This game is glorified DLC. It's a shitton of missions - almost 100 of them - with virtually no context provided to them due to the fact that you no longer receive mail in this game, which removes any semblance of a sense of progression. The missions themselves are also mostly snoozefests, as you get one interesting or challenging mission per five awful and dreary ones. There isn't enough cool missions to justify playing this game, even for Armored Core fans. Even 2-on-1 or 3-on-1 AC fights, Nine-Ball and Stinger can't make this game good. You're better off just skipping straight to Armored Core 3.

Two things can be true: this game is better than Armored Core 2, and this game is more skippable than Armored Core 2 (which is fairly skippable.)

Actually, I'm not entirely sure if it's better or if I had a better experience with it because I played this one on easy mode. I had put it off for a while in my AC marathon because I wasn't sure I was going to bother at all, since I knew it was basically just a zero-story expansion for AC2, a game I didn't like very much. When I did decide to scratch it off the list I went ahead and unlocked Human Plus in 2 before transferring a save, meaning for Another Age I had essentially double energy and the ability to use powerful cannons while moving.

This definitely at least contributed to my having an easier, breezier time overall than I did in 2. And I'm glad I did blow through it fast, because by mission count, Another Age is ridiculously long for an Armored Core game. It clocks in at technically a hundred, although eight of those are VS Missions, which is to say, essentially just multiplayer modes. Still, I'm pretty sure 92 is more than any other game in the series--and this is all without the game having what you'd call any actual plot. Missions still have briefings so you could charitably call a lot of them little vignettes, but... yeah, no, it's a game with no story.

If it sounds like a glorified pre-DLC DLC pack having the largest number of missions in the series would mean the missions are extremely simple and boring... eh. They tend to be on the short and sweet(ish) side, but they're not the series at its most half-assed. If it sounds like they'd be repetitive and padded: holy shit, you have no idea. The only narrative elements the game has are that some missions are related to others, which is to say they get completely rehashed several times. Often the game will just send you back to the same area to do almost the same thing for the same reason back to back, with the unintentionally (I assume?) hilarious extra touch of the briefing trying to recap the last one as if you had played it hours ago.

To be fair, progression is somewhat nonlinear, with different Areas offering missions that you can theoretically bounce around between, and never be in the same area twice in a row. To be more fair, there's no incentive at all to do that, especially considering you unlock new parts when you finish all the missions in a single area.

Still, I feel like the median quality of these missions is, like, decent. Nothing memorable, except for the three sort of "postgame" missions that unlock after the credits roll (these are all just remade boss battles against bosses from the PS1 games, but they're easily, easily the best argument for spending any time on Another Age), but the rapidfire nature of them can feel kind of punchy and very digestible. Despite the frankly embarrassing level of padding and busy work, it felt less tedious to me than AC2... but again, I was not a Cyber Newtype in AC2.

(Did you know that Human Plus and Cyber Newtype are both bonkers localizations of "kyouka ningen," which literally just means Enhanced Human? Augmented Human from AC6 is also a more direct localization of the same. It's a fairly obvious callback to Human Plus in any case but it was explicitly clear in Japanese. Come to think of it, Witch From Mercury also just brought it back but didn't give it a silly name in English. Weird, right? Anyway, this has had almost nothing to do with Armored Core 2: Another Age. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.)

Mechanically, of course, unless you count the fairly small number of new parts added Another Age is completely identical to AC2. It's probably the most any AC game has just been The Last One, But More, which is, honestly, saying something. It's just a little wild how much More. And a shame the game they brought this much More for was AC2. I would not call Another Age worth your time, despite the cool postgame bosses, but it does present a good argument for how to approach its predecessor: just wrack up some debt and get your ass Robocopped. Gen 2 is more fun that way.

this could've been the best out of the first two gens if it only just had like 80 of its 100 missions cut out. instead it's the weakest entry so far. the nonexistent narrative and total lack of context for much of anything doesn't help matters

there's way too much "go back to the brown cave and kill disorder units" and "blow up every box in this boring maze". not nearly enough "shoot enemies from atop a moving airplane" or "destroy a fleet of battleships"

this would probably be a 4/10 if not for the massive mt and the multi-ac fights. those went hard

I really didn't think there'd be another game was more "Armored Core DLC" than Project Phantasma, but here we are. Another Age is another helping of AC action in a package devoid of narrative beats and optional arena missions, instead stuffed to the brim with missions taking place across a wide array of areas and honestly? It works, mostly.

The biggest sacrifice that this game makes is in its story, which is largely non-existent. There's still political intrigue in mission flavour texts, but I never felt like I had a clear picture of the landscape portrayed by this entry. It's a follow up (and finale!) to every game that came before it, yet this premise isn't at all capitalised on. Thankfully, it's not distractingly scarce as the mission design is often at its best here.

You select the missions you want to do from a world map for the first time. It lends a good sense of place to everything and makes revisiting similar locales (which you do a lot) a little less disappointing. There are a lot of missions this time around, and besides the 3 post game missions, none of them are optional! This is another aspect that would have made it hard to implement a traditional narrative, as more than ever you'll be choosing between a wide array of missions to do at every junction, and there's no chance to miss any like you would in prior games.

The missions themselves are usually quite fun due to the diversity on offer. There's a ton of simple "destroy all enemies" objectives, but there are almost as many slightly more distinct ones. More giant enemies, more defences, more disarmings. There's a stealth mission, a mission where you just have to destroy an unarmed train. It's great fun... but, inevitably, it stretches itself thin. The worst example of this is the endgame, where you take on increasingly more difficult enemy ACs. It's similar to the arena from previous games, except losing means you have to boot back into the mission from the world map, sit through the loading screens and opening dialogue, then fight the enemy. It's incredibly draining, and they load all of these fights into the endgame. With the arena, it was so simple to back out try again with different builds without decimating the pace, but they learnt nothing from their successes.

Armored Core 2: Another Age is an advance in terms of variety, especially coming off the poor attempts of its direct predecessor, but it suffers from a enormous amount of bloat that places it among the lower rungs of its series. At the end of the day, though, who doesn't enjoy blasting other giant robots with their giant robot?

an interesting experiment, although not an entirely successful one. it's more armored core 2 - the missions are pretty much a step up from the original in every way, but some of the parts i really enjoyed about that game, like the story and arena components, just aren't here in any form, which is a big bummer. the game makes up for that by giving you like 100 missions which is pretty crazy, but without the connective tissue of a story it just kinda blends together after a point. the sawa is so insanely good in this tho lol

I was so confused when the game just cut to black after an AC fight, asked me to save, and the credits rolled

I actually like this game though, didn't even care about the lack of story, I liked how you can select a ton of missions at once. It's pretty good

It's pretty satisfying maneuvering around some of the AI and learning how to beat the double AC fights and that one triple one.

Also the Stinger/Phantasma and Nine-Ball Seraph superbosses are just awesome callbacks

If you hate this game you got filtered

Wild ride. A long ass fucking game, in terms of Armored Core games go.

Almost 100 missions in this motherfucker, at first it was daunting but by the end it was so satisfying fighting what they threw at me.

Great way to end the 2nd generation of Armored Core games.

You know it's good when every guide recommends beating a different game before this one, importing overpowered parts from it for even the earliest missions, and also get the bonuses from going bankrupt that make the game easier, which aren't normally available in this game without the save import. Great!

I somehow did it. After months of beating my head against the wall, trying to find a way to beat this game on my own terms, I simply caved in and took a mech from a guide. It worked. Woohoo. Just like with Armored Core 2, I do not like missions that are near impossible for any but one specific build. Here, they ramped it up by making it ACTUALLY impossible. Some missions cannot be beat if your boosters aren't strong enough and your mech doesn't have high enough output. Some enemies, like the final boss of AC2, are also infuriating unless you go at them with missiles and only missiles. But you don't know that until you go in.

I guess there's less punishment to be found here at least, you lose, you simply go back in whenever you want. You don't lose any money unless you spend more during the mission than you're paid. There's also zero stakes related to the story. In all the other Armored Core games, you get to choose your contracts, your missions, meaning you can skip any that you don't vibe with. Not here, you need to do them ALL here. All 90, just to reach the credits.

So many of them are so boring. There's no fun in having to stand and shoot at incoming enemies for a bit, or boosting through canyons and shooting stationary targets. It's just testing whether you have enough ammo or good enough boosters. I can do that in the testing arena, not in a mission.

This is particularly egregious early on, there's so many missions of this type. After caving in and eventually building a "well-rounded" mech, rather than the one I've been using for the entirety of AC2 and chose to import here, I did start to enjoy it more, but that's only because I got past the worst missions. The later missions are more varied and pretty, there's enemies hidden in snowstorms, there's jumping between planes and destroying them, there's seeing the progressive demise of a water base we previously defended, but which broke the mega-corporation commity rules and we now have to eliminate.

Like I mentioned previously, there's no story to speak of, this is the purest mercenary experience Armored Core ever got. You just pick missions from whoever, no matter how evil their requests are. You could try to avoid this in other Armored Core titles, it was a key part of this series' interaction with the player and what made these games work the best. Not here, you're a mindless merc, you can't progress until you literally just commit acts of terrorism by blowing up a train.

I think this is an absolute failure, there's gotta be a cool story that could be attached to these random vignettes that could only enrich them. You fight these cool, random ACs, and they're good fights mind you, but they're so much less memorable than something like the Human Plus escapee from Armored Core 1, Nineball, even the final boss of the last game is awesome. I appreciate the megarobot fight, that shit was cool as fuck, but how is something this awesome wasted on it being as important as a random encounter in a jrpg.

What a piss ending too. Nooo, skilled pilots are interfering with the government again, how could it beee. This time, it is some total rando who you hear about only one time. That's the final boss. Whatever. Beat them. No ending cutscene. Awesome, great. There's some superbosses after all is done, they're AC bosses from previous games. Kinda cool I suppose, but they're more fun in their respective games for me anyway. Extra parts that you can only use in the test chamber now I suppose. I never want to go through all this again.

The game offers extensive customization options for mechs, allowing users to modify parts such as weapons, legs, thrusters, and the head. However, assembling a competitive mech requires significant financial resources. The game is challenging, with difficult missions that require thoughtful strategy in modifications. The logo and color editor, although not innovative, is present. Mech control still has issues, especially in the difficulty of rotating the machine. The graphics show little improvement compared to the previous title, appearing dated. The introductory video lacks engagement, and the music is uninspiring. Despite this, the automatic aiming option proves useful in hectic situations. In conclusion, the game provides customization possibilities and longevity through i.Link support, but the disappointing graphics and presentation may not meet players' expectations.

On the surface, there's something rather off-putting to me about 'Armored Core 2: Another Age' as a cultural artefact. The 'bigger is better' philosophy is garish in all periods of course, but the quaking ground the industry now stands on because of it makes it all the more foul to the taste. I confess this is the central reason I avoided 'Another Age' at first, my resentment of overly long games which pitch themselves as such almost purely for the sake of itself as a novelty deterred me and invoked my shameful reactionary purely because of the timely context I myself as a player and critic exist in. What I would not have anticipated is one of the more fascinating and, now in my view, important entries in FromSoftware's catalogue.

It's easy to perceive 'Another Age' as merely more 'Armored Core 2', so say we humour this perspective for a little while. On this platform, one will discover 'Another Age' a simultaneously invigoratingly inventive and suffocatingly boring experiment of a project, with equal ability to dazzle and push the technology and conceptualisation abilities of its predecessor as well as risk surprise top surgery with its insipid monotony threatening to really bore one's tits off. It's a bizarre experience to watch this game violently vacillate between the series' very best moments and very worst in its bountiful mission variety. On this easy perspective, one might also be aware of the mechanical succession to 'Armored Core 2', a game I held qualms with on the basis of difficulty and mechanical onboarding. 'Another Age' amends my previous notes here by being both significantly harder and, hilariously enough, longer. Unlike '2' I felt actively prodded by the structure of 'Another Age' to create a variety of ACs and engage with all aspects of the construction process in a way I found far more engaging and well rounded, it helped to notice the good manner to which the game introduces it's layers as this is the only expansion game other than 'Project Phantasma' where I did not load a save.

So concludes this little written experiment of 'Armored Core 2: Another Age' as simply more 'Armored Core 2', a far more inconsistent experience that is bolder in mission design as well as being, in completeness, more systemically and mechanically rich and satisfying, held down primarily by the fact that it is fucking hopelessly absent on a cohesive or conventionally compelling narrative context. 3/5, not enough fish, will hang myself in my cute dress later.

But this is reductive, so it's time for me to commit to my tradition in reviews and embarrass myself properly.

'Armored Core 2: Another Age' from an actual cohesive perspective is, without contest, the most experiential of FromSoftware's mecha titles. This doesn't mean it's the best, not even close, but it does mean it's dramatically more important than its exterior would suggest, and I can now fully understand where folks are coming from in their love of the title. There is, in critical space, some well earned admiration for the world building in previous titles achieved through cold dialogue and a practically inhuman structure. 'Armored Core 2: Another Age', because of it's excellent mechanics and demand for player engagement with its most important systems in AC building, because of it's borderline abrasive mission variety and broad curation of it's 100 mission catalog, because of it's completely barren, detached and decisively not cohesive narrative, this is the purest distillation of the 'Armored Core' experience that has presently been conceived. The emptiness, the boredom that was felt in this game's lows stopped being flaws for me to harp on in my annoying review and instead became an integral part of the experience that, in retrospect, I wouldn't have any other way. Never before have I felt so drearily detached from myself, from my behaviour in one of these games. The progression of the world building is limited only to the changing landscapes of metallic murder you travel to as the map expands, painting the world itself in physicality as nothing more than stages for violence, total background noise. This technique of environmental storytelling is, of course, very important to what would evolve stylistically in the city of Layered in 'Armored Core 3', but thematically, this absent separation of Raven from Place is deeply important to what is explored in that third generation. A legion of metal and smoke charging forward across the Earth in systemic automation, ignorant and disconnected from the environment itself they impose upon, doomed to face its retort beyond the rebooted setting's Silent Line. This all starts in 'Another Age', truly marking it as a deeply important play in my eyes. There's no 'plot', there's nothing real in 'characters', this is truly immersive experiential storytelling, there is nothing but a dissociative conflict of corporate interests which you numb yourself into accepting, a furious blend of steel and fire signifying only the greatest, grossest industrial heights of our systemic failure. This is a very unique kind of compelling, one that the series feels born for given the notes of it sprinkled in all entries, but 'Another Age' is the only title to truly slice it down to the bare nub of it's meaning, and for that, I passionately applaud it. Given how much FromSoftware's later work is championed for this kind of storytelling, I'm surprised to hear the sentiment of 'Another Age' having no story to be one so common, because with a small change in perspective one may realise that this bloated experiment is hollowingly rich with it.

I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with Another Age's proposal. We already got AC1 as a game without an arena mode, and the AC Battles we do have are overall great and not the jokes they were on AC1, so it's not particularly egregious when it comes to Armored Core games. What the game really suffers from because is lack of an identity. We already got games like the aforementioned AC1 and also Nexus where the player is supposed to roleplay hard as a mercenary. The thing is that this roleplay actually amounts to something. In AC1 every single failure meant a catastrophic loss of credits in a game without an Arena, and in Nexus, the whole point is how mindless the repetition of corporate warfare numbed Ravens to do almost world ending actions just because "that's what we have been doing all this time, why change now".

2AA has none of this, none of the plot threads are ever resolved and the most you'll get are a series of 2 or 3 missions connected to each other, but there's never a moment of actual resolution for any of what you are doing. Failing a mission has no repercussion and so you just throw yourself at it over and over until you succeed. There can't be no mercenary roleplay if the economic side if things or what actions am I being paid for doing matter so little. The world building is crucial to the pacing of these games and 2AA exemplifies what happens when you take it away.

On the other hand, the missions themselves are pretty fun overall. There are a lot of interesting gameplay objectives and new type of boss design with the Massive MT bosses which we would see over and over down the line. The weapon balance has been better calibrated, there's ton of new options to explore, and if you like Armored Core you ought yourself to play 2AA pvp with one of your buddies, it's great. There's also great Co-Op missions so this game is perfect for some couch-sharing moments.

Overall, the game is purely supported by gameplay alone, and it's been show that AC is much more than the sum of its parts. You let a single element take 100% of the focus and the flaws begin to show very quickly. Sandwich everything together with interesting world building and moral dilemmas? You get a great Armored Core game. I am happy they made this game overall because they were able to learn a lot from their mistakes, and what they managed to get it right, which is shown in the 3rd generation of games.

Anyone who follows me on this website probably knows I like Armored Core. Depending on how good later games are, I could see myself calling it one of my favorite game series. I love the customization, the interesting approaches to difficulty, even many of the games’ stories in how they present their themes. However, even I think this game feels tired.

The main thing that I heard about Another Age before going in was that the story was sparse and there’s no arena. Instead, there’s around 100 missions that can be tackled in a non-linear order. This kind of concerned me, because the arena was my favorite part in Armored Core 2, and while I wasn’t huge on that game’s story, I was hoping to see some improvements instead of a removal. Plus, the arena is important for balancing. If you don’t have the arena, there’s nothing to really stop players from deep debt, even if Human+ sticks a band-aid on the wound.

Well, that’s the first thing: Losing missions no longer loses you money. Ammo and repair is still costly and the payouts are usually lower to compensate for the lower risk, but I’m still not a fan of the new focus and the consequential changes. Project Phantasma and Master of Arena were certainly expansions on the first game, but they had original stories and added new things. Another Age, by comparison, removes stuff. Little story, no arena, and not too many new parts. I did get a lot of use out of the quick turn extension and a laser rifle, but the rest are nothing special. There’s nothing wrong with changing and even removing stuff. However, most of what they did was simply remove the most unique elements in the series.

It should be clear that the game lives or dies on the missions. And so, the game dies. These missions went for quantity over quality. There are some cool ones. For example, there’s one where you shoot escape pods so they destroy the MTs inside before they land. There’s another where you jump from plane to plane fighting enemies. However, for each good mission, there’s at least two boring ones and a bad one. For an example of a bad one, there’s one mission where you have to go from floor to floor on elevators defeating enemies. All this really entails is killing enemies in a room, sitting in elevator for 20 seconds, reaching the next floor and repeating. What really sticks out about this mission to me is that they took an already boring mission (Kill all enemies/destroy a bunch of stuff, which already makes up like half of the missions here), and just stuck in elevator rides where you do nothing. It’s also worth noting that the missions in this game miss two major things:

1. A sense of continuity
2. A sense of dynamism

Let’s start with the first of these two. Despite having pretty much no story, this game does have a few mini stories within mission groups, but they don’t really leave much impact. Other than that, there’s really no overarching story. This is obviously because the game is non-linear in terms of what missions you do, but it ultimately means there’s no sense of escalation. Was it really worth sacrificing pacing for non-linearity? Even with the non-linear structure, there could’ve been a better attempt at worldbuilding or something. I mean, even the first game in this series, despite not having an arena, had a Raven ranking. It served no gameplay function, but it enhanced the world and encouraged the player. Players see themselves going up on this ranking and want to hit #1 by completing more missions. The only thing encouraging you here is your own intrinsic motivation (Which for me wasn’t particularly high), and the mission completion %. That’s it. What we have here is pretty much nothing. Nothing feels important or intriguing. Very few characters even have names.

What about the second element though? It’s always exciting in any game when you go in expecting something simple and end up on a greater quest. The most basic and common application of this in this series is ending a few missions with an unexpected AC boss. It happens a lot because it keeps the player on edge and makes missions a little more interesting. The biggest issue in Another Age is how often there’s no dynamism with missions. They’re too straightforward. Very rarely does your mission objective stray from the briefing. I honestly think that a better approach would’ve been fewer, longer missions that have a lot of variety and are dynamic. The developers would’ve had to make some changes to how the game handles resource management probably, but I think it could’ve been done, and it would’ve been much better in my opinion. At the very least, they should’ve prioritized quality over quantity, as I can’t take playing 100 of these generally middling missions.

That brings us to the final nail in the coffin: This game makes you complete every mission to beat the game. As if this game wasn’t repetitive enough. You can’t choose missions that you don’t like, only the order in which you play them. This did honestly mean all of the final missions were really tense, as they were the ones I skipped over before, but it doesn’t make the ending any less disappointing. Upon beating the final mission (Which has no real plot significance, of course), the game immediately goes to credits. No cutscene or anything.

Also, the game still doesn’t use analog sticks for movement and camera. Come on, you couldn’t just add that in? Ok, I guess this is an expansion game. They better add it in Armored core 3 though.

To be honest, while I have been critical of this series, it’s just very easy for me to keep playing them in a way that I don’t with other games. I finish them very fast. It was a little harder for this one though, taking me much more time to complete. Maybe that’s partially because it’s simply longer and I’ve returned to school, but I still beat Armored Core 2 very quickly. Overall, I’d say it’s the worst in the series I played so far. Well, aside from Armored Core V maybe, but that’s a story for another time…

In my Master of Arena review, I said that Armored Core was very similar to Pokemon. It’s clear that my comparison was far more apt than I initially thought. Both series have a very good basis with a lot of customization, but it seems that just like Pokemon, this series is pumping out releases in a way that isn’t good for these games. One-year development cycles weren’t uncommon in the 90s. The thing is, as technology has grown, so has the timeframe needed to take advantage of that tech. I’m afraid that as this series goes on, FromSoft won’t compensate for this. Hopefully I’m wrong. 4/10, very close to a 5.

A rollercoaster of emotions for this title, this is by far the most extensive and testament to the player’s adaptability. The back of the case tells you all you need to know. Fuck the politics and narrative, just do Raven stuff. Exactly that is done!

Right off the bat, you’re given an AC and 100k, this is excellent as there’s way more leeway on what to do build wise, like using moderate cost shell weapons if you’d like.

At the beginning, there’s very few missions you can do and very simple ones at that. The further it goes, more areas open up, newer parts, old areas finished earlier now have quests to do and so on. Some areas fully focused on being water battles, outside battles, or exploring deep ruins. I love this as there’s a real encouragement to change your AC for the missions and areas. Some missions you outright can’t beat due to your boosters being too weak is like tank legs can’t be used. Near the end of the game, I had so many leg parts just in the garage and not even sold in case I had to switch. The menu mania stays, but the gameplay here is PACKED.

There’s great amount of fan service in this title as well, most popular being the post game content and experience a true struggle on the final mission. I would go as far to say it’s the hardest boss battle I’ve ever experienced in gaming yet, so many times I had to go back to drawing board and think about what I can optimize. I find the entire process fun, even if frustrating, if I’m getting my cheeks beat. I tried out melee, light, heavy, quad, full rocket builds, you name it, I probably tried it out nearly every build imaginable and it’s all thanks to this game.

If you love the fundamentals of Armored Core and want that normal Raven experience, this game is for you for sure.

The lack of an overarching plot is often cited as a criticism but that's actually one of the things I like the most about this game. Every other entry in this series has a shadowy AI conspiracy or ancient weapons or corporate psyop fake terrorist groups but this one takes place during a time of relative peace. You're just a merc doing business as usual.
There's a shitload of missions with a decent amount of variety and the postgame Nine Ball Seraph superboss is one of the highlights of the series.