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.

why do vanillaware titles always cause so much melties LMAOOOOOOO, notice how none of the review bombers have actually talked about the gameplay.

anyways, this shit is really good (so far - only 11hrs in), so if you're on the fence about picking up a cool srpg - i'd strongly say go for this.

also i carnally need berengaria so bad