicated or challenging. The AC bosses seem like you're fighting yourself, which suggests some amount of skill and strategy needs to be used, but so much of that skill and strategy gets thrown out as the boss ACs have completely unfair amounts of health.
I had hoped that Fromsoft magic would get me through my initial aversion to mech games, but it's not happening. When I first tried and bounced off of the challenge of Dark Souls, I still found the lore and the world so incredibly interesting and compelling that I was willing to try it two more tries before the gameplay clicked with me. The same continued for DS2 and 3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring. I'm not finding that here. Every mission involves codecs from faceless people I know nothing about who are mindlessly fighting over some clearly dangerous power source.
The fact that you play all sides and take jobs from every faction makes me even less interested in their struggles. Not one of these groups ever holds a grudge against me for fucking them over in prior missions? They don't ever care that I've killed their people or destroyed their weapons, mecha or bases? They just keep giving me jobs and therefore money that I can use to buy more equipment to fuck them over in a couple days when I'm working for one of the other factions? How does any of this make sense? The lack of consequences for playing all sides just feels weird.
The settings and environments for nearly all of the missions are just blending together. There's a few stand outs here and there, such as scaling the gigantic walker to take it down, but those are by far the exception rather than the rule. There's almost no missions with any unique looks or color palettes or architecture or enemy design. Everything looks the same to me. For every other Fromsoft game, you tell me the name of a level and I guarantee you I can recall some aspects of it's design, whether it's a skybox, a particular enemy encounter, interesting architecture, a clever secret, a fun boss, or something else of the like. I can't do that with AC6. Everything is gray and bland, outside of a few non-AC bosses.
What am I missing in this game? I want to like it, but I'm struggling.
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