Beat. I did not see a way to import my save from the previous game but I was able to get a decent mech with the starting money. I more or less created my golden tanky sniper from the last game and did a few missions until I struggled against a boss. I then did arena fights to build up …
Beat. I did not see a way to import my save from the previous game but I was able to get a decent mech with the starting money. I more or less created my golden tanky sniper from the last game and did a few missions until I struggled against a boss. I then did arena fights to build up money for better parts until I just barely scraped past the boss. Then I decided to finish the entire arena, and oh boy I hated that. 1 vs 1 fights against overpowered enemies that often moved very fast and flew around? Not a fun time. Since the arena did not cost anything I most often used the gatling arms. The difficulty progression was not balanced at all with plenty of higher ranks being far easier than certain tough bastards. The first trouble I had was rank 30 Brutus because he was so fast and flew a lot. Aiming vertically was so awkward that I just didn't bother to do it; better off just waiting until they get back down. I mostly used the open water level, using the structure in the middle and walls as cover. I had to look up a walkthrough for Brutus and it mainly came down to fighting in the low ceiling cave map to negate flying. From then on I fought most enemies in that cave. There were a couple that did not fly that were easier to snipe in the water map. It mostly came down to trying each enemy and figuring out what worked. I used the best 4 legs for good speed and made adjustments to the other parts as necessary. Gatling arms, twin plasma cannon arms and twin grenade launcher arms were my most used. Sometimes the chain gun, laser gun or ammo box on shoulder slots. Sometimes I had to use actual arms with the highest damage machine gun or best laser rifle. There was a lot of skill involving with circle strafing and avoiding their attacks. A few times I even tried to bait them into running out of ammo but I am not entirely sure if they can. Some fights were frustrating, taking multiple attempts and often making me go back to the drawing board, but the biggest wall was #3 Pale Rider. He was way too fast and his grenades messed up my view. I must have made over 100 attempts using various weapons. I cut back to the fastest 4 legs with a vert lightweight set up, which allowed me to keep up with him. Weapon choice was very limited. I had some success using the machine gun, chain gun, and pistol. Sometimes I got him down to triple digit hp, and once I got him down to only 27! But the number of attempts it took for luck and skill to align correctly for that success was way too high. There had to be some way to do better, to exploit and cheese. So I went searching online. Found out that turning my back to the enemy made him run away, so I switched to a heavy 9.7k armor, slow as fuck biped design and tried to exploit that. I tried to use a sniper build from the edge and corner of the map but it did not work. Then I tried just standing still and taking his hits while shooting. It went pretty well. I tried several weapons: the heavy machine gun was accurate but did not do enough damage, the laser rifle and grenade launcher had trouble keeping up with his speed. So I decided to buy a bunch of energy weapons and try different ones to see what could work. The green rifle was sitting in my inventory beckoning so I used it next and kicked his ass because of its amazing combination of accuracy, fast fire rate and damage. Now I remember the guide recommending this gun and I think I used it to beat Brutus. Probably should have been using it the entire time. I combined it with the best wide shallow FCS so my auto aim covered most of the screen. Then I wrecked #2 on the first try and took a couple attempts to beat the top dog; I ended up boost reverse kiting him around the map at a slight diagonal so many of his shots missed.
I kept this heavy rifle build for the story missions and made it through the rest of the game without much trouble. I lost to a boss fight once, and the final boss took a few attempts; I had to boost circle strafe around him to stay alive. After this I did the few missions I had missed. Only 1 with a timer required me to change to a speedy lightweight build. I then tried some different weapons on the final boss because that rifle was clearly not the best; he was a large slow target that benefited more from damage than accuracy. The finger machine gun from beating the arena wrecked him easily and might very well be the best weapon in the game. The heavy bazooka did better than the rifle but was more difficult to aim due to smaller auto aim box. Shoulder rockets did well but were a bit more difficult to aim. The grenade launcher almost killed him, then took a couple sword hits to finish off; still faster and safer than the rifle. I was not able to beat him using the shoulder chain gun or best laser rifle due to their restrictions on movement. They might work with a 4 leg set up.
This game was pretty much identical to the first Armored Core; same mechanics, same awkward vertical aiming, same awkward separe shop and garage, same fun core gameplay. The missions were much better designed, especially in regards to not having much platforming at all. Though it was more that the missions included were on par with the best ones from the previous game while the more obnoxious mission types were excluded. I had a much easier time hitting flying enemies with the wide shallow targeting system and weapons, so this knowledge would make the other game easier. Otherwise the arena was frustratingly difficult and broke the progression of the game as by the time I beat the arena and went back to story missions I had over 6 million money and a lot of the best stuff purchased. So ammo and repair costs were a complete non issue.
8.0/10
