Armored Core series overview (armored core 3)

in our previous video we took an in-depth look at armored core 2. now it's time to fast forward two years and see what improvements and changes have been made in armored core 3. the intro shows two teams of acs locked in combat with each other and they're all equipped with newly designed parts [Music] we're also shown off two new features in this game the first being orbital cores [Music] um [Music] now and the second being the ability to drop our equipment we name our pilot and are given a quick prologue if you've played armored core 1 this might sound a bit familiar the world is ran by an ai called the controller and mankind is forced to live underground and for some reason corporations still exist after the prologue we're given our pilot's exam to once again prove ourselves to be a raven the only difference this time is we're not alone we have a partner in this mission and it's a good foreshadowing of what's to come also the game gets a compliment for us fighting in a city there's been other cities in the armored core series but even in armored court ii there wasn't really a lot of detail buildings were pretty much squared off but an armored core three it really looks like they made an effort to make the cities a bit more believable we kill all generic mts and we're officially a ravens objective achieved that we made it to the hub we can really start dissecting this game if you've been following the series then these basics won't surprise you you got missions to complete an arena to conquer and a shop to spend your currency on better ac parts they've added in some pretty huge time savers instead of the shop having its own wing in the hub it's been moved into the garage you can also sell parts straight from your assembly this saves a huge amount of time as customization and armored core 2 looked a lot like this okay let's go buy ourselves a laser blade [Music] now let's go equip it ah i'm overweight let's go get some different legs sell these buy these [Music] and hey there's descriptions now so if you ever wondered what something like energy supply is you can finally figure it out they really really needed this so i'm glad they added it in they also changed the arena so you can skip replays instead of having to go through a whole loading screen and then cancel it this saves about 10 seconds each time and when you realize there's 72 arena contestants it definitely adds up there's also a lot more missions that take advantage of the hover legs now there was only a couple of them back in armored core 2 but armored core 3 has quite a few missions where it's almost required to have hover legs also overheating is more of a thing in this game there's a few missions in arena fights where having a good radiator would be really beneficial so definitely get yourself a good radiator after you buy some of the more important parts that is your arms can now be painted individually from one another so if you want to do some cool color pattern you can it's a nice little feature so now on to the bigger changes this game's a reboot so there's new enemies like these mts that turn invisible the head crabs got a visual upgrade there's these creepy spiders that are the size of a two-story building there's another one that's like the size of a 10 story building it's funny because in armored core too the organic life forms just kind of looked like robots themselves and these other weird flying things that will drop down to the ground and shoot lasers at you and jets actually look like jets now so that's pretty cool all the parts are new or their remodels of previous games some of the remodels don't look as good though like look at this chain gun from armored core 2 compared to armored core 3. every armored core game that's a reboot doesn't have enough parts this game only has a few more parts than armored core 2 had and most of the better parts you're gonna get at the very end of the game or close to the very end of the game pretty much you don't even find a good laser blade until the second to last mission of the game this mission also gives you one of the best boosters and one of the best cores but thankfully there's a lot more to do in the end game and i'll cover that later and everything also has new sound effects now i think this is a good and a bad thing the chain gun obviously sounds a lot better and weapons in general just kind of sound a bit more realistic or maybe have a bit less base to them but that also means iconic weapon sounds like the karasawa firing are now changed the next big addition is orbital cores and i personally think these cores are really useful but they're definitely not overpowered for starters all the orbital cores and armored core 3 fire energy rounds so it's going to take quite a bit of energy and whenever you're firing them they can only fire straight at the enemy they don't have predictive aim like your weapons have and the biggest downside is it gets rid of your anti-missile systems that's built into your core so how exactly could these still be useful well they have unlimited ammo or maybe i should say regenerating ammo and the only other weapons to have unlimited ammo are the laser blades and the laser blades were kind of nerfed in this game or maybe it's the fact that the good laser blade you get you have to pretty much beat the game for and the final addition we could see in the intro cut scene is the ability to drop weapons and equipment now this game has absolutely no tutorial so the average player probably never even figured out you can do this but this feature has become a standard in the armored core series dropping parts removes weight which in turn increases your movement speed and there's absolutely no fees for dropping your parts even if it's a solid weapon that you drop on the floor with rounds in it it won't cost you maybe they got someone to come by later and pick these things up off the ground now this is obviously a really useful feature especially in this game where you have missions that are specifically to avoid missiles for a certain amount of time and if it's not your first time playing this game you can make a well-rounded mech and just drop whatever you don't need for that mission it's something that you appreciate more whenever you've played the game a few times and it makes it really hard to go back to the previous games this is also the first game in the series that started including offhand weapons gone are the days of only being able to equip a laser blade or an energy shield from armored core ii our choices are pretty limited though we can use a flamethrower or a haltzer and i'm going to talk a bit about the hautzer in a bit and i'm still going to save complaining about the controls for the next video even though it's been two years since the playstation 2 was released now we can move on and talk about the arena and missions the arena has a lot of the same immersion that armored core 2's arena had you got detailed descriptions of the participants you got some of the pilots sending you mail and hey look their logos are animated now the arena starts with 50 contestants but they're all grouped into their own rankings so whenever you start the game you can only compete in the e-class of arena then you have to do missions to bump up your ranking so you can compete in higher and higher levels of the arena they also ripped most of the stages out of the missions and some of the stages are a little bit too complex for the enemy ai to understand [Music] a couple of my favorite stages are this desert wasteland stage where it has very low visibility and the water dam that we saw on the missile training mission and man they really did the arena stage dirty in this game i hopped over to the multiplayer versus section because you can actually play single player there and there's a different arena map it's like the same map but it's just better the doors open up and it's in space and you see like this ship flying around like why the heck did they not put this in the single player now that i think about it it's probably because the single player is on earth and the multiplayer you can also draw parts on the ground and they'll actually stay there you can come back and pick them up and sadly there's a few stages i wanted to check out but the ai's too dumb to play on them it has to be two players before i go in depth on the missions though i want to show you just how unbalanced this game is from the very start from the second you start the game you can beat the first opponent in the arena that's outfitted with the exact same stuff you have and checking the mail you get these two missile launchers for free if you go and sell all your weapons and radar you can buy a houser and a machine gun and these are good enough to pretty much carry you through the whole game this game did a lot better at balancing but with the heltzer in the machine gun they i guess they just overlooked it for some reason so if you have years of experience using the claw technique on controller you can pretty much plow through this whole game and the biggest change to the arena just has to be the new fortnite victory dances now it's time to move over to the mission side of things there's 49 missions total which might have been a little bit too much some of the missions are just boring like this mission that has you defending the arena for like what feels like five minutes we also have this escort mission which is totally a rip off of that movie speed pretty much a transport is going too fast and it can't slow down or else it'll explode you gotta clear debris off the road and kill some mts there's actually three of these escort missions and i honestly don't remember a single escort mission in any of the previous armored core games but one of them i actually liked you have to escort this transport that's carrying some newly engineered alloy back to base and you're going through a city killing mts and then you get surprised by an ac but the cool part about it is even if the convoy gets destroyed you can just pick up the alloy and carry it over to the base this game also takes a little bit too much inspiration from armored core one both of the starting missions in ac1 are ripped over and it's pretty easy to tell the similarities they even brought over the modified crane enemy some mission locations are used multiple times and even on top of that a lot of them are used in the arena i mean i feel like these areas are more detailed than armored core 2 so it's honestly just a trade-off so moving over to the positive side of things you can hire backup in about a third of the missions and the beginning of the game it's usually mt pilots but as the game goes on some of them upgrade into ac pilots and then you can hire them in missions and something that's also new is at the end of some of the missions you'll get a request to partake in an urgent mission assignment that's close by they usually reward you pretty good so they're worth doing and it really just adds to the believability of the world that they created the game still has hidden parts which is awesome but in addition to that we now have bonus rewards pretty much if you complete a secret objective in the mission you'll get a reward an example of this is in the missile testing mission if you go through the whole mission without being hit by a single missile you'll get a free part and also in the second to last mission if you don't hire backup and actually finish the mission you'll get the moonlight blade which just so happens to be the only good laser blade in the game i also just have to showcase the most hidden part in the whole series it's like the smallest part and it's hidden behind terrain and it's at the very edge of the map so if you go too far out you're just gonna fail the mission like they must have really wanted you to buy a strategy guide back in the day when this game was released this is just so hidden and it's the best boosters in the game moving on to the story side of things let's quickly hearken back to the prologue people were forced to live underground in a city called layered and an ai called the controller makes every important decision for them as time went on corporations appeared this grew into corporations warring with each other the controller would even manipulate these events always going according to the plans of the controller but somehow the forces of chaos began to rise taking a look at the corporations we have mirage and crest at the top and the smaller corporation kisaragi placing third as war rages on weird events start to occur by the controller and a group called union is formed from the lack of trust towards the controller and they're looked at as a terrorist organization by the corporations the first few missions will have us profiting off the war with missions like secure the mind we'd like you to execute an attack on the grand mining facility kisaragi has played a leading role in the mine's operation and just recently uncovered a rich vein of rare metal ore after consultation with other corporations it was decided that the mine's resources are to be equally distributed and that we mirage will take over its day-to-day operations good on you mirage way to stick it to the little guy as time goes by we're requested to defend ruglin laboratory from mirage forces but it turns out it's not mirage this ac is equipped mostly with high top of the line parts and human plus type traits that make the fight extremely dangerous you're not supposed to win this fight your first playthrough and are instead suggested to run are away evacuate immediately if you do manage to defeat him you get rewarded with a laser rifle which is pretty cool so this ac has no records and it's most likely controlled by the controller itself this is the main point in the story where the controller's decisions really start becoming questionable and we start citing more with union we're sent on a joint effort mission between union and mirage to assist in the capturing of the controller's location that's being held at crest data storage facility other ravens are hired on this mission to do their part and you get a sense of panic and urgency as you hear other pilots fail and you have to make up for their failure swift your area is secure head out sector s31 clear you're our front line raven you complete the objective but mirage pushed out so the mission turned into a total failure and all through this the health of the controller just continues to worsen even getting to the point where it's targeting critical infrastructure that keeps humanity alive mirage hires us to investigate some ruins to locate a passage that leads to the heart of the controller it's a long shot but it's worth a look and we get some backup in case anything goes wrong on this mission and hey it's one of those mt pilots that upgraded to being an ac pilot i knew they wouldn't be enough rebels like yourself have outlived their uses thinking you could destroy the controller what a fool idea there's no place for you in this world betrayal so it turns out mirage just wanted us dead and out of the picture even with all the destruction the controllers caused these corporations are still blindly following its orders well that was a bad call on their part because now massive weapons are coming out of the woodwork to wreak havoc on humanity and guess who has to clean everything up so after saving the day it's time to take matters into our own hands union points us in a direction and we finally get our hands on the location of the controller and it seems like only we have the balls to pull the plug the final mission has most of the staples that make an armored core final mission you got the high budget elevator we're not sure what it is you hope to accomplish a last-minute attempt to turn the game into a platformer and it's also got a pretty tough fight to end it all off [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] it's the controller's core that shield looks impenetrable though but the pillar there's a heat source in the center could it [Music] energy supply diminishing attempting reconstruction executing by interrupting [Laughter] surface access releasing [Laughter] [Music] what was that something about the surface [Music] the game ends with us destroying the controller the doors to the planet's surface are open to the public and a new future may finally begin you see some credits roll and we can load our save like always now what i love most about armored core 3 is how much you can do after beating the game check in the mail we're told about a new ac pilot in the arena called exile some mysterious person wants us to defeat him and if we're having difficulties we should try the new op intensify optional part he says using this new ac part might be frowned upon and i'm definitely going to go into more detail on that in a bit but looking at exile this is easily the hardest fight in the game now the main difficulty comes from how fast he can turn in his ac paired with the really good machine gun that'll just shred up your health and the moonlight blade but he also has these broken extensions what they do is make it so that opponents can't lock on and target you so in other words this guy might as well be invincible for like the first two minutes of the fight so yeah maybe we'll go try out this frowned upon optional part and in order to equip this thing it takes every single optional slot and going back to try the fight again it's even tougher than the first time so what exactly is this intensify optional part this part is actually human plus with the twist there's unmentioned objectives you have to accomplish with this optional part equipped and each objective will unlock a new ability so for example if you want a half the energy consumption of your boosters you can go re-fight the number one pilot ace in the arena and then that trait will be unlocked and if you want to fire your back mounted weapons with bipedal legs you can go ahead and destroy the top part of the massive mt and then finish the mission i'm not going to break down what you have to do for all of them but i did enjoy going back to previous missions and this part actually fixes a couple of the issues that i had with this game and armored core 2. the fact of the matter is there's still only one head you can use to complete every mission but once you unlock the ability op intensify actually gives you every single head function and also a radar function so now you can truly use any head in the game that you want and also if you remember how i complained about the cores and how their main use was for their optional slots well now even a core that has very little optional slots can just use this part since it takes every optional slot but i do have to say this part is extremely overpowered if they would have just nerfed the booster efficiency increase to cooling and turning speed to about half of what it is and not included things like improved target accuracy and enhanced core missile interception then i think this part would have actually been balanced but due to this part's overpowered nature op intensify and human plus will no longer exist in two games and it really didn't need to be this way if they would have just put in some more thought to balancing it then it could have been a good permanent addition to the series and even though this part is overpowered i wouldn't suggest using it a hundred percent of the time if you're using an ac that uses energy weapons you might benefit more off the optional parts that increase energy weapon damage fire rate and reduces the energy consumption and if you're not taking advantage of using the back mounted weapons you might be better off using the optional part that increases your lock box and reduces your lock speed so what other end game stuff is there to do after finishing the game well i already mentioned exile and you guys probably already know by now that you can go back and replay missions that you missed or that you failed in but something that's different about missions is there's actually a ranking system now and i'm not really sure if it unlocks anything if you s rank all the missions i tried to look it up online and i just couldn't find anything so maybe somebody in the comments can clarify and another thing is the extra arena now you might have already unlocked this because all you need to do is reach number one in the arena but you can't really get into the a class until later in the game so i'll just mention it now and the extra arena is pretty much an additional arena mode it's 2v2 instead of just 1v1 and it uses the pilots that you've already fought in the arena and there's not really any new maps but it is a good fun bit of chaos and it's extra money going into the next game if you import your save into silent line and yeah i think that sums up armored core 3 pretty well now armored core 3 was pretty revolutionary it added in a lot of new stuff that's gonna carry over throughout every single armored core game from now on and just in my personal opinion i think armored core 2 was a little bit more memorable i started on armored core 2 so i might be a little bit biased but between the voice acting and the soundtrack it's just a lot more memorable compared to armored core 3 here that's more realistic so i wouldn't even really call armored core 2 better i feel like this game took a little bit too much from armored core 1 enough to even call this game armored core 1 remastered but of course the storytelling was a lot better and i think just the biggest selling point of armored core 3 is just how immersive the world is it really feels like you're put into this world and not this world is made for you and the next game in the series is definitely going to profit from being the direct sequel to this game i would have liked for there to be more parts or at least get most of the parts more earlier on instead of waiting towards the end but it really does feel like this game is meant to be played right before silent line and they're supposed to be played together so yeah stay tuned for silent line make sure to like and comment to help with the algorithm and subscribe if you want to see more and i just want to personally say thank you for all the support that i've gotten when i first started this channel my main goal was just to be the most viewed channel with my name and we kind of blew right past that and we're almost at 100 subscribers you know it's funny because when you see like a big youtube video with tens of thousands of views you don't really think much of it until you actually make a video and going through making a youtube channel has really just opened my eyes now i can't promise that i'm going to be an armored core channel or even a mecha channel and whenever this series is over it might just be the end of it if armored core 6 never comes out so i hope everyone that's watching will stick around for other content i'm trying to waste as little of other people's time as possible until me myself can become a little bit more entertaining in front of the mic but yeah once again thank you very much and have a good day [Music]

Channel: above average gaming

Views: 81,049

Keywords: Review, Critique, Retrospective, Commentary, Gameplay, Longplay, PS2, Retro, From Software, Fromsoft, Armored Core, overview, armored core series, what was armored core, armored core 3, armored core 3 review, armored core 3 overview, armored core 3 gameplay, ac3, what is armored core, armored core, from software

Id: z00Yh2PLUBg

Length: 30min 33sec (1833 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 08 2022