From Software 'n such

[evil_ash_xero]

I'm quite sure it's the same composer. They brought him back for this one.

[Sumez]

Hoshino seems to have pretty dedicated fans, at least in the AC community.

The only stuff I'm really familiar with from him is the fantastic soundtrack to Evergrace.

[Lander]

I've been going back to the older games too - doing a reverse series tour, so 4 -> For Answer and partway through 3 -> Silent Line so far.

Most of my 4th gen time has been with 4A, so going back to 4 for a full run was eye-opening. It's fairly perfunctory for a numbered title; no choices or branching, a story that has the Miyazaki vagueness but without much intrigue, and systems that are cool but still finding their feet.

If anything, it feels like its greatest value is as a prelude. Still worth a playthrough, but the best part about it is the extra context; 4A outmodes it almost entirely, and takes on that familiar sense of From worldbuilding once you know what the Dismantlement War was, how NEXTs used to work in the old days, and what the time jump did to the people and places.

Importing your save across games got nerfed into the ground - schematics only, no cash, no parts. Probably for the best though, since 4A is a really good AC on its own without needing endgame-tier starters.

Though 4 does a nice thing with building that I'd like to see come back - the Assembly and Shop interfaces are one and the same, so you can equip unowned parts to test or earn money with in the arena simulator before making a hard purchase to take on missions.
4A unfortunately reverted back to the split no cash, no shoes, no sale setup (though with actual list UIs, thank goodness) which ended up as the base for 6.

This is.... well, it's how I remember the demo. Hard to control, bland graphics...etc.. Metal Wolf Chaos was easier to control and looked much better.
Is this all about just "making the right build", and not so much about being fun to play?

It's definitely easier to break a working build in gen 4. In fact, the Rayleonard starting model (or equivalent) is all you really need for playthrough 1:

• Light frame
• Efficient boosters
• High Primal Armor cap and recharge
• Responsive FCS
• Shoulder-mounted plasma cannon to strip enemy PA (the tiny bar at top-right of the reticle)
• Machine gun to damage AP
• And a blade to split large slow targets in two (like playing chicken with Arms Fort Stigro and killing it within 10 seconds )

Nothing in the shop can really improve it until Chapter 4 or later, and you can always save the schematic from a temporary new game file if you picked a different one.
I tuned mine for max generator output / capacity using FRS memory, and didn't need to fiddle much with stabilizers to keep it centered.

The controls are trickier and more deliberate than 6 by quite a margin, but come into their own once you figure out the nuances.
4th gen is easily the most technical AC at baseline - in particular, learning how to Chain Boost and Second Stage Boost are both critical, but missing from the ingame tutorial.

Chain Boost is fairly simple: The directional quick boosters each have a cooldown, but you can cancel it by using a different booster.
So instead of trying to boost →→→→ or ↑ ↑ ↑ ↑ during evasion, a pattern like →↑→↑, →↑←↑, or →↑←↓ will minimize downtime and keep you agile.
This also applies to quick turn boosts via the right stick, so you can boost in a direction, then quickly reorient mid-flight to track fast targets in close quarters.

Second Stage Boost is more nuanced; the Quick Boost trigger is actually a fully analog fuel injector, so squeezing it at an even rate, or pulling it to just before the firing point and slamming it the rest of the way, will produce a larger and more energy-efficient boost.
Think of it like milking an Armored Cow and you'll be on the right track

The regular Boost trigger is also fully analog, so you can keep it pulled halfway to stay mobile while sacrificing some speed or altitude for faster recharge.
Though don't bother using it on water, since that wastes a lot of energy for marginal speed gains versus Chain Boost.

I'd also recommend turning off Auto Switch Weapon (though that might be 4 only) and Auto Turn (or whatever the target tracking option is called), since they both interfere more than they help.
Auto Boost stays though - way too easy to King's Field yourself into the sea otherwise.

All that said, unless AC1 ends up being shockingly clunky, For Answer still gets the "least controllable Armored Core" award because of how much they buffed it versus 4's already-fast gameplay. Shit's absolutely crazy!

I like AC fA a lot but I think too, that its a bit complicated to control. The controllers barely offer enough buttons and triggers for the control concept.

I don't think button count is really the issue, save for the shoulder weapon button being a third wheel that has to live on the face cluster, and glommy three-button Assault Armor.

I guess weapon eject can be catastrophic if you accidentally hold both switch inputs while trying to shoot something, but I found maintaining fine control over the analog triggers while dealing with the cognitive overload of evasion and target tracking to be the real challenge of gen 4.
Ended up dropping my old paddle pad for a PS5 one, since there are only two fire buttons, and nicer triggers outweighed faster access to weapon switching.

The classic Acs (PS1 PS2) are more simple to control if you manage to accept the non analog stick idea.

Or reject it as hard as possible and cope by binding d-pad to strafe, and facebuttons to turn

Works pretty nicely, though you lose weapon eject.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Or reject it as hard as possible and cope by binding d-pad to strafe, and facebuttons to turn

I actually used a setup similar to this Let's Play on my last playthrough (R2/R1 for forward/back L2/L1 for strafe Left/Right) and it worked pretty well. Using the D-Pad to aim is pretty workable! I think you still lose weapon Eject though, because you need to press Aim Up + Aim Down together IIRC?

https://lparchive.org/Armored-Core/Update%2001/

How useful is dropping weapons? I knew it existed in AC3 but I never got the grasp of using it and didn't quite understand the controls (it's been a long time since I played AC3, due for a revisit).

[Lander]

I actually used a setup similar to this Let's Play on my last playthrough (R2/R1 for forward/back L2/L1 for strafe Left/Right) and it worked pretty well. Using the D-Pad to aim is pretty workable!

Man, that's exotic. Reminds me a bit of the REmake layout that had run forward bound to the R trigger.
I like to hard-split moving and attacking across the left / right hands, so went with Boost / Switch Weapon on L1 / L2, and weapons on R1 / R2.

I think you still lose weapon Eject though, because you need to press Aim Up + Aim Down together IIRC?

How useful is dropping weapons? I knew it existed in AC3 but I never got the grasp of using it and didn't quite understand the controls (it's been a long time since I played AC3, due for a revisit).

Aim Up + Aim Down resets camera pitch, so you can technically still do that with face aiming. Pad strafing is the kicker, since eject is Strafe Left + Strafe Right + Aim Up + Aim Down + Weapon, and you can't do it with a D-Right + Stick Left contortion since the built-in LS strafe input doesn't count.

Usefulness-wise, it seems mainly relevant in versus play; I've seen vets talk about fielding an overweight AC, spending their heavy back weapons, then ejecting them to take advantage of big speed gains.
I can see it paying off in the harder SP arena fights, though the rest can be whomped with a dakka build and dirtbag stealth extension since ammo costs and honour are no object.

I ran most missions with a miserly energy weapon build anyway, so it was never really a bother.

[Sima Tuna]

Or reject it as hard as possible and cope by binding d-pad to strafe, and facebuttons to turn

I actually used a setup similar to this Let's Play on my last playthrough (R2/R1 for forward/back L2/L1 for strafe Left/Right) and it worked pretty well. Using the D-Pad to aim is pretty workable! I think you still lose weapon Eject though, because you need to press Aim Up + Aim Down together IIRC?

https://lparchive.org/Armored-Core/Update%2001/

How useful is dropping weapons? I knew it existed in AC3 but I never got the grasp of using it and didn't quite understand the controls (it's been a long time since I played AC3, due for a revisit).

I bound strafe to pad/stick and shoulders (L1/R1) to turn when I played AC third generation. It made hoverhopping very easy.

[Stevens]

This is just a friendly reminder from Steven's -

Lies of P comes out in ten days

That is all.

[Lander]

Finished up Armored Core 3 and Silent Line. That certainly puts the AC6 plays like a PS2 game meme in stark contrast; hell no it doesn't!
Designed like a PS2 game, maybe, but that unstandardized we're-figuring-this-shit-out feel of the era is long gone from Gen 4 onwards.

Unsurprisingly, coming back to the classics is a system shock, but retains that thing I keep saying: The controls are good once you acclimatize. Knowing when to boost, when to fly, and when to hoverhop, feels right. And the blading system hides impressive depth once you figure out positioning, aerial tracking, and chaining into shot / boost.
Building is an order of magnitude less accessible (again) on account of fanciful animated menus and modal assembly UI, but works well enough, and has a nice scrappy progression to the early game.

The duology format was very nostalgic; coupled with the menu-heavy frontend, it reminded me of playing .hack//G.U. but with a much better game underneath. Importing a 100% save to Silent Line felt like an expansion-style continuation, and still presented a decent challenge despite my busted OP-INTENSIFY + Karasawa / Big Dakka builds.

Though early gen 3 has a bit of a predilection for bullshit here and there; missions that don't give you enough context to bring the right AC, dirtbaggy arena AIs that legitimize scum strategies, and an eventual reliance on surprise! double-team AC encounters.

Thankfully the good outweighs the bad, and a fine time was had overall

Then I started up Armored Core: Nexus, and... Oh dear. Fromsoft, what have you done?

It's got some really neat stuff, like being able to see Gen 4 concepts creeping into the excellently-produced intro cinematic, remastered missions from past games, rad cutscenes before each mission (Disc 2 Mission 1 - ROCKETO PAAANCH is incredible), and probably the best-presented classic campaign yet.

But, it feels awful. The menus are terrible devolved 30FPS clunk with nary a list to be seen, the analog controls are worthless, and the system tweaks put you constantly on the back foot while trying to get your AC roster off the ground.
Nixing HUMAN+ / OP-INTENSIFY was wise for balance, and in theory good for build diversity, but the addition of booster heat and output down energy drain massively narrows the set of viable parts. Better have a monster generator and top cooling, or you're dead in the water.

And the cheap shots, good grief. 3 and SL were no strangers to having you open a door and immediately meet cannon shell, but here it feels thoroughly premeditated. A mission will start, and you'll eat 1000AP in damage from a shot that was mid-flight on frame 1 unless you did a prescient dodge. Some missions even subvert this and punish the dodge instead - you can't win!

Tracking seems to have been buffed into the stratosphere as well; cannon MTs were slow-turning damage beasts in 3/SL, but here they're just aimbotting. Got an AC with good energy, cooling, and boosters? Well get rekt, because hoverhop weaving doesn't do shit when projectiles leave the barrel at a 90 degree angle. Even worse when the cannon is mounted on an enemy AC that can somehow fire it from the air despite needing the allegedly-gone OP-I to do that.

I'm starting to see why they dropped the reboot bomb and buffed everything for gen 4. Questioning whether I want to push through for the sake of seeing Last Raven, let alone bag the 100% so I can import a head-start save into the ostensibly-hardest AC game. Ech!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

A mission will start, and you'll eat 1000AP in damage from a shot that was mid-flight on frame 1 unless you did a prescient dodge. Some missions even subvert this and punish the dodge instead - you can't win!

This was one issue I always had with the series; there's a LOT of underground missions where you take damage the instant you go into a corridor or open a door with little way to mitigate it. Succeeding at missions is a matter of minimizing how much damage you take and a lot of indoor missions felt like a heavily armored build was a good way to go. I'm not sure what the solution is; healing mid-mission feels a bit unusual (you're a giant mech after all) but maybe some kind of 500 to 1000 AP shield buffer, where you only take armor damage if you're hit beyond that in a short period of time would've worked? It would've made "No Armor Damage" a realistic possibility during missions or something.

[Lander]

This was one issue I always had with the series; there's a LOT of underground missions where you take damage the instant you go into a corridor or open a door with little way to mitigate it. Succeeding at missions is a matter of minimizing how much damage you take and a lot of indoor missions felt like a heavily armored build was a good way to go. I'm not sure what the solution is; healing mid-mission feels a bit unusual (you're a giant mech after all) but maybe some kind of 500 to 1000 AP shield buffer, where you only take armor damage if you're hit beyond that in a short period of time would've worked? It would've made "No Armor Damage" a realistic possibility during missions or something.

In theory I'm okay with some attrition in a game about giant walking tanks, since it never bothered me in the MechWarrior games, and they're quite similar economically outside of manually spending via a 'repair' button instead of a feelsbad auto-dock at the end of a mission. Those games have repair stations, though they only tend to show up on bigger battlefields with established friendly territory.

So I guess it's down to precedent; building light in MW is generally a death sentence for solo assaults because this is war, son versus a light AC that's expected to zoom around and dodge effectively, which makes any cheap setups stick out like a sore thumb. Halo-style regen buffers are kind of there via gen 4 primal armor, but it (and the various energy shield parts of gen 3) are really just DEF bonuses until the AC6 just-parry mechanic.

It could probably be fixed with a few tweaks to stage layout and enemy AI; stop-and-pop doorfighting is technically viable for corridor battle, but most instances don't put enough space either side to let you quickly open up and hop into cover.
AI is a bit odd, since enemies see through walls for purposes of lining up their shot, but won't fire until they have line-of-sight. Might be a designer hack to simulate ambushes, since an AC rampaging through a base can only take so many paths, but it'd be more feasible to rush in and take positional advantage if they could be surprised.

[Angry Hina]

Finished up Armored Core 3 and Silent Line.

In this post I talked about my feelings about AC3 vs ACN as well and was very pleased with N but not so much with 3. But you played the OP-Intensify+Superweapons-way so our impressions should vary because of that. Would be curious to know if others had tha same problems with the third last stage. Have you used an emulator+save state setup?

Though early gen 3 has a bit of a predilection for bullshit here and there; missions that don't give you enough context to bring the right AC, dirtbaggy arena AIs that legitimize scum strategies, and an eventual reliance on surprise! double-team AC encounters.

Thats sadly true for all pre-AC4 games... X(

Then I started up Armored Core: Nexus, and... Oh dear. Fromsoft, what have you done?
(...)
But, it feels awful. The menus are terrible devolved 30FPS clunk with nary a list to be seen, the analog controls are worthless, and the system tweaks put you constantly on the back foot while trying to get your AC roster off the ground.
Nixing HUMAN+ / OP-INTENSIFY was wise for balance, and in theory good for build diversity, but the addition of booster heat and output down energy drain massively narrows the set of viable parts. Better have a monster generator and top cooling, or you're dead in the water.

The menues just should look more modern which they surely did at that time and with the shoulder buttons you can navigate even a bit faster compared to the ring menues in the older games.
And the balancing... I lately whatched the AC-videos of "above average gaming". He dislikes Nexus a lot as wenn and played before mainly human+/OP-intensify builds as well and also puts the cooling stuff in the center of his critics but while playing through the game (till now not the remade missions), I didnt had much problems with it, even if I didnt put much interest in the cooling situations. I liked, that it can be a thing in some missions but I never had to build around this but possibly I put the right parts just by eccident.

But overall I never feld restricted in building what I wanted to.

And the cheap shots, good grief. 3 and SL were no strangers to having you open a door and immediately meet cannon shell, but here it feels thoroughly premeditated. A mission will start, and you'll eat 1000AP in damage from a shot that was mid-flight on frame 1 unless you did a prescient dodge. Some missions even subvert this and punish the dodge instead - you can't win!

What mission is this? Havent noticed something like that on my playthrough. In AC3 though, there are so many cheap spots. I just have to name again the third and second last stages. There is no way you can do them blindly with just a handful tries without searching the internet for strategies or playing op-intensify builds. Nexus had much less of such cheap spots in my opinion.

This was one issue I always had with the series; there's a LOT of underground missions where you take damage the instant you go into a corridor or open a door with little way to mitigate it.

These situation should feel like chip damage in fighting games I guess but heavy damage awaits your AC just seldomly, right? Just some AC fights after cutscenes (like the third last stage of AC3) can be very evil. But this was less true for Nexus.

[bcass]

Anyone else fortunate enough to be in possession of a low firmware PS5? I only bought mine to play the Demon's Souls remake. I hadn't had it connected online for over a year and was lucky enough for it to be on an exploitable firmware so have been using the 60fps Bloodborne patch. It's absolutely glorious, and unlike the PS4 Pro 60fps patch, which wasn't even able to maintain the framerate at 720p, on the PS5 it's rock-solid at 1080p.

[Lander]

In this post I talked about my feelings about AC3 vs ACN as well and was very pleased with N but not so much with 3. But you played the OP-Intensify+Superweapons-way so our impressions should vary because of that. Would be curious to know if others had tha same problems with the third last stage. Have you used an emulator+save state setup?

The super build was mostly relevant in SL, since you don't get OP-I in 3 until post-credits, and it needs to be activated by doing a bunch of challenge runs with no optional parts (beat optional ACs in missions, kill the bioforms with no acid debuff, etc.) Similar with the Karasawa and stealth extension, as the unlock conditions were too hard and / or missed until really late.

By the third last stage, do you mean Investigate Magna Ruins - the one where you have a fixed consort AC, and a boss AC shows up after the first set of enemies?

Spoiler

The betrayal killed me the first time, so I started corner-blading the 'friendly' AC to death before she turned, then fighting the other guy fair and square

Edit: Looking at your video, I guess you mean the reactor core? I remember that taking a few tries with my arena AC; tetrapod, machine gun, howitzer, chaingun, wide-shallow FCS. Facebutton aiming definitely made it easier to track his dodging.

And yeah, I'm playing under emulation. Mostly used fast-forward and save states to accelerate load screens and restarts, though there were a couple of points late in SL that had me lose patience and make my own checkpoints at cutscenes. Set a hard rule of savestating only at the map for Nexus, since it forces you to quit to title for a full save.

The menues just should look more modern which they surely did at that time and with the shoulder buttons you can navigate even a bit faster compared to the ring menues in the older games.
And the balancing... I lately whatched the AC-videos of "above average gaming". He dislikes Nexus a lot as wenn and played before mainly human+/OP-intensify builds as well and also puts the cooling stuff in the center of his critics but while playing through the game (till now not the remade missions), I didnt had much problems with it, even if I didnt put much interest in the cooling situations. I liked, that it can be a thing in some missions but I never had to build around this but possibly I put the right parts just by eccident.

But overall I never feld restricted in building what I wanted to.

The map is my favourite part, outside of needing the Destiny-style analog cursor to point at mission areas - much nicer to have mail inline, and the L1 / R1 shortcuts are good. My main issue is the extra slowdown on transitions and model loading that comes from running at 30, plus the one-at-a-time shop view.

Funnily enough I've been watching Buster TBM recently, who does lots of AC challenge runs and still loves Nexus despite its critics. So in theory I was primed to like it, but build-wise most things I try seems to end up as one of:
* Fine recharge and booster cooling, but external overheat (ex. from eating a howitzer shot) is death
* Big bar but no recharge, death guaranteed as soon as it runs out
* Small bar and good recharge, but prone to overheating in any long fight

I saw an improvement after ditching my energy weapons in favor or ARs and micro missiles, since money seems really plentiful vs ammo costs now, but it didn't take long before it started feeling untenable again.

What mission is this? Havent noticed something like that on my playthrough. In AC3 though, there are so many cheap spots. I just have to name again the third and second last stages. There is no way you can do them blindly with just a handful tries without searching the internet for strategies or playing op-intensify builds. Nexus had much less of such cheap spots in my opinion.

I think it was Destroy The Monorails (or another on that canyon bridge map) that starts with two tank track cannon MTs in front of you and a shot flying wide, and Defend the Base (on the desert map) which starts with bipedal cannon MTs and a shot flying directly at you (and ends with a probably-meant-to-lose AC fight after five or six waves of them )

[Angry Hina]

I wasnt not sure about one ot the moorail canyon stages either. I accepted the (possibly unavoidable) defeat in one of them and played the next mission. It could be the one you talked about ^^

The super build was mostly relevant in SL, since you don't get OP-I in 3 until post-credits, and it needs to be activated by doing a bunch of challenge runs with no optional parts (beat optional ACs in missions, kill the bioforms with no acid debuff, etc.) Similar with the Karasawa and stealth extension, as the unlock conditions were too hard and / or missed until really late.

Ok, wasnt clear about the conditions. Human + was available more or less from the start in the older games.

Edit: Looking at your video, I guess you mean the reactor core? I remember that taking a few tries with my arena AC; tetrapod, machine gun, howitzer, chaingun, wide-shallow FCS. Facebutton aiming definitely made it easier to track his dodging.

yeah, reactor core is the one. Whats Facebutton aiming?
I lost alone some lifes till I really tried to kill the AC in the reactor room because I havent found the least dangerous way through the corridor. The mentioned AC will gives you nearly 900 dmg with one of his shots (with a not that slow fire rate) which was also very surprising for me
Oh yeah, how to break the door is also not that self explanatory.

And yeah, I'm playing under emulation. Mostly used fast-forward and save states to accelerate load screens and restarts, though there were a couple of points late in SL that had me lose patience and make my own checkpoints at cutscenes. Set a hard rule of savestating only at the map for Nexus, since it forces you to quit to title for a full save.

I think its a different experience with original Hardware if you have to reload the game after each loss and navigating through the menues again and again. The fact, that you dont have to do that in Nexus for the last stages alone gives the game a big "+" compared to 3.

My main issue is the extra slowdown on transitions and model loading that comes from running at 30, plus the one-at-a-time shop view.

The extra slowdown comes from 30fps? But that you can access the shop only after the 3D models of the ACs have loaded sucks of course.

Funnily enough I've been watching Buster TBM recently, who does lots of AC challenge runs and still loves Nexus despite its critics. So in theory I was primed to like it, but build-wise most things I try seems to end up as one of:
* Fine recharge and booster cooling, but external overheat (ex. from eating a howitzer shot) is death
* Big bar but no recharge, death guaranteed as soon as it runs out
* Small bar and good recharge, but prone to overheating in any long fight

Good to know that its not just that "everyone dislikes Nexus" is the reason why you dont like it.

Have you seen my video of the last 3 Nexus missions? What do you think about my build? It worked well for me for the biggest parts of the game. I only had to swap the head sometimes (I tried to be more resistant to EMC but possibly I had to do much more so it was never a big difference) and the shoulder weapons. Its this one:
https://youtu.be/a63sAgPj8P4

The Booster was kinda good in most aspects and I did not care oftentimes about the cooling

(ex. from eating a howitzer shot)

There are Hovitzers in this game?

[Lander]

Went back to Armored Core: Nexus because I didn't hear no bell! and ended up sweeping the second half of Disc 1 and all of Disc 2

Surprise, the wall was a build issue - pure energy mechs aren't nearly as viable as they were in 3, and my fallback of rapid fire guns has also been nerfed into the ground. 24 rounds before a chaingun with giant drum magazine has to go down for a reload? You're having a laugh!

Ended up taking the if-you-can't-beat-'em-join-em approach, slapping on a back-mounted dual grenade launcher, two burst sniper rifles, a radar-equipped head, and a narrow-deep FCS - the complete reverse of my usual approach! Some aggressive weight / energy tuning later, and my AC started obliterating everything from range with good movement and generous ammo stocks.

Piquant From-signature ending, though on the whole I think it's one of the less impactful AC tellings, despite being one of the best at keeping the player up-to-date on the unfolding war. Some cool characters, but it lacked the sense of endgame stakes that 3 and SL had.
I get the sense Nexus -> LR is going to mirror the jump from 4 -> 4A, since Last Raven's 24-hour doom clock is looking to be whole disc of endgame stakes.

A bit disappointed to see the For Answer template of having to unlock Free Play missions by picking them in campaign (and also to learn that some of them can only be found through selective mission failure,) since there's no real narrative branch to justify it, but eh. I got the important unlocks and a good set of min-max parts, so it's time to move on.

Overall, not quite the car crash it seemed like when I was in build hell, but the wonky balance and UX regressions drag it down to being one of the lesser AC games.

I wasnt not sure about one ot the moorail canyon stages either. I accepted the (possibly unavoidable) defeat in one of them and played the next mission. It could be the one you talked about ^^

I think the string of four missions that has the canyon, desert base, and Red Star encounter is probably the game's major difficulty wall, since each one hard-checks a different AC quality. 3 seemed to have a more even distribution of 'better have a viable build now' breakpoints across the campaign, whereas Nexus wants you to go back into the garage super regularly in its first half.

Ok, wasnt clear about the conditions. Human + was available more or less from the start in the older games.

Yeah, the setup in 1 and 2 is kind of weird in comparison. SL is even more stringent, awarding it only via 100% completion if you didn't import from 3.
I'm considering skipping HUMAN+ when I get to those games, since awarding it at the start via repeated failure recalls the patronizing Do you want to enable easy mode / abandon the ninja way? game over popularized by character action games, and I'm well past training wheels now

yeah, reactor core is the one. Whats Facebutton aiming?
I lost alone some lifes till I really tried to kill the AC in the reactor room because I havent found the least dangerous way through the corridor. The mentioned AC will gives you nearly 900 dmg with one of his shots (with a not that slow fire rate) which was also very surprising for me
Oh yeah, how to break the door is also not that self explanatory.

Facebutton aiming is the control scheme mentioned a page or so back - bind moving to the D-Pad, aiming to Cross / Square / Circle / Triangle, and everything else to the shoulders - like modern dual analog controls (or Nexus' Type A layout), but without the analogs.

I think its a different experience with original Hardware if you have to reload the game after each loss and navigating through the menues again and again. The fact, that you dont have to do that in Nexus for the last stages alone gives the game a big "+" compared to 3.

Without doubt - I justify it as something they'd probably fix if the games ever got a classic collection

Though I found Nexus more punitive with restarting, since it makes you go to the title screen if you want to hard-save before a difficult mission, versus 3 where you could just do it via the system menu. Unless I misunderstood what the 'partial save' warning meant - didn't want to risk it!

The extra slowdown comes from 30fps? But that you can access the shop only after the 3D models of the ACs have loaded sucks of course.

I can't say for sure, but it seems plausible since logic is tied to framerate in old AC, and the models take ~2x as long to appear in Nexus.

Have you seen my video of the last 3 Nexus missions? What do you think about my build? It worked well for me for the biggest parts of the game. I only had to swap the head sometimes (I tried to be more resistant to EMC but possibly I had to do much more so it was never a big difference) and the shoulder weapons. Its this one:
https://youtu.be/a63sAgPj8P4

The Booster was kinda good in most aspects and I did not care oftentimes about the cooling

Seems good - strong weapons, and the internals look something like the Kongoh / Fudoh generator, Birdie booster, and maybe a Ragora radiator? That's the most viable combo I could figure out before postgame googling yielded a coolest generator + strongest booster + fancy radiator from the disc 2 power plant meta setup that feels like AC3.

I usually use reverse legs as well, though switched to tetrapods early for no-crouch back cannons, and better stability since Nexus can stun a starter AC from mission 1.

The only tweaks I can think of are meta things like swapping the machine gun out for a FINGER (had by acing the Raven's Ark sparring match with Genobee, or A-ranking one of the early disc 2 missions,) since it has crazy fire rate and no magazine reload.

There are Hovitzers in this game?

Not available to the player, but some enemies have them. Those cheap-shot quad MTs have one for close-range, if you're mad enough to walk up to something that already has thousands of AP in damage potential

[Klatrymadon]

This is a mundane topic, but I've been struck by how much the prices for gen 4 and 5 Armored Cores have fluctuated over the last couple of years. Just after 6 was announced some chancers started asking £100 for AC4, then calmed down and sold it for £20ish again, while AC5 stayed at around £8-10 (which is what I paid for all of the 360 games in the before-time). Currently, Verdict Day, on both platforms, is commanding this kind of price.

Not sure why I want to point this out other than as a PSA for anyone looking to get into the series. Wait a while, and they may well drop again! Their prices haven't risen steadily over the last decade or so along with most other games, but they're all over the place now...

[Angry Hina]

Piquant From-signature ending, though on the whole I think it's one of the less impactful AC tellings, despite being one of the best at keeping the player up-to-date on the unfolding war. Some cool characters, but it lacked the sense of endgame stakes that 3 and SL had.

I thought about that exactly alike. I think in some of the better points of AC3, AC2 is even a bit better (but of course worse in many others)

[Lethe]

I usually use reverse legs as well

Looking forward to see if you notice the same details I did with Last Raven builds.

Are you going to bother with Nine Breaker? I found it a lot more entertaining than Nexus at least.

[Lander]

Dabbled in some Armored Core: Last Raven - I'm about halfway through the 'easy' path that's mostly missions, and so far digging the shorter wide-shallow campaign structure.

Seems nicely polished so far - lots of small improvements, like better effects, a pulled-in third person camera, and freely respec-able part tuning. The new UI is pretty good - not as nice as the Nexus world map, but much more responsive, with strong Late PS2 / Early PSP vibes throughout.

And proper lists at last! Thank you Miyazaki.

One boss AC down, and he was no slouch. Feels like my sniper cannon tetrapod got nerfed a little in the transition - mostly due to a narrowed lockbox - so I'll have to give the shop a proper browse, but progress is mostly smooth.

I say mostly, since I'm already pissed at the game pulling an I have altered the deal two stages in a row; one a lengthy close-quarters base assault followed by a hope you didn't spend all your non-lockon ammo timed ECM fest, and the other a power plant cleanup that doomed my newly-rebuilt fast lad laser mech with a surprise forced overheat scenario.
The missions themselves are well-made, but c'mon man! That's enough foreknowledge memo to make R-Type blush

Are you going to bother with Nine Breaker? I found it a lot more entertaining than Nexus at least.

I threw Nine Breaker on for a bit before jumping into LR - in part due to a crisis of faith in my control scheme - but the training + arena setup didn't really grip me too much beyond getting ranked and golding Horizontal Movement, Air Movement and a couple of Dexterity tests.

Bit cheeky to make practice mode its own game, but it's certainly comprehensive; exactly the ticket if I ever want to get godlike at classic building and piloting. The expanded arena is nice too - filtering the database for opponents gives it that light touch of PS2 MMO simulator.

Though it did affirm that default-controls weapon eject opens up a whole new world of matroska doll ACs, which peel off heavy firepower to speed up and make close-quarters - or even flight - viable; the pure energy approach makes a lot more sense when you're not trying to fire everything at once and ending up sunk!

That, and how crucial face aiming is for my ability to track the bouncy bastards that moved in post-Nexus. Quite the conundrum
I ended up macguyvering up an emulator rebind with macros for ejecting via right stick flicks in the end, which feels good if slightly cheaty.

[Lander]

Two and a half more runs of Last Raven in the bag.

Really digging the shorter form branching campaign structure; it feels like a PSP game, in a good way.
Which got me to thinking - it's a shame AC didn't take a similar trajectory to Monster Hunter coming out of the PS2 era, and supplement infrequent flagship titles with handheld games that further refine the classic model.
Having come back to the classics from 4 and 6, there's a lot to love here that would have been great to see continued in its own right, had it not faltered into doldrums in the eyes of public opinion.

And I tellya whut, this weapon eject minmax progression is really something!

First you stick some guns on a mech to go shoot stuff. Then you learn to throw away spent heavies for a speed boost.
And then you realise that one fat build is actually a superset of several sub-builds of varying weight and energy efficiency that can be optioned into based on your ejection order, and thus strategized around this is deep!

Armed with that knowledge, I refined up a regular-leg medium-heavy gunslinger with a laser rifle + handgun on the arms, hanger assault handguns, twin back missiles, and micromissile assist.
Spend the missiles and extension first to increase energy efficiency for the laser rifle - supported by a large-mag handgun for meter management - then toss them Detective Tequila style and go in for the kill with flying John Woo dualies
Alternately the rifle and / or extension can be ditched early, eking out enough speed advantage to wear down an opponent with handgun pressure until they run out of ammo or take leg damage, at which point the missiles become more effective.

With a few exceptions at bosses, it's carried me handily through the Puverizer #1, Jack-O and Evangel routes, and most of the arena.
Makes me wonder just how much depth I missed through not focusing on it in 3 through Nexus, let alone gen 4. Maybe 6 as well, though its switch to weapon parallelism changes the game in that respect.

Missions have been good; no more nasty surprises now I'm armed to the teeth. And AC bosses haven't been quite as horrifying as word on the street would suggest (yet,) ranging all the way from easy stomps to redline seat-of-the-pants duels.
The Leviathan fight, however, should be consigned to the bin. Giant armored hitbox that lives at the altitude limit, does enormous figure-8 missile spam loops in and out of the mission area, and has enough ECM to make returning in kind - or any other kind, for that matter - a serious chore. Stupid thing should have stayed dead after Nexus!

Looking forward to see if you notice the same details I did with Last Raven builds.

Mobility seems to be king now boss ACs are such a focus, along with pin-point big bang shoulder guns (which I should probably steal out of the enemy AI playbook, if I can find a comparable FCS to match.)
By extension, regular legs are looking pretty uber by virtue of overall weight and EN efficiency - stat bonuses vs reverse and tetra feel more pronounced, and there's a set with all-A stats that seems overly good.
Heat's been toned down to the point where I can tune everything for weight and not be on fire every fight. Range and damage variety seem important too, since the campaign is full of surprises.

Outside of that, plenty of Nexus meta still knocking about - double shoulder units tend to be worth the slots, the Lotus / Ananda / Gull internals remain unchallenged, and blade use seems much less pronounced thanks to nerfed air tracking and dangerous enemy explosions.

I'm curious what your take is on it now - knowing AC there could still be plenty of surprises hiding amongst all the un-tried parts

[Lethe]

No, you've come to pretty similar conclusions as I did. In LR, an AC's spare weight ratio impacts its speed, as opposed to only overall weight (I don't remember if this was a factor in Nexus but it definitely wasn't before then). Due to this medium setups boost faster than lights, and taking heavier legs to field bigger weapons which you then dump ASAP is disproportionately effective. Don't ask how this is supposed to make sense when we're talking about thruster-powered movement.

L-blades are buffed a bit from Nexus. They can all reppuken and IIRC air tracking kind of sort of works, but they're still very bad for the AC vs AC combat where it matters. The parrying blades are worth trying out for the meme potential of randomly oneshotting Ravens. I'm a fan of back unit dumbfire rockets personally, with their ridiculous efficiency provided you can aim, but they're hardly practical in LR with all the cheaty/INTENSIFY opponents zooming around. Better off saving that weight for something that you'll be able to expend reliably. And if you really want ECM to fuck off, stacking radars works.

Interesting that you mention LOTUS/ANANDA/GULL being a meta carryover because that sounds like something I'd use in LR but not in Nexus. Now I just want to play these games again... (but I'm only 250 hours into Hellsinker, that's not anywhere near enough to stop yet!)

[Lander]

Finished up Last Raven, and generation 3 of Armored Core along with it!

I did a spit take seeing the dread name Leviathan Path on the wiki list, but it turned out no problem compared to the prior appearance.
Continuing on to Pulverizer Path #2, I got leg-swept onto a different route by a hidden mission requirement halfway through. Bah, it's the Nexus / For Answer replay trap again!
Hard-saved too, but luckily I had an unused quicksave just before the branch, so finished up without too much extra trouble - the bulk of the game is easy enough at this point, with the exceptions coming in the form of final bosses.

Haha.
Final bosses.
People think modern From Software games are hard

Chances are, you've not seen From actually try to defeat their players. Not really, unless you've stuck it out to LR's final path.
Sword Saint, Father, Malenia. Anything from AC gens 3, 4 or 6 that you might consider tough. All just shadowboxing. Wholly bereft of trve murderous intent, like a parent playfighting with a child.

No, you haven't seen that until you've met Zinaida. The titular Last Raven, strongest being in the From Disconnected Universe, and metatextual allegory for evolving ways to kill until a theoretically perfect solve converges.

I'll phrase this in the abstract for the sake of framing it against From's wider body of work - ostensibly considered to contain some pretty difficult, if ultimately fair, challenges - because it deserves to be understood regardless of the reader's exposure to Armored Core.

Imagine - if you will - the cheatiest, nastiest, most abusive theoretical PvP loadout available in a given game, with no regard for stat limits.
Now put it on a disproportionately agile character.
Give it a forbidden item that used to invent new rules and buff everything, but got sealed away two games ago for being too broken.
Give it an infinite resource bar.
Give it an AI whose sole purpose is to unload all of that on the player while never being inside their damage zone.
Put it behind a two-lane frogger minefield and mandatory chip damage gauntlet.
Make the boss room itself a preceding miniboss for extra attrition, and have it greatly favor the boss' mode of movement.

This theoretical balancing megadeath scenario, is Zinaida.

After seven plus games over three or more generations of Armored Core, you might think you know. But you don't.
You can go in with a build capable of walking the rest of the already-relatively-hard campaign - faux-confident in your grasp of the new good stuff - and be nuked into a bespoke mech-shaped crater immediately. No rules, no lock-on, no mercy.
Sure, there's a checkpoint that preserves health and ammo to bank a good run through Sen's Bombhouse, but your build is wrong. Die. Go back and fix it.

It's the logical conclusion to classic Armored Core; a death machine for players, who just keep getting good and breaking the game, with their legendary controller grips, innovative strategies, and impeccable statistical knowledge.
Please for the love of god just die. (The difficulty sliders don't go any higher, cap'n!) Dear god, what monster did we create by giving them Nine Breaker... Hold 'em off, we've got to collapse the timestream!

In full context, I don't think I'd begrudge anyone from responding by laying down the controller, turning off the PS2, retrieving the disc, and calmly frisbee-ing it out of the nearest window before retiring from Armored Core to live a quiet life.

I gave buildcrafting my best shot, but it seemed hopeless even with savescumming to alleviate the mental and numerical attrition of the gauntlet, so I resigned myself to looking one up.
And well, remember the word theoretically from earlier? In series fashion, it's not so bad if you have the right setup.
Executable first try, in fact; it's just ultra-specific and several extra orders of optimization above what you might expect. Never mind the countless torment-filled hours it must have taken to derive on real hardware with no foreknowledge.

Ending's good. Simple, but very good, and likely all the more impactful if you dove into hell to get it.

It's a complex mix of feelings; on the one hand, I certainly didn't earn it - the poor bastard who spent tens of painful hours finding the correct solve did.
On the other, I can't endorse this kind of M.A.D. game design; it's borderline kaizo, so I don't feel quite as bad for standing on the shoulders of veteran players.
On the third, oddly vestigial appendage... It can be viewed as as a conjunction of AC's gameplay with its broader themes, the IRL context of where the series was at the time, and story itself circa Nexus and Last Raven. That's Fromsoft alright.

I think I can forgive it, and award Last Raven the title of Flawed Gem. It makes the Nexus gameplay properly good, has some of the series' most interesting building, and is pleasantly challenging, but has an endgame difficulty wall that more resembles a megastructure.

...So I decided against hunting down the off-path missions for the secret true ending
The one I got hit the right notes, and 3 extra full runs minimum is a bit much for cleanup. I'll settle for... Wait, 114% completion? Good enough!
Onward to the huge overboosts and relative simplicity of AC2

No, you've come to pretty similar conclusions as I did. In LR, an AC's spare weight ratio impacts its speed, as opposed to only overall weight (I don't remember if this was a factor in Nexus but it definitely wasn't before then). Due to this medium setups boost faster than lights, and taking heavier legs to field bigger weapons which you then dump ASAP is disproportionately effective. Don't ask how this is supposed to make sense when we're talking about thruster-powered movement.

I'm a fan of back unit dumbfire rockets personally, with their ridiculous efficiency provided you can aim, but they're hardly practical in LR with all the cheaty/INTENSIFY opponents zooming around.

Interesting that you mention LOTUS/ANANDA/GULL being a meta carryover because that sounds like something I'd use in LR but not in Nexus. Now I just want to play these games again... (but I'm only 250 hours into Hellsinker, that's not anywhere near enough to stop yet!)

Good to know - still got it

I've heard good things about rockets; there's something to be said for not being beholden to the FCS sometimes. The back-mount spread-fire one seemed like it could be usable against some of the ACs, but I backed off of that in favor of micro missiles pretty quickly after seeing my hit rate versus the test fella

That combo seems to be what various FAQs and wikis recommend for Nexus, since LOTUS has the best calorific value vs energy output, ANANDA has the best forced / cooling vs energy use and weight, and all that is in service to minimizing GULL's massive booster heat for top-tier speed.

And whoa, an actual Hellsinker player! I've a long-standing intent to play that, but its intimidating aura has kept me away despite an acclimatization to STG. One of these days

[Lethe]

I think you're slightly exaggerating the necessary level of specialization for Zinaida. There are plenty of setups that can win as long as they stay out of close range. Pretty sure I did it with fast medium biped, rifles for the big lockbox, circle-backwards zigzag-circle tactics, followed by immediate death if I bump into something or fail a landing (yeah, it took a few tries...). Honestly it felt like less of a clusterfuck than stumbling into the Evangel fight on my first playthrough while cluelessly stuck in The Old Ways of do-as-you-please AC building. Of course, this doesn't change that the builds that are totally hopeless vastly outnumber the ones that aren't, and the mission structure itself is plain sadistic.

Brief Hellsinker off-topic

It's one of the best tiny-indie games ever made, irrespective of any position in shmup canon. Coming from an extensively critical person, it's a rare case that a work which is spinning so many plates grows more appealing the closer I look at it. And it even does it with maturity: full of very calculated, careful little things among the melodramatic choreography yet totally absent of overbearing hardcore-hankering or pretentious genre nerdery.

[Blinge]

I've finally clawed my way up to fight 8 in Phantasma's Arena.

Switching between a light rifle zoomy loadout
and a chonky yet not immobile missile-snipe cheeser.

I still can't do that bunny hop shit you guys keep talking about. The descriptions never made sense to me

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Here's a video, it might help:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhJ_16PPDwY

and a PvP match in AC3SL showing extensive use of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijnYjFIP32w

Basically boost in a direction, and as you're boosting, tap boost again to do a short jump, and repeat when you hit the ground to keep doing ground boost -> hop -> ground boost -> hop so you maintain your movement speed but keep recharging your energy during the hops.

I've been reading about kicking in AC6 and it seems reminiscent of Vanquish's boost kicks, except with basically no cooldown, which is pretty freaking powerful stuff.

[Lander]

I wasn't expecting gags when I booted up AC2, but look at this adorable little fraud

The one who achieves basic competence will be awarded the title of 'Eight Breaker'

Nice to come back to after the heavily-iterated complexity of gen 3. There's an earnest pre-reconstruction vibe to its futurey presentation; very self-evidently cool, with the mission brief VO tipping it just over the edge into charming SatAM cartoon.
The menus are great - simple and slick - and the starter AC experience feels only slightly more rigid, which is a good sign.

Progression seems slow and steady; not quite so much room to abuse the part resale economy for early power, and building choices seem nicely distinct for the initial batch.
Though stats are a pain point; the comparison arrows don't differentiate between time and value, so things like missile lock time are backwards and sometimes mislabeled.

No weapon eject either, so it's looking to be a more fundamentals-focused game. Blessing in disguise on the config side too - no more macros!

I think you're slightly exaggerating the necessary level of specialization for Zinaida. There are plenty of setups that can win as long as they stay out of close range. Pretty sure I did it with fast medium biped, rifles for the big lockbox, circle-backwards zigzag-circle tactics, followed by immediate death if I bump into something or fail a landing (yeah, it took a few tries...). Honestly it felt like less of a clusterfuck than stumbling into the Evangel fight on my first playthrough while cluelessly stuck in The Old Ways of do-as-you-please AC building. Of course, this doesn't change that the builds that are totally hopeless vastly outnumber the ones that aren't, and the mission structure itself is plain sadistic.

Quite possibly; I don't think I had the full measure of ammo efficiency without hanger units, so the iterations I went through all failed on either mobility or total kill power. It demands a simple, focused build, and I'd been abusing maximalism the whole game.

The one I grabbed was similar; all-in on mobility and cooling, fast running legs, linear rifle and machine gun in the hands, disposable back rockets for the laser room, and an EO core for extra brainless damage.

Nailing the start and getting her into a comfortable turning back strafe seemed to be the key; after that it mostly boiled down to a damage race against the super-accurate railgun, and ended about 3000 AP earlier than I was expecting.

Speaking of the other boss ACs, did you ever get the sense that the game was copying your build?
I'm 99% sure it doesn't, and it may well be a function of playing it long after popular strategies have embedded themselves into casual discussion, but the amount of times I tweaked something only to run into a mirror match a while later was uncanny.

I've finally clawed my way up to fight 8 in Phantasma's Arena.

Switching between a light rifle zoomy loadout
and a chonky yet not immobile missile-snipe cheeser.

I still can't do that bunny hop shit you guys keep talking about. The descriptions never made sense to me

At the most basic level, you just hold a direction and double-tap Boost whenever you're about to hit the ground.
The trick lies in timing; the first press has to happen while falling and stay held to trigger an on-landing ground boost, and the second has to happen during that boost and be a tap in order to trigger a hop.

So Jump -> Fall -> Hold Boost -> Land -> Release Boost -> Tap Boost -> Repeat.

As for the nuances:

While airborne and not holding Boost, energy regeneration is treated as if you're standing still. Less time pressed = more efficient, so you can tighten your input to save more and regen faster.

Hard landings are velocity-based, so bigger jumps need a bigger pre-emptive boost to retain lateral speed when landing. The ideal is to hit ground just before you start to rise.

Provided that your landing is soft, you can also do Jump -> Fall -> Land into Running -> Tap Boost -> Wait -> Tap Boost -> Repeat for a better speed / energy ratio, since the fixed-length boost you get from tapping once while running also regenerates as if standing.
Risky though, since it's easy to miss the timing window and screech to a halt instead of canceling into a hop.

Just mashing the boost button for big moon hops is also situationally useful, but more taxing on the EN supply.

I've been reading about kicking in AC6 and it seems reminiscent of Vanquish's boost kicks, except with basically no cooldown, which is pretty freaking powerful stuff.

Oh yes. You can apply some disgusting melee kick pressure by building around Assault Boost and a big bar, especially with the advantageous frame data on reverse and tetra legs.

Vertical kicking is also more energy-efficient than conventional flight, lending tanks a Hulk: Ultimate Destruction feel once you start using using their ram as a first-class movement option.

Regular legs don't have any special bonus, but make up for it with an effortless hands-in-pockets bancho kick animation that looks straight out of Yakuza

[Blinge]

ah right. i've always found boosting when hitting the ground to be pretty hit or miss.
like - sometimes i boost. sometimes i stick a hard landing
i'm probably too high

[Lander]

That, or your Y position is too great

You should be able to make it consistent by prioritizing a soft landing over precise hop timing - feather the booster to bleed off velocity on the way down if unsure, since landing into a run and having to reboost is better than landing into a wombo of missiles and cannon fire.

Also if we're talking classic arena, I found a dirty trick that the AI used on me a couple of times; while facing in the same direction, boost past your opponent and loop around them in a circle.
Once you get back to where you started, they'll have begun a big turn that you can exploit to stay at their back and get a bunch of free damage.

[Lander]

Whoa, AC2 is wild!

A relatively slow start belies a system that's cool with letting you build as busted as you like. Light frame, good dakka, good missiles, best internals on the market, and I've not once brushed up against the weight limit.

The lockbox is comically huge compared to gen 3 too - slap in a sideways or wide-shallow FCS and you might as well be playing 4A with certain weapons.

And overboost is so good with no heat generation; I've never really used it in classic AC beyond quick escapes or chase missions, but here it can pull off ridiculous 360-degree machine gun strafes, or safe zig-zags while building a big missile lock.

And that's to say nothing of Limiter Release mode... Good grief. Who needs HUMAN+ when you can dial up infinite energy for 30 seconds, followed by another 30 seconds of being dead in the water? I'll take those odds, and use them to bore a smoking hole through the arena top 5!

Safe to say, energy builds are absolutely broken for boss engagements, and the energy machinegun was already a ridiculous damage hose coupled with the optional parts for increased power / faster refire / lower EN cost.
Being able to boost in circles while firing it for a solid half minute feels like playing as Zinaida

[evil_ash_xero]

While I love talking about older games... a new AC just came out. Nothing more to say on that one?

I'm going thru NG+. It's not my favorite thing, as the difficulty doesn't increase. It does have some harder missions, but you're coasting thru a lot of the others as you have late game
weapons and chips.
There's a lot of balance issues I have with this game. That's my only major gripe. I'm pretty baffled that NG+ isn't harder overall. Very strange design choice.
Maybe they just wanted to make sure people played it three times to get the whole story?

I'm going thru it, because I know you have to get to NG++ to get the full story. I am finding the characters to be interesting, so I'm a bit invested.

Rusty seems to be a fan favorite, while Iguazu is great to meme on. I was playing a stage where some mech gave me a lot of grief, and they're like "Igauzu sent an assassin?".
I laughed at that one. He really hates 621's guts.

I hope they build on what they have here. I think they should get rid of the "fodder enemy stages" of older games, and have a more steady difficulty curve. Doing that rather than
having a lot of easy stages mixed with hard as nails bosses.
I would really like to see DLC to this, and I hope it's tougher in general. Well, not the bosses. They're hard enough.