"Former Raven" who went through the Plus program and "went rampant"...
I wonder if the idea here is that an inexperienced 1997 player will have likely gone through Game Over and the Plus program at least once, reach this mission and go, "This guy is just like me." Or maybe, "this guy is literally my player character from my previous playthrough."
Certainly, considering how the Plus program appears to be extremely coercive in its design (you're forced into it because of debt), I think the line between "oh no, the enhancements are unstable and this pilot went crazy and rampaged through the facility!" and "the pilot woke up, realized the evil scientist who forced him to undergo traumatic treatment gave him an AC and superpowers, and followed this line of thought to its logical conclusion" is, perhaps, one of perspective.
Unfortunately rival pilots don't write mission debrief reports, do they.
Boost hasn't so much changed as been added on to; if you've played 6, boost is generally the way it was there except you can neither QB nor AB not TB, so it's mostly used to gain verticality and speed.
The biggest thing to remember about boosting in old-school Armored Core is that it consumes a lot of energy. Even having the generator with the highest energy cap and the booster with the lowest energy use you can only boost continuously for a few seconds at most, with midair boosting being even worse for that. Hence the trick I use of boost hopping, which is where you boost along the ground, release and tap the boost button to jump, start boosting again when you're about to hit the ground, and repeat—that lets you maintain speed without having to worry as much about running out of energy, while also giving you a movement profile that makes it hard for enemies to hit you. Downside is that it only really works with standard humanoid legs, which limits your options somewhat.
Boosting always costs energy, even in the later games, but horizontal boost is cheap enough in later games that you'll see a lesser recovery rate rather than a outright loss while only using horizontal boost.
I want to apologize for going so long without an update on this. At first, I was just expecting a minor slowdown because my D&Destiny party just hit the Black Garden and I wanted to take some extra time to prep that session, but then Personal Problems Tied Into Current Ongoing Geopolitical Clusterfucks made focusing on this project kind of a non-starter for a little while. Things are okay, don't worry, but it took some time to work through. Hopefully there won't be any more of those for a good long while.
Anyway: I promised y'all me getting punked, and now you shall receive.
But first: Loot!
Shiny new FCS claimed from the nest of the Bug Queen.
Since my current build only locks on to one thing at a time when it bothers to do so anyway, I figure a nice lightweight FCS like this is a good way to save a few extra WP, so I toss it on.
Now, if you recall from the last post, one of the other missions that was available was a second Prototype MT Test. I guess Chrome got tired of me breaking their shit to no benefit and decided to make it work for them. I'll let the briefing speak for itself here:
Article:
Requested by: Chrome
Advance: 0c
Upon success: AC parts
We want to run tests on a new weapon. As in the last mission we want you to fight a new model "CHAOS" weapon. That is all.
This time, we envision a street battle, fought at Test Track No. 6. We have made improvements to this advanced MT based on the previous data. It might be a bit stronger. If you are defeated by the MT, you have no right to be called a Raven.
This time we have prepared some special parts as you pay. They are new products not yet out on the market. However, to make sure you give it your all, you get paid only if you win the fight.
Hey, I know you're salty about me backing Murakumo over you, but there's no need to throw that kind of shade! Especially if I'm going to be providing you with valuable combat data without wrecking all your shit and killing all your dudes.
Let's see what you've got this time.
Not too different from the last time, except from the paint job and that missile rack on the shoulder.
It won't matter.
The engagement is elegant in its simplicity: charge forward, fire KARASAWA repeatedly, enjoy fireworks.
Thank you, next!
Mada mada, Chrome. Missiles and white paint aren't going to--
Chrome Operator: Very good. Sorry, but you get no break. Try a test against another MT. Ready, start.
Excuse me?
Smarmy fuckers trying to gank me with a second one. My aggressive approach left the flank open for this MT to push, so I can't rush him down with the big rifle as easily, and the CHAOS is actually pretty zippy when it's not getting wrecked in five seconds. Rockets aren't a whole lot of help here either, even though I try to tag it with a few.
Eventually, though, it makes the mistake of getting close to me and my laser blade.
That oughta do it.
Chrome Operator: You lived up to your fame, Raven. There still seems to be room for improvement here. Thank you for your help. This ends the test.
Yuh-huh. Nice try, assholes. Real talk, though, I think the bamboozle is actually a nice touch to keep the player on their toes. It also helps present more of a challenge, because the first MT is basically a joust that ends very quickly if you brought enough heat. The second, on the other hand, is an actual fight. Not a difficult fight, but a fight all the same. So, what's the reward?
I'm not sure what this design is supposed to represent, but it's a shock absorber.
I mentioned this part before when I was talking about the optional parts, but, to be clear, this is a part that reduces the physical impact of kinetic weapons—as in, an AC with this equipped won't get pushed back as far if it gets shot with bullets. Good way to avoid getting knocked around or stunlocked on a lighter build.
The next contract I take is another mission from Murakumo. I'll let the briefing take it from here.
Article:
Requester:Murakumo Millenium
Advance: 0
Upon success: 34000
We want you to guard DR. M. Okamura, an authority on genetic engineering. One of his experiments was grossly misunderstood and he has received many death threats in the past. A terrorist group has also threatened to attack him during his next visit to Isaac City.
Dr. Okamura is now at our lab, but he will leave for Isaac City in a couple days. He plans to travel by airplane. We want you to serve as a guard at the time of takeoff.
Ah, the halcyon days of the 90s, when "terrorists" and "planes" had very different connotations when used together in a sentence. No changes to the loadout, let's roll.
Mission start spawns me on one side of the airfield, next to the plane. On the other side, there are several dropships unloading some kind of MT, presumably to box the plane in while they hammer it.
Choppers, ground attack units. . . Ah, I see, they didn't mean terrorism, they meant "terrorism" as in "military we don't want to acknowledge as a legitimate entity." Got it.
I wasn't able to get a good screenshot of the enemy units, but, through the magic of google, I can get you other pictures. One is a slightly upgraded version of the dog robots from the research facility raid:
The other is this thing that looks like a knockoff of one of the bike mechs from Victory Gundam:
(images sourced from armoredcore.fandom.com/wiki)
What follows is several waves of mayhem as I work to keep these things off of the very fragile plane while maneuvering them into killshots with the KARASAWA or just beating them down with rocket pods. Eventually, the waves slacken off, and the operator gives me the good news:
Um. Excuse me?
Then who the fuck was I guarding?
With an explosion that big you could have taken the entire force out at once, why the hell did you need to make me come out here and do it for you?
Whatever, I'll just take my fat stack of credits and ignore that I got bamboozled a second time. What's next.
Two missions. Both Chrome-aligned, but the other one looks an awful lot like going back into the old abandoned military facility, which I'd rather not do again so soon. Let's do the other one.
Article:
Requester: Chrome
Advance: 15000
Upon success: 25000
The other day, one of our special transports crashed while flying over the Naglarder area. Satellite images show the wreck near the center of a giant crater called "Big Hit".
We are not worried about the cargo, but the problem is records of our transactions are stored in the transport's computer. They are encrypted but not absolutely safe.
Unconfirmed reports put a Murakumo detachment in the area. You must completely destroy the nose section holding the recorder. Destroy all Murakumo on sight. If you let even one of them escape, your mission will fail. Be sure to shoot them all down.
That is all.
I mean, 40,000 credits, 15,000 in advance is a big chunk of change. Alright, fine, I'll do it. Not like I actually have any real affection for Murakumo anyway. But first, I decide to tweak my loadout a little bit.
One of the newer parts I have access to is this rad swarm missile launcher. I've been really down on missiles this whole time, but this looks cool as fuck and I really want to try it out. I swap the rocket pods out for this, and then sortie.
Dropship in, mission start, and I'm immediately engaged by MTs. Nothing here at the moment is particularly threatening, but there's a lot of them and very little cover. I take a moment while I have the chance to put a couple shots into the nose of the plane, which blows up with little fanfare.
I try to make the missiles work by using them to clear out the trash, but that turns out to be a mistake. Even on these basic enemies the tracking just cannot keep up. Swapping back to—what else—the KARASAWA lets me make short work of them, and then, finally, it happens.
My first encounter with a ranked AC: Kamui Mk. 17. Pilot: Mizuho Kamui. (Also, third mid-mission twist in a row, by the way.)
For those of you keeping tabs on the comparisons to FromSoft's later catalogue, this is essentially an AI-driven PvP engagement—think one of Elden Ring's many fights with another Tarnished (and no, Godfrey does not count). Kamui is running a heavy tank build with a grenade launcher, missiles, and dual rifle arms. And, for a machine on treads, it spends an awful lot of time in the air.
Get down here you slippery fucker.
I swap to missiles again to get at least some mileage out of the thing I spent money on. Nope. Half the time they slam straight into the ground in front of me and do nothing. Fuck it, KARASAWA it is.
Notice the missile contrails going the wrong way.
Eventually my superior firepower carries the day as Kamui gets too high up to avoid my laser shots, and then it's over. I've won.
Eat shit, asshole.
Most of my pay is eaten by repairs and ammo, though, with the advance, I still make about 17k, so it's not a complete waste. Thoroughly disgusted, I rip off the missile launcher, sell it, and put the rocket pods back on.
I'm not happy with how this game handles missiles. The tracking behavior on them is just unacceptably erratic, and even when they do follow a reasonable path, they still can't hit the target half the time. There must be something up with the way this engine handles homing projectiles. Maybe it's an artifact of the seat-of-the-pants engineering and programming of this era? Whatever it is, since missiles and rockets are basically the only practical back weapon option for bipeds, having fully half their arsenal be goddamn useless is a big fucking problem. It'd be one thing if they were just one or two weapons in the kit, but there's like a dozen different designs in the shop and they're all useless. It's infuriating, and what's worse is I know it's going to be a long time before I get to use halfway decent missiles. Like, not during this console generation long.
But enough about that, this was the first time we've seen a ranked AC on this playthrough. So what did I think of it?
Not bad, honestly.
Like, don't get me wrong, the AI in this game is just not that smart—it can't be, the hardware it was designed for is much too primitive. But it was fast, aggressive, and, most importantly, it understood that this is a game in 3d space, even on tank legs, and took advantage of that. Giving (one of) the first ranked ACs a tank build is also pretty smart, since it makes the thing tough enough to not just get blitzed to death the moment it lands. This isn't the only way we could have gotten introduced to a ranked AC, and we'll circle back to that at a later time, but I think this was a good way to onboard a player to fighting (and beating) a ranked opponent.
Speaking of which:
How's about we do it again?
Article:
Requester: Ravens' Nest
Advance: 0
Upon success: 42000
Come participate in an AC battle that the Nest will be holding over the next few days. This invitational event pits ace pilots in AC-to-AC battles where the winner takes all.
Naturally, there are benefits to entering. The winner of each battle will be presented with prize money in an amount equivalent to the pay of a normal mission.
We will decide the opponents for the battles. You are free to choose any weapons or equipment. We look forward to your active participation.
So, a sanctioned tournament for Ravens to see who is the best pilot or has the better AC build, with cash rewards for the winner? Sounds like fun! Maybe that should be a persistent feature that integrates with the rankings to give pilots a way to test themselves and earn some extra cash to perfect their build for more challenging assignments.
Just saying.
Anyway, since it looks like the match is going to be in the training arena, I stick with the biped build I've been using till now, swapping the missile launcher for a big rocket pod. I figure the KARASAWA is going to do most of the heavy lifting here anyway.
Let's do this.
Handicap my ass, that's a gank.
Oh my god they fucking did it again. Four in a row. Amazing. 10/10 game, no notes.
Now, in fairness, they never actually said the matches were going to be one-on-one, but I think it's reasonable to argue that was implied from the context. One of these, the guy on the right, is an unranked Raven with no name given. The other, though. . .
Is a Ranked AC.
This is a reasonably challenging matchup. Two quad ACs against a biped with little cover is nothing to sneer at, but powerful boosters, deep reactor reserves, and a big fucking laser make up the difference.
Yeet
Smoking the no-name isn't very hard, since it's a light quad that can't stand up to a lot of punishment. Fefnir, on the other hand, is aggressive and has lots of weapons to choose from, so I take quite a few hits while working over his buddy. Once I get him to a one-on-one, though, it's a lot easier to control the engagement. Eventually, I take advantage of my knowledge of the space to kite him to the upper level, and the moment he climbs to me, I light him up.
Checkmate, friend.
Even with the damage, I end up taking home about 28,000 in prize money, which is more than enough to satisfy me.
What a great little mission. On its own, there's not much that's special here: fight two ACs in a big empty room. The thing is, though, context is everything.
Remember how the game started? Boot up the game, get dropped into a mission, and fight two ACs in a big empty room—the same big empty room. The difference is that the second time, the player has spent hours getting familiar with the game, learning the controls and the flow of combat, developing their own fighting style, and perfecting a build that is uniquely their own. The game is inviting the player to look back, some two dozen missions deep into the game, and see how far they've come, possibly without even realizing it.
It's good. I like it.
Now, what next? Well, there's this one mission called "Remove Base Occupants" that just popped up after I finished the tournament. Let's have a look.
Article:
Requester: Boss Savage
Advance: 35000
Upon success: 0
Wadj say youse helps me out wid a li'l job I'd taken. I tink I'm over my head on dis one.
Ya see, it's at the bottom a' da sea. Yeah, an abandoned undersea base northeast a' Agrea. I wuz supposed ta get rid a' all a' the guys who'd moved in.
Dey sez it wuz an easy job, so I takes it. But deez guys are weird. Ya take 'em down but dey keep comin' back. Nuttin' to do but get outa dere, but I can't just leave it.
Pay ya 35000 C for da job. Can't tell ya who I'm really workin' for. Look, I'm given' ya all I should a' been paid. All in advance.
Dis time its not just fer da money. I gots me a reputation to keep. Anyone who can fight'll do. I'll be waitin'.
Hmm, yes this seems totally legit. No problems here, no sir. Completely normal for the mission requester to sound like someone doing a bad Tony Soprano impression. Also absolutely nothing suspicious about paying me everything in advance.
Well, let's give it a shot. I'm sure it's fine!
Completely normal.
Okay, so, let's get this out of the way. This is a trap. It is obviously a trap. The only thing missing is a great big neon sign with music and strobe lights blaring to the whole world that this is a trap. I am, however, making the radical assumption that raw firepower will suffice to get me out of the trap. Hasn't steered me wrong yet!
The underwater base is a cool and unique location. While it's more or less the same tunnel maze that a lot of levels in this game are, it dresses the structure up well by having a different color palette and using lots of windows (which implies some questionable engineering but whatever) to drive the point home.
The submarine we apparently used to get here.
Some kelp growing outside one of the tunnels
The base isn't actually deserted: I run into several crawler robots of the same type I saw in one of the early EERC missions—the ones that are resistant to energy weapons, including the KARASAWA. Whoops.
One of my few KARASAWA kills on these guys. Notice the rockets (down from 50): one or two of these big rockets is enough to take one out.
Eventually, I make my way to another docking bay, when, suddenly, the doors close and lock behind me.
Gasp.
Oh wow, what a totally unforeseen sequence of events. I am beside myself with shock.
Credit where it's due, they at least waited until I was deep into the mission to spring this trap, rather than just going off half-cocked early on.
This makes five, by the way.
Now, how to get out of here? There's a door to the docking bay that's locked, and the door I came in which is also locked. No other entrances that I can see. Maybe something in the walls? The old Doom standby?
Hmm. What's this?
There's something going on with the geometry of this wall panel. Wonder what happens if I shoot it?
Well, whaddya know.
Yup, breakable wall, with a tunnel leading out. Now we're cooking.
The rest of the facility is a maze of the energy resistant robots, with several larger rooms that have a few dogs as well, which fill the FromSoft tradition of being the annoyingly fast dog enemies.
Bad dog.No more of you!
Nothing in here is particularly dangerous, but the tunnels are long, the enemies numerous, and I only have so much ammo. By the time I find a docking bay with an escape craft I can use, I'm down to like 10 rockets and seven laser shots, so I'm glad I made it when I did. All I have to do is walk through the door, and I'm out.
Sweet freedom.
Victory gets me nothing but escape and a little message from an anonymous sender.
Article:
Well, well, well. I never imagined that you would come back alive. It seems that I underestimated you. Well, you certainly showed me. We shall meet again some day. I look forward to that day.
Yeah, yeah, shake your fist, buddy. Next time, bring less maze and more gun.
Final count: five twist missions in a row. Sure, a lot of that was the specific order of missions I chose, but still, FromSoft keeps going back to that well in this stretch of the game. Maybe one of these missions will switch it up. After all, they only want me to either blow up a chemical weapons factory or . . . release some more bioweapons?
Well then.
Thanks for reading, everyone! Should hopefully not be as long a wait for future installments.
You'd think after the fourth plot twist/mission complication it'd loose some of the impact, but nope. I wonder if this is how the Ravens are inadvertently held in check; everyone on the upper end of their hierarchy is under a constant bombardment of backstabs every time they take a mission, forcing them to run an endless gauntlet as they try to maintain their reputation (and funds) until they eventually fail. Well, just means there's always opening for a young up-and-comer like yourself.
Honestly surprised at how much this looks like a DS game. When I think PS1, I think FF7 or MGS1, but this looks a lot better than those in the character models department.
Welcome back to Armored Core, where I finally remember that I'm running this game on an emulator and don't have to put up with the crunchy hyper-pixelated rendering of an actual Playstation. From now on, y'all can look forward to properly legible screenshots.
So last we left off, you may recall, the game left me with two missions to choose from:
The second mission, by itself, would probably warrant some sort of rant about the inherent immorality of being a Raven in this universe as I trudge through a bioweapon lab and let a bunch of the spiders out to kill the corpo scientists who made them. I'm not going to do that though, because the first mission?
Well, I'll let the briefing speak for itself.
Article:
Requested by: Ravens' Nest
Advance: 20000
Upon success: 25000
This mission is extremely dangerous. A problem has occurred at one of the ruins from the Old Generation. Namely, a military facility.
This facility was used to develop chemical weapons, and it seems that someone has secretly entered and tampered with the control panels. It is now full some kind of gas. The gas corrodes metal,
so naturally your AC will take damage. Unluckily, all of the equipment within the base is resistant to the gas, so the defense mechanisms are operating.
Of the five control panels, only one appears to be working. Even so, just destroy all of them. We will provide the detonation devices. Just plant them on all five panels.
When you are finished, get out of the base immediately. If you dawdle within the facility, your AC will suffer a dangerous level of damage. Be careful!
This is the poison level. Of course. Miyazaki (who doesn't work at FromSoft in 1997!) had to get his love of poison swamps somewhere. God help me, but I can't pass this mission up. I have to know. I have to see.
For this mission, I need speed and armor, which means quad legs. The briefing shows a picture of the energy-resisting bug drones, so the KARASAWA is staying home today. Instead, I'm grabbing the AR1000 and a rocket pod.
CARRHAE, in its higher-res glory.
Starting the mission lands me in a grassy field in the middle of nowhere, with a big runway into an underground base staring at me. However, careful observation shows a second entrance off to the left. This seems suspicious, to me, so I take the less conspicuous entrance.
One of the two entrance tunnels.
The long hallway down has a couple of defense turrets and an automated security door, behind which lies, well. . .
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
The pathway to purple, poisonous hell.
Crossing into the purple zone immediately triggers a gradual drain on my AP, as promised. The rest of the level is a long confusing maze with bug robots and turrets—really not a whole lot to talk about here, unfortunately. It's a maze with a natural ticking clock. Every so often, I run into a hexagonal door.
Like so.
Each objective is behind one of these doors. I have to go inside, drive up to the reactor, and interact with (not shoot) the specific side of the reactor assembly that has the target indicator.
A reactor. One of five.
Things get a little more complicated when I reach the last reactor. By this point, I'm deep enough in the facility that I probably wouldn't be able to make the scramble back out the way I came. Checking the map confirms this, but it also shows a different passageway that's much closer.
Location of the last reactor.
Here's the thing: when I head outside into the hallway, it just looks like a T intersection, not the four-way showing on the automap.
Hmm.
HMMMMMM.
Sure enough, these are fake walls that I can shoot out, and the new passage leads up to the other ramp—the one I originally ignored.
Sweet freedom.
Once I get back out to the surface, the detonators trigger and the entire facility goes up in a fireball.
Good riddance.
Not a particularly pleasant mission, all things said. The poison mostly just turns another underground maze run into a timed underground maze run. I don't even get a special part out of it, just another 22k in credits. Better than nothing, I suppose. So what's next?
Interestingly, the previous mission to release the bioweapons is no longer available. Instead, there's now a mission to exterminate those same bioweapons. Does this mean that I could have gotten paid to release them and then gotten paid to wipe them out? That'd be kind of neat, albeit pretty twisted. Not going to touch that mission just yet, though. "Destroy Intruders" seems a little less complicated, and after the poison gas run, I'd like something simpler.
Several armed MTs have broken into a resource reclamation plant owned by the Committee. They are probably terrorists employed by those who want to distort our activities.
We have taken out several MTs but with heavy damage. So we are asking the Ravens for help.
We have closed the gates within the plant to push them gradually into a large blast furnace in the center. We want you to pound them there.
Naturally, the blast furnace is very hot. If you fall, your AC cannot survive. Making good use of the geography will be the key to the battle. Good luck.
Vertical combat area with lots of pipes and walkways to jump between? Sounds like a good time for a reverse-joint build.
Takes a little finagling to get the KARASAWA on a reverse joint, but I manage it.
Launch drops me into the blast furnace, as promised, with all the MTs skulking about underneath. Getting down there seems relatively straightforward, but doing it without getting shot up might be a little trickier. Peeking over the ledge is very hard; the collision boxes are kind of wonky, and the lack of analog controls makes nudging the AC over a little challenging.
See the yellow radar dots? That's all the MTs running around below me.
Before I hop down very far, though, there's a little alcove built into the thermal brick beneath one of the bridges. With reverse-joints, it's not hard to leap up to it.
Inside is a crate of some kind, which, when broken open, reveals:
Item get
A flamethrower. Well, I can't say it doesn't fit the scenery. Having seen what flamethrowers are like on enemy MTs already, though, I'm probably never going to touch it.
After that, it's just a question of dropping down, trying not to fall into the lava, and shooting the MTs a few times with the KARASAWA until they go pop.
Hmm, that one looks kind of familiar.
Decent reward of about 30k, after expenses. Now let's clean up the bioweapons.
Article:
Requester: Chemical-Dyne Co.
Advance: 0
Upon success: 40000
Someone has entered our lab and destroyed a test vet. The lab is now overflowing with biological weapons. The worst problem is the queen organisms are able to reproduce.
Upon leaving the test vat, the cell tissue becomes activated and begins reproducing in no time. If it has already begun reproducing, there may be an overwhelming number of them.
If so, they are certain to try to break open the outside wall sooner or later and escape to the outside.
We can deal with the small types later, so your target is only the four queen organisms. Be sure to bring down all of the beasts.
Alright, back to the regular biped so I can get some more armor. Also going to grab some heavy rockets as a backup weapon, because no way will I have enough shots with just the laser rifle.
There we go.
Different underground tunnel maze than what we've seen before, but ultimately this is the same kind of mission that we've done about ten of at this point: navigate the maze, find the objectives, and blow them up. I'd respect the challenge of taking out multiple queens more if the queens themselves were actually challenging, but. . . they're not.
Die.
Can you tell I'm running out of things to say about these missions? At a certain point, the lack of unique environments and the limited capabilities of enemies (and enemy AI) in this game cause a lot of the mission to blur together. The narrative connections have done a lot of the heavy lifting, but, again, what is there left to say at this point? Corporations bad, bioweapons bad, being a merc is morally compromising.
Don't get me wrong, I'm having fun playing the game, but I think the limited toolset and large number of missions is harmonizing in a very unfortunate way. On the other hand, running this mission got me 41,000 credits, so that's pretty good!
Loading up the mission select screen only reveals one option:
Well, that can't be good.
Article:
We just got a terrifying communique from the terrorist group "Imminent Storm". They said that they are occupying the air cleaner above Isaac City. This unit takes air from above-ground, cleans it, and sends it down to the underground city. It is literally the City's lifeline.
Their demands are for the immediate dismantling of Murakumo Millennium who they say has become the ringleader of social decay. Their false accusations are brash. Their recent activities have been a string of failures thanks to you Ravens. This is a desperate act of desperate men willing to die with honor. Eliminate them quickly.
Note that the air cleaner has an extremely complex structure due to repeated retrofits with the expansion of the under ground city. Be careful.
Jesus fucking christ. Chrome (and let's be real, it's Chrome) would literally prefer an entire city be rendered uninhabitable than lose control over it. No. Not only no, but fuck no. Time to kill the bastards.
As the briefing hinted, this level is a series of vent mazes centered on a primary re-circulation chamber of some kind. There's a couple MTs hanging out in the vents, but they weren't that threatening back when we were on a budget.
We're not on a budget now.
As soon as I reach the main chamber, I get this message:
Oh, good, it gets worse. I think we just found what Chrome was going to use that poison gas on the highway for. Even better, the central area is occupied by a pair of no-shit ACs for me to rip apart.
HEY GUYS, WHATCHA DOIN'?
That's what I fucking thought.
There are ventilation tunnels all over this room, with multiple openings everywhere, including in the ceiling and the floor. A lot of them are also blocked off with grates that just need to be blown apart. I'll spare you the tedium of trying to navigate them—it's mostly just trial, error, and close reading of the automap. Attrition takes its toll, but one of the less-accessible tunnels has a surprise:
*insert Zelda acquisition jingle*
These are dual shoulder-mount swarm missile launchers. Very impressive, but at this point I'm done trying to make the tracking work on those things. Further navigation eventually leads to the gas canister, guarded by a couple of mechs.
Fuck you.
Once they're gone, I can retrieve the canister (not blow it up—we don't want to gas the city!) and call it a fucking day, plus 23,000 credits. Hey, I like being a hero—doesn't mean I mind getting paid to do it.
R also sends along an email for my trouble:
Article:
Imminent Storm has been destroyed.
They clearly went too far. Even Chrome could not stop the backlash against them. And eventually, Chrome will be destroyed as well.
But this process was a necessary one, necessary for our rebirth and that of all humanity.
I'll be in touch.
"Necessary for our rebirth and that of all humanity?" Okay, that's weird, right? I'm not the only one who thinks that sounds weird? And ominous?
Also, if I had any questions about whether Chrome and its allies were the eviler faction in this story, they've been answered. Those are Nazis. Chrome is backing Nazis. Or, well, was.
Only one mission is available now: Chrome Uprising.
Article:
Requester:Murakumo Millenium
Advance: 20000
Upon success: 28000
The Chrome have finally started an armed uprising. Socially, they been in a cornered position, but it seems that they have finally made their move.
We wish no unnecessary fighting, but their mere presence is a danger to all humanity. If we don't crush the bad seeds, the roots will again begin to spread. Justice is ours.
Our elite troops have come under attack in various regions. The war situation is going just as we had expected. However, we miscalculated. We had to fight pitched battles against Chrome detachments appearing above-ground. Several military bases were attacked and suffered crippling blows.
According to reports, the enemy is a small detachment of 5-6 MTs, but their capabilities cannot be taken lightly. They are probably Chrome's latest models. From the enemy's attack vectors, their next target is probably a military base in the Zahm Desert. We want you to head to the base ASAP and engage the enemy detachment.
Right, time to put Chrome out to pasture. Let's get after it.
Hmm, what's this?
In a turn of events most of you probably saw coming, Chrome's hit this base with the CHAOS mechs I helped test.
The same CHAOS mechs.
This won't take long.
Good riddance.
And that's it. That's the end of Chrome--the big showdown. Honestly, kind of an anticlimax, but, to be fair, we still have one mission to "Mop Up Chrome Remnants."
Article:
Requester:Murakumo Millenium
Advance: 0
Upon success: 50000
Special report for all Ravens! It has been decided to disband the Chrome group that planned a military coup d'etat using new robotic weapons. Murakumo Millennium will control and inspect the remaining assets of Chrome, so that they can be reused appropriately later.
Now that the confrontation is over, there may be less and less for you Ravens to do. Hopefully this is a sign that mankind is moving towards a peaceful future.
It's not over yet. We have a job for you. We need you to survey a Chrome military base. Some remnants of the group may still resist, but their strength is inconsequential.
We want you to check the situation in the interior of the base and mop up any resistance you find there. Your pay should be adequate.
Better be more than just adequate after the shit I went through for you goons.
The mission begins with the dropship dumping me down a long shaft to land in some kind of cavern or industrial bay, atop a pile of machinery. There are some basic MTs running around but, honestly, they're target practice. Inspecting the map reveals only one way out, so I follow it. Nothing in here is too exciting except that somebody was clearly storing a lot of fuel or explosives down here.
Ask me how I know that. Ow.
I shoo(t) away the MTs and trudge my way back up to the surface, but once I see daylight, I get a panicked message from the pilot right before his radio cuts out:
Uh oh.
When I get outside, I see the problem.
The very large problem.
Just to be clear; the trees really come up to this behemoth's shin. It's fucking enormous. Clearly Chrome had one last surprise for me after all.
Unfortunately, while this monster is fast and nimble (especially for its size), it's not particularly durable, and it's a really big target. I empty the KARASAWA's magazine into it and, well.
GIANT SLAIN
That's it. They're done. To make it very explicit, the game plays a cutscene, followed by some more transition text.
As they fought each other over and over, the two enormous organizations began to decline with the fall of one.
But this was only the beginning of the real end.
I treated a symptom. The disease goes merrily on. The underground society of this world—the systems that generated Chrome and Murakumo in the first place—are more or less untouched. All I did here was put an end to the current crisis. Which I helped cause in the first place.
By the way, apologies for taking so long to get this one out--there are a lot of missions and the end of the year is a very busy time at work, so my cognitive bandwidth has been pretty strained. The next update is only going to cover a couple missions. If you've played this game before, you know why.
(And yes, I will be covering the choices not taken, for those of you wondering.)
I'm traveling this week for Thanksgiving, so I won't be around as much--won't be completely incommunicado, but expect a slower response time.
Also, happy turkey day to those of you who celebrate. If you don't, enjoy your week anyway.
On the one hand, it certainly feel like the KARASAWA being overpowered and enabling relatively easy victories which then turn into solid payout and never failing a mission and risking losing credit which then snowball into a budget glut allowing for all-around best specs on your mech trivialized much of the challenge of the game.
On the other hand, the fact that so much of the difficulty seems to reside in stuff like "really annoying maps," "control schemes that make peering over a ledge a deadly threat" and "good luck trying to make missile tracking work lmao" makes me want to say that maybe the game doesn't deserve to have its intended challenge respected.
On the other hand, the fact that so much of the difficulty seems to reside in stuff like "really annoying maps," "control schemes that make peering over a ledge a deadly threat" and "good luck trying to make missile tracking work lmao" makes me want to say that maybe the game doesn't deserve to have its intended challenge respected.
If you spend more time fighting the controls vs the enemies, it doesn't give the best impression, no.
Seems Armoured Core 1 suffers from a limited selection of battle stages, overall. Quite a few missions seemed to share the same basic structure and enemy variety. Least you didn't get asked to go massacre a crowd of civilians, I guess... more than a few times.
Both ending paths are different mission chains with entirely different maps and goals and story in terms of the corporate war.
The 'defeat chrome' path is generally easier and less story interesting, but as pointed out in the update, the poison gas and CHAOS bots were set up long long before one side started winning.
Hey, you could always take the fast route to the bottom; jump off the spot and let gravity do the rest. Would net you a bad result, but hey, it would be quick.
Hey, you could always take the fast route to the bottom; jump off the spot and let gravity do the rest. Would net you a bad result, but hey, it would be quick.
My bad. But they'll still be a pain in the ass to use. Early 3D platforming was a nightmare. I mean, sure, Super Mario 64 (1996) beat Armored Core 1 (1997) to the market, but most 3d platformers were a hot mess. And let's not forget, AC1 used tank controls, which were not very conductive to platforming:
The solution FromSoft went with was this: D-pad controls forward and backward movement plus turning (read: tank controls), strafing is on L1 and R1 (not ideal but I can kind of see it?), and looking up and down is on L2 and R2 (oh god WHY). The face buttons have various combat controls: X is jump/boost (logical), square is right hand weapon (fine), triangle is left hand weapon and interactions, and circle is weapon swap. Start and select are pause and map, respectively.
(image posted by u/NoeleVeerod on /r/armoredcore)
