Hi there!

So when talking Armored Core, there’s two questions that come up dang near every time someone’s talking about trying the series out for the first time:

Where do I start, and which one is best?

Let’s answer that second one first. Never ask that part. That debate is one that has caused more arguments between fans than I can count, and funnily enough, doesn’t even really apply to this series. How does that make sense? Well….

Armored Core is a series best seen as less of a series, and more of a collection of ideas for a similar goal. Each installment went full steam into some new feature or idea, gave it their all, and usually wound up alienating some part of the community that liked something else.

As to where to start…anywhere but Last Raven. Why, You may ask? Well, this was intended to be the ultra-difficult swan song of the series, and it expects a lot of experience going in (Plot wise, only the absolute dirtiest have made it that far, it’s name is no over-dramatization, You can actually become the last active living raven in one ending.)

With that all out of the way, let’s get started!

Generation 1 (AC1, Project Phantasma, Master of Arena)

This is the original that started it all, the first trio that showed that mechs didn’t have to be absurdly over-stylized to be fun. They took the joy of being a kid playing with your LEGOs, and took it to a fun, violent, but still somewhat logical level.

The premise here was simple. You are a mercenary in a customizeable mech. You serve a “Nest”, which facilitates everything you do, you are enrolled in arena, which updates based on who lives, dies, or challenges another through the course of the game. You are given a list of contracts, and You pick one to attempt to progress the story.

Despite being the first in the series, this game actually featured a partially branching storyline, which became a staple in some later games, and the Arena, which was available in dang near all of them. You couldn’t challenge anyone of your own accord just yet in the first game, but both Project Phantasma and Master of Arena introduced this feature. Actually, MoA took it one step further by giving the second largest roster of challengers in the series, and some of them were pure gold. (I will never not bring up Kongoki)

The music was amazing, setting a nice precedent of futuristic, metalic sounding techno to the occasional silent mission where all you heard was the sound of metal clanks and shots.

The setting was bleak, but optimistic, showing a post nuclear apocalypse world that got back up on it’s feet and learned absolutely nothing from annihilation, heading full steam ahead for another apocalypse. The most well known antagonist of the series, Nineball, started here, and was, for all intents and purposes, the GOOD GUY.

Unfortunately, money’s a great motivator.

You are just here to get paid, Nineball is here to make sure the earth doesn’t get nuked back to the stone age again. AC1 and Project Phantasma explored themes of mixing biology with technology, with self-replicating robot ants, and people merged with machines.

Project Phantasma dove a little deeper into the story of this interesting setting, but frankly, the writing made it a little hard to take seriously. It did have some really fun fights, though.

The map design in these early games fantastic, with FROMSOFT having just come off of doing the amazing Kings Field Series, along with Shadow Tower. Interestingly, Shadow Tower even used the same exploding fireball animation as the first generation grenade launcher cannon. The missions had relatively large areas, and did a good job of balancing chaotic action with the occasional quiet recon mission or some run of the mill pest control from self replicating massive android ants.

On a final note, Master of Arena was actually the first time that the series began to delve into customizeable AIs. This is a feature that they would revisit several times throughout the series, but this was definitely one of the easier ways to make a custom arena for you and your friends to fight.

To quickly break down what each game added, it looks a little like this:

AC1 introduced is to the Core concept (actually referred to as such by devs, pun not intended), and the world as a whole. It introduced light aspects of branching storylines, and NPCs that could life or die organically through the story. We were introduced to weapon and part archetypes that have been used throughout the series, as well as mission types that have been recycled and redone in a pretty surprising variety of situations (As the joke goes, how many subs really need giant mech protection?) . Man and machine themes were explored, and the news being relayed by emails system remained for over half the series.

Project Phantasma introduced the freeform arena, as well as several new part archetypes, some smoother parts that have been remade in almost every game, as well as new map types that got carried over to some of the bigger games.

Master of Arena set the precedent for a game diving heavily into a single gimmick, and gave us the incredible EX Arena (Used in many later games, and would be almost perfected in Ninebreaker), as well as the AI customization system (Which is fun in Silent Line, the entire gimmick behind Formula Front, and one very convenient buddy system in Verdict Day).

To this day, these hold up surprisingly well, aside from some of the odd writing, and remain a great set of games to go back to for challenge runs every now and then.

If this sounds like Your cup of tea, give them a try!

Sincerely,

Coffee Potato, Terrified of Self Replicating Robot Ants