Was it Good? - Armored Core

main system engaging combat mode in the far future a cataclysmic war known as the great destruction has wiped out most of humanity forcing the survivors to live underground in the aftermath two mega corporations have risen to global dominance chrome and the murakumo millennium locked in endless battles for political and social power both sides hire giant mech freelance mercenaries to fight their battles for them you are a raven an elite member of the ravens nest mercenary company piloting your own custom-built armored core a giant mechanized fighting robot you go wherever the pay is and business is booming but who really pulls the strings are you simply a pawn in a global scale game of chess and does armored core exist in the dark souls universe let's find out ladies and gentlemen welcome i'm josh drivehayes and today we're going back to 1997 rejoining the ravens crushing the chrome and spending far too much time in the shop as we replay the classic mech action game armored core i'll be finishing the whole game showing you all the missions the hidden items and the optional bosses and then looking at the legacy this game went on to spawn before asking the simple question armored core was it any good as usual a huge thank you to all the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel alive more on how you can support at the end for now let's begin 1997 the playstation 1 had been out for three years and was dominating the home console scene but the age of downloadable games wasn't yet fully upon us so magazines and game fares used to give out demo discs physical discs with small sections from various games for you to test before you buy and this one was quite the gold mine interactive sampler disc volume 4. you had playable levels of croc parappa the rapper treasures of the deep and armored core now you've only got the first level but it was enough to know this was something special now armored core was made by a small developer known at the time for the brutally hard unforgiving rpg series kingsfield the developer has since become relatively well known they're called from software yes that from software the guys behind demon souls dark souls bloodborne sakiro and eldon ring i wonder if we'll see any of that signature from software design all the way back in 1997. so we launched the game and we're treated to a gorgeous cgi intro movie [Music] um [Music] cool [Music] we see a mech being made choices of equipment for various equipment slots being scrolled through a custom mech being built and then used we don't know who we are but we do get a general feeling of the game and we know to expect fast-moving customizable mechs with some high-caliber firepower fighting equally capable opponents and then the game actually starts instantly and this is definitely a from software title because you're told this is the only test we give new ravens good luck as you're thrown into a battle with some training mechs you are not told the controls or the systems you're not given any hints or tips you're just told go and kill stuff and thrown directly into a trial by fire so you run around madly trying to understand the ui while being shot at working out how switching weapons or locking on works and if you die which is remarkably easy to do because you don't know what you're meant to be doing the game restarts armored core is definitely a from software game if you can fail the intro so unlike the game i'll give you a basic rundown of the controls and a few tips and tricks first off no analog sticks here it's entirely d-pad driven your mech moves forward or backward or turns left and right l1 and r1 strafe you left and right and l2 looks up and r2 looks down pressing x activates your booster if you're moving while boosting you'll boost forward along the ground and if your mech is light enough you'll slowly start to ascend boosting while strafing is similar to dodging and if you're standing still when boosting you will jump while in the air you can boost more to fly or slow your descent the heavier your mech is the harder it is to slow your descent or control your positions in the air boosting uses fuel it's the green bar on the left this bar refills when you are moving but not boosting and it refills faster if you are standing still if you ever drain the gauge completely as in get to the red zone and then fully empty it you'll be forced to wait for it to refill completely before you can boost again energy weapons like laser rifles and close range energy swords also use a small amount of fuel to fire in addition to that other ammo so already we have what could be considered a multi-purpose stamina system your health is the energy number shown to the top left this number is the total armor point value of all of your mex parts head body legs and arms all added together heavier mechs usually have more you don't have any recharging shields and there's no way to refill your health mid mission once you have taken damage that is it you are slowly creeping toward failure there is a basic compass toward the top and then a radar to the top right now the radar is an optional extra you need either a body or legs with a built-in radar or a shoulder slot dedicated to a radar antenna we'll look at the build process later to the middle right you'll see a list of all the guns you're currently equipped with and this is the real core of the game you can have one ranged weapon active at any one time it's the one on the top of this list and pressing triangle will cycle through this list each weapon has limited ammo and there's no way to refill in the middle of a mission when you're out of shots that's it pressing square fires some weapons like rifles will shoot straight ahead other weapons like missiles will need a lock on and this is a super fun mechanic which will affect how you build your mech the red square in the center of your vision is the lock-on zone when you're aiming at an enemy you'll see a little distance gauge showing how far away they are from you and if you keep an enemy within your lock-on zone long enough you will lock on and track all of your shots to them different weapons have different sized lock-on zones weapons with low damage like rifles have a large lock-on zone high-powered weapons like bazookas have a very small lock-on zone as long as you're in range missiles will lock on and then home in when you fire this doesn't mean that you'll always hit enemies some enemies move too fast for the missile lock even if you are homing and others can boost away from your burst fire when you do hit an enemy you'll have the hit message flash up to the bottom right some weapons are attached to your mechs arms like the basic rifles these can usually be fired while moving or in the air while boosting but other high-powered weaponry is mounted on your shoulders like laser cannons or the larger missile launchers and these guns need you to stand still and stabilize yourself to fire now standing still in armoured core is a bad idea so upgrading your mechs legs from biped to quad or tank tread is useful because these legs can fire shoulder-mounted weapons even while moving along with ranged weapons there's a limited selection of melee laser swords these use a small amount of fuel per swing but they never run out of ammo now the laser sword attack will actually change based on your armored core's legs biped means you'll swing a large horizontal arc in front of you tank and quad means you'll stab forward and there are issues with this we'll have a look at them later but that's pretty much all you need to know move boost lock on fire stab don't die and when you finally complete the opening test the test is over from this moment on you are a raven you're not a good guy or a bad guy you're a raven a gun for hire and you'll end up fighting for all sides of this war as the story progresses this is the main menu you'll be spending a lot of your in-game time here so let's have a look the mailbox has various contacts sent to and from before or after missions and a few personal messages to you from the mysterious are leader of the ravens this is all fluff and can be ignored the ranking screen shows you the current points values of the top 10 ravens as you complete missions you'll rise through these ranks and these ravens and their associated armored cause may also appear as mini bosses in some missions just because you work for the same mercenary organization doesn't always mean you're on the same side and now we get to the shop probably one of the most important screens completing missions gets you credits and the shop sells everything legs arms heads weapons radars it's extensive but now a super important note if you buy something from the shop you can sell it back for the same price there is no depreciation of your assets so you are not penalized for trying out different builds buy a gun use it if you don't like it sell it back at no loss and once you've bought all the things you can afford you'll want to equip them and this is where the game shines the garage this is your armored core creation screen and you get to design every element of your mech and the level of detail is extensive so let's just break it down an armored core is made up of 11 main parts a head a core the arms the legs a generator a firing control lock-on module the boosters the left shoulder weapon the right shoulder weapon the left arm weapon and the right arm weapon and armored core 1 has 138 different parts consisting of 10 heads some with built-in radars some with built-in missile jamming some are resistant to enemy jamming technology some can lock on through walls and some generate a more detailed level map three central cores with varying slots for optional extras 16 arms some built to hold weapons others as weapons themselves such as miniguns bazookas or heavy duty dual energy rifles 24 different legs from forward-facing bipad to backward-facing bipad thin and lightweight heavy and armored to quad legs or tank tracks six different boosters from weak and light and energy efficient to heavy and super powerful eight firing control solution modules with lock-on ranges from short to far horizontal to vertical lock-on speed differences and max lock-ons from two to six seven different generators putting out various levels of power and having different red zones that the boosters can fall into before needing to fully recharge 34 shoulder-mounted weapons rifles chain guns bazookas railguns radars lock-on missiles multi-splitting warheads anti-air chaff dual warhead launchers or energy ball generators 15 right arm ranged weapons machine guns energy rifles rocket launchers sniper rifles and more and different weapons have different lock-on zone sizes so you can choose to equip a weapon with a big lock-on zone that's weaker or a small lock-on zone and rely more on your own manual aiming skill four left arm melee weapons energy swords of varying power and 11 optional parts which can be fitted within your core provided you have the optional connections available such as enemy lock-on jammers circuits to increase energy output lock-on time reduction and shields to reduce either incoming physical or incoming energy based damage the box itself even boasts you can custom tailor your armored core with over 300 000 different weapon and armor combinations and if this sounds overwhelming it gets even deeper your mech construction is limited by several factors first off your legs must be able to support the weight of everything on top of them and each leg part has a total weight load and then your core must be able to support the weight of your arms and the weapons those arms are carrying and then the generator itself must be able to supply enough power to everything you have equipped while you're on the shop screen or the garage screen you can press triangle on any item to bring up a detailed breakdown of all of its stats and while in the garage you can see the energy being produced the leg weight limit and the core weight limit to the bottom right if you equip too much you won't move so building your mech isn't just a case of throw the best stuff on it's a balance of weight energy ammo tactical choices defensive power offensive output speed it's a subtle balance well it's pretty subtle right up until you can afford the best quad legs and then it's just throw everything on and you'll be fine so let's start with a basic all-round mech before we go into battle let's choose a style there's a load of color patterns to choose from with different variations on each pattern classic woodland desert camo digital or classic playstation 1 garish but what if you want to be a little bit more out there well you can in armored core 1 you can manually adjust the rgb values for the main secondary and then highlight color for every single part of your mech and there's a two player versus mode so you can even save your own color schemes and load it into a friend's game later and when you've finished creating this colorful monstrosity you can choose an emblem remember the emblems all the ranking ac's had well you can choose from a pre-made list or you can make your own there's an emblem designer tool with paintbrush line box filled box straight line circle and a bucket fill tool with a selection of colors you can spend hours designing a pixel perfect emblem before boosting into battle all this just serves to help immerse you in the world of armored core but once we've got one built let's get killing armored core is a mission based game and all the missions are very short taking from two to ten minutes to complete only the final level takes over 20 minutes you head to the mission tab and you'll see the current contracts and the rewards offered you can read through what's expected of you before accepting anything now it's important to note you won't be able to finish every mission in a single playthrough because certain choices will lead you down certain story paths you will always end at the same ending but there is variation within the game but don't worry once you've finished the last mission you unlock the ability to go back and play all of the missed ones let's start with eliminate the squatters you get a simple 3d map visualization and estimation of the enemy forces and then off you go missions in armored core all have very simple names eliminate this guard that stop a thing from happening find an item kill a faction leader the title of the mission is basically the entire objective and this is good because once you've started a mission there is no way to bring up that objective again so if you forget what you're meant to be doing tough you might think if i forget oh i'll just blow everything up which is a great plan right up until the mission was prevent this thing being blown up the early levels aren't big so it's pretty hard to get lost but if you press select you'll bring up a 3d map the quality and detail of this map is based on the head and radar you have equipped better means you can see further now some levels need you to find certain targets or go to certain rooms and these will not be shown on your 3d map but they will appear on your heads-up display in game you won't need the map for the opening but when you start getting to the break into abandoned military compound style levels with various floors and dead ends and rooms or the sewer levels with the ascending and descending pipes and tunnels you will come to rely on this because getting lost is a very real risk and while you don't want to take your radar over your rail gun sometimes you do kind of need to the first mission teaches you some valuable principles mainly stay back and fire a lot of missiles until you've upgraded your armored core your turning speed is abysmal and enemies will run rings around you so you can't lock on hanging back and sniping is usually good but if the enemy do close the gap the laser sword is so incredibly powerful you can melee the entire game if you want to and we'll look into how to get the secret laser sword later when you finish a mission you'll get paid but you'll also have to pay out after every mission you'll have a repair cost based on the damage you took and an ammo restock cost every gun has an ammo cost the more you shoot the more you pay so while it's fun to just spray and pray you can actually end up paying more in ammo costs than you earned meaning sometimes you can make a loss even if you pass the mission the opening missions vary the level design and let you get a feel for the style you enjoy there's a large open room with enemies hiding behind corners to encourage you to run through a melee there's a long thin corridor which lends itself to hanging back and sniping there's a barricaded bridge which has the enemies heavily fortified meaning you have to jump and fire from the air to get over the defenses or hop into the shallow water below and run along the side and jump up onto the other end of the bridge to attack from behind the opening missions do a great job of setting the enemy to be weak to a certain tactic and encouraging you to experiment sometimes you'll have multiple missions to choose from and each is being given by a different mega corporation or a smaller political or social activist group while you don't have any allegiance the mission briefings do let you piece together the plot it's loose but it's basically corporate overlords like the war smaller eco and splinter cells want it to stop and now the toughest enemy the camera armored core shines when you're in a big open space with some obstacles around you like buildings or cars that you can crush and you've got enough space to boost around fire some missiles and dodge into cover when you need to those kind of fights are pure mech bliss but when you're in a tight corridor mission it's another story the camera doesn't deal with walls well so we'll clip into or through you often the enemies are often faster than you so turning to see them is a drawn out affair and jumping launches you quite high and really tries to snap the camera to follow but when it can't it ends up in this messy under you position these smaller enclosed fights end up feeling more frustrating than fun and this mission specifically don't damage the truck is brutally difficult when the enemies will damage it themselves there are times when using your guns isn't a good idea but locking onto a fast enemy with melee is just as tricky these missions where you're fighting both the camera and the enemy really slow the pacing of the game thankfully they are in the minority if you do lose a mission either by being destroyed or failing your objective you'll be returned to the ravens nest menu not paid but you still need to pay your repair and ammo costs so it's highly likely unless you're skilled you will end up in debt very early on while you're in debt you can't buy anything from the shop or sell any essential parts back to it and this is done to prevent the player soft locking themselves and ending up in a position without an essential part and no way to buy it but when you do get to an open city level my god it is so much fun stop the security mt's perfect jumping boosting sliding dodging running gunning locking on and sniping away launching missiles and blasting some lead this is great it's moments like this when you understand why this game went on to spawn an absolute legacy in fact the timeline of this series is way more fleshed out than people realize armored core armored core project phantasma master of the arena armored core two two another age armored core three silent line nexus ninebreaker formula front last raven armored core four four answer armored core 5 and then finally verdict's day back in 2013. although rumors are after the success of eldon ring from software might be looking into the armored core series once again we can only hope the next mission has us defending an oil rig from waves of flying enemies and another major issue using l2 and r2 to look up and down instead of the analog stick is clunky it's not a sharp snappy movement there's slow acceleration than deceleration and with enemies moving super fast both into and out of your lock-on area especially flying enemies getting a focused lock-on can be fiddly it also means the majority of your group fights end up with you burst circle strafing while just spamming missiles whenever you can once you've got enough credits to buy stuff you can start to customize your mech i grab this fire missile whenever i have a lock-on upgrade and if you don't want to risk losing credits by going straight into a mission you can launch the practice arena a few basic bots and enough room to move around lets you get a feel for whatever you buy some missions don't reward credits they reward unique parts either by gifting them to you directly or adding them to the shop you still need to pay the repair and refuel costs so they're not really free you just paid in the expenses to do the mission eventually you'll run into customization issues you've never got enough of either remaining weight energy or credit and if you buy something you'll be over the energy cost so you'll sell something but now you're overweight and this highlights a design issue you'll be switching from the shop to the garage to the construct view to the detailed view trying to get all these numbers to match up repeatedly and there's no single simplified screen where you can see it all there is so much switching back and forth from screen to screen and you're just trying to remember right i need to lose 200 pounds but i've also got to keep the energy output above a certain level but i can't afford better legs but i need a radar and i can't survive without a sword ultimately there are a lot of numbers and limiting factors in armoured core and while that's not a bad thing by itself there's no centralized way to see all of them at once being complex isn't bad but being complex and awkward to navigate is you'll sometimes spend more time flicking between the shop and the garage than in actual missions next mission remove the worker robots don't damage the generator okay i promise to be super careful ah look at this walkway playstation 1 fully showing off its 3d surface and texture movement processing there while the levels of armored core are relatively simple layouts wireframe style the surrounding textures and distant ambience is just lovely okay don't damage the factory got it okay right what they meant was don't fire any weapons at all and complete this mission entirely in melee well that's good to know now i've blown half the factory up next eliminate the squatters while this game doesn't have a lot of voice acting it does have some how dare you come here don't get carried away just because you're a raven while that plea for mercy isn't going to stop me it does make you think are we doing the right thing because one mission you'll be paid by millennium to destroy a chrome factory and the next you're paid by chrome to retaliate the money keeps flowing and the battle keeps going then we get told about the terrorist group imminent storm clearly being supplied by a larger company but with unknown goals the story in armoured corps is relatively well fleshed out with the big corporations setting up shell companies and funding splinter cells to carry out false flag attacks or more clandestine insurgencies but like most from software games you can ignore the story and still have a good time into the aqueducts i've brought some tanked legs to increase my equipment load and bring more weapons but this is a level i'm really missing my radar and my map and i moved super slowly so maybe this wasn't the best build for a sprawling waterway and after about 15 minutes i'm thinking yeah a slow radarless tank was the wrong choice here the advantage was i get more guns and more armor but that doesn't matter if i can't work out where to go so i quit and quitting puts me in debt great so i rebuild and retry faster lighter and okay this is better but lower armor and less health means i actually get destroyed damn and if you fail enough the missions actually get removed from your selection you lose the chance to finish it until you complete the game and as we'll see with hidden weapons this can be a big deal some missions don't have a set payout they pay out based on your success so this one attack an urban city wants us to just cause chaos destroy cars shoot down the monorail blow up the lightning nodes on top of the city easy stuff except the city has hired another raven to defend it you in the ac surrender immediately if you resist we will attack without mercy enemy approaching danger danger danger name of ac valkyrie [Applause] ac unit destroyed combat halted the number two armored core valkyrie attacks us and god damn she is tough she's got this missile barrage which is deadly accurate and will juggle you into the air stun locking you if you're caught in that you're as good as dead and i die with one second remaining on the mission timer meaning i fail god damn it my debt is getting worse so let's try something else something easy like destroying a fuel depot well it sounds easy nice simple map what could go wrong ah right enemy radar jammers if your lock-on system gets jammed you can't use missiles so you're forced to manually aim your rifle which means you'll waste a load of shots and as you're being shot back you get knocked around which throws off your aim and you don't realize how much you rely on your targeting lock until you don't have it i actually soft lock myself into failure on this mission i use all my bullets taking out the radar jammers and then my missiles on the gun turrets and i run out of ammo on my rifle so i can't shoot i have missiles but they require a lock-on to fire and my job is to blow up these fuel tanks i do have a melee attack but the explosion of the tank hurts me so i can't win if i attack the fuel i'll die and it's around this point that i start to understand yes it's a big mech game but it's full of subtle important choices a weapon with more shots a tactical anti-jamming head using melee when you can to save ammo it's not a mindless mech game there's planning needed i'm spiraling into debt and i get a mail from the human plus project a cybernetic enhancement project who are looking for volunteers they say they'll be in touch and this sounds pretty ominous so i take whatever mission i can but i cannot pass because i can't buy any better equipment and eventually i reach minus 50 000 credits and then this happens is this the subject for our next experiment yes his papers say he was a raven oh so he took the usual route here seems to have piled up quite a dent must have dashed his dreams but he will be reborn in this experiment that is if he lives hmm you have a point there let's get started if you owe more than 50 000 credits you'll be automatically donated to the human plus enhancement project and forced to restart the game but you'll gain some permanent boosts to make your next attempt easier first off your debt is cleared to zero and you will have to restart but you get to keep any previous purchased items and you gain a permanent human plus upgrade so it's like a pity system which lets you retry the game with a stacking advantage each time on your first restart you'll be given a permanent long range radar even if you don't have one equipped the second human plus will add incoming missile and enemy elevation markers to your radar making things easier to dodge the third increases your turning speed fourth is faster movement in general fifth increases your maximum fuel the six restart reduces the drain rate of your boosters the seventh lets you fire your shoulder mounted weapons while moving even if using biped legs and the eighth adds an energy wave to your laser sword melee attack this is a fascinating way to add a pity system into the game repeated fails don't make the enemies easier they make you better now this isn't the same system as dark souls this isn't bonfires or leveling up but it does present an interesting foundation to the design philosophy the company from software became known for from software have always seen failure as part of the gameplay experience and instead of punishing the player for attempting and failing they reward you for perseverance you know even if you lose a mission you are one step closer to the next human plus upgrade you're not losing progress so much as making horizontal progress to something that makes your gameplay experience different from software do make hard games but they want the player to finish them so the process of failure is part of the journey to success and this is designed into the gameplay loop this also means finishing the game without getting a single human plus upgrade is the challenge run so that's my goal no human plus soul level zero armored core completion the human plus system does let you retry old missions with new builds though like this heavy stabby melee tank which presents an issue when you use a melee sword on tank legs you stab slightly to the side and this means you actually stab either past or over smaller enemies from software have always loved their accurate hit boxes and here it hinders a melee build because your blade does not connect with the enemy model okay you know what forget melee let's just buy some gatling arms nothing can stand up to sustained dps and oh damn okay yeah i won but at what cost i actually lost money firing so much ammunition i cannot afford to keep doing this you know i never thought i'd find myself limiting my own firing rate in a game with massive guns because i keep thinking oh this is gonna be quite expensive but here we are armoured core a giant mech fighting game which will make you question the cost of giant mech combat here's another issue i get dropped into a facility and this place is just swarming with tiny little worker robots and in tight corridors your missile systems aren't great because they tend to hit the corridor walls and the ceiling before hitting the enemy especially if they fire away from you at the start of their trajectory so i'm just churning through machine gun ammo i've even unequipped my laser sword to save weight and i run out of ammo i literally cannot finish the mission so hot tip never unequip your sword after finishing or failing a mission you do spend time reflecting on how you did buying and selling and rebuilding and most of the game is genuinely spent on these menus this mission sees us hunting down a single pesky enemy a rogue defense spot running rampage in a multi-story car park and we're asked to avoid damaging cars so now you're worried about collateral damage while i'm not a fan of the levels you can't freely fly around in i really admire how much variation they have put into the level design someone sat down and said right i'm going to play with every 3d element vertical space no vertical space open levels closed levels encourage destruction discourage destruction armored core really uses its limited designs to the fullest eventually you'll end up buying or selling parts after each mission to prepare for the next and while i can see the idea behind the shop and garage as separate things it doesn't flow as a process because of this reason i feel it would be better to have a total max value build limit on the garage screen that you simply can't go above and this limit increases or decreases as you finish or fail missions and then you have access to everything in the shop from the build screen because that would functionally be no different to buying and reselling everything every time but it would save a lot of screen switching when you do finally find your weapon combination and when you do finally get a level that allows you to show what you can do it just feels awesome side note i expected the quad legs to walk like a spider but you actually just glide along probably a playstation 1 animation limitation eventually in the later levels you'll even get small in-game mini boss cinematics nothing amazing just a little this fight is harder get ready preparation here's an issue smaller hordes of enemies can hit you more often and each hit even though not powerful does interrupt your attacks and my plan to melee everything falls apart when i keep being stun locked at the start of my attack animation melee however does have a nice subtle design touch again it's a pity mechanic while in the air if you're locked onto an enemy and perform a melee attack you will actually dash toward them regardless of your armored core's build or weight i'm guessing this was done because melee combat in the air is extremely fiddly and flying enemies tend to be faster so this aerial soft lock and dash system means blade attacks are still viable time for a rematch with valkyrie okay you're fast but i'm better now i have more armor more firepower let's see how you stand up to me now ac unit destroyed combat halted okay that was lucky but let's reload and see how you do now ac unit destroyed combat halted you know what i'm just going to come back to this mission later on i even checked the rankings valkyrie is number two i'm number ten there's no wonder i'm losing killing her is optional by the way from software optional bosses they were doing it back in 1997. next mission we are called upon to help test a new defense robot a drone called chaos nice simple square arena so i just boost strafe and riddle it with bullets and nothing too complicated we're told thanks we've gathered data from this test i then have a feeling that training an enemy drone to become more effective against me is probably gonna come back to haunt me no matter what mission route you take you have to fight valkyrie there is no way i can stand toe to toe with her so i'm just gonna hide in this little tunnel on the edge of the map until the mission timer expires and she goes away i don't have to kill her just survive her you even get a mail afterwards saying you were lucky to survive mate i know a snowy infiltration mission next six minutes to destroy the surface-to-air defenses and then find the base entrance and we are told stealth is optional i'm in a giant weaponized mech suit stealth is never ever going to be a choice i make i've even upgraded my firing control solution module and shoulder mounted missiles to increase the number of lock-ons and missiles per shot and it makes a massive difference i should have done this way earlier the next mission is very interesting the title of the mission is stop the gang known as dark soul from software have been using this name for years the original king's field games had references to the dark soul but never anything connecting it universe to universe so i tweeted out how armored korwan had a reference to dark soul and someone else made the joke oh does it also have the moonlight great sword because the moonlight sword has been in the king's field series dark souls 1 dark souls 2 dark souls 3 bloodborne and elden ring and while that was clearly a joke the answer is actually yes the moonlight sword is in armoured core it's one of the hidden weapons so let's take a look at them there are 11 secret parts you can find on specific levels nothing in the game even hints at them existing and you can miss them permanently if you finish the mission and don't get them and because of how some missions close you off on certain routes and you can't go back this means the best rifle and the best sword in the game can be permanently skipped take the bridge level at the very start instead of going forward turn around hop over the barricade and find the l-24 rocket launcher one of the most powerful shoulder mounted weapons in the game secret items add replayability and mystery and as we all know hidden items with no real fanfare will become a from software design staple the best rifle in the game is actually hidden in the fuel depot mission once you've destroyed the containers before leaving the area search the ledge at the very back and you'll find the karasawa an energy rifle with a super high fire rate almost no recoil and insane damage if you find this bad boy early on you are set for the rest of the game but what about the moonlight greatsword well several missions in you can be sent to kill the leader of the splinter cell struggle this gang is hiding in the sewers and the whole sewer level is a massive 3d maze long thin corridors huge open spaces and then up or down connecting pipes and eventually you'll find a corridor with a fireball trap repeatedly shooting down it and as you make your way down mines on the wall will blow the floor below you up and you'll fall into a deep chasm now your first reaction is going to be jump up and out and carry on the mission but if you purposefully fall all the way to the floor which takes a while because this chasm is super deep you can find the laser sword code name moonlight the main issue with doing this is jumping out takes a while you have to boost from platform to platform and this isn't the last time we'll see armored core trying to be a platformer it gets a lot worse later on the sword itself is crazy powerful deleting most enemies even powerful bosses in one or two hits the defeat the gang dark soul mission itself sees us outside taking on a tank division the ground is covered in mines making this the first area denial type mission but the mines aren't that powerful and as a player you can get a mine dropping weapon but it's basically useless just stick to the chain gun next up guard this warehouse a wave defense mission third wave approaching three mts this map is great big open areas buildings to hide behind enemies coming at you from all the angles fighting both land and air and then from defending to attacking and from robots to giant bugs it seems there's an infestation in one of the cities a huge nest of huge insects and we're sent in to clear it out and i love how this map plays with the corridor layout design we've gone from industrial straight lines and 90 degree corners to a more organic sloped tunnel with uneven floors and multiple dead ends leading to watery breeding pools missiles are basically useless down here the tight turns mean they crash into the wall before the enemy so i am churning through machine gun ammo and my sword isn't too useful down here because my quad legs mean i keep stabbing to the air this is another level that i need the map to navigate and finally we find the queen and strangely she starts shooting laser beams at me so after some seriously intense circle strafing and praying my quickly dwindling missile supply is enough i take her down and interestingly after the mission we get a mail confirming they weren't bogs they were attack robots designed as bugs built by one of the main companies we just don't know which company yet from underground to overground the mission briefing tells us a fleet of blimps keeps being ambushed so we are assigned to hide within the blimp and then provide air defense and this level introduces an exciting new mechanic falling to your death armored core is not really a platformer it doesn't have the subtlety or precision controls needed to provide a fun platforming experience so these levels where you need to precisely jump from one place to another such as from the hangar of a blimp to the support structure of a blimp are a real test of patience looking down doesn't make landing the jumps any easier because looking down is slow and the momentum in the air moves you forward further than you expect aiming a landing is hard and small corrections end up as big overshoots the idea of the mission a surprise attack while on board a blimp is awesome but the execution and the player experience fails to live up to the gameplay potential when you do get onto the upper body though it's pretty fun taking down a swarm of aerial attack drones before they damage the blimp too badly and burn it all down finishing the blimp mission gives us even more items in the shop i quite like the slow drip feed of items instead of having them all available from the start it means that every time something new is added you're going back in doing more calculations considering do you have the energy output the weight is it worth it the meta changes every few missions and the process of thinking oh what if and then testing is fun hey it's a rematch with the chaos defense drones maybe they've improved it somewhat it's got way more health and oh okay there's two of them and they're faster you know i knew helping would come back to hurt me i am creating my own worst enemy quick narrative point based on this mission creating your own worst enemy through helping a company create an unbeatable robot is a really cool slow burn plot you know that you're just doing your job but you can also see the growing power of the thing you're creating and you know it will soon surpass you and you won't be able to stop it and the more i think about this the more i realize this is literally just the plot of the incredibles wave defense while guarding an airplane the issue is here that small fast robots swarm the plane and i can't damage the plane so my usual tactic of fire all the missiles until everything stops moving won't work so i'm timing my machine gun bursts and positioning myself to not catch the plane in the crossfire and then from defense to offense we are dropped into a crater and told there's a downed military plane that must be destroyed simple objective fight through some guards but then [Music] enemy reinforcements identified as a ranking ac enemy ranking ac identified as conwey mark 17. target of operation cleared system switched to normal mode you don't encounter enemy armored cores that often which means when you do it's an event it's nerve-racking they're faster they're more powerful they are a genuine threat even if you are fully kitted out stay at range circle boost and unload and thankfully win before i'm out of ammo from the simplicity of a big crater to the overwhelming complexity of an underground base we need to break in and destroy a central computer and this is another level the game just shines it's an internal mission but the internals are big enough for you to boost around in and actually maneuver you'll need to use your map and navigate you'll need a melee weapon for the tight corners a machine gun for the long range shots and missiles to take down the slow-moving heavily armored enemies and when you finally reach the inner sanctum i end up stabbing the computer to death because everything else was used up fighting my way in and now for a cool concept that i think was under used this next mission sends us to a deep sea research facility the mission is simple remove everything in the base but the plot takes a nice little twist [Music] i've locked the doors to this room sorry but killing you is my mission i will take my leave now gate check cannot unlock gate there's another armored core with us and they seem to want to kill us so this isn't a mission it's a trap but look at this an underwater tunnel i know the limited graphical and processing power of the playstation 1 means you probably couldn't break this and have water flood in but think of the potential armored core very much feels like a game ambitious beyond its system limitations the designers pushed every aspect they could to breaking point the customization the level size the vertical limits of the sewers and the bases the open blimp levels the hemmed in underwater levels the amount of missiles flying around the depth of the detail of the landscape around you armored core feels like it's proving what it can do so it gets given a better system to do it on and indeed when the playstation 2 launched armored core 2 was a launch title eventually we get trapped in a room the doors locking behind us so we wait and the enemies burst in through the wall so we fight our way out and finish the mission but there's no pay for this one and then a mysterious male saying we'll see you again it seems the raven's nest isn't safe either the infighting between the mega corporations has infected the mercenary companies and now the most anxiety-inducing mission journeying into an abandoned base and destroying five controlling computers by planting bombs on them the only issue the base is flooded with a corrosive gas which will constantly eat through your armored core's armor meaning not only are we taking damage from the security bots we are on a timer and our map while extensive doesn't have the targets highlighted and this base is big meaning you can accidentally loop back round and go into the same room twice thankfully i've built for defense so i can tank the damage but this mission takes 12 minutes to finish and every second is sweaty palms heart pounding please god please let me find the next computer because then you have to escape the base and while running away and hoping the damage drain stops you start to realize that by now you've bonded with your mech you've likely found a combination of legs arms weapons and support abilities that work for you and now it's about playing to your strengths more than just buying different more powerful stuff this design is peak from software it's not about raw power it's about understanding your own limitations and your skill within those limitations from poison gas to giant lava tower you are dropped into a giant furnace tower told it's infested with haywire defense robots and you need to carefully drop down from pipe to pipe destroying as you go making sure not to drop all the way to the bottom or you'll get melted terminator 2 style we're in the top three ravens by now closing in on the final few missions remember the insects turns out they were indeed a disguised weapon however they were a bit too efficient and have broken out of their own construction facility so we are now hired to go in and mop them up the game even tells you ignore the small ones and find the four queens because you simply don't have enough ammo to kill everything this is a very big complex and honestly i think i preferred fighting the bugs in the organic tunnels because it made sense for them to be there and it was a nice change the factory and the robotic style is one thing and the organic and natural is another and what this mission has tried to do is combine them but it's not actually taken the strengths of both and enhanced them it's just put the bug enemies into a facility if you're going to combine design styles use the strengths of both have the bugs dig organic or acidic tunnels through a metal facility have the defense robots of the facility fight the bugs let us see what a clash of styles would look like not just a placement of one into the other next up retake the air cleaner oh god this one this is a big 3d maze this is the air purification tower for the whole city and a terrorist group have planted a poison gas canister somewhere we have 10 minutes to find it this level is effectively a main central square room with small tunnels branching off and the tunnels are covered with metal grates and you shoot them to destroy them and then you can go up down left or right you'll be dropping in exploring event returning shooting more grates boosting up returning exploring returning the main issue here is some of your weapons can't be fired in the air and your manual up and down view doesn't give you the range of movement to shoot straight up so sometimes you'll need to be shooting a great mid-flight and i hoped you equipped a gun that can do this the central room of this level is fine the small bracing vents just remind me how awkward the game feels in small cramped spaces and with the purifier saved we get a rather alarming male the mega corporation chrome has been defeated by the morocco millennium so chrome are staging an all-or-nothing last stand an all-out offensive last-ditch effort to survive and we are sent to stop it dropped into the desert military camp chrome's final stand means throwing five of the chaos mechs at us the ones we helped train and they are faster and deadlier than before they even hide behind cover but i think that was more luck than planning the ai in this game isn't great it mostly just walks or flies towards you and then shoots there doesn't seem to be much in the way of teamwork or enemies coordinating their movements kill all five mts then get dropped into the chrome base and told to just destroy everything standard search and destroy corridors small enemies boosting up slopes and then we leave the base and we're in for quite a nice surprise a giant mech is waiting for us outside and it's a boss it's fast it's got a ton of health and it's armed to the teeth now this should be a really cool fight and when i first saw it i was super excited giant mech versus even gianter mech but honestly the whole section is let down by the awkward map shape and the enemy's inability to traverse it the enemy giant mech just can't walk up the slope or it gets caught behind the metal framework of the outpost i feel this enemy would work really well in a flat city map not an organic outside map great idea terrible execution with the giant mech down a strange mission next was sent back into the same map chrome's base and we're told hey just do one final sweep to make sure it's all cleared out so we do that there's nothing here we even get told raven there seems to be nothing else here that's enough please return but upon trying to return ambush it's another trap someone within raven's nest wants us dead and they are throwing everything at us so we fight our way back to the surface but then you are still alive but we will end that now don't you understand you are totally out of line you are going overboard enemy ranking ac identified as sledgehammer [Music] sledgehammer a hard-hitting fast armored core i fight back the best i can but i took way too much damage fighting my way out of the base earlier and i die and when i die i actually died [Music] there are a few fights in the end game against other armored cause where if you die the game resets you don't fail the mission or lose money you just straight up need to reload your save because you cannot fail these missions so why retry enemy armored cores are weak to energy weapons so a quick load change out and he is down and now the final mission destroy the floating mines it seems that the raven's nest headquarters has been invaded and filled with deadly aerial mines and the defense spots have been set to kill so we go in to clean up the mess the strange thing is as soon as we get there everything attacks us now this is the only mission divided into two parts and between parts you are fully healed and fully restocked the first part is tough but simple fight your way through a densely packed room of enemy robots they've got laser weapons bazookas and a few of them fly but then there's this bit this god damn bit this room is extremely tall filled with floating moving squares which look like borg cubes you need to ascend the room climb to the top but you've not got enough fuel to just boost all the way there so you have to jump from cube to cube waiting boosting refueling and then jumping again but it's not that easy because the room is not only filled with flying enemies who will shoot you out of the air or off the cubes and knock you off course some of the cubes themselves have gun turrets either on top or underneath and they will shoot you off other cubes so you need to slowly fight your way up killing as you go and when you fall which you will do unless you can very carefully land on a cube you will likely fall all the way to the floor again this room is a test of patience it is the absolute monument to why armoured core should not try to be a precision platforming game until it sorts out the camera and the in-air controls just ascending this room took me like 15 minutes longer than any other level entirely and when you do finally reach the top remember i said the cubes look a bit like the borg resistance enemy ranking ac identified as nine ball armored corps and star trek take place in the same universe it's canon and you cannot change my mind that voice by the way was nine ball the number one ranking armored corps we reach the blue light bridge at the top of the room and drop into a massive vertical room a circular tunnel with rings around the edge and wiring flowing down some type of central mega computer and in the room the number one ranked armored core himself nine ball and he absolutely wrecks me i try again and again and again and i just cannot beat nine ball he's too fast he's too strong with too much armor i do not have the agility to outplay him in this room but you know what i don't need agility i need firepower and a trap so i load up on bazookas and chain guns i max my armor out and i bait nine ball and hide in a corridor and when they finally show up i just pepper them with explosive shells yes i'm taking a beating but they can't move and all of my attacks have aoe damage and finally they go down so i push on through the level i begin to ascend through another massive circular room and then i die to another nine ball what the hell game so the final mission is not only split into two parts the opening fight and the super dumb vertical platforming bit but it then makes you fight two identical nine ball armored cores in terrain designed to give them the advantage the difficulty spike in the final mission is intense but finally i trap them both pelt them both with enough bazooka shots to kill a building and then i find the central ravens nest computer and destroy it and finally learn the truth in the human plus cut scene we see these strange lights they are in the central computer room at raven's nest so raven's nest is the human plus center it is also the central supercomputer that controls everything chrome the murakumo millennium and all the other armored cores everything is controlled by this computer it was keeping the world in a state of constant battle because ironically this is the best state for humanity to survive in where humanity never gets too powerful the only problem you did too well you fought too hard and you upset the balance of power you became too much of a success which is why it's been trying to kill you and we're left with the philosophical questions of who's the real evil the computer or you for messing up the balance and then we get some unskippable credits but we're not totally done finishing the game unlocks the mission choice menu you can go back and do all the stuff you've missed or find all of the hidden items so i have one final vendetta i grab the kawasawa laser rifle and the moonlight sword i fully tank up and i go to pay a visit to our old friend valkyrie the number two ac who killed me oh so many times yeah not as tough now are you eat overpowered laser rifle god that felt good even in 1997 from software understood that letting a player return to an optional boss once they were massively overpowered is a beautiful cathartic thing to do once you've mastered the single player mode how about bringing over your mates and building two different mechs and battling it out in two player mode while not as fully fleshed out as the campaign the two-player mode does let you pit mech against mech with no cost limit and if you saved your own mech design including your own unique color scheme and custom icon you can load it into a game via memory card the two player mode was fun but it does become a bit dull when you realize the massively overpowered tactic of just boosting towards your friend and melee rushing them if you complete the game and then go back and find every hidden item for 100 completion you'll unlock the two final human plus potential rewards no weight limit and no power limit truly letting you build the armored core of your dreams so now we've defeated both nine ball armored cores and destroyed the central computer we can finally ask armoured call was it any good the idea of a giant mech fighting game is awesome and armored corps captured the spirit the shop allowing you to buy parts the garage letting you build and then the missions focusing on the fun parts of the mech battle fantasy short but intense conflict the sheer variety of customization is outstanding the different combat styles encouraged by the weapons and missile flight trajectories keep the battles fresh and the use of variation within level design from open rooms to tight corridors under the sea to above the clouds means one mech isn't suited you'll need variety you're encouraged to adapt it's not perfect however the amount of screens needed to buy equip check test and then sell means the whole process takes longer than it needs without adding any gameplay and the control scheme isn't set up for precision jumping and the camera doesn't work with tight corridor gameplay so these sections can feel chunky and dying due to a mistime jump feels unfair the plot is thin and mainly serves as a justification for a big war you could lose the plot and still have the same experience but overall armored core 1 was a great foundation full of traditional from software touches it's short but intensely satisfying so to end the review i will award armored core the test is over from this moment on you are a raven out of 10. thank you for watching another massive thank you to all the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel alive you can support from only one pound a month check the video description for links to the patreon twitch twitter and our discord and as always remember target of operation cleared system switched to normal mode

Channel: Josh Strife Plays

Views: 1,239,333

Keywords: classic gaming, retro games, older games, retro review, gaming reviews, nostalgic gaming, nostalgia games, playstation 1, playstation 2, n64, dreamcast, classic rpg

Id: ZoisdI5MNMM

Length: 61min 45sec (3705 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2022