Category: August

When it comes to the most notable video game genres, I think many will view role-playing games (RPG) as being one of the most important within the entire industry. They were among the earliest video games developed with dnd, a video game adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons, being released in 1975 and many of the best-selling video game franchises continue to be RPGs! However, the current state of RPG video games isn’t exactly what I’d hoped for and, so, I believe it important that I share my thoughts and opinions on the matter.

The first thing I want to start with is a question that I think many of you will be confused by, what do we look for in an RPG? This may seem like a strange thing to ask but it’s something that I think varies greatly from person to person. I myself know some people who consider the most important part of an RPG to be its story while others prioritise the gameplay. Even within these camps, I see a lot of variety in what they want. Some are satisfied with a well-written story and predetermined characters and choices, often associated with JRPGs, while others want one where you’re able to create your character and shape the story as you want. Some want an in-depth RPG system where skills and mechanics cover a vast array of things such as conversations, perception, wisdom, spells, weapons, trinkets etc. which allows for a wide variety of character builds while others want a more simple and straightforward system which focuses more on combat. The variety within this genre is staggering but this can result in a dearth of content for fans of particular subgenres.

FromSoftware is well-known these days for their many successful games such as the Dark Souls series, Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. However, as I noted before, FromSoftware’s history extends well before these games with two particularly notable series being King’s Field and Armored Core. While we’ve yet to see a new King’s Field game or even a rerelease of the older titles, it was with great excitement that we learned that FromSoftware is making another Armored Core game. So, with the upcoming release of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the history of these video games.

The first Armored Core game was released for the PlayStation in 1997 and was FromSoftware’s first non-King’s Field game. As with all other entries of the franchise, the player controls a highly customisable mech that proceeds through selectable missions with third-person shooter gameplay. Along with single-player, the game also contained a local multiplayer mode that allowed players to fight each other in large maps. While I’m unsure how the game performed commercially, it must’ve been successful as it led to numerous future entries.

I mentioned before in an article that I’d set up a gaming channel on YouTube called “Victory Achieved Gaming“. Within it, I briefly touched on the inspiration for the channel and the format but something that I left out was the creation of a list which is publicly available and details the games that could potentially appear on the channel. Given that I neglected to do so before, I thought it might be interesting to take a look again at the concept of the list for Victory Achieved Gaming and what my goals are for it.

Those of you who are familiar with the channel will know that the premise is that I, Eoghan, assist a friend of mine, Kathlynn, in playing hard games. I’ve dubbed it the “Guided Blind Let’s Play” which was inspired by some Dark Souls playthroughs I saw before on YouTube and which I believe allows the strength of a blind playthrough to shine while eliminating many of its weaknesses. One component of this though is that it requires at least one participant to have played through the game previously so that they can assist.