Let's Play Every Armored Core Game In Release Order [Now Playing: Project Phantasma (1997)]

[Rhymes]

Welcome back to Armored Core, where we're about to put a bow on the main campaign.

Surviving the last mission and killing the Giant gets me. . .

. . . absolutely nothing!

Except another mission.

Looks like we're trying this thing again.


​

Article:

Requester: Ravens' Nest

Advance: 0

Upon success: 48000

We have heard a rumor that a former Chrome military facility has recently been visited by an unknown group.

The true situation is unclear but we have eye-witness reports of presumed weapons. Although supposedly already dismantled, the military superiority of Chrome was awesome in scope. It is not surprising that some may still be loyal to Chrome.

But still they are only remnants of the group. They probably have no serious weapons. This job may not be satisfying for Ravens, but we want to eliminate apprehension quickly. Enter the base and attack them as you find them.

That is all.

Source: Mop Up Chrome Remnants II briefing

Hi yes I know that, it's me, I'm the eyewitness report. You're telling me things I already know. I was there. Please tell me new things.

No?

Okay then.

​

This time, rather than dropping me down the air shaft into who knows what kind of ambush, I just get dumped at the main entrance. There's nothing for me on the surface right now, so I head down.

​

It's quiet.

​

Dead quiet.

Now, having some media literacy, I know that there's gotta be an ambush here at some point. The level's too big to stay empty forever, even if it is the same place I just visited.
Sure enough. . .

I'm sure it's fine.​

I can keep going down into the bowels of the complex until I end up at the bottom of the airshaft where I started the last mission, but there's nothing further to be found down here.

Map for location reference.​

Once I start climbing back out of this place, I get a couple chambers up before I start seeing radar pings and hearing noises from other machines.

​

Sure enough, it's another trap.

What's interesting about this is that the enemy complement isn't the CHAOS series or the usual AT-ST-type units. The force composition here is generic biped ACs and reverse-joint units that rely heavily on boosters and use integrated cannons.

Here's a good shot of both. The AC is further left and the paint scheme kind of causes it to blend into the background.​

The chicken walkers look familiar. Really familiar.

HMMMM.​

What are Raven's Nest ACs doing in a Chrome base? If they were just working for Chrome, there's no reason to let me get so deep in the base before attacking. Curious.
What's not curious is the best way to engage these guys. I could charge into the big open areas where there's more room to maneuver, but there are a lot of enemies and I can only shoot in one direction at a time. Much easier to wait at the edge of one of the ramp tunnels and light them up when they follow me in.

Like so.​

My shoulder rockets also help with taking potshots. They're not amazing--the projectile velocity is painfully slow and the launcher doesn't get much elevation, so it struggles to keep up with my point of aim with more mobile targets. That said, though, they hit hard and the enemies move predictably enough that I can catch them and save some high-powered laser ammo for emergencies. A few of the enemies decide to cut me a break and kill themselves with environmental hazards, which is very considerate of them.

As I approach the surface, I get another radio message.

​

It's Boss Savage, the guy who locked me inside the underwater base and ran off. Did you bring enough gun this time?

Ahhh, who am I kidding, the guy decided to engage me in a heavy build on open terrain with little hard cover.

He died so fast I don't even have a good shot of engaging him.​

Completing the mission gets me more credits and . . . that's it?

Really? Not gonna talk about this? No acknowledgment that two raids on the same facility both went sideways?

Something isn't right.

That's a lot of credits. Hm.

​

Article:

Requester: Ravens' Nest

Advance: 0

Upon success: 50000

An armed band of unknown affiliation broke into the Nest HQ and destroyed part of the facility. The security corps quelled the disturbance without incident.

There is one problem: the floating mines left by the band. Normally, our corps would deal with them, but the mines are numerous, of a special structure and very powerful.

We want you to take care of these mines. Just blow them up as you find them. You will be paid well.

Source: Destroy Floating Mines Briefing

A mission inside the Nest? After Nest ACs just came after me? The plot thickens.

​

Mission start drops us already inside the Nest, which probably shouldn't be a surprise. Proceeding down this hallway leads to a closed door, but I can here some mechs behind it. Maybe it's backup--

Or not. Ow.​

More hoppers and some big, burly ACs that punch (yes, punch) really hard. Rockets and the KARASAWA do a lot of work, but I spend a bunch of time trying to save ammo by laser-blading the bipeds. This turns out poorly, as you can probably predict.

Don't bring a knife to a fistfight, kids! Bring a gun instead!​

Eventually I stop screwing around and just shoot them, but by that time I'm down a lot of armor. Stupid of me, since I'm sure I'm not finished yet.

After clearing this area, I come to an elevator which takes me further down into the Nest, bringing me to a bridge with less cover and more enemies.

I don't have health to spare, but this time I start by sniping them from the doorway.

Cheap? Yes. But I'm pretty messed up, so.​

That still leaves a couple left who don't want to expose themselves, so I have to use my agility to maintain distance and evasion while employing maximum ranged aggression (this is pronounced KARASAWA). This does the trick.

*chef's kiss*​

After clearing this mission out, I get a cutscene of a door opening and then . . .

hooooooo boy​

Well isn't that something. I hit a checkpoint! AP, ammo, it's all completely refilled. This has never happened before!

. . .This has never happened before. FromSoft thought this mission was hard enough they give you a free refill partway through.

Hahaha. I'm in danger!

Wait what?​

As if to reinforce the point, a synthesized disembodied voice tells me to stop. Yeah, little late for that, friend.

The door in front of me opens to a massive square-shaped room guarded by a couple of the reverse-joint ACs. The area's relatively confined and doesn't have a lot of cover, so I crush them with a few laser shots.

Buzz off.​

There isn't any other obvious path out of this room, and the only other thing I can see in here are these strange floating blocks, some of which have turrets on them.

​

The turrets don't hurt very much, they just knock me around a little, but the blocks seem to move in some kind of repeating pattern. . . and I can't see the ceiling . . .

Oh. ​

I don't believe it. They put a fucking Mario level in a mecha game.

Hey, maybe it won't be that bad? Maybe it'll be a test of piloting and fine control and battlefield awareness and hahahahahaha oh my god no. This sucks. It's dogshit. This is terrible. It's a piece of level design that conflicts directly with the camera (which sucks and is too close at the best of times), floaty physics which work great for boost skating and terribly for actual precision maneuvers, not to mention doing all this without analog controls.

Plus, of course, there's no spot to stop and rest, so if you fuck up you're going all the way back to the bottom.

And what's worse is that it just

​

keeps

​

going

​

on and on and aaaaaaaaaaauuughhh

Sheer persistence eventually gets me close to the roof. I know I'm making progress because I run into this blue glass tube that an AC is trying (and failing) to shoot me through.

Don't worry, I'm sure I'll get to you later.​

There's also a passageway into another tunnel, as I breathe a sigh of relief for having gotten through that platforming mess, but it just leads to an open pit?

???: Your fate is sealed.

COM: AC Nine Ball found.

Rank 1 AC: NINE BALL​

This is Nine Ball. The top-ranked AC. He's got a pulse gun, a grenade launcher, missiles, and a laser blade. He's Human-PLUS, with full kit. And the worst part?

He's camped out in a vertical shaft. A cramped vertical shaft where half the time you can't see him.

You can actually see him in this shot but he looks kind of tiny.​

Now, technically speaking, I don't have to fight him. It's totally possible to just drop right down the center of the shaft, into the exit tunnel, and move on. In fact, that's what happens to me by accident.

But I'm not settling for that.

I jump back up into the shaft, start boosting to one of the ledges around the outside, scramble for a lock on Nine-Ball and . . .

. . . down him in a handful of shots.

​

Hm. That's all she wrote for Hustler One, I guess?

I drop down the opening at the base of the shaft and push my way through the tunnels, past another reverse-joint AC. Then I come to a hole in the ceiling leading to another shaft and

???: Go back. It is not too late.

​

What the fuck.

There's a second Nine Ball.

Why is there a second Nine Ball? How does that even work? Is Hustler One just a codename for whatever poor Human-Plus subject somebody crammed into one of these things?

Gahhh it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. It's fine!

It's fine.

So I can't really run past this one. I mean, it's possible, but it involves jumping up another shaft and then navigating into a relatively small opening at the top while getting shot at by the most dangerous AC in the game.

Yeah, uh, fuck that. I'm gonna just kill this guy.
Engaging for real is, well, it's actually pretty challenging. Nine Ball is extremely aggressive, stays constantly on the move, has options for basically every engagement range, and they're all extremely damaging. Add in the environment which is extremely hostile to the game's non-analog controls, and the wonky jump physics, and that's a lethal combination. Rather than attempting to just engage in the main shaft I work my way into a cage structure built around the entrance to this shaft. Nineball has to weave around the structural members to get in, and he can't just take potshots at me from above. That lets me force a few engagements where I can hit him with the KARASAWA and burn off chunks of health. He gets me back pretty good with his grenade launcher though.

​

Then something happens.

See, Nine Ball favors his grenade launcher—with good reason, since it's an AOE weapon that fires fast and hits like a truck. Except . . .

. . . I've already damaged him extensively and forced him into an environment where there's lots of cover that can be deceptively close.

Nine Ball 2 takes himself out with his own grenades

I don't even get a good screencap, but you can see the shards from the impact effect coming from behind the pillar.
​

???: What is your wish?

Yeah the disembodied voice isn't a good consolation prize. You know what is a good prize, though? Getting out of here, which involves more flying straight up. At least this time there are static ledges.

From here it's a straight shot through the tunnels, with a couple of harrowing moments where I try to take out the Reverse-joints with my rockets. For some reason, I have issues with aiming and end up burning most of them.

Down to the fucking wire.​

Passing through the blue tunnel in the Mario shaft (and avoiding getting taken out by a couple semi-transparent explosive mines as a last-ditch "fuck you"), I get another communication.

???: Come no closer . . .

Then my HUD identifies a priority target.

​

I have no idea what this is, but I'm guessing it's the core of the Nest. Convenient, because after this mission, the last few missions, and the general terribleness of being a mercenary in this world, I have something to say.

Take this job

​

and shove it.


View: https://www.youtube.com/embed/VczLuSaYRJ4?start=208&end=254
[Timestamp 3:28 through 4:14.]

I. . . that. . .

. . . what?

There's really not a lot to go on here. I'm guessing the core of the Nest is an AI core of some kind, and started going after me/my character because we were winning too much? That still doesn't explain what the deal is with the second Nine Ball, and the whole thing just comes out of nowhere?

It doesn't help that the campaign closes on a real sour note, mechanically speaking. Armored Core opened with a series of missions that established the core gameplay, mechanical feel, themes, and tone very effectively. Armored Core ends with a couple of uninspired combat engagements and a series of vertical navigation and combat challenges that show exactly what this engine and control scheme suck camel dick at. It's difficult because it's cheap. It's lengthy because it's tedious, and success requires the player to work around the game rather than with it. It's a really terrible final impression for a game that is otherwise very impressive in multiple respects.

Or, I should say, it would be.

If that were the game's final impression. Except it isn't.

​

Because there's a post-game, baby!

Thank you for reading.

Next Time: The Postgame, or, The Roads Not Taken.

 

[HeWhoAdds]

Can't believe they put Only Up in an Armored Cored game from 1997

 

[Mizu]

A climbing puzzle sounds quite horrid with analogue button controls.

 

[hghwolf]

Congrats, you beat Armored Core 1.

Now do it without the weapon so good it was sequentially nerfed in every subsequent incarnation and still remains a very viable choice.

 

[Rhymes]

Congrats, you beat Armored Core 1.

Now do it without the weapon so good it was sequentially nerfed in every subsequent incarnation and still remains a very viable choice.

Click to shrink...

Consider:

No

 

[Avernus]

As I recall, the reason why there's two Nine-Balls is that the ACs are actually unmanned and controlled by the AI.

It's been many, many years since I played, but that jump puzzle made such an impression that the memories of it came back reading this update. Exceedingly frustrating.

 

[NobodyImportant]

View: https://youtu.be/Xwv7iqn3S_c?si=U7kq4a1fmeWoopHj

There was a vile little imp that invisibly walked the halls of game studios back in the day, whispering in the ears of designers, saying to them, forcing the player to interact with undercooked, underexplored jumping mechanics would be the perfect final challenge to your game. Thankfully, some decades ago exorcists captured the creature in a Mario-themed magic jar, and we have been at peace ever since.

 

[RubberBandMan]

Congrats, you beat Armored Core 1.

Now do it without the weapon so good it was sequentially nerfed in every subsequent incarnation and still remains a very viable choice.

Click to shrink...

I actually did that in the lead up to AC6, partly influenced by people playing AC1 like this. It's not that much harder, actually.

. . .The second strongest laser rifle is a very solid choice. Not obviously overpowering, but still very very good to put work in, and has a lot more ammo. And less weight. And doesn't hard-lock you out of some parts for being too fucking huge. The main downside from a practical point is you have to pick it out of the shop and pay for it, a major hurdle most players won't do compared to trying out this one weapon they found on the ground.

For AC fights I typically went with the chain gun, and my other shoulder either had missiles or that 80 ammo energy plasma launcher that did huge AoE damage that was super fast firing.

I think it's really remarkable just how solidly AC1 set the tone for the series, and was such a fully realized world. It's so solid you see why they kept the basic story ideas and theming for something like 10 games until AC4 nine or so years later, the core is just very very solid.

This game did instill in me a distrust of AI's, Mercenary Organizations, and mission controls, which does occasionally make me freak right the fuck out at the start of some more recent, award winning, games.

 

[Avernus]

I honestly often didn't use the KARASAWA. Powerful as it is, I often preferred something with more ammo capacity. Look at how in the last update they ran out of charges for it before the end and had to rely on the rockets. Also IIRC it's heavy, energy hungry and doesn't work with all leg types.

 

[Connelly]

I get why players would prefer to get comfy with the looted weapons, being free and strong, but they tend to blind players from realizing their drawbacks and how good are some of the things the shop offers. The good laser pistol won't lag behind the Karasawa except for power, and even that is compensated by a faster rate of fire and bigger ammo count.

If I wanted a main weapon with more power, the twin laser (plasma?) arms only have 40 pitiful shots, but each containing enough Wrath of God for every mech in most missions. Pair it with a shoulder gun with decent ammo like the chaingun (the favorite of boys and girls alike) or even two, and you'll never want for dakka. Not something that would be practical for the last mission unless you're Human-Plus, though, because believe me, climbing that shaft with four legs or tracks... not fun.

It's also funny how transparently bullshit is that last mission statement, but even more when you realize there are floating mines in the battle room before the checkpoint (you can see them in the screenshot with Rhymes sniping at low health). Most people probably stopped thinking that would be a thing after the plot twist, and more than one might have dodged straight into one without realizing at least that much was true in the briefing.

 

[maskedanddanger]

The Raven's Nest is the sick, beating heart of AC1's world, the key that allows the Corporations to go to war with one another despite restrictions or public pressure. Of course the AI that is quietly controlling things behind the scenes is there.

I think it reminds me of a bad end to the film WarGames, with WOPR learning not that "The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play", but the only winning move is to keep humanity playing Tic-Tac-Toe, over and over again, forever. It tries to stop you because you unbalanced the equation.

 

[Rhymes]

. . .The second strongest laser rifle is a very solid choice. Not obviously overpowering, but still very very good to put work in, and has a lot more ammo. And less weight. And doesn't hard-lock you out of some parts for being too fucking huge. The main downside from a practical point is you have to pick it out of the shop and pay for it, a major hurdle most players won't do compared to trying out this one weapon they found on the ground.

Click to shrink...

I get why players would prefer to get comfy with the looted weapons, being free and strong, but they tend to blind players from realizing their drawbacks and how good are some of the things the shop offers. The good laser pistol won't lag behind the Karasawa except for power, and even that is compensated by a faster rate of fire and bigger ammo count.

Click to shrink...

I was going to touch on this when I did my end-of-game writeup, but I might as well say now that I think I presented a slightly distorted picture here. All of the hidden parts are in locations that the player would have no reason to check without already knowing that the parts exist, and the game doesn't even tell you that hidden parts are a thing until the skyscraper mission (i.e. after the KARASAWA shows up.) Plus, many of those missions are timed or involve protecting something fragile, so you don't have very long to look around. Also, I'm not kidding when I call it a pixel hunt on native resolution. Stuff's barely visible.

All of which is to say that, yeah, the KARASAWA is stupidly powerful, but the odds of a first time player stumbling on it in 1997, where "game guide" meant a physical book you had to go out, find, and purchase, are pretty low. My read is that it was balanced as an endgame or postgame reward for experienced players, but since I did not respect that particular challenge (because I think it is dumb and bad) I got to break the game balance in half much more quickly than would have been typical for the period.

 

[Rhymes]

Welcome back to the post-game of Armored Core where we still have another . . . dozen?

Or so?

Missions that haven't been played.

Let's check it out.

So, first things first, what has changed? Well, in a nutshell. . .

​

Every mission in the game is now playable. This means both missions that I already completed, where I can go back and try to do them better (or pick up any hidden parts I missed) and missions that I skipped or were blocked off as a consequence of my previous choices. Missions already completed are marked with a reference mark ※.

Unfortunately (and frustratingly) the missions are not listed in any sort of chronological or narrative order, but by some internal indexing the game uses that seems to be completely arbitrary. Rather than playing through the alternative missions that way (and making the game even more incoherent) I'm going to be relying on the excellent Japanese-language wiki by the fine folks over at https://bladeandgrenade.sakura.ne.jp, who took the time to list out the missions in order.

They also explain how the game's alignment system works: it's just a counter. Completing Murakumo-aligned missions or failing Chrome-aligned missions increments the counter, completing Chrome missions or failing Murakumo missions decreases it. If the count is negative, the Chrome route opens, and if it's positive (or zero), the player gets the Murakumo route. Just from a quick scan, it looks like it's much harder to go negative than to go positive, so it seems like the Chrome route is something the player has to work a lot harder for. Given how openly awful Chrome is presented as, it's hard not to see this as another example of the long tradition of FromSoft bad endings that require extra effort and will probably get missed on the initial playthrough.

So. What are we starting with?

Of course lmao​

What else? Kicking squatters out of a factory.

​

Article:

Requester: Zam City Guard

Advance: 0

Upon success: 19,000c

Remnants of the squatters who occupied the abandoned factory on the east side of the City have reappeared. They have brought together 12 MTs from somewhere, and have again amassed inside the factory. Clamoring for us to bring out the guys who hurt them before, they are on a rampage. Our Guard weaponry is useless. Any Raven will do, just do something.

Source: Eliminate Squatters II Briefing

This group is pretty cranky that I'm coming back to shoot them again. As you can imagine, it's not much of a challenge. The warehouse is a big open room, I've got a top-end AC, and these are early game enemies. I roll right through them.

​

After mission upon mission in cramped quarters that curtail pretty much every part of the combat that's actually fun, it feels real good to cut loose.

​

Sadly, it's over much too quickly. Easy come, easy go. Completing this mission also gets me a couple of new (ish) emails.

​

Article:

We really should perform a full-scale investigation, but they hold some pretty bad company, if you get my drift. Unless we have direct evidence of wrongdoing, we cannot get involved.

Well, we have our reasons.

Even though we are called the "Guard", we are really mere cogs in the clockwork of business. We don't want to do anything to wring our own necks. Unfortunately, that seems to be all we can do.

We look forward to working with you in the future.

Source: Terrorists in the Shadows Contd.

Nothing much surprising here from a post-game perspective, but I remain. . . impressed by the choice to have such pointed imagery for the Chrome-aligned insurgent faction.

The other email rounds out the world-building a little more:

​

Article:

Although Chrome has held authority over this area, in recent years Murakumo has turned the tables so that most of the redevelopment projects have been led by Murakumo.

It's not hard to imagine that these circumstances are involved in recent events.

I'll be in touch.

Source: Chrome and Murakumo Contd

Hmm, what else can we do? Oh! I know!

​

Let's wreck a city.

​

Article:

Requester: Chrome

Advance: 0

Upon success: Based on results

We want you to wreak havoc on Gal City. The job is simple. Just attack the urban area and fire at will at any attractive target. If one finds oneself in danger, one who does not have the power to resist must depend on someone else. If you have the power, come to us at Chrome.

You have 3 minutes for tactical operations. Staying any longer is useless. If you stay too long, we don't know what sort of trouble will happen.

Your pay will be determined based on the results. Simply put, the more you destroy the higher your pay. Good luck.

Source: Attack Urban Center Briefing

​

3 minutes to make a mess. Let's see how much mayhem we can cause.

​

It turns out the answer is a lot. Most of the destruction can be accomplished by just running cars, signs, and traffic lights over with my AC. Actually shooting them would be much less efficient in terms of both ammo and time (especially since I brought the KARASAWA again).

After about a minute, the cops show up and take exception to my wanton violence.

​

Unfortunately for them, my guns are bigger than theirs.

At the 1:50 mark, I get a message:

​

Another Ranked AC. Valkyrie is, like Nine Ball, heavily armed and Human Plus augmented. If I'd encountered her in the early game, when the mission came up, she'd have been a formidable threat bordering on unbeatable with a timer and the early-game kit. Tellingly, I don't have to kill her to complete the mission, just survive (and break as much stuff as I can) until the 3 minute mark. But to me, now, she's not an optional boss.

​

She's target practice.

With the enemy AC down, the security MTs are easy pickings, dropping to a single KARASAWA shot each.

​

After three minutes, the mission halts, and I get to take home a fat bonus for my work.

I also get an email from R explaining why I just had to fight a ranked AC.

​

Article:

This means that sometimes Ravens may fight against each other. This time, you fought against the ranking Raven "Losvaize." He is one of our top-ranked Ravnes. You should consider yourself lucky to have escaped with your life.

I'll be in touch.

Source: Ranking Raven Contd

More context that would have been neat to have earlier on. I'm noticing that these early missions overlap in lore drops and tone-setting. This is likely a consequence of the variable path the player can take through the first chunk of the game before the alignment system starts to take effect. Since FromSoft has no way of knowing which missions the player will accept or skip, they all have to cover more or less the same information.

Moving on. Remember when I had the choice between guarding a Chrome factory or designating its entrance for Murakumo? Well now I can see the mission from the other side.

​

Article:

Requester: Chrome

Advance: 0

Upon success: 32000

We have uncovered a plan to destroy our underground factory in the Whiteland area. We think that Murakumo is behind it.

We are not sure of the specific details, but since the factory is underground, they can't do anything unless they get inside. So we want someone to guard the entrance of the factory. The gate cannot be opened from outside as long as the lock system is not destroyed.

We will need several days to put up a full-scale security system. Of course we will pay you during that period whether or not there is an attack.

Not a bad job, huh? Do it well.

Source: Guard Factory Entrance Briefing

It should come as no surprise that this mission is very similar to "Secret Factory Recon."

There's even a hidden part in the same general spot as the other mission.

​

Most of the enemies are jets, which makes the KARASAWA a painful choice for this mission, but I'm stubborn and don't want to back out and replay it. Careful aimed fire when the jets come in for low passes is enough to splash them. A few ground ACs come along, but gut shots with rockets clean them up real fast.

Completing the mission nets me another email.

​

Article:

You did quite a job. We didn't expect so much firepower to be thrown into the fight, but the fact that you managed to repulse them all by yourself was amazing. I like it.

To tell the truth, we thought of you Ravens as no more than convenient throwaways, but I guess we will have to rethink our position.

Well anyway, good job.

That is all.

Source: Factory Affair Report Contd.

Oh, wow, thanks! I love backhanded compliments.

Next up, let's take another crack at Guard Wharf Warehouse.

But wait, Rhymes, you say, didn't you already complete this mission?

Why yes, imaginary reader I'm using as a rhetorical device! Yes I did! But you see, there's a hidden part in this mission that I didn't get the last time.

Well, okay, I say it's "hidden," but actually it's not hidden at all. I know exactly where it is. The briefing tells you.

​

You can literally just steal the radar part from Murakumo.

Naturally, this immediately fails the mission with a pretty severe drop in your alignment rating—turns out Murakumo doesn't like it when you steal their stuff. I would say I understand, but counterpoint: fuck corpos.

Next!

​

Article:

Requested by: Chrome

Advance: 0

Upon success: 30000

We want you to break into an abandoned facility that was used by Murakumo in the initial stages of their Human Plus development. It was left after a fire several years ago.

The Human Plus technologies were supposedly developed by Murakumo but nothing has been released publicly about the initial stages of research, so many mysteries remain.

Our surveys so far have not turned up much information. However, we received strange reports from a survey team recently dispatched to the abandoned facility.

Parts of the facility are said to be operating even now and strange capsules have been placed in the furthest most room.
Upon trying to recover the capsules, the team was attacked by fighting machines that they had never seen before. They could not fight back and failed to recover the capsules.

Your mission is to recover those capsules. We have no idea about their significance, but they might give us an advantage over Murakumo. We are counting on you.

Source: Recover Capsules Briefing

Hmmm. A dive into an abandoned research facility to investigate a core component of the setting? This could be very interesting.

​

This place is creepy. The "background music" is just an echoing rumble that's clearly meant to sound like stuff banging around in the concrete tunnels. There's also a PA system that's clearly damaged and keeps repeating itself in Japanese, often stuttering partway through. This is the most atmospheric the game has gotten. Love it.

​

The enemies, though, undercut the mood. Despite how chunky they look, they're two-tap fodder for the KARASAWA.

​

There's really only one path forward, so it's just process of elimination before I find the target marker. Picking up the capsule ends the mission, but Chrome is polite enough to send me a debriefing email.

​

Article:

It looks to be very old, but we can't tell yet just how old. It is unmistakably from before the "Great Destruction." We don't know how they got a hold of such a thing, but one thing is for certain. The Murakumo did not create the "Human Plus" technology.

Source: Relics of the Past contd

Ah, that fills in a couple pieces of the story. In the Murakumo route, the excavation missions for the EERC really don't seem to fit in very well. Those missions feature some of the largest playable areas and the highest enemy counts, but they have no real bearing on the conflict between Murakumo and Chrome, and the EERC is the one organization whose allegiance is never explained. . .

. . . but here we learn that Murakumo is very interested in Old World technology, and that their premier 'achievement' is, at the least, derived from what they dug up. That also explains why Murakumo wasn't a serious challenger to Chrome until recently: Chrome's had a long time to cement its conventional industrial and economic (and, realistically, political) advantages, so Murakumo had to look to outside-context advantages, which have only now started to bear fruit.
The alignment mechanic supports this interpretation, too: EERC missions give Murakumo affinity, which I couldn't explain. . .

. . . until now. I think I can guess what Murakumo's equivalent to the Chrome Uprising will entail.

But maybe not just yet.

​

Article:

Requester: Chrome

Advance: 13000

Upon success: 25000

We have a mission for you regarding the old military facility southwest of Isaac City. It is now occupied by the Earth Environment Reclamation Committee. The group purports to survey the above-ground environment, but this seems questionable.

The reason given for their entering the facility is said to be the peaceful dismantling of residual military facilities, but they are taking too long for that. We are studying their background, but we must do something about this group quickly.
According to surveys, this facility functioned as a military data bank before the Great Destruction. The main computer may still have records from that time. If their true target is this data, this is no trifling matter. Heaven forbid for that to be it. We want you to break into the facility and destroy the main computer.

Source: Destroy Base Computer Briefing

And with that bit of info I'm feeling pretty confident in my assessment: EERC is a Murakumo proxy to dig up pre-war military tech. It's possible that Chrome is feeding me complete bullshit, of course, but, in-universe, Human-PLUS is evidence that Murakumo is a bad actor all by itself, and oftentimes, the best propaganda is just the unvarnished truth. From a Doylist perspective, the bleak cyberpunk setting the game has spent so much time establishing essentially requires that both corporations be awful. That's the point.

So with that, it's time to undo all the hard work of exploring the underground military bunker.

Hello there!​

The mission starts at the entrance to the complex, but features an entirely new set of enemies. The tank-like MTs shown above are by far the most numerous, but their rockets are slow and they're lightly armored. Plowing through them is trivial.

Peekaboo, jackass.​

These speedy little shits are more annoying, though. Their armor is energy-resistant, so the KARASAWA isn't a whole lot of help, but they like to get close enough that I can put a few rockets into them instead, which does the job.

Despite the twists and turns, there's only one real path forward, so I eventually make my way into the deeper layers of the facility. There's some neat bits of continuity here: the door the researchers' APC was trapped behind still has the lock shot out, for example:

"Leave No Trace" can eat my ass lmao​

Once I get into the lower levels, the enemy force concentration starts to increase, but there's still only one path forward. The laser barrier that was up the last time I was here is gone now, but most of the side passages are closed off.

How not to make a sign.​

At the end of the main path is an unlocked door which opens to reveal . . .

. . . some guy?

​

AC Pilot: You . . . you're a Raven? I don't know anything about . . . those things here.

Then he explodes taken out by . . .

. . . some other guy?

​

Anyway, the AC charges straight down the passage towards me, so I dump KARASAWA shots into him until he dies.

Sit down.​

Then I walk up to the computer core and put rockets into it.

Say cheese.​

It explodes.

And with that, I've cleared all of the non-aligned missions. There's one Murakumo mission that I inadvertently skipped on the main playthrough, but there's a couple things I want to tackle before I get to that one. First, I want to take on the first mission on the dedicated Chrome path:

​

Article:

Requester: Chrome

Advance: 18000

Upon success: 20000

Great news! We have determined the whereabouts of the leader of the terrorist group "Struggle". He is in the Ruins of Vaella in the eastern Dragna region. This is the venue for secret meetings with his sponsor, Murakumo. Your mission: Destroy the enemy leader's AC. Up until now, many plans have been foiled by that one man. I loathe to admit it, but his skills are unmistakably well-honed.

Nearly all reference material about the ruins was lost in the Great Destruction, so its internal structure is unknown. There may be traps, but you'll be OK in an AC.

This is the chance of a lifetime. Do not fail us. Be sure to get him.

Source: Kill Struggle Leader Briefing

Mission start spawns me into a very large room that looks suspiciously . . .

​

. . . pre-industrial.

There's no doorway, but there's a big opening in the floor which leads into an extremely cramped tunnel. There's only one path forward, again, and the enemy presence confirms I'm heading in the right direction.

​

As I follow the path, the tunnels start to get more hazardous: first I start finding mines attached to the walls which I can't go past without setting off, so I have to shoot them.

Then the tunnels start hucking fireballs at me.

Uh oh.​

Hugging the walls lets me squeeze past them (which is good because they hurt a lot), but eventually I run into one section of hallway that has a mine stacked on either side of it.

Blowing these mines up takes out a chunk of the floor under me, dropping me down a long

long

shaft.

​

I land on a beam partway down, but, since I'm curious, I decide to check out what's at the bottom. A place like this has to have some goodies in it.

At the lowest level, back in the direction I entered from, there's an AC part sitting on a pedestal.
FROM nerds in the audience who haven't played the game already probably figured out what was hiding here from the first in-mission screenshot.

Ahhhhh. You were at my side all along. My true mentor.


My guiding MOONLIGHT.​

For those who don't know, FROM Software's first game was a 1994 dungeon crawler (and PS1 launch title) called King's Field. In that game, the player character is tasked with freeing the land of Verdite from its evil king. To do this, you must reclaim your father's ancestral sword, which is eventually revealed to be the Moonlight Sword, a weapon of divine power. Since that game, the Moonlight Sword has essentially become FROMSoft's mascot item, appearing as usable equipment in every game barring Sekiro.

(The Bloodborne version is my favorite.)

Here, it's pretty mundane, since the energy wave feature that defines it in the Souls-likes is reserved for Human-PLUS, but it makes up for that by being bar none the strongest laser blade in the game. As soon as I get out of this place, it's going on forever.

Speaking of which, getting out is . . . actually not that bad? There's a series of beams in staggered positions and heights so I can just boost straight up, fall down onto a beam, and then boost up again to reach one of the adjacent beams until I make it back up to the top. From there, I just follow the tunnels until I find the target.

Discount Char.​

He's kind of slippery and has some powerful weaponry.

​

So do I.

Completing this mission gets me another email from Chrome gloating over their victory over Murakumo's proxies.

​

Wow, y'all are just . . . not even bothering anymore, are you? Such fun working for the bad guys.

Split for image count.

 

[Rhymes]

Alrighty, so, a'fore we get back to helping the bad guys (either set), I notice that there is a second mission titled "AC Battle" that is listed as incomplete. Opening up the briefing shows that it's the same mission as the other AC arena fight. I'll spare you the details and jump to the main difference.

In the campaign, the Nest pulled a dirty trick and pitted me against two ACs. This time, it's just one:

Remember me?
​

Turns out he wasn't so rogue after all, just a Raven who didn't like working for the corpos. And since this mission only triggers if you let him live (or fail to kill him), he's back to settle things for good.

It's, uh.

​

It's short.

Alright, enough screwing around, lemme finish off the Murakumo path and then we can get onto the alternate scenario stuff.

​

Article:

Requester:Murakumo Millenium

Advance: 0

Upon success: 32000

We have uncovered the true nature of the mysterious organisms that appeared in Gal City. They are not organisms, but rather a type of biological weapon. They were developed by Chemical-Dyne Co., a biochemical manufacturer allied with Chrome. They were lax in telling the truth and taking responsibility for the incident.

This is your mission. Break into Chemical-Dyne's research facility, search for biological weaponsand release all of them upon discovery. The facility is certain to have a considerable number of test species. Releasing them all will certainly cause the facility to collapse. This will cause much damage to Chrome.

This may seem like a dirty trick, but it is the most effective method to stop Chrome from running amuck. Naturally, do not bother the biological weapons.

We will deduct 500 C from your pay for each one killed. Detailed instructions will be given to you by radio after you have entered the facility.

Source: Release Organisms Briefing

Aww time to wet the cute widdle bug monsters out to pway with their cweators! Apparently Murakumo has a vicious sense of irony. I'm betting it's the same base as the one I had to clear out later on?

​

Yup, same research base where we ran into them last time. This time it's packed with cannon and rocket MTs instead of bugs. I clear them out with no real trouble and head into the base.

But not before pausing to admire the sunset.
​

It doesn't take long before I hit an intersection and have to pick a direction.

Which way. . . .​

Let's go left.

​

Or apparently not, since left and right loop around to a path deeper in. I think I should check the middle door back up above first.

Found you.​

Yes, I know this map uses the same layout as the last time I was here and if I remembered I could use that as a reference for where the bug rooms are since they're the rooms the queens camped out in.

If I remembered.

I do not.

Anyway, I'm here now, and the objective is to blow up the switch locking the bug in its enclosure. Taking out the switch without wasting ammo is tricky, thanks to being just high enough to be out of easy sword reach.

Eventually I get it, and as soon as it blows, the alarm goes off.

Yeah, no shit.​

Nothing much actually changes besides alarms and flashing red lights as I navigate the corridors and hallways, taking out MTs and turrets as I find them, and it's all pretty samey from here. Just methodically combing the map and freeing all the bugs. There's one trap I avoid where if you take the wrong path it drops you into the enclosure with the bugs, but otherwise there's not much else remarkable.

​

Completing the mission gets another email from R.

​

Article:

When those biological weapons began overflowing into the streets, the Murakumo side skillfully manipulated public opinion to make it all seem to be the responsibility of Chrome.

The tide can no longer be halted. Chrome will probably be destroyed, even if you do not do them in yourself. But they are not dead yet.

It is said that nothing is more dangerous than a wounded animal.

I'll be in touch.

Source: email from R

Wasn't hard to manipulate: Chrome did make them, after all.

That's the last stray mission. All that's left now is the Chrome route.

​

Article:

Requester: Chrome

Advance: 0

Upon success: 35000

We want you to break into the Space Station "Kaede" owned by Murokumo. Your goal is to destroy their new catapult.
This space station has been unmanned since the Great Destruction and was left in orbit, but Murakumo has made secret modifications, turning it into a space base. We discovered that Murakumo has sent large amounts of materiel to the space station and the catapult appears to be used to send the material elsewhere.

We still don't know what they are up to. But still, it is in space. It may be too late if we wait until the full story is known.
Your space shuttle is ready. Go to the space station ASAP. We are counting on you.

Source: Destroy Space Catapult Briefing

Holy shit, Murakumo can into space!!!!1!

Hype. Let's do it.

​

Pretty roomy for a space station. Also very considerate to make everything AC sized!

Most of the doors are locked, so there's really only one path to follow. I only get a few rooms away when I get a notification from Chrome

That's not good.​

We don't get to see the battleship, obviously, since that would be infeasible for this game's tech, so there's just a timer. I try to head back the way I came. . .

. . . but the door's locked.

Uh-oh.

Of course it couldn't be that simple. The passage I took to get here is locked down, so I have to run back and try to find an unlocked door that will get me back to the entrance.

Lemme out. Lemme out!​

The roughly rectangular grid layout the station uses means there's only so many paths I could take. With some deductive reasoning and a little bit of trial and error, I eventually make it back to the starting hangar and off the station.

Get me outta here.​

A brief excursion, but obviously this is meant to introduce the space station as a mission space for further exploration in subsequent assignments.

Oh hey look, subsequent assignments!

​

Article:

Requester: Chrome

Advance: 0

Upon success: 45000

We have decided to carry out an operation intended to occupy the Murakumo's base of activities, the Space Station "Kaede".

Since our single ship attack failed the other day, the pace of the Murakumo's activities in space have picked up extraordinarily. Large amounts of material have been carried off to space, and "Kaede" is rapidly becoming a fortress. If we leave this as is, it will only become more difficult to act later.

Our first division has already begun fighting. Your mission is to support the invasion troops. Bring materiel to the supply vehicles engaged in combat. The enemy forces are more numerous than expected and the supply material may not be in time. Place the materiel in the catapult.

Capture the catapult and pass the materiel on to the supply corps. Murakumo is planning something in space. We must stop them before it is too late.

Source: Capture Space Station Briefing

Hm. This kind of scut-work isn't what I would expect to be hired for, especially for a late-game contract. Weird.

Looks like the party started without me.
​

It's the same parts of the same space station, so the layout is identical. The primary difference is that I'll occasionally run into Chrome-brand AT-STs fighting with Murakumo ACs.

​

The narrow tunnels I barely got to explore last time lead to an upper level of the station with more enemies, including some lightweight ACs.

​

The most interesting thing up here is a large hangar-like room guarded by a single AC.

Go away.​

Hm. If this place looks like a hangar, maybe the launch catapults are through those twin doors on the far wall?

​

Sure enough, on the left side there's a funny-looking box that. . . I can pick up?

Annoyingly, the mission instructions are incorrect: the briefing told me I had to place supplies in the launch catapult, but instead I have to take these supplies out of the catapult and bring them to the Chrome units already onboard the station. This isn't a translation error—the Japanese script says the same thing, so there must have been a miscommunication between whoever wrote the briefing and the mission designer.

I guess that explains why the briefing didn't sound like a suitable assignment for a Raven, too. Going behind enemy lines to steal their stuff to supply the invasion force is more like it.

Since the briefing took time to highlight a Chrome IFV, I'm guessing that's the unit I'm looking for. Wandering through the station to figure out where they've posted up takes some time, but the enemies are all cleared out, so that's no trouble.

Large pizza for a Mister Crumb?​

Once I find them, the mission ends.

It would have been nice to see some more substantial fighting between Chrome and Murakumo. Technical limitations are really hampering this game's presentation.

Two missions to go. The penultimate mission is "Destroy Base Generator."

​

Article:

Requester: Chrome

Advance: 20000

Upon success: 28000

Head for lunar base "Roa". Roa has been unmanned and abandoned for a long time, but Murakumo has already dispatched forces intending to revive the base facilities. There are now no other usable lunar bases, so Roa Is effectively the key to control of the entire Moon. But a full frontal attack would deal a severe blow to the base itself.

So this is our request. We want you to infiltrate the base alone and destroy the generator. Our main force will then retake the base in the confusion. Do not bother unnecessarily with enemies, but remaining AC's will be troublesome in the future, so try to destroy them on sight. We will reward you for each additional kill.

The Murakumo are scheming to use the moon base as a base for a terrible plot. The full story is unclear, but desperate men will stop at nothing.

This is a very dangerous job, but we have faith that you can do it. We are counting on you, Raven.

Source: Destroy Base Generator' briefing

Chrome is being . . . nice to me? Wow. This is weird. They're paying me compliments and sending me to the Moon? It's almost too good to be true!

(This is what we call foreshadowing).

The mission brief, at least, didn't lie: we are on the moon.

Even out this tiny window and with asset limitations preventing more substantial terrain detail, this is cool as hell.​

The mission spawns me inside an airlock, so I thankfully don't have to wait for that to cycle. Just ahead is an elevator, which takes me into the base itself, obviously built underground for defensive purposes (or to act as radiation shielding, either/or.) Murakumo takes exception to my presence.

Rude.​

The elevator lets me out into a hallway with very high ceilings. I clear out the ACs that are camped in here and then start checking doorways.

No going that way.​

The main door at the end of the hall is a red herring, and some of the other doors just lead to elevators that take me to the upper level of this hallway. One of them is a glass-covered tunnel, which I'm guessing is where I want to be.

Looks promising.​

Past this tunnel is a bridge over a long drop with turrets dotting the ceiling.

I shall pass.​

On the other end is an elevator back to a different part of the surface complex with a single AC guarding it.

Goodbye.​

This surface facility has a door leading back underground. . .

. . . and directly into the reactor room.

Oh goddamn it.​

Always there's gotta be a catch with Chrome. Two minutes to run all the way back to the airlock. The good news is the path isn't actually that complicated.

The bad news is the elevators only go so fast.

I make it, but it's close.

It's not visible but I had maybe 40 seconds left on the timer when I got here.​

Alright. We've besieged the Justice. We've blown up Murakumo's lunar base without getting caught in the blast. Now there's nothing left to do but put them down for good.

​

Article:

Requester: Chrome

Advance: 0

Upon success: 50000

Terrible news just came in. Murakumo has gotten hold of the most horrible fruit of mankind's madness still in space. The giant gun "Justice" is now under the control of Murakumo. The weapon which drove all of humanity underground at the time of the Great Destruction, is certain to seal the fate of the world if it is fired at our planet now.

This is no longer between us and Murakumo. The weapon's only weakness is the enormous amount of time and energy it takes to charge up. We may still be in time. The only way to stop it is to destroy the firing system itself.

Your best bet is to destroy the peripheral energy chargers to delay firing, and them blast through the multiple force fields to get close enough to destroy the firing system.

The best space shuttle we have is ready and waiting. Go into space ASAP.

We are counting on you.

Source: Destroy Justice Briefing

Oh. OH. So it wasn't just nukes that drove everybody underground. It was weapons like this. And now that Murakumo's losing they're just going to blow up the whole board. Jesus.

Before I sortie, I take the time to swap out the rocket pod for the WC-CN35. I know it's a heavy back weapon and I have to kneel to use it with this build, but I want something that can actually target enemies for this in case the KARASAWA is underperforming.

The last build of CARRHAE.​

Alright. Let's go.

​

Okay, so where did they drop us?

Oh.​

In the fucking barrel. Great. The barrel is also filled with a swarm of flying MTs that harass me the whole time. Even better.

The floor just ahead has an opening that leads to one of the backup generators.

Pictured: more time, in a convenient explosive package.​

Killing this thing buys me more time, but what it does not do is bring down the force fields.

​

To do that, I just have to shoot them.

They blow up pretty spectactularly too.​

It's literally that simple. The complicated part is chasing off enough of the fodder to get a clear shot. The chaingun cleans house, even though I can't move while using it, and I make sure to pop the generators to buy some extra time.

Once I clear the adds, it's basically all over.

Justice served.​

I don't get a cutscene despite completing the Chrome path because this is the postgame, but if I had, it would have been this one:

View: https://youtu.be/VczLuSaYRJ4
(Timestamp: 2:44 through 3:26.)​

I would say that's a harsh response, but after Murakumo just tried to pull? I get it.

The Chrome route is a little harder to unlock than the Murakumo route, I think, but it's definitely the more ambitious branch of the campaign, with its orbital setting and space base set-pieces. Showing the full extent of the conflict was obviously never going to be feasible, and with that in mind, I think From did a fine job selling the progression and scale of the conflict without directly showing it. Subjectively, I also think that Justice is a far better ultimate weapon than the Giant to "fight," even though it's scenery and not an actual NPC enemy that shoots back. An enemy that makes up an entire level is more interesting than just "generic enemy AC, but big."

Does the Chrome route change my overall impression of the story? Not really. The campaign still offers us no further clarity on the concluding arc or the final cutscene after blowing up the Nest. Pity, that.

On the other hand, blowing up an orbital cannon before it can wipe out human civilization (again) is an excellent climax. The mission gives you just enough time to pull it off, enough enemies to make it a real furball, and enough space to actually engage them in 3D instead of being locked into a shaft. In my opinion, this is a far better showcase of the strengths of the combat system and a demonstration of the player's progression. I'm much happier to call Justice the final mission.

So what's left?

Well, nothing. That's pretty much it. I've completed all the missions, found all the hidden parts, and made it to the top of the pilot rankings . . .

​

. . .I think we can call that a game.


This has been

ARMORED CORE (1997)​

Thank you for reading.

Final thoughts after the break.

 

[Rhymes]

Final Thoughts:​

What can I say about Armored Core?

First, I think I should explain my mental framework for this game.

When I was about 6 or 7, my dad bought me a Logitech Wingman flight stick for the PC; there were a few PC games I liked that could support it, but mostly I just thought joysticks were neat, and my parents were cool like that. Bundled with that stick was a demo disc for a game titled FreeSpace 2, a mission-based space combat sim released in '99 by Volition (who you probably know better for Red Faction or Saints Row). I liked the demo enough that I convinced my folks to find a copy of the first game, titled (in the US) Descent FreeSpace: The Great War.

FreeSpace was released in 1998—the Descent title was stuck on it to avoid trademark conflicts with an unrelated IP—as Volition's first PC title under its current label. The game was a space combat flight sim using a semi-arcadey movement model, controls that were tough to learn for new players, a mission-based structure, primitive 3D graphics, and a very basic story that mostly survives on tone and atmosphere rather than particularly solid narrative. Even so, the game nailed the feeling of "old-school dogfight IN SPACE" via the flight model and combat, with a good mix of light, fragile strikecraft, heavier bombers and frigates, and gigantic capital ships that served mostly as scenery and set dressing to communicate scale. The game also has poor weapon balancing, dogshit missile tracking, a pretty basic set of mission structures, no major characters, and its actual core narrative is painfully by-the numbers.

Armored Core is a 1997 mech combat game using a semi-arcadey movement model, controls that are tough to learn at first, a mission-based structure, primitive 3d graphics, and a very basic story that subsists entirely on tone and setting, not narrative. It also has poor weapon balancing, dogshit missile tracking, a basic set of mission structures, no major characters, and its actual core narrative basically . . . doesn't exist?

You probably see where I'm going with this.

FreeSpace has been my major point of comparison for this game, as a roughly contemporaneous title attempting a similar distillation of a different genre that displays many of the same stylistic choices.

This is good company for the game to reside in, as far as I'm concerned. The FreeSpace games were a formative part of my childhood, and a game that makes me feel like I'm a kid blowing up Shivans on an old PC is obviously going to get a warm reception.

Mostly.

In terms of mechanical gamefeel, Armored Core manages the remarkable feat of retaining enough depth in the mech design systems and enough weight in the movement that an AC actually feels like a giant war machine. There's a deliberateness to the action that hearkens forward to the style of the Souls games. At the same time, though, there's none of the fiddling that you get with hardcore sims where it takes five button presses just to ready your weapon.
Combat is pretty good: the deliberate movement makes every shot feel meaningful, and the explosion and death effects are very satisfying. That said, the limited number of projectile effects and especially weapon sounds means a lot of the guns start to feel very samey, which I think makes combat less interesting. I feel very strongly that in gun-based combat systems, good effects and sounds are at least as important as actual balance. AC is clearly trying, I think, but it's also apparent that making each weapon have unique animations, effects, and sounds just wasn't a priority for this game.

At a higher level, the choice of mission-based structure with a robust equipment system and a discrete budget management layer largely works to encourage customization and engagement with the arsenal. Unfortunately, the arsenal itself is all over the place, balance-wise. Radar parts are totally useless past the early game, and missile tracking is unacceptably bad (much like it is in FreeSpace 1! I wonder if there's a common thread there.) Optional parts range wildly in utility, as do the hidden parts. The KARASAWA, as you've seen, pretty much trivializes most of the combat challenges in the game, and is not particularly well hidden. As for budget management, funds are not a huge obstacle past the very early game, and even when failure is a possibility, I can just reload a save and avoid the issue.
One of the inherent aspects of the mission structure is that it can swing wildly in difficulty and complexity. That's not necessarily a bad thing: a short, easy smashfest can be a perfect palate cleanser after an endless slog through the underground military facility. Trouble is it also means that sometimes the "difficulty" spikes very suddenly. This can be managed if the developers curate the mission sequence. . .

. . . but they didn't, not really.

The choice to give the player so much freedom in which contracts to take necessarily requires less coherence in the missions. When you have a set of a dozen missions, from which the player could choose any six, in basically any order, wild swings in scenarios, environments, build requirements, and difficulty are all but inevitable. Alternatively, you get pacing issues, like where I had five bamboozles in a row because that was the mission order I chose. Yeah, sure, it was mostly just funny, but that was a microcosm of the larger problem.

The actual mission design is very hit or miss. Difficulty is mostly the learning curve of figuring out the controls, what parts do, and how to build for the mission. Beyond that, the structure is really simple: 90% of the time the options are either "here's an arena, kill everyone" or "here's a maze, find the things." There are some twists—escorting a train, defending a point, staying on the airship, not dying to poison gas. . . but it's pretty much all variations on those two themes. Some of those variations work decently well: the underwater base is cool, and cutting loose on corporate goons in one of the arenas is fun as hell, for example. Others are just a slog, like most of the military base missions.

Then there's Destroy Floating Mines, which is a crime against game design. So glad I ended with Justice instead.

That nightmare aside, the core challenge of the game is mostly, as I said at the start, bringing the correct loadout to the mission. The game's AI isn't capable enough to present a credible threat unless it's given a lot of advantages, like with Nine Ball or Losvaize. And, like, that makes sense. Part of the mech power fantasy is being able to plow through mooks and only being challenged by similarly-elite units.

Also, building for the mission is fun. It feels satisfying to review a mission brief, observe the map and enemy profiles, assemble an AC from the available parts, and roll right over the enemy with the best tool for the job. The sheer amount of customization is incredible for a game in 1997, and there's not a lot that beats the feeling of a build and a look for a mech that is totally mine. This is good shit.

Which is why it fucking sucks that the KARASAWA renders most of those decisions irrelevant.

Credit to FromSoft, they tried to keep it under control with the limitations they imposed on it, but it wasn't enough. Mission design was by far the best tool they had to constrain the KARASAWA, via duration, or energy resistance, or highly mobile targets, or whatever, but since the missions are so simple (and the AI relatively dumb) that tool isn't properly exploited. I suspect the solution they settled on was "bury the weapon in the hidden part hunt," which would be acceptable for 1997 design sensibilities in an era where online guides were not really a thing. In 2023, though, it's a bullshit tactic that I do not respect nor have time for and is completely trivialized by 30 seconds of googling. Like I said upthread, my guess is that the KARASAWA was envisioned as a post-game/repeat playthrough weapon—something to grab once you've already seen the campaign and are looking to optimize your runs or get 100% completion.

The teal deer of this is the game feels good, they nailed the core fantasy, but balance is kind of fucked by OP hidden parts and the missions are wildly hit or miss.

The visuals are solid. Everything's readable, all the assets and textures look like what they're trying to be, and ACs have a unique visual language that I like. PS1 rendering does the game no favors on modern LED displays, which don't fuzz the pixels the way period-correct CRTs would, so the game did look pretty crunchy until I worked some emulator magic. Once I did, I was actually pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the look of the game.

Narratively? The game's a mess.

Armored Core barely has a story, has a grand total of like two named characters other than the ranked pilots (only like one of whom have any dialogue), and, for me, is totally devoid of emotional weight. There's enough world-building that I'm kind of interested in exploring the setting, but that's all.

This is frustrating, to me, because I can see that this game has tools that could have been used to give the game something. Texts and images in emails and mission briefings, plus in-game voiced dialogue, can go a long way even without named characters. FreeSpace managed emotional torque despite not having a single human character by having spaceships fill the same roles—certain craft, especially capital ships, would make recurring appearances over the course of the campaign, and they'd start to carry emotional weight when you saw the name pop up, whether they were friendly or hostile. Even if FromSoft wanted to keep things relatively detached, regular appearances from key characters in briefings and emails could have served as an emotional anchor or a way to set mood.

Music would have helped too—the game has it, but music is not being used to set atmosphere in that way, just as generic backing tracks that are mostly divorced from the action.

The bottom line is Armored Core . . . just wasn't interested in weaving together an actual story from these parts.

The result is an emotional void. Later FromSoft titles would find emotional anchors in atmosphere or, more often backstory and lore (*cough* Souls *cough*), but here, there's just not enough to go on.

And then there's the "ending," which really raises more questions than it answers at this point.

I wanted more. I wanted better. I'm annoyed I didn't get it.

So, to cap this off:

I've spent a lot of time laying out my issues with the game, but the all-important question is: did I have fun?

Well, yes. Obviously. The game made me feel like a little kid again. I could never hate it for that. But as a grown-up, I can acknowledge Armored Core's flaws nevertheless.

Armored Core is a sound gameplay loop layered in as-yet-unrealized potential. Even on a mid-90s PSX game engine stuck on pre-analog controls, I can see how FromSoft could have leveraged the tools and the tech already in this game to build a more robust experience than they did.

So what happened?

I can guess: It's 1997, you're a small Japanese studio, and you're working on a game whose core concept is designing and building mecha from modular parts. What do you prioritize: the missions, the enemy AI, the story (in an era where John Carmack's quote about stories in games was still taken seriously). . .

. . . or the central concept of building customized modular mecha that the whole game runs on?

FromSoft focused on the core experience—the Armored Core experience, if you will (doh ho ho)--for the first game, and you know what?

I think they made the right call.

Thank you for joining me on this adventure. I hope you've been entertained by my misadventures in the world of Armored Core.

Next time, we'll be jumping into the first followup title: Armored Core: Project Phantasma.

 

[Etranger]

Loved this game as a kid, could never finish it, had a blast watching you play it. Despite the jank you commented on, I'm actually a little impressed with the story. It would have been really easy to have the "good" corp and the "bad" corp, so their commitment to making Murakumo twirl its mustache just as hard as Chrome is sort of admirable. Looking forward to, uh... Armored Core 1.33, I guess?

 

[grimely]

Loved this game as a kid, could never finish it, had a blast watching you play it. Despite the jank you commented on, I'm actually a little impressed with the story. It would have been really easy to have the "good" corp and the "bad" corp, so their commitment to making Murakumo twirl its mustache just as hard as Chrome is sort of admirable. Looking forward to, uh... Armored Core 1.33, I guess?

Click to shrink...

Phantasma is a prequel, actually! Then Master of Arena is concurrent with 1. We don't actually go past the ending until 2, which is clever, because it means it doesn't matter what the player picked in 1.

 

[Omicron]

Thank you for this playthrough. It's been really interesting watching you go through this game I only have fragmented childhood memories of, and seeing how far it's evolved in the modern day after Armored Core 6 rocked my socks off.

​

Also, building for the mission is fun. It feels satisfying to review a mission brief, observe the map and enemy profiles, assemble an AC from the available parts, and roll right over the enemy with the best tool for the job. The sheer amount of customization is incredible for a game in 1997, and there's not a lot that beats the feeling of a build and a look for a mech that is totally mine. This is good shit.

Which is why it fucking sucks that the KARASAWA renders most of those decisions irrelevant.

Credit to FromSoft, they tried to keep it under control with the limitations they imposed on it, but it wasn't enough. Mission design was by far the best tool they had to constrain the KARASAWA, via duration, or energy resistance, or highly mobile targets, or whatever, but since the missions are so simple (and the AI relatively dumb) that tool isn't properly exploited. I suspect the solution they settled on was "bury the weapon in the hidden part hunt," which would be acceptable for 1997 design sensibilities in an era where online guides were not really a thing. In 2023, though, it's a bullshit tactic that I do not respect nor have time for and is completely trivialized by 30 seconds of googling. Like I said upthread, my guess is that the KARASAWA was envisioned as a post-game/repeat playthrough weapon—something to grab once you've already seen the campaign and are looking to optimize your runs or get 100% completion.

Click to shrink...

YOU CHOSE TO USE IT THOUGH

You could have not done this for yourself!! I never used Knights of the Round for a reason!!

It's actually been interesting following your adventures in comparison to Josh Strife's Was It Good? Armored Core video; I don't think he ever found the Karasawa and he ended up running into more actual difficulty, to the point of falling into debt and going through the Human PLUS program, something which obviously hasn't been a concern in your playthrough. There's clearly a wide spectrum in player experience of the game's difficulty, which is interesting and ties into its fucked up balance as well.

Did you end up experimenting with the alternate leg types? You went through the game with a bipedal build but I wonder how the other leg types 'feel' to play - in AC6 I've been using a reverse jointed ultralight for most of the game, but AC1 seems to be a much more ground-based game with much less time spent in the air, so I wonder if RJ legs have a real niche yet.

 

[Rhymes]

YOU CHOSE TO USE IT THOUGH

You could have not done this for yourself!! I never used Knights of the Round for a reason!!

It's actually been interesting following your adventures in comparison to Josh Strife's Was It Good? Armored Core video; I don't think he ever found the Karasawa and he ended up running into more actual difficulty, to the point of falling into debt and going through the Human PLUS program, something which obviously hasn't been a concern in your playthrough. There's clearly a wide spectrum in player experience of the game's difficulty, which is interesting and ties into its fucked up balance as well.

Click to shrink...

I used the Karasawa because it's fun as hell. You avoided Knights of the Round because it would turn every fight into a two-minute unskippable cutscene. These things are not the same

In other words: Ha ha laser rifle go pew pew

(e: also spellblade/rapid fire/omnicast ultima says hello)

Jokes aside though, I do think I'm going to be putting the Karasawa up on a shelf now that I've had my fun with it (and built up enough of a cash reserve that I feel comfortable spending it down). Obviously that did factor into the difficulty, but, candidly, there's an incredibly easy trick to avoid falling into debt: reload an old save. I saved literally after every mission and used every slot the game let me have in case I needed to go several missions back. I rarely did, but still. It's not like a souls game where you're locked into every decision you make. The game doesn't obligate you to stick with a fucked up run if you don't want to.

I also think the control scheme makes a huge difference. I don't know how you'd get through some of these missions with the default control scheme, even with practice.

Did you end up experimenting with the alternate leg types? You went through the game with a bipedal build but I wonder how the other leg types 'feel' to play - in AC6 I've been using a reverse jointed ultralight for most of the game, but AC1 seems to be a much more ground-based game with much less time spent in the air, so I wonder if RJ legs have a real niche yet.

Click to shrink...

I did a little, if you recall, but not as much as I probably could have. My impression of RJs is that they're good parts for an aerial play-style (and platforming!). The controls are a hindrance, because of the stiff free-look and the even more stiff mid-air movement from digital-only inputs, but you can get a lot of hangtime with good boosters and deep EN reserves. I'm just not a huge fan of that approach with this game's controls or the low framerate.

Quads are great for skating, since they don't have a walk cycle and move omnidirectionally without needing to rotate the lower body. Very good for zooming around. Tanks are slow, but the big guns are fun as hell.

 

[Mizu]

Wasn't expecting it to involve a space travel mission set, nor going to the moon. I kinda assumed they couldn't live on the surface due to it being hostile to human life, honestly.

 

[hghwolf]

I don't know how you'd get through some of these missions with the default control scheme, even with practice.

Click to shrink...

Good, mission suited builds and iteratively doing better, a bit of cheese here and there. Human PLUS helps but isn't required.

You 'git gud', as it were.

 

[maskedanddanger]

I think that Armored Core 1 is following a very specific lineage of mecha anime. The most obvious influence is Macross: Shouji Kawamori was designer for both Macross and Armored Core (and still is lead designer in the franchise to this day), and the design for Valkyrie from Macross could slot in as parts for AC1 extremely easily. Macross was an early Real Robot mech show where the mech designed lacked the prominent visored faces most shows had.



I don't think Macross contributes much storywise to Armored Core, Macross is an idealistic tale about the redeeming power of love and song in the face of mankind's destruction.

The second influence is obviously the UC era Mobile Suit Gundam franchise. While Armored Core aesthetically pulls away from the WW2 inspired kit of UC Gundam, you still start in a green mono-eyed mech armed with a machine gun and an energy sword, major staples. As Gundam was the seed of the Real Robot genre, something that Armored Core plants its feet in with it's sim elements, this influence was going to be felt no matter what. Specific to Gundam though is the corporate war aspect: by this point, several series had Anaheim Electronics moving behind the more overtly ideological clashes between Earth and Space to make make money through the military industrial complex. As series creator Tomino's relationship soured with the actual business interests that kept Sunrise afloat, Anaheim became more sinister.



This one is kind of a gimme, but I think it does immediately signal to the audience that you are playing as the bad guys. Green mono-eyed mechs are extremely villain coded thanks to the Zaku-2 from the original series, and Nineball's design pulls heavily from the line of red mobile suits used by "The Red Comet" Char Aznable, especially with the noticeable fin on it's head.

The third influence was the works of Ryosuke Takahashi, particularly Armored Trooper VOTOMS. VOTOMs follows a soldier-turned-mercenary Chirico Cuvie who finds himself stuck in a battle between two seemingly opposed sides (his own military and an ancient conspiracy) who are actually both being controlled by an ancient super computer called WISEMAN. Cuvie is a special forces soldier, but is initially outclassed by the conspiracy's use of Perfect Soldiers, artificial humans with enhanced reflexes at the cost of their ability to survive without a specific form of radiation that the Conspiracy uses to control them (much like the Humanity Plus program). Armored Core's final act pulls heavily from VOTOMS, especially with the massive betrayals, the reveal that everything has been controlled by a singular artificial intelligence with the goal to maintain the balance of power, and the hero breaking the chains of holding back mankind only for it to be revealed that doing so plunged the world into endless war.



Also of note in VOTOMS is the extreme vulnerability of the titular Armored Troopers. While Macross and Gundam have beloved Ace Custom mechs, Chirico will often go several episodes without one of the replaceable Scopedogs because he lost his previous one due to bad luck, circumstance, or pushing the machine beyond it's limit. In the first arc's final showdown, Chirico customizes a Scopedog with a massive array of weapons, and yet before the episode is over a strike from an enemy Armored Trooper leaves it useless and he is forced to abandon it for a second Scopedog his allies have been towing around on a flatbed. Like Armored Troopers, Armored Cores are expendible, replaceable, and need to be customized on a per-mission basis.

 

[Rhymes]

Welcome back to this crazy thing I'm doing.

Let me tell you a story.

It's July 1997. FromSoftware has just released its ambitious new mecha title to positive reviews and good sales for the company. Armored Core is, by any metric, a success. The logical next step is to release a followup to capitalize on that success and improve upon it.

The illogical next step is to attempt to do that by December of the same year.

Armored Core: Project Phantasma (1997)

​

Other folks have gone into the subject of how and why games take much more time, effort, and resources to develop for modern hardware in much greater detail than I could (like open_sketch, here), so I'll just summarize: exponentially more sophisticated assets are exponentially more difficult to produce. That means that, in the PS1 era, it definitely was not unheard of for a developer to release a game every 12-18 months on the latest hardware. Now, with modern games, that couldn't be pulled off without a horrifying amount of crunch if it could be done at all. This is not to suggest that there wasn't far too much crunch back in the day (i.e., any at all) but the point is that it was genuinely feasible, even sustainable, to release games at that sort of cadence in this period and have them not be merely functional, but good.

Five months, on the other hand? Not accounting for whatever pre-production or dev time preceded Armored Core 1's release? Yyyeahh i dunno about that chief. We'll see what they came up with as we go through the game; reading the reviews from the period, Project Phantasma seemed to get a favorable reception at the time, but my impression is that modern fan discourse tends to gloss over the game compared to AC1's other PS1 followup, Master of Arena. Time will tell on that front.

So, first impressions:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF1C5ZYWZdc​

As intro movies go, this is totally serviceable, but it's essentially a diet version of the original game's introduction, showcasing a collection of different AC builds doing cool stuff, except without a proper CG action sequence. That's not a flaw per se, because I'd rather FromSoft spent their budget and very limited dev time on the game part of the game and not the fancy CG intro. I just hope it doesn't foreshadow corners being cut elsewhere.

After the intro comes the main menu screen.

Virtually identical to the main menu from Armored Core 1​

Selecting "Scenario Mode" brings up the choice to start a new game or load an existing game.

​

Selecting "New Game," of course, begins a fresh playthrough with the starting AC and a smattering of credits. Selecting "Load Game" shouldn't bring up anything, because I haven't played Project Phantasma before, except . . .

​

Project Phantasma isn't a sequel (or prequel), not really. It's as close as a PS1 game can get to an expansion pack, designed to augment the Armored Core experience with a wave of balance changes, a bunch of new parts, a new campaign, and a new gamemode. If this were a PC title, Project Phantasma would just bolt right onto my AC1 installation and give me both games at once. Unfortunately, while it's possible to make such things work on console games from this era, it requires complicated and/or annoying solutions like a separate expansion media device (like Sonic & Knuckles), or swapping discs back and forth (like the PS1 version of Grand Theft Auto).

From didn't bother with that stuff; they just went with a simple save game importer.

So what's imported?

Everything.

My AC build, every part unlocked whether it's in the store or already owned (so my inventory follows me, as do the hidden parts), my credits, my paintjob, even my emblem. It's all here. The only thing that changes is that the game is using the Project Phantasma version of all components, so there's no dodging balance adjustments.

In theory, this means that Project Phantasma can start at much higher intensity out of the gate, gambling on the reasonable probability that someone playing this game has already put time into Armored Core 1 and has a build to import. We'll see how well this holds up in practice.

Once loading is complete, we jump right into the Raven's Nest menu. It's almost identical to the original, except that the "Ranking" section, which didn't do much, has been replaced by "Arena."

We'll come back to this one, but for now, just remember it's here.​

In a bit of a weird twist, the game has an intro screen that only appears if you start a new game without importing your save. Probably the result of simple code that can't tell the difference between "loading a current save" and "loading a save from the last game."

​

That fills in the context of what we're doing, but not how the game fits in next to the original. I'm given to understand from second-hand recitation of supplemental Japanese-only materials that Project Phantasma is set about two years before Armored Core. Don't ask me how that squares with the save game import—I'm pretty sure that way madness lies.

Bottom line, we're a random Raven in the Underground contracted to raid Amber Crown two years before the Chrome-Murakumo war.

Let's be about it, then, shall we?

​

AC1 liked to throw sets of missions at the player, offering sets of 2 or more missions to choose from aside from certain key moments where the next mission was locked in. Here, Project Phantasma says "you get one mission, and you're gonna like it." Depending on how this is handled, it could either deliver a more curated and structured experience, or deliver the same experience as last time only with less player agency. Again, we'll see.

​

Article:

SEARCH AND DESTROY

Requester: Unknown

Reward: 33000

Location: Materials dump

Before actual employment, we would like to gauge your true power. Destroy all opposing forces.

Target any troops you see defending the materials dump. Destroy all opposition. You will have three minutes.

If possible, destroy the materials dump as well. Do not worry, we will provide an additional reward depending on your skills.

Source: Search and Destroy

Opening with a timed annihilation mission is a good way to up the ante at the start without pushing too hard. It gives first-time players a chance to acclimate to the controls and embrace the power fantasy, and lets more experienced pilots strut their stuff.

After having spent so long running the same build in AC1, I'm making an executive decision to put away the KARASAWA for this playthrough. I think I've made my point about how powerful it was the last time, and I'd like to experiment with some configurations I didn't try before.

It also occurs to me that now would be a good time to walk through my approach for actually designing a build in this game, since I never actually did a step-by-step breakdown of that process. So on that note, welcome to the first installment in my new irregular series, Rhymes's Buildcrafting Corner!

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCLzxoPI0zo
(A/N: Right click, set to loop for appropriate soundtrack)​

A couple prefatory notes: First of all, everybody has their own approach to designing a build, and there is no singular correct process. Any method that works within the game's allowances and results in a design that clears missions is valid. This is just the process that works best for me. Second, as we proceed away from the PS1 games, this approach might end up changing as new part types and mechanics are added to the game, so I make no promises about the relevance of any of this to later titles.

So, how does one create an AC build? I'm going to begin this lesson with the time-honored Jewish tradition of answering a question with another question:

What do you think is the first thing we should do?

​

Check the garage, where we can see our current build and where all the parts we own are, to see if there's anything worth using?

​

Or look at the shop, where we can browse for interesting parts to base a build around?

​

Or maybe examine the mission board, where I can look at the mission briefing and try to extract useful intelligence from it that can guide a build?

The answer is: it's a trick question! Sorry!

Here's the deal. An AC is a tool, like any other piece of military equipment (or most hardware, for that matter), and tools are designed to perform specific tasks. Yes, if you wanna get really abstract, every AC exists to perform the same task of "mecha-based violence" but, like, that's why we're here, and within that space is a whole set of potential tasks, which I fit into three main categories:

(1) use a specific part or set of parts,

(2) use a specific fighting style ; or

(3) fulfill the requirements of a mission.

There's definitely overlap between these three, and plenty of builds are designed with an eye towards more than one of these tasks. As an example, the build I was running through the end of Armored Core 1 was designed with three principles in mind: (a) use the KARASAWA; (b) have backup weapons that don't require kneeling; and (c) avoid using missiles. With that build, you can see that I had a particular part in mind, and a fighting style I wanted to favor (or, more accurately, to disfavor.)

Here, the task in mind is pretty simple: I want to be able to complete the first mission. I'd also like to experiment with some parts that I haven't been leaning on for half a game, but that doesn't really constrain the design space.

Now that I know what task I have in mind (Complete the Mission), I know where to go next: back to the mission board to look at the briefing. If I wanted to use a part, I might look in the shop or the garage to inspect it and see what qualities I would want to emphasize or mitigate.

So, if we look back at the mission briefing, there's several bits of intel we can glean—most of which the game outright tells us—and some inferences that can be drawn about what capabilities will be needed to complete the mission.

The primary objective is to destroy all enemy forces so firepower is a priority.

The optional objective is to destroy as much of the dump as possible, so ammo reserves are also important to have enough to blow up everything.

We also have a 3-minute timer, so fast movement is probably going to be something we want to reach the objectives quickly, as is high burst damage (as opposed to weapons with low burst but high sustained damage like machine guns) to ensure we kill enemies as fast as possible.

Finally, it's not easy to tell from the pictures, but it looks like the AO is mostly flat desert terrain, so ground speed is probably important to cover those distances. Fast or nimble flight is certainly desirable but is secondary to pure linear speed.

Putting all these together, we come up with some basic requirements for our build:

High burst damage, deep ammo reserves, and linear ground speed.

The first two are have some mutual exclusivity: game balance basically demands that weapons with really high burst damage have limited ammo reserves (among other limitations) to keep them from dominating the sandbox. That's fine, but it means we're going to have to make some compromises to balance between the design pillars or come up with an alternative solution that skirts this constraint.

We have our goal, and we have the design targets we want to meet to complete that goal. Now we can start picking parts. And what's the most important part of any build? The Legs.

Legs are the most important part because the choice of leg design dictates so many critical elements: movement speed, movement behavior, jump behavior, heavy back weapon behavior, and, of course, weight. That last one is important here: even though our design target doesn't call out weight by name, it does call for a lot of firepower, and heavy ordnance is heavy ordnance, if you catch my drift.

Since we also need linear speed, the overlap of these two requirements makes several leg types undesirable for this build. Tank legs have all the WP in the world, but they're extremely slow (and prohibit boosters, which is relevant for a reason I'll address in a sec). Light biped legs and reverse joints have speed, but limited weight capacity, so they're not a good choice either.

Heavy biped legs also have the speed problem, but, unlike tank legs, they allow boosters, so we could run those and rely on boost-skating to get around. However, doing that would be an EN-heavy playstyle that could easily run into problems depending on our weapon choice. Workable, but opens up new problems.

Mid-weight bipeds and the heaviest reverse-joints land right in the middle, doing nothing well but nothing badly. Both also provide decent aerial maneuverability, though the reverse-joints are, naturally, much better in that respect, so that could give us some additional capabilities. They also have solid weight capacity, fitting in and around the lighter quadrupeds. On the other hand, heavy back weapons would require kneeling with these parts. That's not irreconcilable with the design target, but it is a limitation.

That leaves quadrupeds. Quads are fast, as in of the top 6 fastest leg parts, 4 of them are the quad legs, with the cheapest taking the top spot. They also have good-to-great stability, turning speed that is at worst average, solid weight capacity, and they don't need to kneel to fire back weapons. The main weaknesses are poor jump height (so weak aerial game) and thin armor.

Also, quadrupeds are unique in that they don't need to rotate the lower body to change their direction of movement. Biped legs and tank treads both need to reorient themselves before moving in a different direction, which adds a short delay. Quadrupeds don't need to do this, so they can skate along the ground and weave between the raindrops much more easily.

Quadrupeds, IMO, are the best choice here because they hit all of our design targets, and the main weaknesses are things that don't interfere with that. While it certainly would be nice to have more air game or armor, we do not, strictly speaking, need them here, and there are ways to shore up those weaknesses with other parts. And, as it happens, I have the LFH-X5X already sitting in my inventory. This is the most expensive quad-leg in the game, and it's very good:

That 5k WP is the best on offer outside heavyweights and tanks, and that speed rating is 4th fastest (out of like 25).​

Now that we have our legs, we can start picking out guns. Don't worry, we'll come back to the rest of the AC parts, but legs and weapons are critical components that dictate how you play. Everything else is stats and modifiers.

There are some potent one-hand weapons available, like grenade launchers, bazookas, and laser rifles that could be interesting. Here, though, I'm looking more at the weapon arms. These weapons are some of the most powerful arm weapons on offer, they fire two shots at once, and they behave more like heavy back weapons than their right-arm counterparts (e.g., gatling guns instead of MGs, cannons instead of rifles). Also, candidly, I haven't tried weapon arms out very much , so I'm leaning towards them because it sounds like fun to try something new. This is a game, after all: fun is the whole point.

There are some big heavy cannons available, in both laser and kinetic flavors, but the heaviest options only have around 50 shots (and remember, they fire two at once). Not enough for my taste. The second-string cannon, though, is the AW-RF105, which brings a nice round 100. That I can live with if I have back weapons.

Note that the 1530 damage that just barely lags the KARASAWA is per shot, and this fires two at a time. And this is the weaker option.​

Since I'm running a quad that doesn't have to kneel, there's no reason not to take heavy back weapons like a plasma cannon. Like with the guns, I go for a second-string option rather than the heaviest stuff on offer to make sure I have the ammo reserves to blow up absolutely everything.

​

The WC-01QL isn't the most powerful energy weapon on offer, but it is the second-most, so I grab that as a back weapon.

​

I also grab the WR-L24. It's been sitting idle for a long time, but I have the spare weight and slot for it, and a big rocket makes for a useful "oh shit" option if I need to dump a high damage explosive into something now. Although it was intolerably heavy and expensive to feed when I first got it, now that I'm essentially in endgame, it's been eclipsed on both counts by a lot of other weapons despite being one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Running endgame-tier leg parts and having tons of cash also mitigates both pain points.

Next, the generator. The choice here is easy: bigger numbers better. The weight addition isn't not relevant, but I generally find the difference between values not to be big enough to make a difference. Either you're too heavy or you're not, and these parts aren't typically the breakpoint. If they are, just dial back to the next best item.

Sticking with the GBG-XR from the last game. The shop has one that's even better, but this one's in inventory and I'm lazy.

​

Same general philosophy goes for the boosters: the B-VR-33 is still best in class.

​

As for the FCS, it . . . doesn't really seem to matter if I'm not using missiles? Pick one with a range profile that fits what you're doing. I have the QX-AF in inventory so that'll go in.

That leaves the core and the head. If I weren't using weapon arms this would also be where I'd look at the arm parts as well. The main thing for cores and arms, to my eyes, is to mitigate any defensive weaknesses that our build has opened up (ie, by choice of leg or weapon arms), and to stack as much AP as possible without going over. While lighter cores do have more optional part sockets, they all have enough room to carry the chips you actually want.

​

Since I have a ton of WP left, the XCH-01 is a no brainer. Optional parts worth taking are the SP-ABS and SP-SAP for stagger resistance against shells and explosives, SP-S/SCR and -E/SCR for kinetic and energy damage resistance, and SP-E+ for energy weapon damage . This is a total of 6 OP slots out of 12, just to illustrate how much excess there is.

What about the head? For the head, we want the most detailed computer and automap we can get, plus a radar. There are several good choices, but, I'm gonna be honest, I find this part tends to come down to fashion, since it's the mech's "face."

​

Since I want a slightly different look than I've been using, I go for a mono-eye, the HD-ONE.

And with that:

​

We have our build.

Now, let's get to work.

(By the way if you've had Shape Memory Alloys playing the whole time, you can turn it off now. Bit's over.)

Ooh, new loading screen!

​

The mission starts with a sweeping view of the rail yard that is our AO, ending on a mesa. . .

​

. . .and CARRHAE dramatically dropping into view for a waist-down shot, before the camera pulls back to its standard perspective.

And we're off!​

The base is fairly lightly defended: there's one MT and three tanks, all packing heavy weaponry

​

The MT is closest and starts launching missiles, so it's first on the block.

Getting right up in its face leaves it easy prey for my guns.​

After that's done, I have an entire chunk of the base that I can rip into with everything I've got. All my weapons are high impact explosives, so it's just absolute mayhem. Everything here is fair game: barracks, guard towers, train cars, cargo containers, storage silos, you name it.

Everything is going to go boom.​

The tanks are the other priority targets, but although their guns are potent, they don't have the maneuverability to keep up with me. Once I track them down, they're toast.

​

One of the towers is calling for help. Nobody's coming, but he keeps yelling until I put a shell into his setup.

I also find and kill another tank. ​

Since there's a bonus for blowing up as much as possible, I squeeze as much destruction as I can out of the time I've got before I track down the last tank and put it out of my misery.

Let not a second go to waste.​

God damn but that was a good time. How'd I do?

​

Yeah I kinda went hog wild on the ammo there, but considering that one mission paid out more money than the endgame missions of AC1, I think it's justified. Also I'm still swimming in credits and have a bunch of parts I can sell off if I need more liquidity.

My mysterious benefactor sends me an email congratulating me on my performance:

​

Article:

SENDER: UNKNOWN

Your work so far has been satisfactory. The missions from this point forward will be somewhat more difficult.

Source: Email

Coming from FromSoft, that's practically a love note. Okay, mysterious person, what have you got for me?

​

Article:

INFILTRATE AMBER BASE

Requester: Unknown

Reward: 32000

Location: Amber Crown Entrance Gate

Raid the underground city, Amber Crown. It should be easy to pass the entrance, although take note there is a security system.

In order to bypass entrance security, simply destroy the four energy generators located outside.

The entrance gate to access the city is secured by computer. Destroy the underground condensers then go inside.

Once we confirm a successful raid, we will provide further instructions. Good luck.

Source: Infiltrate Amber Base

Okay. Base raid, so likely CQC with high enemy density. Mission objective is destroying these condensors, so I want to be able to crack them easily. I'm thinking a tank build: base areas tend to limit mobility in AC1 and a lot of base raids were endurance-focused. Probably going to swap the cannon arms for something less . . . explosive too.

Gatling arms. There we go.​

Let's see how this turns out.

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The mission opens with the well-worn drop from altitude, giving me a nice view of the target base. . .

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. . .and what are unmistakably a couple of cannons on top of it. Tank was definitely a good choice.

My armor lets me soak up some fire, which is good, because even with the best tank legs money can buy, I'm not fast. I put a few shots from the gatlings into the right-hand turret (partially hidden by the dune in the screenshot up above), get up to the bunker wall, then boost up and over to land right next to the other turret.

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Then I put a big rocket into it and shut it up for good.

The blue forcefield is controlled by a set of four generators encircling the base. With the cannons gone, they're easy prey.

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And just like that, I'm in. This first area is just a great big elevator, which brings me down to a long hallway.

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Enemy density is actually fairly light; a couple of spider mechs that are no real threat. This hallway leads to a large open room, but when I enter, I get a brief cutscene to highlight a new enemy type.

What are you?​

Mildly annoying is what they are. These are a new type of flying enemy—not very mobile, but with a reasonably potent and high-impact gun.

They're also very fragile.

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Once they're dealt with, I can move forward. This big room is actually one of those large elevators that's designed to lift really heavy stuff by moving along an incline rather than straight up and moving very slowly. That it can support my AC is convenient.

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That the shaft is lined with turrets and more of these mechanical flowers is not. Fortunately, I have firepower to spare.

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The door at the bottom leads to another long hallway with a couple more spider mechs. Again, no problem. I hand one a rocket as a party favor.

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This time, however, the door at the end is locked. This grate in the floor seems to be the way forward, as spelled out by the helpful target indicator.

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The condensers are at the bottom of the shaft the grate was covering. They're shielded, but a few shots breaks the shield.

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A few well-placed rockets, and the mission clears.

My ammo expenditure wasn't too bad, but the beating I took from the cannons meant I only made about 10,000 credits. Not a huge deal—I still have like 100,000 in petty cash and so many parts in inventory that if I need something I don't have, there's plenty of options to swap.

First impressions are: not bad, but it's mostly just more Armored Core. So far, despite the increased linearity, I'm not seeing a wild difference from AC1 in mission design. These are way more challenging and action-packed missions than the first game at the same relative point, to be sure, but if you stuck these in mid-to-late game, they wouldn't feel more (or less) sophisticated than the surrounding assignments. That said, there are signs of something like life in the game so far. I'm noticing a greater use of in-mission battle chatter and cinematics, which add a lot more texture and make levels feel like a curated experience, not just a sandbox to run around in. I'm interested to see what they do with that.

Next time: Rescuing hostages and. . .

meeting our first named character???

Thanks for reading!

 

[Mizu]

Seems like an expansion of AC1 over an entirely new game, as you've said. I wasn't expecting save importing, though.

 

[hghwolf]

Next, the generator. The choice here is easy: bigger numbers better. The weight addition isn't not relevant, but I generally find the difference between values not to be big enough to make a difference. Either you're too heavy or you're not, and these parts aren't typically the breakpoint. If they are, just dial back to the next best item.

Click to shrink...

This is probably the most wrong you've been this entire LP.

You ALWAYS want the best generator. If you can't fit it, revise your build. Downgrading your generator is the last, the absolute last, modification of a concept you want to do because running out of energy is a death sentence for your mission efficiency and usually a death sentence period. Use lighter weapons, lighter arms, a paper core... any of these are better choices than downgrading your generator, also because it means you've got less output and thus need to be more stringent with your equipment drain.

Gen choice doesn't really get INTERESTING until AC6 but the only part that should have more design weight given to it are the legs.