Armored Core (1997)

I'd like to briefly talk about 2 games I played recently.

First, with the success of Armored Core 6, and given how cool it seems, I decided to try the old ones. While I don't fully regret this, I hated my time with the 1st one and dropped it. I loved building my robot, and the soundtrack is amazing, but the gameplay just sucks! It controls like shit! I'm pretty sure that's improved in the future, but I just can't.

Next, I'm kinda disappointed with Palworld. See, I really believed that this would be "Pokemon with guns", but it's far from it. Feels like I'm playing a survival/crafting game, on BOTW's map, that looks like Fortnite. I didn't even get the gun yet. The Pal monsters are cool, though. I love games like Pokemon, SMT, Digimon, but this is just not my thing, unfortunately.

Armored Core is a series that eluded me for a long time until I decided to finally try the first game. I was curious about what made it be so succesfull, why did this keep FromSoftware afloat.

The armored

• Armored Core has a very interesting story and lore. The first game has a lot of backstory that you have to piece together reading the emails that the game sends you. And it is very interesting, you slowly start to learn about the downfall of humanity, how it was destroyed and reduced to underground cities.

• The different points of view of the corporations you work for are shown very well. If you are willing to play all story missions, you start to learn how hypocritical they are after all.

• The music is just awesome, that's all I can describe it with. It pumps you and makes you nervous of what's to come.

• The game despite being extremely hard, is actually quite forgiving. If you go indebt several times, you will be forced to take a handicap called Human Plus, which causes you to be more agile, more resistant, etc.

• Mech customization is quite indepth. You can customize the paint, the symbol, etc. And you have many options, armed arms, laser guns, plasma guns, generators, machineguns, missiles, etc. And the game actually forces you to work on a budget and on weight plus energy capacity.

• You can find lots of hidden weapons that make the battle easier.

The debt

• The controls are horrible due to the time period, nobody knew about twin sticks and the Dualshock wasn't commonplace. You will be fightning the controls a lot during the game because you can't dodge or turn around fast enough, causing you to take damage.

• It's extremely easy to go indebt on accident, take a little bit too much damage or waste a little too much ammo and now you lost money, and without money you can't buy or upgrade anything; and if you go into debt way too much you are going directly into Human Plus, losing your progress. To some people, becoming Human Plus is almost an inevitability.

• The game has a dominant strategy because it forces you into it. Just build a sturdy mecha that can take a beating, then put a powerful generator in it so you have energy to spare, add a super fast booster, then some multi missile, then the Karasawa; with that build you are set for the entire game because any other build is not as powerful or as useful as this one.

Conclusion

Armored Core had somewhat of a rough start, but the appeal is still there and you can see the small inspirations for Dark Souls.

Beat 84%. This game was very similar in design and play to Mech Warrior on SNES, but it was significantly better. The early game was fun as I saved up my money to buy the best sniper rifle. That rifle served me well for the entire game. I soon realized that buy and sell costs were equal, which was fantastic. It encouraged experimentation and getting minor upgrades rather than saving up. I eventually ended up with the most expensive generator, which allowed me to put on the special heavy biped legs with impact absorption, the 2nd best defensive arms (the best limited back weapons), and the second best head for decent defense and all features except noise canceling (I have no idea what that did). My mech was an absolute tank but was incredibly slow. It took forever to turn around, but I still killed a lot of enemies with my blade.

The difficulty spiked hard on the mission to protect a train because the enemies were jets. It took many tries to figure out how to manage them; it was about using the fast lock targeting system with missiles. I eventually got the best core with all defensive optional parts, and the ones that buffed energy weapons. I upgraded to the better sword, large missile launcher and laser cannon. Even though some missions were annoying with time limits and the like (I had to switch to 4 leg speed setup for the poison gas mission), I did not have trouble until the final mission. The final mission was God awful and took several tries to beat. Whoever thought it was a good idea to put in that ridiculously tall shaft with moving blocks and enemies to platform up was an asshole. Maybe if it was only 1/3 at high it would have been acceptable, or at least had checkpoints. But no, screwing up mostly likely sent me right down to the bottom. I had to switch to the best 4 legs and weak light arms for optimal platforming. The awkward camera, 3rd person view and weight of the mech did not help! Again, why the hell is there so much platforming in a mech combat game? I kept my weapon setup rather than switch to the most powerful dual lasers or chainguns. The sniper was great at picking off the turrets on the moving blocks, and missiles were needed to hit those damn jumpy mechs. I died to the boss several times because his offense was so immense and it was difficult not to take significant damage leading up to him. Fighting him in the large vertical shaft was suicide so I lured him into the tunnel below. The time I finally beat the level I was barely hanging on with like 5% hp left, 0 ammo for the sniper and laser, and only a few missiles left. I did get him good by outranging with my sniper.

After finally beating the game I went back and did the missions I had missed. Not sure how much of branching paths there were but most of the missions I missed were for Chrome and most of those were obnoxious with time limits and flying or jumpy hard to hit enemies. It took 2 or 3 tries to beat some of those levels as I had to learn the optimal route to beat the time or not take too much damage. I only found 1 special loot in the air vent level. Too bad there were not other things to find in the levels, like money stashes, powerups or refills.

This game was fun with excellent mech customization. The setting was cool but the story and writing were not very interesting. The game ran into trouble with the controls and some of the level design. I absolutely hated anything involving verticality, whether it was platforming or trying to hit aerial enemies. On PSP I bound look up to triangle with look down and reset camera to the analog stick. I am sure it would be better on a PS1 controller with proper L2 and R2, but even then aiming would still be awkward. I was prepared to give this game 8.5 to 9 out of 10, but I am dropping my rating significantly just for that travesty of a final level.

7.2/10

Armored Core can take some time to get used to, but the process of building up one's mech and taking on a surprisingly rich variety of battles with technical and narrative depth make this a must-play experience.

After Earth survives a catastrophic war, corporations soon come to power (Chrome and Murakumo Millennium). Inter-corporate war between them provides opportunities for mercenaries called Ravens to fulfill jobs using powerful and highly customizable mechs called Armored Cores.

The player can either play single-player missions or do a two-player versus mode. Players may use guns, rockets, lasers, and swords of varying power and ammo during a mission, with the need to balance energy output and weight for max firepower and survival.

Controls seem a bit awkward at first without the analog stick, but managing aiming with L2/R2 and having good strafe controls allow the player to make either careful and deliberate movements or use a ridiculous amount of vertical maneuvering, including advanced techniques such as the "bunny hop".

While the movement controls are something to train for battles, most of the single player's challenge comes from figuring out the best type of mech for challenges and being able to afford the parts. Using up health and ammo incurs extra costs, and debt can prevent the player from buying new parts. This encourages the player to save often and practice missions until powerful radar and lock-on, high energy output (and energy weaponry), and some helpful guns (read: the chaingun) will turn the player's Armored Core into a killing machine.

Missions can be fairly massive in terms of space, with large fields, vertical shafts, blimps, seaside bases, abandoned facilities, test arenas, cities, and so much more bring this cyberpunk world to life. Graphics are also surprisingly varied for a 1997 3D game, with no attempt at rendering human models (mechs look far better with primitive 3D rendering). Music is solid techno that also fits intense cyberpunk battles and will provide a suitable beat for focus. The player can also customize their mech and emblem, resulting in opportunities for fun and colorful creativity amidst the serious (if a little drab) designs.

Armored Core is plain impressive for the time it was made, utilizing limited controls in mech combat that works both single and multiplayer, enriched with plenty of gameplay variety and a morally ambiguous storyline that puts the player on either side of a futuristic imperialist war.

The controls hold the game back, From Soft should have waited until the PS2 came out with the Dual Analog Stick controller. Even with the limitations of the gamepad, TPS games do work on the Playstation 1, for example Syphon Filter 2 is a terrific game but it doesn't have enemies moving up and down, they're either stationary or moving slowly. In Armored Core your foes fly in all directions and if they're above you, it takes time to turn the camera, more so if they're above AND behind you. It's very awkward, you're eating lead and plasma while trying to turn your Mech around.
Apparently later they made 4 PS2 titles that still did not utilize dual analogs which boggles the mind.

But I still like it, short missions are addictive, upgrading the mech is fun. Simple and entertaining.