Armored Core: Master of Arena (1999)

The third game that FromSoftware made, and this is easily the best Armored Core in the PS1, it has the arena of Project Phantasma but expanded three times over, a better story mode, and even more hindsight into the world.

The strong

It offers more of the same mech customization and combat as the previous games. More weapons is always better, because you can even use the Project Phantasma ones, and they even nerfed the infamous finger gun that kills the final boss in a few hits.

The arena is even bigger, better and has new modes, where you can test your skills and creations against other players or AI opponents. Yes, you can build a mech, and see if you can kill it; or build a mech, and make a friend try to kill it.

You can import your save file from Armored Core 1 and Project Phantasma, allowing you to access all the benefits. Including human plus.

The game actually forces you to play the story, in Project Phantasma you could grind the arena and then destroy the game's story. But now, you are forced to do the story so you can get access to the arena; no more cheesing.

The story is more interesting than Project Phantasma. Your character has an actual motivation to be a Raven, unlike the guy from Project Phantasma who just exists; he has a simple yet effective one, Nine Ball killed his family and he wants to murder him in revenge; but he has to get better gear and improve as a pilot before he can finally challenge him.

The game is set during Armored Core 1, if you pay enough attention, you can actually see the point where the Armored Core 1 protagonist starts affecting the world; causing changes on the Arena and the corporations involved in your rise.

The weak

Human plus is almost mandatory to beat the game, several Arena fighters and even the final boss become almost impossible to defeat, they are extremely fast, take a ton of damage, and have Human plus too. And guess what? Like in Project Phantasma, you can't get Human Plus normally, you need to get it on the first game.

The final boss is extremely unfair. You have to fight him four times, and if you end up accumulating too much damage, you have to do the last two missions again because the mission is split up in two sections; meaning you have to fight the first Nine Ball, the duo, and then Nine Ball Seraph. This isn't a final boss fight, this is a gauntlet

If you advance too much on the arena, several missions autocomplete, causing you to miss context. I recommend you to read a guide so you know how far you can advance, because the game will autocomplete missions and make you miss several plot points.

Conclusion

The game is an improvement over the first and second one. But again, they dropped the ball by making the final boss unfair, forcing you to use Human Plus and autocompleting missions.

And I'm done. I think this is the quickest I've beaten a FromSoftware game. AC: Master of the Arena is the best of the first generation of AC games for certain. I didn't want to play it at first since honestly playing a "game" in an arena just sounded boring. But, this game actually has a half-way decent story and kinda closes out the story from the first game. In that regard, the format is very similar to what King's Field III did to King's Field I, but to be sure, each King's Field game added a lot more to the formula than each AC game. So far, I'm seeing each AC game is fairly samey, which isn't bad if you like AC. The two sequels were fairly easy overall compared to the slog of the early game in AC1. Once you have your AC build well established, are flush with cash, and have become a veteran pilot, what can the game do to create a challenge? Well, they can give you enemy ACs that break the rules that you have to abide by and give you long maze like levels full of enemies to test your ammo efficiency. The bosses in King's Field are pitifully easy by comparison to the bosses and high level arena combatants you'll be playing Armored Core. This is why I'd say that the Souls series took the setting of King's Field and married it to the tense, deep, skill-based combat of Armored Core. King's Field the challenge is much more puzzle like and exploratory, enemies generally pose little in the way of threat (with some exceptions). AC is pure mech building and the skill to use that build effectively.

Overall, I enjoyed myself with this game, I'm honestly torn between 3 and 4 stars. It was great fun, but also brutal at times. Most of the missions were easy up until the last few. Same with the Arena, easy until you get to the highest tiers at which point it feels nearly impossible at times. I feel like I got lucky with the final boss. It took 5 tries and I barely won with only 13 AP left.

On to AC2 for the PS2!