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.

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

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.