Was it Good? - Armored Core

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The test is over, from this moment on, you are, a Raven.

Let's go back to 1997 and replay the Fromsoftware mech combat game 'Armored Core'.

Chances are you had the first level of this on a demo disc and never got to play the whole thing, so, is it actually any good?

Massive thanks to the supporters on Patreon and Twitch who keep the channel and nostalgia alive!

[juancarlosfernandezperez]

>camera issues
>a lot of dying
>NPC invaders
>a poison section
>a "go down some rafters" section
>plentiful equipment options
>a Moonlight Sword
Yup, it's a From Software game

[mptesteroni]

Fun Fact: AC's mecha parts look so iconic and familiar because they were designed by Shoji Kawamori himself- the mechanical designer who created both Macross (which was the seed media of both the Robotech US anime series as well as early Battletech and MechWarrior properties) and the Transformers.

[keab]

"Now for the toughest enemy. The camera"

That's how you know it's truly a FromSoft game.

[kiberme]

"So these souls-likes... They all are actually armoredcore-likes?!"
"Always have been"
*SHOT*

[fonkyfesh-old]

The customization and "gun for hire" aspects of this game are what really captured my imagination as a kid.

[roshan]

Revisiting this after Armored Core VI reveal. Excited to see how the series will evolve

[axsprime]

As a major Armored Core fan with it being my favorite game series of all time I just want to say thank you for making this video. The series doesn't get enough love so anyone taking the time to play a game in the series and do a video on it really gets the word around.

[cbogus]

Watching this after playing AC VI is surreal. It’s a testament to how good the game design was that so many years later I can recognize so many of the same systems in the new game

[KarmikCykle]

"Rumors are, after the success of Elden Ring, From Software might be looking into the Armored Core series once again. We can only hope."
And here we are, six months after this video, with AC6 finally officially confirmed.

[RageMode]

This game with its locking system and vertical camera control trained my hands for all future games to come, and gave me a legacy dexterity score of 99.

[quantaluxvision]

"If there's no one left alive, there's no one left to say you weren't being stealthy."

-Josh Strife Hays

[norntneithernt]

-stamina bar
-git gud tutorial
-camera loosing its mind in tight spaces
-my guiding moonlight
-poison (swamp) fog
-nightmare dropdown section

Yup i can see where did this game came from.

[shadowxps]

I’ve always felt the payment and cost system of armored core to actually be quite brilliant. It accents the gameplay in a totally different feeling because you’re immersed. You are thinking how your character would think about not just combat but also expenditure. When you approach the game that way you really feel like a mercenary who’s constantly considering the bottom line.

[risby]

Played this a LOT in high school. My friends loved this game. We got all the games. Tweaked out our ACs like crazy. We wrote bad fan fiction about our ACs. Thank you for this.

[tylerr]

Ironically, the first fromsoftware game that I played was a mech game that wasn't an armored core game; Chromehounds. Fromsoftware just had a talent for making some of the best niche games on the market

[bakuhakudraws]

Something else to point out about this is that the 'Human Plus' program is also consistent with a lot of Fromsoft's philosophical elements in the later games: The loss of humanity.
In Dark Souls it's always a negative: you lose certain capabilities as you fail. Dying over and over and coming back to throw yourself against the same gargantuan challenge of surviving in a world that wants you dead is difficult. It eats away at your soul, and in the Dark Souls series, this is always represented through the Hollows; those who have given up entirely, losing their reason and wit as they are simply tortured over and over again. The player character is always on the verge of becoming one, and the games' difficulty is, among many other things, a way to represent how and why so many other characters become Hollow. It's painful to fail over and over again, and sometimes giving up is the only thing they can do to survive.

But Armored Core doesn't want you dead, Armored Core wants you to be useful. If you start costing your corporate overlords too much money because you weren't equipped to handle the meat grinder they're puppeteering, they'll just recall you and retrofit you with better parts. Pesky human reaction speed too slow? Upgrade it. Can't process all the information coming at you with that inefficient meat brain? Upgrade it. Become less human, become less yourself, and become more and more a component of the weapon that they put you in.
Sure, you get stronger and it works amazingly in-game as a pity system to help struggling players persevere, but it's also a very clear representation about how the massively powerful forces orchestrating this war couldn't give a single shit about YOU, they only care about the influence and power you can provide for them. Your very humanity is extracted as payment for your failures, and you become little more than a machine following your orders.

I never played the series too extensively, and I know a bunch of old-school fans hate on the comparisons to Dark Souls. I generally dislike the idea of 'it's dark souls but with robots' as well because the actual granular gameplay of them is so different, but the core philosophical themes are very similar between the two games. A bleak, hopeless world steadily crumbling to pieces, perseverance against impossible odds, a world of hostile and desperate people despairing at their impending doom, snippets of cryptic lore delivered piecemeal by people who really don't seem to care if you understand the context or not, it's all present in all of Fromsoft's games.
Even the megacorporations in AC fulfill a similar role to the eldritch horror themes in Demon's Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring: vast, unknowable entities that are so much larger and more powerful than you that you can't even guess at what the hell they're trying to do or why they want what they want, much less how you could ever hope to influence them. You're just trying to stay alive while much larger and more powerful forces are treating you and yours like a piece on a gameboard. You're only worth anything to them as tools to be used, and will be discarded when that usefulness is expired.
Gameplay-wise, the only real connection between the two is 'customizable builds in a resource-focused action game', but in terms of the general 'vibe', fans of Dark Souls, Elden Ring, and Bloodborne will feel right at home in this franchise.

[zephyrstrife]

This series... is my dream series. I fucking LOVE mechs, Armored Core was my favorite game series, even if I wasn't all that good at it. I absolutely hope that Armored Core 6 becomes a thing, I want this series to return so bad.

[sneakyking]

It's great to see when people play it drastically differently to the way YOU play it.

[toddclawson]

Fun fact. Killing the two 9-ball ACs in the last mission is entirely optional. Like you, I died over and over again until I finally realized there is actually nothing stopping you from running past them and killing the computer to beat the mission. I was not ashamed to do so.

[LazarusOfLight]

I am actually amazed that they were able to pull something of this level during the Playstation1 era.
This makes me so hyped for the new Armored Core game that is coming up next year.