I wish I liked Armored Core 2 more because it does make a lot of much-needed improvements from the 1st gen games. The story is more involved, the levels have more variety, the difficulty of most of the game is increased without the final level feeling impossible again, etc. But look beneath the surface and most of these changes begin to feel superficial, and there remain many areas in which AC2 fails to improve or actually falls below AC1/MoA.

For a PS2 launch title, it looks great, and the opening cinematic is particularly incredible. I rewatched the whole thing every time I launched the game just to see the bit where the locks explode off the capsule and the mechs come out, it's so cool. Maybe not quite as good as the Omega Boost opening video, but it's still cool. Still, I can't help but feel the smooth, refined aesthetic here is weaker than the blocky grit of the PS1 games. I don't mind the visual departure from those games entirely, it suits this game's new setting and story taking place ages after the first, but considering most of the parts and mecha designs are still completely in line with the 1st gen stuff, it kind of falls flat. Of course, the style of those games was so effective because of the technology they existed on, and there isn't any point in trying to recapture the PS1 aesthetic in a PS2 launch title, but I do wish they committed further to a sleek, futuristic look instead.

As for the gameplay, I finished playing this like half a year after I played the first-gen games so I can't really comment on any minute differences in the control scheme or whatever. On a broader scale, there were two things that stuck out to me. One, there are a few missions here that have no inherent reward for their completion, most if not all of them being mandatory. This means any damage taken or ammo spent will be drained directly from your money rather than cut out of your reward, meaning at a few points in the game you have to lose a good amount of money to continue. This is a smart decision, it makes the mission reward system more interesting and forces you to consider what missions you are taking and when. Ideally, it means you will spend more time taking on non-mandatory missions to build up money rather than speeding through the story, but in reality, you don't have any way of knowing what missions are mandatory, when missions will leave the board, or when new ones will arrive, so unless you are using a guide this doesn't really work. Beyond that, there were a few missions here where I took so much damage and used so much ammo that the amount I had to pay was more than my reward anyway, something that never happened in the first three games. I think either of these options (ramp up the difficulty so you can lose money even when completing missions, or adding non-rewarding mandatory missions) would work to develop the money system in general, but they happen so rarely that together they both feel half-baked.

Two, coming off Master of Arena, the arena in this game feels almost non-existent. I think I played it a little bit when I was playing this last year, but the game never even once prompts you to explore it. I don't think it needs to work exactly the same as it did in MoA, where you had to progress through it to unlock more missions, but some method of blending the missions and the arena on a deeper level feels necessary after that game. Maybe they improve on this in later gens, we'll see.

Mostly, Armored Core 2 feels safe. It doesn't change much in most areas and doesn't change at all in others. Its few new ideas feel half-baked (like the hover legs), and the downgrades from MoA are very apparent. It isn't what I want out of the series at all, but as a basis for expansion, it isn't much better or worse than the first Armored Core. That game ultimately led to Master of Arena, which I really enjoyed, so I'm hoping Another Age is a similar improvement to AC2.