For Answer follows up on where AC4 finished but if the last game ended up on a hopeful note now For Answer tries to destroy all sort of hope. The protagonist of the last game and his assistant tried to create an independent corporation where everyone can join to achieve a better future but all the “free” individuals left to join are either spies or criminals, their utopia is crumbling. The corporations are still kicking, maybe even harder and pulling the strings to satisfy their wishes, without giving a damn about who is in the middle. Due to the contaminations the NEXTs produce the environment is near irreparable and you are just trying to get your next paycheck.

AC For Answer maintains all the gameplay revolutions AC4 brought to the series and went beyond with it. Focusing more on speed and movement mechanics asking the player to refine their skills, adding more customization options, adding the Arms Forts to create missions where you can feel like a one mech army against an impenetrable colossus size mech, refining the NEXTs fights making them feel even more like dog fights that go over 1000 km/h. The game is certainly easier than AC4 and pretty much the easiest out of all the AC games but this is in normal difficulty, hard mode is one of the biggest ass whooping you’ll get if you don’t try to understand all the ins and outs of the gameplay and optimize your mech to the thinnest detail. For me, AC For Answer is the peak of the AC formula, it truly makes you feel like your piloting a war machine capable of causing destruction to a country single handedly while asking to be mindful that a NEXT configuration won't work in all scenarios, thus keeping the loop of experimentation and optimization that makes Armored Core stand out.

Of course it’s not perfect, heavy builds are no longer viable, you can optimize your NEXT as you wish but it will gravitate towards a speed and high damage focused one and compared to other Armored Core games this entry is more “bland” artistic wise. The mech parts and user interfaces are one of the best the series has to offer but all scenarios rotate towards big empty maps with some buildings, so pick your poison, empty dessert or empty flooded city? It makes sense when you remember that story wise all nature is practically dead and bigger open maps are better for the faster movement based gameplay but damn put some beauty to this dead world, New Vegas did it, Nocturne did it and many others.

For Answer is a nihilistic game. In the first two endings no matter what you do the corporations win and screw everyone else, even yourself. For them, you are just another pawn to satisfy their desires. There’s almost no room for ideals left, you are a wage slave, so get to work. On the third and final ending the game gives you a solution. The world is beyond destroyed, there are no more heroes, might as well give them a villain and YOU DO. The solution is to burn it al down, causing a genocide just to screw on the corporations making you their number one problem. Who cares right? So far you’ve seen that there’s no solution left so what gives? You survive the corporations collective effort to eradicate you, showing them the ultimate NEXT pilot they created and that they are next on the line of your destruction. Edgy? kinda but god does it perfectly creates a fiction where you basically break your chains and rebel against the system that treats you like dirt.

So yeah, Armored Core For Answer is peak fiction, is an extremely well executed power fantasy, its gameplay is the best the series has to offer and its story is presented in a simple but entertaining way. Go play it and White Glint kept on fighting by pure will power, what a chad.