>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
@@whitenoise0065 as someone who favors tanks in more than half of situations, tank tread ACs are not about mobility, but sheer firepower, HP, and weight limits. It is also one of the leg types to be able to fire shoulder-mounted cannons on the move without the required Human+ augmentation. That does mean that low mobility will result in getting hit by high damager per shot weapons that are normally slow in traversal.
If you control the camera well you're not really playing the game right. its like using Ashes or magic or leveling up in Elden Ring. Don't be a pansy easy mode player.
"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.
@@Aereto MW4:Mercs - MekTek version. STILL played online by alot of old farts. I got to play with one of the Dev-crew & some dude who was 80+ yrs old. dude it was epic. wish i hadn't been so 'checked out' these last few years :/
"Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction" is my all-time favorite, and the game that made me grow fond of Open World Games. it is a game where you take sides on a fictional conflict against North Korea, and it's main draw is the "Deck of 64", which is a reference to Afhgan Bounties. you got a open world, bounties to hunt and not only a decent arsenal but Air Supplies on Demand... as long as you can afford it.
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.
@@TheHappyMadman The designs made by the FASA team back then weren't the best yes. It was the Japanese designs they licensed that were the best looking designs, hence the Unseen tended to be some of the most iconic mechs. At the very least though, PGI's take on the battlemechs finally gave Battletech the actual mechanical design language the rest of them needed.
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.
I really wish they'd do more like the first 3 eras of it...4 was okay, but kind of went far to gundam with it while the others were the heavier feeling mechs
considering the limitations of the PS1, it was pretty mind blowing, I have to agree. I remember being instantly obsessed after finding it. My Dad's housemate lent me his copy when I must have been about 11.
@@randomfurrygirl548 Different strokes, especially as 4 is rather different from the rest. Silent Line is prolly my personal favorite due to it being my first and also just being a love mix of the best parts of AC, but I also have a soft spot for For Answer, as well as Last Raven just for the sheer variety of parts. The only series I don't really like is 5.
@@elloneng7965 I tried to get into it a few years ago with emulation but the controls made me drop it, VI got announced and i'm happy to say i just finished 1 today, the controls are still bad but there is a solid game underneath. Started project phantasma a few hours ago, i hope they release a remaster as well.
@@andream5690 try my keysetting? it's may help [direction botton for movemont direction]_[triangle - look up / X - look fown / square -turn left / O - turn right] L2 for booster and R2 for switch weapon
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
I was going to say, it really feels like this is a concept that was remarkably fully formed in its first iteration, obviously barring technological limitations. So many series you can see the developers slowly figure out what the most important parts are as they iterate, but the game as shown in this video feels like it's a demake of AC6 (similar to the fan Bloodborne one) rather than a first attempt at the idea.
yeah same! it's really cool how they've just iterated and refined on it instead of making revolutionary new systems like a lot of other long-running franchises end up doing
Umm that's not inherently good design. Noticing references, and that things haven't changed for fromsoft even the bad parts since their earliest games is a sign of bad game design and not listening to fans, or feedback. Armored core 6 literally has lost all of its retention already and most people quit the game pretty fast due to its very generic mechanics, lack of innovation, and the game slowly just becoming a merge of dark souls and armored core. A brand new game that came out only months ago has like 10 viewers on twitch currently, and very little content being made about it. That is not a testament to good design. They also started just blatantly making their mechs into Gundams instead of sticking with their unique original design. This whole, "Oh reference, that means game is good," think needs to stop. copy pasting the same exact formula from years ago, but eliminating tons more mechanics and streamlining their games is not a testament to their design sicne the game sold like shit, and the reviews even by verteran players are pretty awful.
@@lunova6165 It's not inherently good or bad design, it's just very cool to see that the series figures out its core loop that immediately. And the game definitely is a success, it's just in a genre (single player action games) that doesn't have a ton of longevity in terms of Twitch viewership. Once streamers beat the game there's not too much reason to keep showing it. Compare it to Hi-Fi Rush, another successful action game this year, and AC6 has twice as many viewers right now (though both are very low). Steam achievement stats are a more useful stat. AC6's two initial endings each have about 40% completion and the NG++ one has 28%. Those are pretty good completion rates, since most people who play a game don't finish it, let alone replay it twice.
-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.
It is wild to see just how much of From Softwares identity existed before Miyazaki ever even joined the company. He seems to have been molded by the company as much as he has molded its style. It’s really uncanny just how much of of the same DNA is in all those games.
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.
Armored Core was how I learned to have a finger on each of the trigger keys. Though I've since lost that habit, it was not impossible to learn if an 8 year old could do it.
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.
Coming back to this after telling some friends about Armored Core due to the new announcement- there's so much care in this video that I can't help but watch it over and over. Absolutely pulled me into Armored Core, thank you!
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.
I was going to put my own reply to this video up...but every single word you said is exactly what I think too. Praise be Armored Core, it's return can't come soon enough!
@@jesseperry9602 My thoughts exactly with one bit of input. I want 6 but only if they don't return to 5's style of gameplay, I for one want 4 or 4 Answer style AC's again that really only had to worry about other AC's or boss type enemies.
Try Another Century's Episode series (JP only but there are translations online). Virtual On series is another classic with some games having global versions
DaemonXmachina is a relatively new game that follows in the footsteps of AC. A spiritual successor, since Fromsoft hasn't released AC content in a while.
@@Kurotaisa DaemonXmachina is a terrible game. I play with a group of friends that generally play mech games. We where desperate at that time when we tried that game it was horrible. Armored core and MechWarrior is pretty much it. The rest is sub par pretenders.
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.
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.
Yep, I built an AC to take out both 9-ball ACs and the final boss no matter the cost. It was all too impressive. Essentially saying "I am more than twice the pilot you are, and then some!"
As a kid, I wasn't good enough to beat the game so I used a couple gameshark codes for infinite armor. I thought I actually broke the game a little, because I thought the game didn't expect you to beat him. Now I think it's proof that he was just a computer controlled AC, and the computer could make as many as they wanted.
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.
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
Man, seeing that name still give me the chills. Easily one of my favourite games, multiplayer in that game was truly exhilarating. I miss it so, so much. I'd love a sequel, I'd pay big money for a sequel :(
Fromsoft was a name you could trust to make some strange, interesting, if kind of clunky games. Now they churn out the same cash cow they've been doing since 2013 and people fucking lap it up like they didn't just buy Demons' souls 7 times. And then have the gall to act like buying the newest Call of Duty is somehow different.
@@TheGreatDanish I mean, to be fair, they've been churning out armored core games long before they switched to dark souls. Give em time, they'll shift to other genres I'm sure.
I absolutely *LOVED* Armored Core. My brothers and I played it religiously! It was sooooooo cool. Just the fact that you could customize your mech was like really really cool in those days.
@@SpadeAlchemistify that's awesome! So to be honest I played a lot of AC1, an ass load of 2, and a bit of 3. But after that I stopped getting em. It might be fun to buy one if a new one comes out! If for nothing else for nostalgias sake. Besides I bet if they do a new one it'll be pretty cool!
I’m here right after the armored core 6 announcement, I gotta say I’m pretty hyped! Also this game aged really well, the customization and combat looks really good at its time.
Armored Core was actually the series that taught me not to put too much faith in professional games journalism, near two decades ago. I would read reviews in gaming magazines that gave a particular AC game a 65-70/100 with the primary complaints being that there was *too much* customization. They complained about having to change radiators, that they found it tedious and silly. Meanwhile, this much customization was one of the primary selling points for me. I absolutely loved spending hours trying new builds. It really demonstrated that such quantitative review scores are often utterly pointless as they're just a way for a certain reviewer to grade the game on how much it fits their own tastes. Thankfully, we have reached an age in which properly contextualized reviews are plentiful and easily accessed.
It's almost like different people enjoy different things and journalists are limited to their taste and ability to play games. Game journalists are just barely a starting point, not a replacement for your own judgement.
Video game reviews exist so that you can buy the game. They manufacture consent which is why they would give Call of Duty games very high scores even though I find them terribly boring. With that said, not everyone is going to like everything in a game so finding the customization in AC tedious isn't wrong. These games got harder by the time AC3 came out.
I guess the argument would be more about the use of points in a review. To be fair, though, not everyone enjoys the idea of managing a mech and it's components. Generally you wouldn't expect someone to play the entirely of a game, and post the review, if they didn't have any interest from the outset, I'd agree. To many of us, having options like that is a good thing, but to many it gets in the way, even if the game was built around it. These days, though, I think that the customization would be seen in a more positive light when it comes to reviews. Elden Ring did well, even if you didn't have to decide on what FCS and generator you wanted, but it did have a lot of choice. So here's hoping AC6 exists and people like it.
Video game reviewers have much more in common with movie or restaurant critics than actual journalists. Unless they are just a complete shill for the companies, they speak with their own voice from their own viewpoints. What the audience has to do is be able to find critics whose opinions and tastes closely mirror their own. Then they know they can trust their opinions on stuff. It's very much the difference between a journalist and a critic. Journalists are there to report news, updates, and break stories. Critics are the ones who should be doing reviews. With video games unfortunately, those lines are often blurred to the point of erasure, and with the constant barrage of payola, social media influencing, and outright deception, it's very hard to know who to trust.
Most PS1 games still came with manuals in the box, so I probably memorised the control scheme at work after buying it on my lunch break, before coming home to play the game in the evening.
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.
@@brotbrotsen1100 Fromsoft treat everygame the same, remember Bloodborne and Sekiro where just side games for the souls series yet they got the treatment that made them the highest rated Fromsoft games( before Elden Ring )
@@n124ajdx Yeah but these games had generally the same concept and never were to different from souls games and they were already doing good. Mech games though were always for a relatively small niche and never did extremely well, armored core, zone of the enders, daemon X machina, all really good games but not all that successful financially so i could see from soft not putting to much budget into the game because the chances that it backfires on them are fairly high. You could say the name from soft will already draw people towards the game but that's not a guarantee since other beloved companies like platinum or even square have quite some failed attempts when they attempted to do something else. I guess it would be good if they advertise it a lot.
@@brotbrotsen1100now Fromsoftware have big investment from Tencent, Sony and Bandai. Also both Miyazaki and the director of Sekiro are working on Armored Core so I'm sure it's a serious project for them
Armored Core was my jam. I was a MechWarrior kid so these games grabbed me quick. Would always build a balanced medium weight mech with weapons bracketed for all ranges. I remember having hours of fun in any of these games just playing around in garage and building my perfect AC. Freaking loved it when they introduced the arena and made it a staple of all the games.
@@robgoins3672 You and me both. Timberwolf was always my go to mech of choice in every MechWarrior game. Even end game I'd still be piloting one and tearing things up. Love that machine.
@@robgoins3672 FILTHY CLANNER I''m kidding. I just love the design of the Mad Cat and Mad Cat MkII. I just wish my favorite IS mech Bushwacker had bigger brothers. Imagine a 65-ton 'Wacker with 3 RAC5s instead of RAC2s. I would imagine it'll look like the Catapult but without the bunny ear arms.
That ending sounds great, the idea of the prolonging the battles to limit how powerful humanity gets and targeting you for being too good a mercenary and disrupting the balance, genius concept by fromsoftware, badass
A pretty good leadup to it as well. A ranking Raven, one of the best in the business, one that previously said that his job is to kill you - which is just fair enough, must be a decently paying contract from Chrome/Millenium - telling you that you're "out of line"? The hell's _that_ supposed to mean now? Whatever, time's money and he's wasting it on his nonsense. Surely what he said has no real implications whatsoever and he's just trying to get in your head.
This video is so insanely gripping that I initially planned on falling asleep to it for a nap. Instead, I had a blast listening to the roots of my favourite dev studio. It was relaxing, informative, and watching the whole thing felt as satisfactory as any real life goal. Awesome stuff, your essay abilities are exemplary.
I remember what blew my mind back when I first played this game, is the ability to take your mech you built in this game and bring it over to the sequel. Then when you beat that game, you can take your saved mech to the sequel after that. It was the first time I had seen anything like that. And even to this day you only really see something like that in live service games.
Nah nah, I’ve never seen where can port assets from one of these rip off battle pass live service games, but know where seen that before for sure: Pokémon games. I’ve got some trades from first games on gameboy through DS era till today, like legit 20 year old pokemans been with me since start lol They totally got that from armored core
@@BRBMrSoul I'm not saying it was the first game to ever do that. I'm just saying it was the first I had seen myself doing it to that extent. In Pokemon you have to do so much just to get 1 transfer. It really isn't the same as having your entire accumulated loot load to the next game in one step. But again, I know it wasn't the first.
Mass Effect is the only other game that did something like this that I can think of. Yeah loot didn’t carry over between 1-3 but having all your story choices carry down from character to character was pretty damn cool.
This is how it was always Meant to be. you have NO idea how much we used to complain about this 'back in the day' : "It's a Sequel, why can't i import my car/mech/character from previous game.. especially in one like AC or MW or GT(Gran Turismo). It's not like they have to give me my 'OP Everything' but gee, ya could give me SOMETHING. hell, look at Mass Effect 1 & 2 - Q.E.D.
Two gripes about your excellent overview of great memories: 1) I seem to remember that the PlayStation1 did not have analog sticks on their controllers when this game was released. 2) You missed the hidden/secret stat that governed turning speed, which the backward legs excelled at. Thanks for a wonderful walk down memory lane!
the playstation 1 did have analog sticks by the time armored core was released as by that point dualshock 1 controllers were the norm, the first generation of PS controllers did indeed not have analog sticks though so maybe you had one of those when you got the game which would have been 100% possible
@@stickpge the dualshock was nto common and the norm in 1997. FF7 was made for dpad for example, and analog controls at all weren't a thing in that franchise until 98's FF8. Dpad only ps1 games were the default for a long time!
@@stickpge the dual shock wasnt yet standard part of the ps1 package at the time so there was a chance Ps1 owners didnt have it. this is what made Ac1's control be so akward, they had to presume a lack of analog sticks.
@@stickpge If not for this channel I'd never know the PS1 even had analog sticks. I always thought that one of the big changes in the PS2 were the analog sticks. You even had a toggle button for them.
I also remember looking into the designs of the other ravens like Nineball and Valkyrie... some of them are actually overweight and require "Human Plus" to even use. Hell 9ball is able to move and fly while firing his shoulder weapons which are crouch weapons (and if I'm not mistaken overweight too... but its also been SO long since I've played I could be wrong on that one). So there are even little nuances in the story there, not just "a difficulty tweak"
That was part of the point. The reason NIneball exists is to protect the system that is running everything. He's not even human anymore. Valkyrie wasn't quite as far converted, but she was definitely H+.
Transhumanism in a nutshell: cybernetic augmentations. Daemon X Machina is the spiritual follower, which does containing some former FromSoft members that worked on AC. At least we have the equivalent of Human+ but on a progression tree of Head, Body, and Legs, and can see the results of augmentation, with a cost for removing all augmentations. Yes, the pilot can be built to fight if the mech goes down, but unlike the mech, the pilot can't be revived if downed.
Human plus is Canon within the setting and many of the top ranking ACs have H+ traits. The are even mentioned in the pilot description for some ACs in AC2.
I didn't get into Armored Core until after I graduated High School, but I love AC a lot. Even thinking about the idea that AC6 might exist makes me too excited.
A while back there was a guy trying to create an armored core PC ersion. he was building assets and got to a working garage interface. IDK what happened to it though
I literally never knew about the restart bonuses and beat the game without them! Wow! That's hilarious! Mr. Hayes, you are the man for bringing this game to the front yet again! AC IS AWESOME! 🍻🍻
I always made a new file if I got that cutscene 😅 I wish I knew because I would have loved the ez mode honestly. I did beat the game without them though
@@asdbanz316 "Holy sheit! When did Animal Crossing get so hard, its like playing one of the souls game!" - after you tell your gullible sibling that its Tom Nook in the other AC and you're Isabelle in the player mech chasing him around because he bailed on paying for something and he's overdue on his house payments...
I would spend hours getting my build to have just enough weight for the legs and just enough power consumption for the generators. In later AC games you could start the round overweight with a big Gundam style canon and just purge the dead weight when the ammo was spent to get your movement speed back up to something functional. Being over the weight limit was like the beta version of fat rolling.
The presentation of this video is insane. Made me feel like I was playing through the game myself and discovering the wonder of the AC units, the hidden weapons, the story twists myself. Amazing video that captures the feel of someone playing through the game for the first time with you.
Absolutely astounding customization for it's time... I'm honestly blown away. I would have dropped huge amounts of time on this game as a kid if I'de ever gotten my hands on it
I would describe the Armored Core series’s customization options as “overwhelming”. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing up to personal preference.
My brother threw me to the dogs and made me play it when I was about 4 or 5 years old. Im glad he did, it shaped my understanding of games and customization and many games do not live up to it. I replay the originals every other year to this day.
I can see where Titanfall got the inspiration from Armored Core. I wish Titanfall had that type of customization. This game looks awesome, especially for 97'. Maybe we will get lucky and get a new Armored Core in 2023
@@travisoutlaw9511 Yeah for sure and I just watched the game awards as well don't even know much about armored core but the trailer had me hyped anyways
Guy Armored Core 6 is a real thing right? Those art leaks weren't just a pleasant dream right? I mean its pretty logical since Miyazaki has grown so big that there's no way the big wigs in from software will not listen to him....right?
You know in Hindsight there being 2 Nine-Balls explains the number one ranking. It's two Ravens doing the work of one. Plus they make their AC's identical to disorient their opponents, making them believe their is only one really fast/tricky AC Pilot.
@@AnatoliasAce3341 I do now, the core point still stands. Though 9-Ball could have just been placed there regardless. However I feel like the AI would need to still employ them from time to time to keep up the illusion. There being two AC's working in perfect unison, while maintaining the illusion of their being only one, would help to sell that this is the 1# Raven.
@@patrickbuckley7259 personally i believe it's more likely that nine ball used to be a raven untill it fell into debt or got the "plus" "uppgrade" one way or another, and then became the computer's puppet. From then on either it made a copy one way or another or maybe the pilot could remote control a second AC.
@BlackMage Wow thanks for this great comment, BlackMage! 🙂 my initial comment didn’t warrant such a beautifully descriptive account of the different games and how the mechanics differ!
26:20 Fun fact about lil ol' Valkyrie there: Her "missile barrage weapon" is actually a shoulder mounted assault-shotgun. (it's the back-mounted Slug-Gun you can buy and equip, but fires at ludicrous speed instead of really slowly) It was such an infamous weapon, that you can actually unlock and use a near-functionally identical version of it in Project Phantasma (called "SPGUN") where it is comically overpowered. (the most overpowered stuff in the franchise was found in Project Phantasma. SPGUN is quaint compared to WA-FINGER; a hand-shaped machinegun that basically sprays lead at 5x the next best model and has 1500 rounds. Melts just about everything in seconds, including the final boss of the campaign in that game)
WA-FINGER technically didn't fire any faster than other machine guns, it's just that it fired from all 5 barrels simultaneously, basically it was a ludicrously fast automatic shotgun. Master of Arena nerfed it heavily, making it shoot slower, deal less damage, and reducing the ammo pool from 3000 down to a measly 500.
@@JeffHikari Basically, it was an AR-1000 with way higher base damage, and 5x multi-shot. Only real drawback, if you could call it one, was the short range due to the spray. Utterly ludicrous weapon though.
@@procow2274 Yeah. :\ A lot of Special locks got introduced in places they really shouldn't have at that. AC3 had this problem too, and why the majority of designs ran rifles and machineguns to the exclusion of everything else in competitions. Apart from the XCW-90 and KARASAWA (and arguably the energy shotgun) no other energy weapon was remotely worth running because of tiny lockboxes and lag-sight tracking. Weapon arms also suffered from this same problem in AC3 too; AC1 and AC2 have very functional weapon arms, even if they completely lack defenses and limited ammo.
So you're saying there's a Valkyrie in a FromSoft game that's one of the toughest bosses in the game and has a ridiculous attack that's fast and hits for massive damage if you get caught in it? Where have I seen that before...?
It’s so interesting just FROM SOFTWARE this game is. Like this game was made years before Miyazaki came to the company, and we associate so many FROM SOFTWARE-isms with his quirks (looking at all those fire keeper feet). But truth be told, they were using this design language so long before he arrived, it feels like they really just have backed it into their culture to make games like this.
@@Richard_Cranium exactly, the japanese call them "from-games" and that's more fitting imo. Fromsoftware can make completely different genres and still feel consistent because they have their own style.
There's a game called Daemon Ex Machina. I haven't played it myself, but from what I understand it's meant to be a spiritual successor to the Armored Core games
I'm only 15 minutes into this video and I've already downloaded this PS1 game and I'm hyped as fuck to try it out. From Software are built different, man. Even back in the 90s.
@@georgemosidze1794Not piracy if he has an original ps1 disc that he can rip the rom off of. Emulation itself is fully legal, even game companies use emulation for their classic games to work on modern systems.
@@dragonandavatarfan8865 If you own the game legit but can't rip it yourself, you're even good to download it. Provided you get the same version, anyway. Might depend on country though.
Loved your coverage of this classic. =) Quad legs make the platforming tougher; slippery, and sluggish to jump. I remember some nimble bipedals taking the edge off. Part of the beauty is tailoring your build to context.
Back in the mid-90s I plumped for an N64, but armored core was one of those games that had me deeply envious of PlayStation owners. Now finally playing armored core 6, which is a blinder of a game, but man I wish I'd have been able to play these games back in the day
I remember finding the Easter egg, that when you died against 9 ball you were able to fire shoulder weapons while moving. Weird but I loved it. Also this was were we meet Patches. I believe he was hired to back you up, only to backstab you. Good ole' Patches.
A few corrections: 1) You don't get the shoulder-weapons-plus-movement from dying to Nine-Ball. Dying to him results in an instant game over. You get that upgrade far earlier in the game through the Human Plus secret. 2) Patches was first seen in For Answer on PS3/360, as "Patch the Good Luck;" in the mission you encounter him in, if you kill his partner first, he stops attacking and begs for mercy. If you leave him alone, he actually leaves the combat area without firing another shot, and the mission counts as completed.
I remember having to ascend through a hole in the bottom of 9 Ball's arena and being proper stoked when i killed him. I think he had weapons that defied the weight restrictions?
This series is literally why I was confused when people were getting refunds on demon souls and dark souls. Being a kid and hearing my life beeping just to have a cutscene of a boss mech appearing.
@@Anedime Having starting playing King's Field The Ancient City the other day, I can confirm that Demon's/Dark Souls are much, _much_ easier. Non-tank controls and a third-person perspective do wonders for playability.
@@kyon813 I played the original (US) King's Field on PS1 way back when it first came out (I was about 15 years old at the time) and loved the concept and atmosphere despite not knowing what the hell I was doing. It's probably why I warmed up to Armored Core 1/2 and the Soulsbourne games so easily and readily as they came along. :)
@@BlastMagicianYGO lol I played both US Kings Field games and 2 Armored Core games and when Dark Souls got big and I heard people saying "oh god it's so hard" I was like FROMSoft made it? Yeah of course it's hard Then I played DS and I was like "pfff this is like easy-mode Kings Field"
@@Anedime The thing is Dark Souls *is* quite challenging The way that Guitar Hero or Ikaruga is challenging; it's just figuring out the pattern and then executing it Of course once you played Ikaruga Dark Souls doesn't seem that hard more just tedious
Love that you added in the secret parts and human plus - for a long time I thought I was the only one that knew about that in my teenaged ignorance and it felt like id found something amazing hidden in the game, I then went on the follow the series and dearly loved every frustrating minuet of it. From software gave me a fantastic bit of my childhood to look back on in quiet moments and I thank them for it. Just as I thank you now for making this and reminding me of it.
When you linked two different PSone's together with the link cable option and played on two different monitors, Versus mode has additional stages that were not available when you weren't using the link. They changed from each game, but were always a blast to play.
Lugged my PS1 and 27" TV over to a friend's to do this quite a bit. Totally worth the risk of destroying a TV and subsequent years of chronic back pain.
@@mptesteroni lol, yes someone who knows the pain. For us it was lugging a Panasonic TV from my friend's attic down to the living room. It was like having an arcade experience, and it was amazing.
I played way too much AC1, but it taught me a lesson that was true for the entire series. Energy weapons do not cost anything for ammo. So I always stick with energy for an early game boost in credits. Love your content!
Personally, I always had a problem with that. Srsly, it was like a 'cheat'. Even Energy weapons should Cost. - Why? Cuz energy comes from SOMEWHERE. and even if it's drawing power from your Compact Fusion Genny onboard.. it still has ammo count which obviously means there's a 'cartridge' of some sort, be it even an Encapsulation field or etc(look at the Plasma Cannon); ie. Energy-based weapons should cost LESS but not Nothing, and the energy cost shoulda been nearly doubled. //espeically considering the Power of these weapons.
Exactly! Ffs... Fromsoft has been in my life since early childhood... Played this AC's demo... Played "Eternal" Ring Played Evergrace Then waaaaay later on, thousands of hours across all the soulsborne games... Feels like I've missed out on so much. This series is right up my alley...
get AC 4 Answer , will be the easiest entry if you never played any of the games and captures the essence best. otherwise if you still have a ps2 play ac nexus or silent line
Flipping between the menus was, regrettably, my favorite part of the franchise. Doing couch pvp in Silent Line was so great, and it was mostly us having 30 second fights and spending an hour tweaking every little thing.
Great Video! Don't know if someone already mentioned it but there are actually 2 different routes in AC1. The one you picked is the pro-Murakumo route, where you help them defeat Chrome. The other route is exactly the opposite defeating Murakumo and their space stations and what not. The last two missions of both routes is the same. The trap of boss savage and the final one are exactly the same. The trigger of the route depends on which mission you pick at the "Factory". Either Chromes request "Guard Factory Entrance" or Murakumos "Secret Factory Recon". EDIT: Actually another thing I'd like to tell you. You're one of the only people who played this game and realized the Human Plus cutscene is related to Hustler One/Nine Ball by comparing the lamps to the one in the final room. The lore may sound complicated but I'm also really sure that this is the case as well! I'm absolutely happy that more people are making showcases of AC1 these days. You can't compare Dark Souls/Elden Ring to just King's Field while a lot of From Softwares story telling, narrative and lore was born in this very game.
its until you connect the dots that hustler one himself is an AI nad thus actually has human + as an inbuilt ability sure that makes him cheaty hard in MoA where its basically one giant flat arena you are fighting on and the AI is not derpy enough for the arena version of ninball to be cheesed via mine field
In the Chrome route of the game, they send you a mail after completing "Retrieving capsule", claiming Murakumo actually didn't invent the Human Plus technology. They either found it or were given it. Considering all the points you mentioned as well, I always thought it had to be Hustler One in order to create a rival corporation to Chrome which was older and bigger than Murakumo.
42:38: "I knew helping would come back to hurt me." This really does feel like a Fromsoft staple as well. I mean, how many quests in Elden Ring alone does the act of simply doing good things for people result in horrific results, both for you and for them? Like, what if you give Boc a Larval Tear? Or hell, go back to DS1: what happens when you tell Laurentius what he wants to know about Izalith? Or help Siegmeyer progress through the world and save him repeatedly? From loves to make you question whether being indiscriminately kind is a good idea.
I don't think the protag of AC is ever particularly 'kind', it's more a matter of your own pride and/or greed coming back to get you. More akin to having a Very Trusty Friend show you a super rare, super free treasure just *right down there* lol
@@versebuchanan512 I mean Armored Core 4A which is one of the only two directed by Miyazaki absolutely does this with the League ending where you prevent ORCA from carrying out their plan which in-game is heavily implied to be very likely to doom humanity to extinction versus killing thousands to potentially save the species in the ORCA ending.
Reminds me of KOTOR. You give a beggar money at one point and your mentor starts scolding you for your wanton pointless good-doing. She then uses the Force to show you the beggar later getting robbed and killed because other beggars saw that he'd received credits. "If you'd ignored him like everyone else, he'd still be alive. But you think you did good by giving him credits, don't you?" -kinda thing. It's towards the start to reinforce the fact every choice has consequences and those consequences don't always align with intention. Just like real life! 🤓 Hell is paved with good intentions!
@@versebuchanan512 I love how Patches is like a deconstruction of this trope, too. His first impressions are almost always "shady dude doing malicious things to me like an asshat," and almost always ends up "shady dude who actually helps quite a lot and maybe isn't just an asshat." Patches is not a "good" man and is rarely ever helpful just for the sake of it, but somehow ends up being a friend so reliable he transcends time, space, genres and franchises.
Yeah, except this is like the 6th or 7th game they've been doing this. Seeing NPCs dying at the end of their quests over and over and over again has started to get boring to see. I feel like spongebob getting bored of the flying dutchman constantly scaring him. Shock factor stops working when you keep being exposed to it
Algorithm fed me this video in the wake of the Armored Core 6 announcement. Owe my lifelong love of stompy robots to playing Armored Core, Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries and watching Return of the Jedi all in the same year as a youth. Always had a pipe dream of an Armored Core and MechWarrior/Battletech crossover.
make sure to bhop, double tap the boosters to hop, wait for the AC to land, press booster right before it lands to prevent landing end lag it makes every old-gen armored core game (pre 4) twice as fast
Yup this is the way. I used to call it dash-strafing. Basically Armored Core's version of circle strafing around someone. Even better if you have a lighter mech and balanced parts for infinite energy.
Low key breaks the earlier games. That and rockets are great bang for your buck (and weight), especially in missions that generally have a fair number of easy to hit enemies.
Bhopping and the movement tech is what makes this series special. To get such deep mechanics in an early psx game is ridiculous. Playing around with your parts to maximize your en efficiency is so great, much better than the builds you get in souls games.
Carrying your core into the next "add-ons" for PSone was also a fantastic touch. Granted, that meant it was the same exact engine as the firsts, but it kept the experience going. I haven't dived into the PS2 sequels as I was just recently able to acquire them. Looking forward to those experiences again
The PS2 sequels are even better with some of the UI problems addressed, tons more parts (and hidden parts), arena ladder matches, better graphics and eventually adding dual analog support (which I just can't get used to).
@@stiimuli Me neither. The tank controls from the originals give the ACs their heft, and you feel more like an Ace when you start getting better at working with the limitations, doing battle in the air. Anything the AI can do, you can do too.
I grew up with Armored Core, I absolutely loved it. The later installments of the series had better graphics and more features, but they always seemed way too tryhard in their story and never gave the atmosphere and feel of the first three games.
Armored core is one of my favorite series, I am a huge fan of their indirect, none-linear story telling. It makes you piece together all the bits of info after missions, and the politics between the factions. It is usually several playthroughs later that I'm beginning to understand what really happened. Truly a FROM software masterpiece.
The best part is that within each armored core gen you can transfer your save and all of your collected parts between games so you can 100% AC1 and then start Phantasma with all of your stuff, 100% it, and then start Master of Arena with 2 games worth of parts and really go to town.
Probably my favorite game of all time, and yet, there was piles here I never discovered for myself. Fascinating. This is the best armored core review on youtube, and it's decades after its release. Fantastic mate. Absolutely.
One of my favourite PlayStation games. I loved how you really had to think about what build to use in order to complete a mission as effectively as possible. I recall trying multiple builds to try and complete the mission with 100s of tiny bots without running out of ammo or dying, only to finally rely on a fast tank build that simply ignored many of the bots in order to rush the actual objective.
Two notes your playthrough completely missed: Energy Weapons don't have an ammo cost. Investing in them early greatly increases your income/makes it much easier to not fall into a debt spiral. You won't fight Valkyrie at all in your playthrough if you refuse to side with Chrome. Otherwise, was fun to get a retrospective on a FS classic.
@@MadPirateShin Reverse-joint sucked in PvP due to not being able to sideways/turn boost. Need regular legs for that, not any other. Reverse joint were fine for many missions though. If I recall they tended to have good defense, particularly vs shell. But if facing a strong AC it might be a bit hard to avoid their attacks due to the lack of side boost. LN-2KZ-SP were god legs in my opinion. Not available until the expansions though.
@@rjohnson2813 What is it with people that love to say things like "Wrong." Or in your case: "Not True." Opening with 1 or 2 words, followed by a period, declares with finality that someone else is incorrect. That always comes off as obnoxiously arrogant to me. Which probably isn't a coincidence, because arrogant people generally love to tell others that they're wrong. But the other thing about arrogant people: they're usually also ignorant. And your comment is a perfect example of all these phenomenon. If you try to be less arrogant in future, that will help you be less ignorant. And then the world will be a better place; not only for those around you, but indeed for you as well!
I played countless hours of that demo disc and Armored Core was always my favorite, it even had a playable splitscreen versus mode that my brother and I played a bunch. It wasn't until years later that I actually played the full game (as well as Intelligence Qube and Ace Combat 2). Awesome video Josh thanks for bringing back some memories!
Awesome content! Armored Core will always have a special place in my heart. Probably unpopular opinion, but Last Raven was my favourite of the bunch. Liked the characters, the little of them the game had and most of the multiple endings were great. Hundreds of hours customizing and trialing ACs against Pulverizers, Daemon or 2-3 Ligers, it shouldn't have been that much fun, but damn, to me it was.
Armored Core is one of my all-time favorites. That intro still gets me pumped. I'd love to see a competent modern take on this franchise. It's fun watching you experience / explain many of the same pitfalls with specific missions that I remember from ages ago. The volatile factory. The delicate buses. The many, many quadrupeds. The MATHS.
While it's not AS awesome as Armored Core in my opinion, I highly recommend Daemon x Machina. It's made by the original AC devs and carries the spirit, though it does feel more monster-hunter-ish in focus (you get most of your parts from doing missions).
Rewatching this after I saw the announcement from the game awards. This review did the game (and series) so much justice and I'm happy that the series is coming back and throw this video at all my friends that don't realize why I'm so excited lol
I remember playing this game almost every night with my friends. Not many people can play it back then because it was hard af so we really felt like we are one of the lucky ones playing a semi hidden gem. It was a very unique game in the FPS genre, the customization is unmatched back then.
Back when i played this as a kid ( love this game) , i had to teach everyone how to dodge by showing them the strafe buttons. Bumpers got ignored a lot back then.
I remember when everyone in my immediate circle upgraded from "James Bond: Agent under fire" to "James Bond Nightfire". Agent under fire I don't think had any form of strafing(iirc none of the controller settings had both camera and movement set to the analog sticks) and nightfire did, and the whole way I viewed shooters changed drastically. Nightfire had controls that were actually pretty close to what most FPS control schemes are like today, and it was just a whole different genre after that. God I wish I could go back to those old ass splitscreen days.
Loved playing this game, completed it so many times and had a blast of a time in the Vs mode when playing agents my friends. Still have my copy safe and sound.
This was my very first game with my brand new PS1 when I was 10 years old. It goes without saying that AC pretty much brainwashed me to love mechs for the rest of my life.
The best part about playing armored core as a kid was getting the Tips & Tricks magazine to see what armored core builds they put together. Good times, good times... and now I feel old. Meeeeeeeeemories all alone in the moooooonlight
I am emotional watching this. Armored Core 1 was a game I found at a flea market as a kid because the cover looked cool. It was everything I ever wanted in a game and I had no idea games could do this. The customization, the movement, the exploration within missions, the challenge of it all. I adore this series and I continue to buy Sony Consoles almost solely because of the 1% chance another armored core game comes out so I can play it right away. The games fell off for me in recent titles, but the music and menu sounds will always make me giddy.
The Moonlight and Karasawa really are the signature pair of legendary weapons in this series. Love it when I'm able to manage fitting both on a mid-weight biped build and still have room for maybe a missile pod.
I can't find info on these games so I think my best way to learn more from a fan perspective, how they are, how they've changed and all that, is by asking here.
I was REALLY hoping this would be about the Franchise itself, not just the first game. But damn, this brings back so many memories. That music especially.
For its time, yeah, it was incredible. The story, action, customization, and immersion were all really high level gaming. Edit: Wow, that's nuts. I had no idea about the Human Plus thing. I never let myself fail that much. I reloaded and tried again. ALWAYS get a high damage energy weapon, to save on energy costs. Ranged energy sword for the same reason. EVERY BULLET COUNTS. You fire too blindly and aren't waiting for the CONFIRMED shot.
>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
Don't forget the ending. That was pure Fromsoft.
Moonlight, an impressive blade in the hands of a mech or person.
and its was still AMAZING..
he makes tank build in armored core loses a lot :I he like explains making a tank is bad then goes on to make another tank and fail more.
@@whitenoise0065 as someone who favors tanks in more than half of situations, tank tread ACs are not about mobility, but sheer firepower, HP, and weight limits. It is also one of the leg types to be able to fire shoulder-mounted cannons on the move without the required Human+ augmentation.
That does mean that low mobility will result in getting hit by high damager per shot weapons that are normally slow in traversal.
"Now for the toughest enemy. The camera"
That's how you know it's truly a FromSoft game.
If the camera is too good, everyone could play it...
Dark souls has great cameras, it's more of a 90 s thing
If you control the camera well you're not really playing the game right. its like using Ashes or magic or leveling up in Elden Ring. Don't be a pansy easy mode player.
Needs more "Death by Gravity" tbh
More like a PSX game hehe
"So these souls-likes... They all are actually armoredcore-likes?!"
"Always have been"
*SHOT*
>Has to pay 2000 Credits for the shot
No
@@aidankircher8865
I found it hilarious/great that you had to pay for your own bullets. It was like "What, you thought these grew on trees?"
Umm actually *pushes up glasses with one finger* they are not Armor Core Likes, they are KingsField-Likes
@@brennanscarcello1443 ☝🤓
"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.
couldn't be happier
Joshtradamus
We need a different anagram because I’m gonna have a hard time telling between Ace Combat or Armored Core just like Team fortress 2 and Titanfall 2
@@Anonymous-73 yeah I thought assassins creed too 💀
@@sauzy0 and Animal Crossing too lmao
The customization and "gun for hire" aspects of this game are what really captured my imagination as a kid.
Mercenary games
spent a good time trying to find this game out of nostalgia memories for those reasons alone
@@Aereto MW4:Mercs - MekTek version. STILL played online by alot of old farts. I got to play with one of the Dev-crew & some dude who was 80+ yrs old. dude it was epic. wish i hadn't been so 'checked out' these last few years :/
You should try Mechwarrior 4: Mercenaries sometimes. It was the at the time free version of MW4 minus the plot based on being a merc.
"Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction" is my all-time favorite, and the game that made me grow fond of Open World Games.
it is a game where you take sides on a fictional conflict against North Korea, and it's main draw is the "Deck of 64", which is a reference to Afhgan Bounties.
you got a open world, bounties to hunt and not only a decent arsenal but Air Supplies on Demand... as long as you can afford it.
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.
Really glad Battletech's designs took a form of their own; the earliest designs are by far the ugliest
@@TheHappyMadman The designs made by the FASA team back then weren't the best yes. It was the Japanese designs they licensed that were the best looking designs, hence the Unseen tended to be some of the most iconic mechs. At the very least though, PGI's take on the battlemechs finally gave Battletech the actual mechanical design language the rest of them needed.
The leg shapes in particular are VERY signature of his style, with the big "calves" and whatnot.
So that's why Evangel's AC Oracle resembles Soundwave!
I was wondering why so much of this felt like "we wanted to make a Battletech game but they wouldn't let us have the rights."
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.
I really wish they'd do more like the first 3 eras of it...4 was okay, but kind of went far to gundam with it while the others were the heavier feeling mechs
@@AzraelThanatos My personal favorite is For Answer, its a level of customization and fast combat unmatched by literally anything
What is your favorite in the series? I played AC 2 at like 13. Loved it, but barely remember anything it feels.
considering the limitations of the PS1, it was pretty mind blowing, I have to agree.
I remember being instantly obsessed after finding it. My Dad's housemate lent me his copy when I must have been about 11.
@@randomfurrygirl548 Different strokes, especially as 4 is rather different from the rest. Silent Line is prolly my personal favorite due to it being my first and also just being a love mix of the best parts of AC, but I also have a soft spot for For Answer, as well as Last Raven just for the sheer variety of parts. The only series I don't really like is 5.
Revisiting this after Armored Core VI reveal. Excited to see how the series will evolve
Let's watch this again brother, I'll see you again in battle when the game releases
@@elloneng7965 I tried to get into it a few years ago with emulation but the controls made me drop it, VI got announced and i'm happy to say i just finished 1 today, the controls are still bad but there is a solid game underneath. Started project phantasma a few hours ago, i hope they release a remaster as well.
@@andream5690 try my keysetting? it's may help [direction botton for movemont direction]_[triangle - look up / X - look fown / square -turn left / O - turn right] L2 for booster and R2 for switch weapon
R1 - fire weapon / L1 - Laser Blade (iirc ac1 left hand can equip only laser blade)
Arriving here after the reveal.
I'm so hyped, though I do expect delays.
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
I was going to say, it really feels like this is a concept that was remarkably fully formed in its first iteration, obviously barring technological limitations. So many series you can see the developers slowly figure out what the most important parts are as they iterate, but the game as shown in this video feels like it's a demake of AC6 (similar to the fan Bloodborne one) rather than a first attempt at the idea.
As the saying goes, "no need to reinvent the wheel"
yeah same! it's really cool how they've just iterated and refined on it instead of making revolutionary new systems like a lot of other long-running franchises end up doing
Umm that's not inherently good design. Noticing references, and that things haven't changed for fromsoft even the bad parts since their earliest games is a sign of bad game design and not listening to fans, or feedback. Armored core 6 literally has lost all of its retention already and most people quit the game pretty fast due to its very generic mechanics, lack of innovation, and the game slowly just becoming a merge of dark souls and armored core. A brand new game that came out only months ago has like 10 viewers on twitch currently, and very little content being made about it. That is not a testament to good design.
They also started just blatantly making their mechs into Gundams instead of sticking with their unique original design. This whole, "Oh reference, that means game is good," think needs to stop. copy pasting the same exact formula from years ago, but eliminating tons more mechanics and streamlining their games is not a testament to their design sicne the game sold like shit, and the reviews even by verteran players are pretty awful.
@@lunova6165 It's not inherently good or bad design, it's just very cool to see that the series figures out its core loop that immediately.
And the game definitely is a success, it's just in a genre (single player action games) that doesn't have a ton of longevity in terms of Twitch viewership. Once streamers beat the game there's not too much reason to keep showing it. Compare it to Hi-Fi Rush, another successful action game this year, and AC6 has twice as many viewers right now (though both are very low).
Steam achievement stats are a more useful stat. AC6's two initial endings each have about 40% completion and the NG++ one has 28%. Those are pretty good completion rates, since most people who play a game don't finish it, let alone replay it twice.
Gundam: Mech combat has a cost on our humanity.
Armored Core: Mech combat has a cost on our wallet.
and humanity too if you go over 50k in debt!
Dai-Guard: Mech Combat has a cost on our work budget, wages, and insurance.
@@Doomerang01 Dai-Guard, the most horrifyingly realistic mecha property ever made. (Emergency Engagement Authorization Paperwork, I rest my case.)
@@aka-47k nah if you go into debt you just become a new type
Battletech: mech combat has a cost on both
"If there's no one left alive, there's no one left to say you weren't being stealthy."
-Josh Strife Hays
You would fit in well with the Steiner Scout Squad.
Dead men tell no tales mate XD
Too bad being stealthy is optional. Needed some mission where stealth is required or instant defeat.
Ah yes, russian stealth.
@@jeremystone5946
Project Phantasma and Another Age both have this and it's terrible in both
-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.
@@oriandthesleepytime they meant it came from FROM SOFTWARE 😜
@@Orinslayer Exactly 😋
Losing*
It is wild to see just how much of From Softwares identity existed before Miyazaki ever even joined the company. He seems to have been molded by the company as much as he has molded its style. It’s really uncanny just how much of of the same DNA is in all those games.
The OG is actually King's Field
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.
Armored Core was how I learned to have a finger on each of the trigger keys. Though I've since lost that habit, it was not impossible to learn if an 8 year old could do it.
@@jonathanblair5920 for me it was the nier series
Armored core taught me how to use claw grip which I needed whenever I ran a dual shotgun build.
pov: your dexterity score is actually 1 point above the human limits
@@Amin-al-Husseini_1941picture I guess you could say its... Human plus.
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.
Same same, my friend. The good old days.
Same
I was really into AC in high school too but none of my friends were lol
played this with my uncle when i was in high school, we would smoke a joint and play this for hoursssss
Ah, the time spent with a light as you can get mech, max boost, and a Moonblade. Hours spent switching controllers every time someone lost their duel.
It's great to see when people play it drastically differently to the way YOU play it.
I make acs that look like animals :)
@@procow2274 that's cool!
Coming back to this after telling some friends about Armored Core due to the new announcement- there's so much care in this video that I can't help but watch it over and over. Absolutely pulled me into Armored Core, thank you!
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.
I was going to put my own reply to this video up...but every single word you said is exactly what I think too. Praise be Armored Core, it's return can't come soon enough!
@@jesseperry9602 My thoughts exactly with one bit of input. I want 6 but only if they don't return to 5's style of gameplay, I for one want 4 or 4 Answer style AC's again that really only had to worry about other AC's or boss type enemies.
Try Another Century's Episode series (JP only but there are translations online). Virtual On series is another classic with some games having global versions
DaemonXmachina is a relatively new game that follows in the footsteps of AC. A spiritual successor, since Fromsoft hasn't released AC content in a while.
@@Kurotaisa DaemonXmachina is a terrible game. I play with a group of friends that generally play mech games. We where desperate at that time when we tried that game it was horrible. Armored core and MechWarrior is pretty much it. The rest is sub par pretenders.
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.
Yep it definitely required you either going to gamefaqs as a youngin or pen and paper lol
@@Klipschrf35 LOL I feel like all armored core players eventually find or found their way onto a gamefaqs guide
I accidentally went into too much debt and wound up becoming a Plus pilot. Unlocking all of the Plus abilities made the game so much more fun to play.
Yeah, I knew the game is very unusual when it started billing me for used ammo and repair.
that feel when you miss your three Ultra large missile shot. "I will not recovered financially from this"
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.
Did the same
I don't remember the ending
Yep, I built an AC to take out both 9-ball ACs and the final boss no matter the cost.
It was all too impressive. Essentially saying "I am more than twice the pilot you are, and then some!"
You missed out on items doing so.
@@crisnmaryfam7344 It was the end of the game. I am not a completionist.
As a kid, I wasn't good enough to beat the game so I used a couple gameshark codes for infinite armor. I thought I actually broke the game a little, because I thought the game didn't expect you to beat him. Now I think it's proof that he was just a computer controlled AC, and the computer could make as many as they wanted.
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.
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
Man, seeing that name still give me the chills. Easily one of my favourite games, multiplayer in that game was truly exhilarating. I miss it so, so much. I'd love a sequel, I'd pay big money for a sequel :(
Fromsoft was a name you could trust to make some strange, interesting, if kind of clunky games.
Now they churn out the same cash cow they've been doing since 2013 and people fucking lap it up like they didn't just buy Demons' souls 7 times. And then have the gall to act like buying the newest Call of Duty is somehow different.
@@TheGreatDanish I mean, to be fair, they've been churning out armored core games long before they switched to dark souls. Give em time, they'll shift to other genres I'm sure.
Yeah I know too well this game too, was good times on this game. Very tactical gameplay in multyplayer and you better knew what you had to do.
@@TheGreatDanish Yeah... like they didn't churn out mech games before that
I absolutely *LOVED* Armored Core. My brothers and I played it religiously! It was sooooooo cool. Just the fact that you could customize your mech was like really really cool in those days.
Hello fellow raven
It was and still is one of my favourite mech games.
My brother and I loved this game too
If rumors are true their working on a new one finally.
@@SpadeAlchemistify that's awesome! So to be honest I played a lot of AC1, an ass load of 2, and a bit of 3.
But after that I stopped getting em.
It might be fun to buy one if a new one comes out! If for nothing else for nostalgias sake. Besides I bet if they do a new one it'll be pretty cool!
Thank you for making this and giving such a thorough experience of why Armored Core is such an awesome game and series.
I’m here right after the armored core 6 announcement, I gotta say I’m pretty hyped! Also this game aged really well, the customization and combat looks really good at its time.
Armored Core was actually the series that taught me not to put too much faith in professional games journalism, near two decades ago. I would read reviews in gaming magazines that gave a particular AC game a 65-70/100 with the primary complaints being that there was *too much* customization. They complained about having to change radiators, that they found it tedious and silly. Meanwhile, this much customization was one of the primary selling points for me. I absolutely loved spending hours trying new builds. It really demonstrated that such quantitative review scores are often utterly pointless as they're just a way for a certain reviewer to grade the game on how much it fits their own tastes. Thankfully, we have reached an age in which properly contextualized reviews are plentiful and easily accessed.
Yeah, videogame journalists have ALWAYS been bad.
It's almost like different people enjoy different things and journalists are limited to their taste and ability to play games.
Game journalists are just barely a starting point, not a replacement for your own judgement.
Video game reviews exist so that you can buy the game. They manufacture consent which is why they would give Call of Duty games very high scores even though I find them terribly boring. With that said, not everyone is going to like everything in a game so finding the customization in AC tedious isn't wrong. These games got harder by the time AC3 came out.
I guess the argument would be more about the use of points in a review. To be fair, though, not everyone enjoys the idea of managing a mech and it's components. Generally you wouldn't expect someone to play the entirely of a game, and post the review, if they didn't have any interest from the outset, I'd agree. To many of us, having options like that is a good thing, but to many it gets in the way, even if the game was built around it. These days, though, I think that the customization would be seen in a more positive light when it comes to reviews. Elden Ring did well, even if you didn't have to decide on what FCS and generator you wanted, but it did have a lot of choice. So here's hoping AC6 exists and people like it.
Video game reviewers have much more in common with movie or restaurant critics than actual journalists. Unless they are just a complete shill for the companies, they speak with their own voice from their own viewpoints. What the audience has to do is be able to find critics whose opinions and tastes closely mirror their own. Then they know they can trust their opinions on stuff. It's very much the difference between a journalist and a critic. Journalists are there to report news, updates, and break stories. Critics are the ones who should be doing reviews. With video games unfortunately, those lines are often blurred to the point of erasure, and with the constant barrage of payola, social media influencing, and outright deception, it's very hard to know who to trust.
“It’s definitely a From Software game if you can fail the intro” lmao I’ve never thought about that
Most PS1 games still came with manuals in the box, so I probably memorised the control scheme at work after buying it on my lunch break, before coming home to play the game in the evening.
Probably why George Wood didn't care for it...
I played that demo for countless hours, especially the VS mode, brings back the memories, makes me feel like a kid again
me too
Yeah I had the demo too I actually thought it was the entire game lol
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.
I hope they treat it like a major release and put as much effort into it as in elden ring
@@brotbrotsen1100 Fromsoft treat everygame the same, remember Bloodborne and Sekiro where just side games for the souls series yet they got the treatment that made them the highest rated Fromsoft games( before Elden Ring )
@@n124ajdx Yeah but these games had generally the same concept and never were to different from souls games and they were already doing good. Mech games though were always for a relatively small niche and never did extremely well, armored core, zone of the enders, daemon X machina, all really good games but not all that successful financially so i could see from soft not putting to much budget into the game because the chances that it backfires on them are fairly high. You could say the name from soft will already draw people towards the game but that's not a guarantee since other beloved companies like platinum or even square have quite some failed attempts when they attempted to do something else. I guess it would be good if they advertise it a lot.
I hope it's a PC game.
@@brotbrotsen1100now Fromsoftware have big investment from Tencent, Sony and Bandai.
Also both Miyazaki and the director of Sekiro are working on Armored Core so I'm sure it's a serious project for them
Armored Core was my jam. I was a MechWarrior kid so these games grabbed me quick. Would always build a balanced medium weight mech with weapons bracketed for all ranges. I remember having hours of fun in any of these games just playing around in garage and building my perfect AC. Freaking loved it when they introduced the arena and made it a staple of all the games.
Ah yes MechWarrior and good old TimberWolf. I feel old…..
@@robgoins3672 You and me both. Timberwolf was always my go to mech of choice in every MechWarrior game. Even end game I'd still be piloting one and tearing things up. Love that machine.
@@robgoins3672 FILTHY CLANNER
I''m kidding. I just love the design of the Mad Cat and Mad Cat MkII. I just wish my favorite IS mech Bushwacker had bigger brothers. Imagine a 65-ton 'Wacker with 3 RAC5s instead of RAC2s. I would imagine it'll look like the Catapult but without the bunny ear arms.
That ending sounds great, the idea of the prolonging the battles to limit how powerful humanity gets and targeting you for being too good a mercenary and disrupting the balance, genius concept by fromsoftware, badass
A pretty good leadup to it as well.
A ranking Raven, one of the best in the business, one that previously said that his job is to kill you - which is just fair enough, must be a decently paying contract from Chrome/Millenium - telling you that you're "out of line"? The hell's _that_ supposed to mean now? Whatever, time's money and he's wasting it on his nonsense. Surely what he said has no real implications whatsoever and he's just trying to get in your head.
@thundersoul6795 "nice story bro, unfortunately I have a pulse cannon and the best generator money can offer"
This video is so insanely gripping that I initially planned on falling asleep to it for a nap. Instead, I had a blast listening to the roots of my favourite dev studio. It was relaxing, informative, and watching the whole thing felt as satisfactory as any real life goal. Awesome stuff, your essay abilities are exemplary.
'you will spend more time flicking between the shop and the garage than missions'
me in AC6: _laughs in decal creation_
I remember what blew my mind back when I first played this game, is the ability to take your mech you built in this game and bring it over to the sequel. Then when you beat that game, you can take your saved mech to the sequel after that. It was the first time I had seen anything like that. And even to this day you only really see something like that in live service games.
Nah nah, I’ve never seen where can port assets from one of these rip off battle pass live service games, but know where seen that before for sure:
Pokémon games.
I’ve got some trades from first games on gameboy through DS era till today, like legit 20 year old pokemans been with me since start lol
They totally got that from armored core
@@BRBMrSoul I'm not saying it was the first game to ever do that. I'm just saying it was the first I had seen myself doing it to that extent. In Pokemon you have to do so much just to get 1 transfer. It really isn't the same as having your entire accumulated loot load to the next game in one step. But again, I know it wasn't the first.
Mass Effect is the only other game that did something like this that I can think of. Yeah loot didn’t carry over between 1-3 but having all your story choices carry down from character to character was pretty damn cool.
This is how it was always Meant to be. you have NO idea how much we used to complain about this 'back in the day' : "It's a Sequel, why can't i import my car/mech/character from previous game.. especially in one like AC or MW or GT(Gran Turismo). It's not like they have to give me my 'OP Everything' but gee, ya could give me SOMETHING. hell, look at Mass Effect 1 & 2 - Q.E.D.
A ton of jrpgs of this Era did it as well as many other games had save transfers since Ps1 and ps2 memory cards function the same
Two gripes about your excellent overview of great memories:
1) I seem to remember that the PlayStation1 did not have analog sticks on their controllers when this game was released.
2) You missed the hidden/secret stat that governed turning speed, which the backward legs excelled at.
Thanks for a wonderful walk down memory lane!
the playstation 1 did have analog sticks by the time armored core was released as by that point dualshock 1 controllers were the norm, the first generation of PS controllers did indeed not have analog sticks though so maybe you had one of those when you got the game which would have been 100% possible
@@stickpge the dualshock was nto common and the norm in 1997. FF7 was made for dpad for example, and analog controls at all weren't a thing in that franchise until 98's FF8. Dpad only ps1 games were the default for a long time!
he specifically said that the game did not use analog sticks when outlining the controls at the beginning, Dpad and shoulder buttons
@@stickpge the dual shock wasnt yet standard part of the ps1 package at the time so there was a chance Ps1 owners didnt have it.
this is what made Ac1's control be so akward, they had to presume a lack of analog sticks.
@@stickpge If not for this channel I'd never know the PS1 even had analog sticks.
I always thought that one of the big changes in the PS2 were the analog sticks. You even had a toggle button for them.
I also remember looking into the designs of the other ravens like Nineball and Valkyrie... some of them are actually overweight and require "Human Plus" to even use. Hell 9ball is able to move and fly while firing his shoulder weapons which are crouch weapons (and if I'm not mistaken overweight too... but its also been SO long since I've played I could be wrong on that one). So there are even little nuances in the story there, not just "a difficulty tweak"
That was part of the point. The reason NIneball exists is to protect the system that is running everything. He's not even human anymore. Valkyrie wasn't quite as far converted, but she was definitely H+.
Transhumanism in a nutshell: cybernetic augmentations.
Daemon X Machina is the spiritual follower, which does containing some former FromSoft members that worked on AC. At least we have the equivalent of Human+ but on a progression tree of Head, Body, and Legs, and can see the results of augmentation, with a cost for removing all augmentations. Yes, the pilot can be built to fight if the mech goes down, but unlike the mech, the pilot can't be revived if downed.
@@AdamBladeTaylor Nine-Ball was never human though, it was always an AI. Hustler One is nothing but a facade to hide its real nature.
Human plus is Canon within the setting and many of the top ranking ACs have H+ traits. The are even mentioned in the pilot description for some ACs in AC2.
Well, if you know what Nineball is, it makes sense.
"and now the biggest enemy, the camera"
Ah, I was having trouble believing it before but now I see it truly is a fromsoft game.
these games defined my teenage years. I was obsessed with armored core games above all else. I want a new one SOOOO BAD
They're working on one!
Armored core 6 is on the way......
I didn't get into Armored Core until after I graduated High School, but I love AC a lot. Even thinking about the idea that AC6 might exist makes me too excited.
@@Shmandalf I wonder if it'll come to PC this time. Or if it's gonna remain console-exclusive like rest of the franchise.
A while back there was a guy trying to create an armored core PC ersion. he was building assets and got to a working garage interface. IDK what happened to it though
I literally never knew about the restart bonuses and beat the game without them! Wow! That's hilarious! Mr. Hayes, you are the man for bringing this game to the front yet again! AC IS AWESOME! 🍻🍻
I always made a new file if I got that cutscene 😅
I wish I knew because I would have loved the ez mode honestly.
I did beat the game without them though
Only problem with Armored Core is the initials will lead others to think you're talking about Assassins Creed.
@@propheinx2250 Or Ace Combat. Or Animal Crossing
@@asdbanz316 "Holy sheit! When did Animal Crossing get so hard, its like playing one of the souls game!" - after you tell your gullible sibling that its Tom Nook in the other AC and you're Isabelle in the player mech chasing him around because he bailed on paying for something and he's overdue on his house payments...
@@asdbanz316 its called Project ACes
I would spend hours getting my build to have just enough weight for the legs and just enough power consumption for the generators. In later AC games you could start the round overweight with a big Gundam style canon and just purge the dead weight when the ammo was spent to get your movement speed back up to something functional. Being over the weight limit was like the beta version of fat rolling.
The fact there was this much complexity in the first game is actually insane. Has me even more hyped for Armored core 6
Did it deliver?
@@ArcSolaire To say it delivered is an understatement. Armored Core 6 absolutely nailed it.
@@JebAlert Agreed haha. I had to platinum it, it's so good.
@@ArcSolaireNot exactly
@@kakizakichannelTempleOS. Next.
I had a memory card dedicated entirely to this game. Played the hell out of it with my cousin when we were kids. Thanks for the nostalgia trip
Damn thats wholesome af and relatable. Hope you and your cousin can relive 6 together the same way you guys did as kids 😊
The presentation of this video is insane. Made me feel like I was playing through the game myself and discovering the wonder of the AC units, the hidden weapons, the story twists myself. Amazing video that captures the feel of someone playing through the game for the first time with you.
Absolutely astounding customization for it's time... I'm honestly blown away. I would have dropped huge amounts of time on this game as a kid if I'de ever gotten my hands on it
I absolutely did spend hundreds of hours in AC games, they were great. Heres hoping AC6 comes out and does the series justice.
I would describe the Armored Core series’s customization options as “overwhelming”. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing up to personal preference.
And we could have been Raven brothers
I played Master of the Arena first, and got good from there.
My brother threw me to the dogs and made me play it when I was about 4 or 5 years old. Im glad he did, it shaped my understanding of games and customization and many games do not live up to it. I replay the originals every other year to this day.
ARMORED CORE!!!!!!! ARMORED CORE 6 IS REAL!!!!!
Gameplay trailer just dropped like a weak ago!!!!!
🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪
CAN WE GET MUCH HIGHER (can’t wait for my preorder to come in next month)
OH OH OH, OH OH OHHO
What was I talking about
I can see where Titanfall got the inspiration from Armored Core. I wish Titanfall had that type of customization. This game looks awesome, especially for 97'. Maybe we will get lucky and get a new Armored Core in 2023
This aged well
@@aloo7687 lol That is what happens when you put good things out in the Universe 😎. I just watched the the game awards and I'm stoked for us all!
@@travisoutlaw9511 Yeah for sure and I just watched the game awards as well don't even know much about armored core but the trailer had me hyped anyways
This comment aged well
Based and precise.
Armored core, gundam, and mechwarrior are what got me into mechs all those years ago. This game series will forever hold a special place in my heart.
I really need another Armored Core in my life. These games are so good and the little bit of story that is told to you is so deep and well-written
If armored core 6 comes out on PC I am so buying it
Heard a rumor that Miyazaki is making an Armored Core game right now
Some months back Armored Core development was leaked
@@jabberjaw4289 i might end up buying a ps5 just for that game if not. But i feel with the success of their games on pc theyd be silly not to.
Guy Armored Core 6 is a real thing right? Those art leaks weren't just a pleasant dream right? I mean its pretty logical since Miyazaki has grown so big that there's no way the big wigs in from software will not listen to him....right?
A lot of the mechanics were set in stone so early, love that dedication to its foundations
You know in Hindsight there being 2 Nine-Balls explains the number one ranking. It's two Ravens doing the work of one. Plus they make their AC's identical to disorient their opponents, making them believe their is only one really fast/tricky AC Pilot.
You realize Nine-Ball is an AI, right?
@@AnatoliasAce3341 I do now, the core point still stands. Though 9-Ball could have just been placed there regardless. However I feel like the AI would need to still employ them from time to time to keep up the illusion.
There being two AC's working in perfect unison, while maintaining the illusion of their being only one, would help to sell that this is the 1# Raven.
@@patrickbuckley7259 oh, yeah.
@@patrickbuckley7259 personally i believe it's more likely that nine ball used to be a raven untill it fell into debt or got the "plus" "uppgrade" one way or another, and then became the computer's puppet.
From then on either it made a copy one way or another or maybe the pilot could remote control a second AC.
@@thehatred94 It's shown in Master of Arena that Nine-Ball is mass produced by the AI.
This is potentially my favorite series of video game. Unmatched to this day in aspects like customization and replay-value.
How do the ps2/ps3 versions compare? Never heard of these series until today but I might try and give it a go. Looks great!
@BlackMage Wow thanks for this great comment, BlackMage! 🙂 my initial comment didn’t warrant such a beautifully descriptive account of the different games and how the mechanics differ!
26:20 Fun fact about lil ol' Valkyrie there: Her "missile barrage weapon" is actually a shoulder mounted assault-shotgun. (it's the back-mounted Slug-Gun you can buy and equip, but fires at ludicrous speed instead of really slowly)
It was such an infamous weapon, that you can actually unlock and use a near-functionally identical version of it in Project Phantasma (called "SPGUN") where it is comically overpowered. (the most overpowered stuff in the franchise was found in Project Phantasma. SPGUN is quaint compared to WA-FINGER; a hand-shaped machinegun that basically sprays lead at 5x the next best model and has 1500 rounds. Melts just about everything in seconds, including the final boss of the campaign in that game)
WA-FINGER technically didn't fire any faster than other machine guns, it's just that it fired from all 5 barrels simultaneously, basically it was a ludicrously fast automatic shotgun. Master of Arena nerfed it heavily, making it shoot slower, deal less damage, and reducing the ammo pool from 3000 down to a measly 500.
@@JeffHikari Basically, it was an AR-1000 with way higher base damage, and 5x multi-shot. Only real drawback, if you could call it one, was the short range due to the spray.
Utterly ludicrous weapon though.
@@JeffHikari even with the nerf still one of the best weapons in moa particularly with how weapon tracking got nerfed
@@procow2274 Yeah. :\
A lot of Special locks got introduced in places they really shouldn't have at that.
AC3 had this problem too, and why the majority of designs ran rifles and machineguns to the exclusion of everything else in competitions.
Apart from the XCW-90 and KARASAWA (and arguably the energy shotgun) no other energy weapon was remotely worth running because of tiny lockboxes and lag-sight tracking.
Weapon arms also suffered from this same problem in AC3 too; AC1 and AC2 have very functional weapon arms, even if they completely lack defenses and limited ammo.
So you're saying there's a Valkyrie in a FromSoft game that's one of the toughest bosses in the game and has a ridiculous attack that's fast and hits for massive damage if you get caught in it? Where have I seen that before...?
It’s so interesting just FROM SOFTWARE this game is. Like this game was made years before Miyazaki came to the company, and we associate so many FROM SOFTWARE-isms with his quirks (looking at all those fire keeper feet). But truth be told, they were using this design language so long before he arrived, it feels like they really just have backed it into their culture to make games like this.
That's why the arguments around "is the FROMSOFTWARE game soulslike" are very tiresome. FROMSOFTWARE games are "FROMSOFTWARE-like".
@@Richard_Cranium exactly, the japanese call them "from-games" and that's more fitting imo. Fromsoftware can make completely different genres and still feel consistent because they have their own style.
I sure hope from softwares brings this series back, we've been missing a good mech game for a while now.
There's a game called Daemon Ex Machina. I haven't played it myself, but from what I understand it's meant to be a spiritual successor to the Armored Core games
Mechwarrior 5 is pretty good
Fromsoft have been confirmed to be working on a new AC game as we speak!!!
Heard Miyazaki wants to add Souls elements into future AC game.
There are AC6 screenshot leaks on line. Fromsoft hasn't confirmed it's AC6.... But it's fucking AC6
I'm only 15 minutes into this video and I've already downloaded this PS1 game and I'm hyped as fuck to try it out.
From Software are built different, man. Even back in the 90s.
From now on, you are..... *A Raven*
Were you able to download it on the ps3 store ? It's still live ? If so I'll definitely get a ps3 again and download all my ps classics again
@@AlbertoNegron96I think he means pc emulation I.e. piracy.
@@georgemosidze1794Not piracy if he has an original ps1 disc that he can rip the rom off of. Emulation itself is fully legal, even game companies use emulation for their classic games to work on modern systems.
@@dragonandavatarfan8865 If you own the game legit but can't rip it yourself, you're even good to download it. Provided you get the same version, anyway.
Might depend on country though.
Loved your coverage of this classic. =) Quad legs make the platforming tougher; slippery, and sluggish to jump. I remember some nimble bipedals taking the edge off. Part of the beauty is tailoring your build to context.
You can get really deep into roleplaying since the game allows you to accept sorties without starting them. I'd use the briefing to customize my camo.
36:00 “dark soul” was used in berserk which is a huge inspiration for all their fantasy games. Many of the devs were fans of the series.
Back in the mid-90s I plumped for an N64, but armored core was one of those games that had me deeply envious of PlayStation owners. Now finally playing armored core 6, which is a blinder of a game, but man I wish I'd have been able to play these games back in the day
I remember finding the Easter egg, that when you died against 9 ball you were able to fire shoulder weapons while moving. Weird but I loved it.
Also this was were we meet Patches. I believe he was hired to back you up, only to backstab you. Good ole' Patches.
Motherfragger has been pushing you under the bus since Day 1
A few corrections:
1) You don't get the shoulder-weapons-plus-movement from dying to Nine-Ball. Dying to him results in an instant game over. You get that upgrade far earlier in the game through the Human Plus secret.
2) Patches was first seen in For Answer on PS3/360, as "Patch the Good Luck;" in the mission you encounter him in, if you kill his partner first, he stops attacking and begs for mercy. If you leave him alone, he actually leaves the combat area without firing another shot, and the mission counts as completed.
In my defense, my memory is fuzzy on the details, but the love for the game remains clear. Thanks for the corrections.
@@MyHazey Ay, no worries, man. Trust me, there's a few details about some of the games' plots that are a bit fuzzy to me, we all have those moments.
I remember having to ascend through a hole in the bottom of 9 Ball's arena and being proper stoked when i killed him. I think he had weapons that defied the weight restrictions?
This series is literally why I was confused when people were getting refunds on demon souls and dark souls. Being a kid and hearing my life beeping just to have a cutscene of a boss mech appearing.
Indeed, Armored Core fans were not surprised that demon souls was hard.
@@Anedime Having starting playing King's Field The Ancient City the other day, I can confirm that Demon's/Dark Souls are much, _much_ easier. Non-tank controls and a third-person perspective do wonders for playability.
@@kyon813 I played the original (US) King's Field on PS1 way back when it first came out (I was about 15 years old at the time) and loved the concept and atmosphere despite not knowing what the hell I was doing. It's probably why I warmed up to Armored Core 1/2 and the Soulsbourne games so easily and readily as they came along. :)
@@BlastMagicianYGO lol I played both US Kings Field games and 2 Armored Core games and when Dark Souls got big and I heard people saying "oh god it's so hard" I was like
FROMSoft made it? Yeah of course it's hard
Then I played DS and I was like "pfff this is like easy-mode Kings Field"
@@Anedime The thing is Dark Souls *is* quite challenging
The way that Guitar Hero or Ikaruga is challenging; it's just figuring out the pattern and then executing it
Of course once you played Ikaruga Dark Souls doesn't seem that hard more just tedious
I loved the UI in this game, it looked like what you might see in a tank or an aircraft, making you feel like you were really inside the mech
Love that you added in the secret parts and human plus - for a long time I thought I was the only one that knew about that in my teenaged ignorance and it felt like id found something amazing hidden in the game, I then went on the follow the series and dearly loved every frustrating minuet of it. From software gave me a fantastic bit of my childhood to look back on in quiet moments and I thank them for it. Just as I thank you now for making this and reminding me of it.
When you linked two different PSone's together with the link cable option and played on two different monitors, Versus mode has additional stages that were not available when you weren't using the link. They changed from each game, but were always a blast to play.
I only ever got to try this on Master of Arena but it was awesome.
Lugged my PS1 and 27" TV over to a friend's to do this quite a bit. Totally worth the risk of destroying a TV and subsequent years of chronic back pain.
@@mptesteroni lol, yes someone who knows the pain. For us it was lugging a Panasonic TV from my friend's attic down to the living room. It was like having an arcade experience, and it was amazing.
@@baronwest Bargain Battletech Center at home with party favors and pizza
I played way too much AC1, but it taught me a lesson that was true for the entire series. Energy weapons do not cost anything for ammo. So I always stick with energy for an early game boost in credits. Love your content!
And if you are skilled enough, do the arena for extra credits in the later games. If you can beat enemies in tank treads, it's not stupid.
Personally, I always had a problem with that. Srsly, it was like a 'cheat'. Even Energy weapons should Cost. - Why? Cuz energy comes from SOMEWHERE. and even if it's drawing power from your Compact Fusion Genny onboard.. it still has ammo count which obviously means there's a 'cartridge' of some sort, be it even an Encapsulation field or etc(look at the Plasma Cannon); ie. Energy-based weapons should cost LESS but not Nothing, and the energy cost shoulda been nearly doubled. //espeically considering the Power of these weapons.
and yes, i was like 15-16 when thinking all this back then lol
I believe that wasn't the case in Gen 3
BRUH how has this ENTIRE series gone under my radar for this long until 6 was announced THIS IS MY JAM I need to look into what I can play
Exactly! Ffs...
Fromsoft has been in my life since early childhood...
Played this AC's demo...
Played "Eternal" Ring
Played Evergrace
Then waaaaay later on, thousands of hours across all the soulsborne games...
Feels like I've missed out on so much. This series is right up my alley...
Boy do I have some news for you!
get AC 4 Answer , will be the easiest entry if you never played any of the games and captures the essence best. otherwise if you still have a ps2 play ac nexus or silent line
you need to look into some vocabulary that doesnt sound like it comes out of the mouth of a 15 year old girl, queer
Unfortunately none of them are on steam for some heretical reason
Flipping between the menus was, regrettably, my favorite part of the franchise.
Doing couch pvp in Silent Line was so great, and it was mostly us having 30 second fights and spending an hour tweaking every little thing.
Great Video!
Don't know if someone already mentioned it but there are actually 2 different routes in AC1. The one you picked is the pro-Murakumo route, where you help them defeat Chrome. The other route is exactly the opposite defeating Murakumo and their space stations and what not.
The last two missions of both routes is the same. The trap of boss savage and the final one are exactly the same.
The trigger of the route depends on which mission you pick at the "Factory". Either Chromes request "Guard Factory Entrance" or Murakumos "Secret Factory Recon".
EDIT: Actually another thing I'd like to tell you. You're one of the only people who played this game and realized the Human Plus cutscene is related to Hustler One/Nine Ball by comparing the lamps to the one in the final room. The lore may sound complicated but I'm also really sure that this is the case as well!
I'm absolutely happy that more people are making showcases of AC1 these days. You can't compare Dark Souls/Elden Ring to just King's Field while a lot of From Softwares story telling, narrative and lore was born in this very game.
its until you connect the dots that hustler one himself is an AI nad thus actually has human + as an inbuilt ability sure that makes him cheaty hard in MoA where its basically one giant flat arena you are fighting on and the AI is not derpy enough for the arena version of ninball to be cheesed via mine field
In the Chrome route of the game, they send you a mail after completing "Retrieving capsule", claiming Murakumo actually didn't invent the Human Plus technology. They either found it or were given it. Considering all the points you mentioned as well, I always thought it had to be Hustler One in order to create a rival corporation to Chrome which was older and bigger than Murakumo.
42:38: "I knew helping would come back to hurt me."
This really does feel like a Fromsoft staple as well. I mean, how many quests in Elden Ring alone does the act of simply doing good things for people result in horrific results, both for you and for them? Like, what if you give Boc a Larval Tear? Or hell, go back to DS1: what happens when you tell Laurentius what he wants to know about Izalith? Or help Siegmeyer progress through the world and save him repeatedly? From loves to make you question whether being indiscriminately kind is a good idea.
I don't think the protag of AC is ever particularly 'kind', it's more a matter of your own pride and/or greed coming back to get you. More akin to having a Very Trusty Friend show you a super rare, super free treasure just *right down there* lol
@@versebuchanan512 I mean Armored Core 4A which is one of the only two directed by Miyazaki absolutely does this with the League ending where you prevent ORCA from carrying out their plan which in-game is heavily implied to be very likely to doom humanity to extinction versus killing thousands to potentially save the species in the ORCA ending.
Reminds me of KOTOR.
You give a beggar money at one point and your mentor starts scolding you for your wanton pointless good-doing. She then uses the Force to show you the beggar later getting robbed and killed because other beggars saw that he'd received credits.
"If you'd ignored him like everyone else, he'd still be alive. But you think you did good by giving him credits, don't you?" -kinda thing.
It's towards the start to reinforce the fact every choice has consequences and those consequences don't always align with intention. Just like real life! 🤓
Hell is paved with good intentions!
@@versebuchanan512 I love how Patches is like a deconstruction of this trope, too. His first impressions are almost always "shady dude doing malicious things to me like an asshat," and almost always ends up "shady dude who actually helps quite a lot and maybe isn't just an asshat." Patches is not a "good" man and is rarely ever helpful just for the sake of it, but somehow ends up being a friend so reliable he transcends time, space, genres and franchises.
Yeah, except this is like the 6th or 7th game they've been doing this. Seeing NPCs dying at the end of their quests over and over and over again has started to get boring to see. I feel like spongebob getting bored of the flying dutchman constantly scaring him. Shock factor stops working when you keep being exposed to it
Algorithm fed me this video in the wake of the Armored Core 6 announcement. Owe my lifelong love of stompy robots to playing Armored Core, Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries and watching Return of the Jedi all in the same year as a youth. Always had a pipe dream of an Armored Core and MechWarrior/Battletech crossover.
I think MechWarrior in armored core world will be fucked twice over.
@@KoeSeerwell yeah but mechwarrior games do have ton of overpowered weapons
make sure to bhop, double tap the boosters to hop, wait for the AC to land, press booster right before it lands to prevent landing end lag
it makes every old-gen armored core game (pre 4) twice as fast
Yup this is the way. I used to call it dash-strafing. Basically Armored Core's version of circle strafing around someone. Even better if you have a lighter mech and balanced parts for infinite energy.
Low key breaks the earlier games. That and rockets are great bang for your buck (and weight), especially in missions that generally have a fair number of easy to hit enemies.
@@aidanklobuchar1798 In the later games, pairing this with overboost and mid-air laser blades means constantly being up close and doing major damage.
I figured out how to do this as a little kid, made most fights a breeze. The ones it didn't, you just needed bigger explosions.
Bhopping and the movement tech is what makes this series special. To get such deep mechanics in an early psx game is ridiculous. Playing around with your parts to maximize your en efficiency is so great, much better than the builds you get in souls games.
Carrying your core into the next "add-ons" for PSone was also a fantastic touch. Granted, that meant it was the same exact engine as the firsts, but it kept the experience going. I haven't dived into the PS2 sequels as I was just recently able to acquire them. Looking forward to those experiences again
The PS2 sequels are even better with some of the UI problems addressed, tons more parts (and hidden parts), arena ladder matches, better graphics and eventually adding dual analog support (which I just can't get used to).
@@stiimuli Me neither. The tank controls from the originals give the ACs their heft, and you feel more like an Ace when you start getting better at working with the limitations, doing battle in the air. Anything the AI can do, you can do too.
AC 3 is awesome
One of the best soundtracks of all time. Shape Memory Alloys, 9, Apex in Circle, and the absolute best track, Ambiguity. All amazing.
Your review/recap of Armored Core is informative, intriguing, and a great contribution to the community.
Thank-you!
I grew up with Armored Core, I absolutely loved it. The later installments of the series had better graphics and more features, but they always seemed way too tryhard in their story and never gave the atmosphere and feel of the first three games.
44:02 I love how the chaingun is firing to the beat of the excellent battle music :D
Armored core is one of my favorite series, I am a huge fan of their indirect, none-linear story telling. It makes you piece together all the bits of info after missions, and the politics between the factions. It is usually several playthroughs later that I'm beginning to understand what really happened. Truly a FROM software masterpiece.
The best part is that within each armored core gen you can transfer your save and all of your collected parts between games so you can 100% AC1 and then start Phantasma with all of your stuff, 100% it, and then start Master of Arena with 2 games worth of parts and really go to town.
Probably my favorite game of all time, and yet, there was piles here I never discovered for myself. Fascinating. This is the best armored core review on youtube, and it's decades after its release. Fantastic mate. Absolutely.
One of my favourite PlayStation games. I loved how you really had to think about what build to use in order to complete a mission as effectively as possible. I recall trying multiple builds to try and complete the mission with 100s of tiny bots without running out of ammo or dying, only to finally rely on a fast tank build that simply ignored many of the bots in order to rush the actual objective.
Two notes your playthrough completely missed:
Energy Weapons don't have an ammo cost. Investing in them early greatly increases your income/makes it much easier to not fall into a debt spiral.
You won't fight Valkyrie at all in your playthrough if you refuse to side with Chrome.
Otherwise, was fun to get a retrospective on a FS classic.
✏️✏️
👍
He also missed the hidden stat: TURNING SPEED, which the backward legs excelled at.
@@MadPirateShin Reverse-joint sucked in PvP due to not being able to sideways/turn boost. Need regular legs for that, not any other.
Reverse joint were fine for many missions though. If I recall they tended to have good defense, particularly vs shell. But if facing a strong AC it might be a bit hard to avoid their attacks due to the lack of side boost.
LN-2KZ-SP were god legs in my opinion. Not available until the expansions though.
Not true. The best energy weapon in the game (the hidden on level three I think) had a 100 round magazine.
@@rjohnson2813 What is it with people that love to say things like "Wrong." Or in your case: "Not True."
Opening with 1 or 2 words, followed by a period, declares with finality that someone else is incorrect. That always comes off as obnoxiously arrogant to me. Which probably isn't a coincidence, because arrogant people generally love to tell others that they're wrong.
But the other thing about arrogant people: they're usually also ignorant. And your comment is a perfect example of all these phenomenon.
If you try to be less arrogant in future, that will help you be less ignorant. And then the world will be a better place; not only for those around you, but indeed for you as well!
I played countless hours of that demo disc and Armored Core was always my favorite, it even had a playable splitscreen versus mode that my brother and I played a bunch. It wasn't until years later that I actually played the full game (as well as Intelligence Qube and Ace Combat 2). Awesome video Josh thanks for bringing back some memories!
Awesome content!
Armored Core will always have a special place in my heart.
Probably unpopular opinion, but Last Raven was my favourite of the bunch. Liked the characters, the little of them the game had and most of the multiple endings were great. Hundreds of hours customizing and trialing ACs against Pulverizers, Daemon or 2-3 Ligers, it shouldn't have been that much fun, but damn, to me it was.
Last Raven is how you END an era of a game.
Armored Core is one of my all-time favorites. That intro still gets me pumped. I'd love to see a competent modern take on this franchise. It's fun watching you experience / explain many of the same pitfalls with specific missions that I remember from ages ago. The volatile factory. The delicate buses. The many, many quadrupeds. The MATHS.
While it's not AS awesome as Armored Core in my opinion, I highly recommend Daemon x Machina. It's made by the original AC devs and carries the spirit, though it does feel more monster-hunter-ish in focus (you get most of your parts from doing missions).
I'd love a new AC that opens with the modern GFX quality version of the original AC opening.
Rewatching this after I saw the announcement from the game awards. This review did the game (and series) so much justice and I'm happy that the series is coming back and throw this video at all my friends that don't realize why I'm so excited lol
AND THEY JUST ANNOUNCED A NEW ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Excellent breakdown, I can't imagine any other series more underrated than Armored Core.
Custom Robo and Omega Boost
@@luichinplaystation610 Omega Boost isn't a series, it only got one game. It IS underrated, though.
Monster hunter maybe at least in the past game journalists would "review" those in a similar way they did the ac series
I remember playing this game almost every night with my friends. Not many people can play it back then because it was hard af so we really felt like we are one of the lucky ones playing a semi hidden gem. It was a very unique game in the FPS genre, the customization is unmatched back then.
Back when i played this as a kid ( love this game) , i had to teach everyone how to dodge by showing them the strafe buttons. Bumpers got ignored a lot back then.
I remember when everyone in my immediate circle upgraded from "James Bond: Agent under fire" to "James Bond Nightfire".
Agent under fire I don't think had any form of strafing(iirc none of the controller settings had both camera and movement set to the analog sticks) and nightfire did, and the whole way I viewed shooters changed drastically.
Nightfire had controls that were actually pretty close to what most FPS control schemes are like today, and it was just a whole different genre after that.
God I wish I could go back to those old ass splitscreen days.
AC VI was just announced and I am so hyped. Glad ya did this for this original event.
Loved playing this game, completed it so many times and had a blast of a time in the Vs mode when playing agents my friends. Still have my copy safe and sound.
This was my very first game with my brand new PS1 when I was 10 years old.
It goes without saying that AC pretty much brainwashed me to love mechs for the rest of my life.
Not my first game, but it was the game I had the fondest memories of for that era. Also brainwashed me into loving mechs lol
Amen Raven
This is why I reconfigure every other game to have controls as close as possible to those of Armored Core.
Holy shit! Huge shoutout to the Patreon supporters. You guys are supporting a phenomenal content creator and growing by an insane amount.
More like huge shoutout to Douchemongold, one of the very few good things he has done, making Josh Strife popular.
@@ThisisCitrus low iq
bananas
lol, i think it's only appropriate this show up on my recommendations again after that AC6 reveal. I'm so fucking hyped, man
The best part about playing armored core as a kid was getting the Tips & Tricks magazine to see what armored core builds they put together. Good times, good times... and now I feel old.
Meeeeeeeeemories all alone in the moooooonlight
another Tips&Tricks reader!
Here here
That and I always had to get a guide that showed where all of the hidden weapons and parts were.
Sorry mom, I gotta print off another 30-40 page guide from gameFAQs 😀
You’ve awakened some really good memories my friend. Thanks, I’ve played this game so much back in the day!
I am emotional watching this. Armored Core 1 was a game I found at a flea market as a kid because the cover looked cool. It was everything I ever wanted in a game and I had no idea games could do this. The customization, the movement, the exploration within missions, the challenge of it all. I adore this series and I continue to buy Sony Consoles almost solely because of the 1% chance another armored core game comes out so I can play it right away. The games fell off for me in recent titles, but the music and menu sounds will always make me giddy.
The Moonlight and Karasawa really are the signature pair of legendary weapons in this series. Love it when I'm able to manage fitting both on a mid-weight biped build and still have room for maybe a missile pod.
I remember my dad raving about one or two games, armored core was one of them. I never realized that it was made by Fromsoftware.
I can't find info on these games so I think my best way to learn more from a fan perspective, how they are, how they've changed and all that, is by asking here.
I was REALLY hoping this would be about the Franchise itself, not just the first game.
But damn, this brings back so many memories. That music especially.
In keeping with mecha would love to see a “Was it any good?” For Z.O.E 1 or 2
Phantom Crash and S.L.A.I are cool too
Keeping it mech and PS1, a Future Cop vid would be good.
Front Mission 3
@@jamesraposa942 it’s criminal how unknown Phantom Crash is.
@@r.Ry4N.05 I was literally just thinking about this game when I watched this. Such a great freaking game.
For its time, yeah, it was incredible. The story, action, customization, and immersion were all really high level gaming.
Edit: Wow, that's nuts. I had no idea about the Human Plus thing. I never let myself fail that much. I reloaded and tried again. ALWAYS get a high damage energy weapon, to save on energy costs. Ranged energy sword for the same reason.
EVERY BULLET COUNTS. You fire too blindly and aren't waiting for the CONFIRMED shot.