Fixes any issue I had with Nexus and doubles down on everything I love about 3rd gen AC. Deep build crafting and with multiple different routes to beat the game, there's a wealth of content here. Def make sure to play through multiple times as more of the story and its characters are revealed to you with each route. Lives up to its reputation as being particularly difficult, but there are still plenty of broken weapons and parts if you want to blow through most of the hardest fights in the game. Dig the atmosphere in this one a lot as well, the list of remaining Ravens getting smaller as the story progresses is a nice touch. For now, it's my current favourite Armored Core game.
Earlier (as of writing this review), I stepped out to get lunch. The weather was good, I was hungry, and I thought there was no better time. While out on my walk and on my way, I just stopped, paused for a few seconds, and all I thought to myself was “fuck, Last Raven is a good ass game”.
What stood out to me about Last Raven was a thought of “wow, this is it”. When I played Armored Core 1, the game left a deep impression on me. Not because it was some sort of paragon of polish and game design that had me shitting myself at how good it was, but because of the potential it offered with its incredibly rock-steady design ethos. Phantasma, Arena, gen 2, and early gen 3 all had good games to be sure, but their improvements were rather incremental in my opinion, improving on Armored Core 1 in different ways, be it the economy, combat, mission system, arena etc, but never in the way I had envisioned a perfect Armored Core game to be. What makes Last Raven so great is that it is THAT game, the platonic ideal of an Armored Core game that gazed up into the heavens and perfected the Armored Core formula.
Everything characteristic of Armored Core is damn near perfect here. The controls are tight and responsive, the sheer variety of customizations makes my head spin, the level design (while repetitive) is fantastic and never overstay their welcome, AC on AC combat is exhilarating, the mission pathing system has its weaknesses but is also BY FAR the most varied and dynamic in the series with how much variety and surprises it holds, and the story is perhaps the best in Armored Core’s oldgen, perhaps in all of Armored Core.
The game also has varying difficulty depending on who you ask. Many consider it the hardest Fromsoftware game ever, and depending on your approach, that sentiment may ring true, though a number of factors like Nexus data or taking one of the easier routes may lead to a much easier experience. I never really got the sense that it was the hardest until I had done the indie routes, which more than justified this game’s brutal reputation in my eyes. Still, they never took away from my enjoyment. If anything, I’m generally shocked at how, easy, I guess? Some parts of this game could be with the right build. Karura Missiles were great against Pulverizers and in a variety of situations, Bazookas and Rifles were my go arm weapons that changed depending on the situation, a Blade was always handy if I needed to conserve ammo and kill a tanky enemy, the laser cannons were there in case I didn’t want to redo a tedious mission, and that only really scratches the surface. Last Raven’s customization is broad and encompassing, as is characteristic of the series, but more so than any other entry, it gave me reasons to actually utilize this catalog of parts to my full advantage.
As for Last Raven’s challenge and its reputation as being the hardest Fromsoftware game: I think that, everything considered, Last Raven should be an unfair game. The enemy ACs are equipped with H+, out DPS-ing you and flying away with their high energy reserves, not to mention the several occasions where they come either subsequently or just straight up ganking your ass. I think the reason Last Raven can get away with tomfoolery of this level and something like say, Dark Souls, can’t, is the inherent design philosophy that characterizes the ethos of the Armored Core franchise. Since LR is the perfect Armored Core game, it means all the aspects of challenge we’d typically associate with Armored Core are tuned to the nth degree. Skill is demanded of you, yes, but as are AC building knowledge, resourcefulness, endurance, and situational awareness. I can’t really think of any challenge that I overcame with pure “git gud” grit alone. Each and every difficult mission demanded at least one of these major tenets of ACs design from me, and that’s what made overcoming them an insurmountable joy.
I think where Last Raven most fulfills the unwashed concepts of its predecessors is its mission pathing and the inclusion of multiple endings. This was something that VI left a lot to be desired when I had first played it, and while it was good to know that previous AC games had more complex and dynamic mission structures compared to 6th gen’s more streamlined approach, they never really went beyond with those systems on a narrative, or even mechanical level. For Answer was a net improvement, offering three distinct endings and a dynamic mission structure that requires a total of five playthroughs to get them all, but seeing what Last Raven had done with its structure, 4A almost seems meek in comparison.
Last Raven not only has six endings, which is only rivaled by Elden Ring in my Fromsoftware experience, but the game took me a whopping 5 or so semi-playthroughs to get everything, and that isn’t even accounting for how easy it is to screw up certain objectives and causing whole ass playthrough resets (which happened to me like twice). Luckily, playthroughs are about 12 missions on average and if you’re really efficient, take about an hour or two of your time to blast through a single one. Still, the variety in mission pathing and endings stand out to me as the most impressive change Last Raven makes to the AC formula, not to mention how surprisingly digestible it is, compared to say, AC3’s mission unlocks which can feel kinda random and unimpactful regardless if which corporations you choose to work for. I wish it was a little less tedious and I wish certain missions didn’t have to be constantly repeated just to unlock ONE mission over the course of one playthrough, though the game is short and the mission replays do test your merit to some degree, so I can’t be too critical of this part of the game.
Last Raven’s most impressive use of this dynamic mission pathing system is not in its gameplay (which honestly does get a bit tedious after a while), but its narrative. Prior to LR, narrative has never been a major focus for Armored Core. Select games like 2, 3, and Nexus definitely had more narrative than others, but their narratives felt more like backdrops if anything, Nexus’ ending was great and Klein was a solid antagonist, but it’s no MGS and that’s not what you should expect from this series. Last Raven, like many of its predecessors, is definitely a “gameplay-first” kind of game, but I was genuinely taken aback at just how much this narrative wound up resonating with me by the end. Excluding relativity to other AC games, I genuinely do believe Last Raven’s narrative stands on its own two feet as a damn great story that uses the medium to full effect.
It’s a feat how cohesive Last Raven’s narrative manages to be in spite of this really being From’s first attempt at putting it at the forefront in an AC game. Not all the endings are narratively great or super impactful, and with the exception of the second independent ending, they typically fail to feel climactic, with Sheila just saying “let’s get out of here” and suddenly rolling credits. I feel like the 6th ending was meant to be saved for last, which you wouldn’t know without a guide, leading you to potentially stumbling upon it first (though for your sanity, I hope not lmao). Still, Last Raven does what all great multi-ending games do: ⭐perspective⭐.
Like with VI, which I had said in my review of that game here, even if I don’t love the endings on an individual level, one thing I think each of them excelled at was elevating the others by association. The FoR ending isn’t amazing on its own, but context from the LoR ending enriches it, likewise with AIE. Last Raven is much the same. Yeah the Vertex endings aren’t great, but knowing what Jack was up to in those endings greatly elevates the first Alliance ending (which is narratively the second best ending in my opinion). Last Raven also has several missions that, as a result of its tight and limited structure, are basically the same conflict, with the caveat being that whoever you side with, be it Vertex, Alliance, or just being an indie, affects how you approach that conflict, be it on one side, the other, or neither and just being in it for shits and giggles (and cash).
STORY SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON. READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.
Where the different routes shine most is definitely in how they elevate this game’s three central characters: Jack-O, Evangel, and most importantly: Zinaida. Two (or all, depending on who you ask) of them are returning characters from Nexus, and the continuity this game has from Nexus is always appreciated. In general I do love the continuity present in generation 3. Not all the games are made equal in terms of story or content, but each game, at least in some way, shape, or form, feels like an evolution of the previous one be it narratively or mechanically. The aforementioned characters are the most important parts of this game because, to me, they are the quintessential Armored Core characters. The series had never been a character-focused one, and while a handful of characters in previous games like Klein, Stinger, Sumika, and Huster-One are certainly memorable, I wouldn’t call them masterfully written by any approximation. I wouldn’t necessarily apply that designation to the Last Raven trinity either, but I do think they are great characters in their own right that benefit a ton of Last Raven’s structure
Jack-O probably benefits most from this multi-ending approach since he is the only one of these characters to appear in all of these routes in one way or another. I do regret doing his route first, because as powerful and climactic and his big moment was, I wish I had just an ilk more context on his motivations and what led him here in the first place, something that is explained in most of the other routes. Evangel’s two routes also substantiate him quite a bit. I think he’s easily the weakest character of the three, but getting to see different sides of him and how his motivations change drastically depending on which route you follow was really cool, not to mention he served as the eventual template for the series’ best character.
Zinaida’s a bit weird because, if you played the routes in the order I did, she doesn’t really have much presence until the indie routes, typically sending an ominous message about how you suck. Even between the two indie routes, you only really get to fight her in her ending, watching as she gets killed off by a Pulverizer (if only she kept the Micro Missiles, RIP). I think Director Dai Takemura’s additional context on her relation to Genobee is a cool bit of trivia that I think enhances her quite a bit, though where we see Zinaida truly shine is the final fight with her in “Destroy the Internecine”.
I could probably write a whole ass review on this fight alone and how fucking peak it is, but I’ll keep it short. That whole final stretch, from the moment you encounter Zinaida in the Internecine to the final shot of the Last Raven staring out into the sunset is one of my favorite moments in all of gaming. I legit got out of my chair and just thought to myself “this is real gaming”. Is the final fight with her the most complex, intricate, and varied bossfight in terms of moveset? No. Is the visual presentation and music a spectacle to behold? No (the music sucks lmao). Is the fight a completely fair fight? Everything considered, probably not, but that’s a hotly contested debate among many AC fans. Is this fight representative of everything I love, not only about Armored Core as a franchise, but about video games, be it as a medium of storytelling, a form of interactive entertainment, and an expression of art? Abso-fucking-lutely YES. When I think of the kind of unique experiences that games can offer as an artform, this fight is now one of the first things that will always pop up in my mind.
“I felt I finally reached what I'd been chasing... Raven... That title truly suits you..."
Last Raven is a monumental work of art and a crowning achievement of the medium. Like a lot of Fromsoftware’s catalog, it’s a bit of a shame that this game is buried under its own difficult reputation, as well as being a sequel to a divisive game in a niche series stuck on the PS2 and PSP. It is a more-than-fitting swansong (ravensong?) to the old generation of Armored Core and a fitting way to end my journey with those games. It’s also the most “not for everyone” game, I cannot emphasize that enough. If you are not as dick deep in these games as I am, or are not an absolute fucking idiot, I would never recommend this game. It’s brutal, kinda silly, kinda wacky, a bit tedious, but as far as I’m concerned, it fucking slaps.
What stood out to me about Last Raven was a thought of “wow, this is it”. When I played Armored Core 1, the game left a deep impression on me. Not because it was some sort of paragon of polish and game design that had me shitting myself at how good it was, but because of the potential it offered with its incredibly rock-steady design ethos. Phantasma, Arena, gen 2, and early gen 3 all had good games to be sure, but their improvements were rather incremental in my opinion, improving on Armored Core 1 in different ways, be it the economy, combat, mission system, arena etc, but never in the way I had envisioned a perfect Armored Core game to be. What makes Last Raven so great is that it is THAT game, the platonic ideal of an Armored Core game that gazed up into the heavens and perfected the Armored Core formula.
Everything characteristic of Armored Core is damn near perfect here. The controls are tight and responsive, the sheer variety of customizations makes my head spin, the level design (while repetitive) is fantastic and never overstay their welcome, AC on AC combat is exhilarating, the mission pathing system has its weaknesses but is also BY FAR the most varied and dynamic in the series with how much variety and surprises it holds, and the story is perhaps the best in Armored Core’s oldgen, perhaps in all of Armored Core.
The game also has varying difficulty depending on who you ask. Many consider it the hardest Fromsoftware game ever, and depending on your approach, that sentiment may ring true, though a number of factors like Nexus data or taking one of the easier routes may lead to a much easier experience. I never really got the sense that it was the hardest until I had done the indie routes, which more than justified this game’s brutal reputation in my eyes. Still, they never took away from my enjoyment. If anything, I’m generally shocked at how, easy, I guess? Some parts of this game could be with the right build. Karura Missiles were great against Pulverizers and in a variety of situations, Bazookas and Rifles were my go arm weapons that changed depending on the situation, a Blade was always handy if I needed to conserve ammo and kill a tanky enemy, the laser cannons were there in case I didn’t want to redo a tedious mission, and that only really scratches the surface. Last Raven’s customization is broad and encompassing, as is characteristic of the series, but more so than any other entry, it gave me reasons to actually utilize this catalog of parts to my full advantage.
As for Last Raven’s challenge and its reputation as being the hardest Fromsoftware game: I think that, everything considered, Last Raven should be an unfair game. The enemy ACs are equipped with H+, out DPS-ing you and flying away with their high energy reserves, not to mention the several occasions where they come either subsequently or just straight up ganking your ass. I think the reason Last Raven can get away with tomfoolery of this level and something like say, Dark Souls, can’t, is the inherent design philosophy that characterizes the ethos of the Armored Core franchise. Since LR is the perfect Armored Core game, it means all the aspects of challenge we’d typically associate with Armored Core are tuned to the nth degree. Skill is demanded of you, yes, but as are AC building knowledge, resourcefulness, endurance, and situational awareness. I can’t really think of any challenge that I overcame with pure “git gud” grit alone. Each and every difficult mission demanded at least one of these major tenets of ACs design from me, and that’s what made overcoming them an insurmountable joy.
I think where Last Raven most fulfills the unwashed concepts of its predecessors is its mission pathing and the inclusion of multiple endings. This was something that VI left a lot to be desired when I had first played it, and while it was good to know that previous AC games had more complex and dynamic mission structures compared to 6th gen’s more streamlined approach, they never really went beyond with those systems on a narrative, or even mechanical level. For Answer was a net improvement, offering three distinct endings and a dynamic mission structure that requires a total of five playthroughs to get them all, but seeing what Last Raven had done with its structure, 4A almost seems meek in comparison.
Last Raven not only has six endings, which is only rivaled by Elden Ring in my Fromsoftware experience, but the game took me a whopping 5 or so semi-playthroughs to get everything, and that isn’t even accounting for how easy it is to screw up certain objectives and causing whole ass playthrough resets (which happened to me like twice). Luckily, playthroughs are about 12 missions on average and if you’re really efficient, take about an hour or two of your time to blast through a single one. Still, the variety in mission pathing and endings stand out to me as the most impressive change Last Raven makes to the AC formula, not to mention how surprisingly digestible it is, compared to say, AC3’s mission unlocks which can feel kinda random and unimpactful regardless if which corporations you choose to work for. I wish it was a little less tedious and I wish certain missions didn’t have to be constantly repeated just to unlock ONE mission over the course of one playthrough, though the game is short and the mission replays do test your merit to some degree, so I can’t be too critical of this part of the game.
Last Raven’s most impressive use of this dynamic mission pathing system is not in its gameplay (which honestly does get a bit tedious after a while), but its narrative. Prior to LR, narrative has never been a major focus for Armored Core. Select games like 2, 3, and Nexus definitely had more narrative than others, but their narratives felt more like backdrops if anything, Nexus’ ending was great and Klein was a solid antagonist, but it’s no MGS and that’s not what you should expect from this series. Last Raven, like many of its predecessors, is definitely a “gameplay-first” kind of game, but I was genuinely taken aback at just how much this narrative wound up resonating with me by the end. Excluding relativity to other AC games, I genuinely do believe Last Raven’s narrative stands on its own two feet as a damn great story that uses the medium to full effect.
It’s a feat how cohesive Last Raven’s narrative manages to be in spite of this really being From’s first attempt at putting it at the forefront in an AC game. Not all the endings are narratively great or super impactful, and with the exception of the second independent ending, they typically fail to feel climactic, with Sheila just saying “let’s get out of here” and suddenly rolling credits. I feel like the 6th ending was meant to be saved for last, which you wouldn’t know without a guide, leading you to potentially stumbling upon it first (though for your sanity, I hope not lmao). Still, Last Raven does what all great multi-ending games do: ⭐perspective⭐.
Like with VI, which I had said in my review of that game here, even if I don’t love the endings on an individual level, one thing I think each of them excelled at was elevating the others by association. The FoR ending isn’t amazing on its own, but context from the LoR ending enriches it, likewise with AIE. Last Raven is much the same. Yeah the Vertex endings aren’t great, but knowing what Jack was up to in those endings greatly elevates the first Alliance ending (which is narratively the second best ending in my opinion). Last Raven also has several missions that, as a result of its tight and limited structure, are basically the same conflict, with the caveat being that whoever you side with, be it Vertex, Alliance, or just being an indie, affects how you approach that conflict, be it on one side, the other, or neither and just being in it for shits and giggles (and cash).
STORY SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON. READ AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.
Where the different routes shine most is definitely in how they elevate this game’s three central characters: Jack-O, Evangel, and most importantly: Zinaida. Two (or all, depending on who you ask) of them are returning characters from Nexus, and the continuity this game has from Nexus is always appreciated. In general I do love the continuity present in generation 3. Not all the games are made equal in terms of story or content, but each game, at least in some way, shape, or form, feels like an evolution of the previous one be it narratively or mechanically. The aforementioned characters are the most important parts of this game because, to me, they are the quintessential Armored Core characters. The series had never been a character-focused one, and while a handful of characters in previous games like Klein, Stinger, Sumika, and Huster-One are certainly memorable, I wouldn’t call them masterfully written by any approximation. I wouldn’t necessarily apply that designation to the Last Raven trinity either, but I do think they are great characters in their own right that benefit a ton of Last Raven’s structure
Jack-O probably benefits most from this multi-ending approach since he is the only one of these characters to appear in all of these routes in one way or another. I do regret doing his route first, because as powerful and climactic and his big moment was, I wish I had just an ilk more context on his motivations and what led him here in the first place, something that is explained in most of the other routes. Evangel’s two routes also substantiate him quite a bit. I think he’s easily the weakest character of the three, but getting to see different sides of him and how his motivations change drastically depending on which route you follow was really cool, not to mention he served as the eventual template for the series’ best character.
Zinaida’s a bit weird because, if you played the routes in the order I did, she doesn’t really have much presence until the indie routes, typically sending an ominous message about how you suck. Even between the two indie routes, you only really get to fight her in her ending, watching as she gets killed off by a Pulverizer (if only she kept the Micro Missiles, RIP). I think Director Dai Takemura’s additional context on her relation to Genobee is a cool bit of trivia that I think enhances her quite a bit, though where we see Zinaida truly shine is the final fight with her in “Destroy the Internecine”.
I could probably write a whole ass review on this fight alone and how fucking peak it is, but I’ll keep it short. That whole final stretch, from the moment you encounter Zinaida in the Internecine to the final shot of the Last Raven staring out into the sunset is one of my favorite moments in all of gaming. I legit got out of my chair and just thought to myself “this is real gaming”. Is the final fight with her the most complex, intricate, and varied bossfight in terms of moveset? No. Is the visual presentation and music a spectacle to behold? No (the music sucks lmao). Is the fight a completely fair fight? Everything considered, probably not, but that’s a hotly contested debate among many AC fans. Is this fight representative of everything I love, not only about Armored Core as a franchise, but about video games, be it as a medium of storytelling, a form of interactive entertainment, and an expression of art? Abso-fucking-lutely YES. When I think of the kind of unique experiences that games can offer as an artform, this fight is now one of the first things that will always pop up in my mind.
“I felt I finally reached what I'd been chasing... Raven... That title truly suits you..."
Last Raven is a monumental work of art and a crowning achievement of the medium. Like a lot of Fromsoftware’s catalog, it’s a bit of a shame that this game is buried under its own difficult reputation, as well as being a sequel to a divisive game in a niche series stuck on the PS2 and PSP. It is a more-than-fitting swansong (ravensong?) to the old generation of Armored Core and a fitting way to end my journey with those games. It’s also the most “not for everyone” game, I cannot emphasize that enough. If you are not as dick deep in these games as I am, or are not an absolute fucking idiot, I would never recommend this game. It’s brutal, kinda silly, kinda wacky, a bit tedious, but as far as I’m concerned, it fucking slaps.