Something I’ve been meaning to talk about on this website is that people seem to judge sequels differently than expansions. It makes sense, but it can kind of bring up a lot of semantical arguments. One could criticize a game like Tears of the Kingdom for a lot of stuff, but when people say ‘This is just an DLC/update of Breath of the Wild’, it raises a lot of questions. First, what does this exactly mean? Is it an expansion because it almost exclusively adds stuff instead of making fundamental changes? Maybe, but other sequels have done this without being scrutinized nearly as much. Is it because enough isn’t added/changed? Possibly, but I honestly think if this game was for some reason split into three or so parts and released as DLC of Breath of the Wild for the same price in the end, people would be fine with it. I mean, look at Super Smash Bros Ultimate. It costs $60 to buy 12 DLC fighters along with their stages. Clearly, this is less content than the base game at the exact same price. As such, it becomes clear that people simply hold sequels to a higher level of scrutiny. Saying a sequel is just an expansion is a criticism of a game.

With that, I have to ask: is Silent Line: Armored Core a sequel to or expansion of Armored Core 3? I would say that in many ways this is an expansion. You can transfer your save from Armored Core 3 over to this game. All of the parts in that game are present here. The general movement and UI are the same. There’s an arena with new opponents, but it’s ultimately not that different from the arena of the previous game. And of course, Silent Line: Armored Core still has that same dumb control scheme I feel obligated to mention in each review.

However, pretty much every mission is completely original. Not only that, but they’re consistently the best missions in the series. Even the more basic missions will have lots of little twists that make playing them more entertaining. For example, there was one mission where you initially just start with some target and evasion practice, but by the end you’re fighting a giant robot while hopping around on airplanes. Surprises like this are all throughout this game, and it makes a ton of missions really memorable. The missions can get pretty challenging too, so you really have to consider your loadout before going into battle. You can’t take parts like extension and inside parts for granted, you really must optimize. Even once you get past that, the opportunity to earn new parts is present in every mission, whether it be from finding one out in the wild or getting it as a gift for doing a good job. This makes missions much more replayable on a whole.

And wow, there’s a ton of new parts. Most previous expansions averaged around 20 to 30 new parts. This game offers 198. I’d be remissed if I didn’t mention that many of these are simply upgrades to other parts, but these upgrade parts are usually the aforementioned mission rewards, so I think that’s honestly fine. A lot of these parts are new left-handed weapons. This game still differentiates between right and left-handed weapons, but there’s way more options for left-handed weapons that I don’t even really care. This adds so much more customization to the game, and it made way more builds viable. It’s the best feedback loop a game like this can have: Missions are hard enough that you really need to consider loadouts, and missions will reward you with new parts, meaning you always have something new to try out.

And maybe most importantly, this game’s story is a direct follow up to that of Armored Core 3. In fact, it’s the most direct of a follow-up that we’ve had in the series so far. You could argue that the story here is the same kind of stuff the series has been doing: A self-destructive cycle of corporations attacking each other where you are a self-destructive soldier for them. However, it feels a little more deliberate here. Even after everything that happened in the previous game, none of these superpower companies have learned anything. It seems the antagonist may be thinking the same, as it slowly becomes more active in pushing against the corporations’ war. The ending really caps it off well, with the final words of IBIS being, “The rest is up to you.” It makes you consider whether or not IBIS was meant to stop humanity or crown a new protector. I hope they expand on if IBIS’ defeat was a good or bad thing in later entries.

So, at the end of the day, is this a sequel or expansion? It’s all semantics. It’s the same as arguing if the AC I started Armored Core 3 with is the same as the one I have here. Here and there I’d replace parts to the point that it’s pretty much a completely different mech. But if it is different, when exactly did it definitively become a different AC? It’s an AC of Theseus, if you will. These kinds of semantics are worth discussing, but if there’s one thing Silent Line: Armored Core is, it’s great. Once again, it’s the best I’ve played in this series marathon so far. 9/10.