Why Hello There!

Today we will be discussing the start of many peoples’ favorite part of the series, the sequels that redefined how everything worked, the one that many even point to as the Golden Age of the series.

Additionally, these two games were 2 of the 4 that got remade on the PSP, giving them a far longer life through emulation (Since PS2 emulation is a luxury few can pull off).

So let’s start with the most obvious question right off the bat, why is Gen 3 divided into 2 parts? Well, to make a long story short, Armored Core 3 was originally supposed to incorporate all of the features of the entire generation, things like fully reworked heat mechanics, dual wielding, part and weapon damage, lots of new tricky gadgets.

So….what happened to this huge ultimate super game?



The problem was, this was absurdly ambitious. Actually, it would ultimately take them 3 years and 7 games to release all of the features that they wanted to.

The funny thing is, the original, amazing intro to 3 was made with all of these features in mind, showing the part and weapon destruction mechanics, plus showing ACs only moving when they needed to, in addition to the EO system. Actually, an interesting note is that even though the Red Heavy’s EO functions properly, the Light Red’s EO has audio for firing, but never deploys, instead seeming like he’s rapid firing his laser rifle at that same EO speed (Not achievable until 5th gen)

In fact, the first two games played entirely different to the remaining 5, and fit into this nice little nook between the fast fun of 1st and 2nd gen, and the on-edge simulation aspects of late third gen and 5th gen. This is why these first two games are often lauded as the most fun part of the series. Bear in mind, this doesn’t mean they were the best, or even best designed. They were, however, extremely satisfying.

What was new?

Let’s, as always, get into what new goodies this generation brought.

Exceed Orbits

First and Foremost, this was the first time Cores were given offensive capabilities. In fact, there were a few new built in weapons, but let’s start with the most obvious. This was the first time in the series that we were given a functionally unlimited weapon aside from a laser blade. Essentially these were rechargable drones that fired out of the core, and fired at all nearby enemies ahead of you, and off to the sides. While their ammo was limited, it recharged over time, allowing builds to take advantage of this to finally build multi-weapon builds, for those that either didn’t like, or weren’t good with blades, or simply wanted shields. Their main downside is their quick and sudden drain, which could leave you charging very easily if you aren’t careful, along with the fact that they had no built in anti-missile response.

These originally started with 3 energy variants in AC3, with rapid fire, laser rifle, and heavy laser firing modes respectively. They all could do pretty substantial damage, (especially the rapid and heavy variants with all relevant optional parts) but suffered pretty heavily when it came to accuracy. Most of the time, they trailed behind opponents, taking timing or circling movements to be scary. They do have a great psychological effect, however, as you never knew when they could pop out and ruin your day.

Things changed for the better in Silent Line, where we were first introduced to the awesomeness that is shell EOs For all intents and purposes, these were just another gun turret that got slapped into your core, just like the energy EOs. They traded longevity for more firepower, and traded option slots for not charging. While this would change later in the series, the Silent Line Shell EO systems had relatively few expansion slots, with the rapid fire light core being the only exception. Additionally, the shell variants got back their VS MG response, making them a lot better suited for general purpose builds that just wanted a little extra firepower, but didn’t care for Overboost much.

Left Arm Goodies

One thing very noticeably missing from the series up till this point was the use of left arm weapons. In fact, it was an odd thing to be missing so long, considering the art for the very first game showed an AC using two MG1000s (This wouldn’t be completely possible until 4th gen).

The funny part is, they did remake Ernst’s guns up there in that picture in Last Raven, although they weren’t the 1000MG anymore (Every single game in the series has a version of the infinite machine gun).

Starting in AC3, new lefty options became available, like the Howitzer, which fired a small, arc-firing grenade, Spready Howy, which did the same, but scattered into multiple shots instead of exploding, and Flamethrower, which was all about that close range burn and DPS, obviously. All of these used your main weapon’s lock, meaning they paired excellently with anything that had a large box, like a Machine Gun or Pistol. In fact, the high damage Machine gun and Flamethrower combo does such absurd damage that it’s currently the ideal way to do a speedrun through the game, allowing even ACs to be annihilated within seconds if used correctly. (Despite this, I’ve gotten some pretty close times with a Howy/MG combo despite being new to speedrunning, so there’s some potential there.)

Starting in Silent Line, however, we got to see the early workings of the left arm weapon system. This included some of most of the weapon categories in a very diminished capacity, and actually introduced the Burst Rifle. This first iteration of the BR was very weak and inaccurate, but did boast being the first 1-1 left arm version that was near identical to it’s main variant. It operated on a sort of charging accuracy system, wherein each shot would be more accurate the longer you were locked on….but honestly I never even noticed this in play, since they were generally pretty awful as a main weapon, with maybe 1 of their 3 shots hitting at pretty close range (two of the shots would dumb fire).

Roasty Toasty Robots

In addition, this was the first sort of rework of how heat worked. Heat became a bit more of a worry in early third gen, however…you could still very realistically get through the entirety of both games just using the starting radiator. This part’s function still held onto Gen 2’s identity of being a sort of heat shield, rather than an active cooling system. They would determine how much heat you could take, and how fast you recovered from taking heat damage, but moving was still mostly free.

The only exception to this was Overboost, which now gave you a large burst of heat, limiting it’s potential. In short, there was no constant overboost as an option.

Part Purge

Another feature that was oddly missing up to this point was the ability to drop parts. This opened up the ability to increase your speed mid fight, carry in and use cumbersome weapons before throwing them away, and creating builds centered around quicker switching of fewer weapons as the fight went on. You also could now justify carrying in situation specific things, like decoys and side shields, with the option to throw them off if they aren’t being helpful.

First Person Mode

This feature was only in the PS2 version of Silent Line, but they had a short lived full-HUD internal view of the AC, which was really cool. Sadly, this never made it to the PSP remake, but this is likely due to the fact that A- it was nauseating to use, and B-would be both barely visible, and stretched to all hell with the new resolution on the PSP.

The Infinite Hover

This was more a bug than a feature, but the HEX extensions were a new item that could potentially allow you to fly forever, given that you had enough energy output to recover from a small boost every second or so. This looks absolutely hilarious in practice. In addition, with some good timing, there is a fun speedrun strategy that allows for Hover legs of all types to boost forever laterally, and with absurd speed vertically. Essentially this takes advantage of a timing bug (removed in multiplayer) that allows you to boost every 8/10s of a second, reusing the initial boost acceleration of the legs to do some really fun maneuvers.

Parry Blades

I’ll be frank here. These things may have been utterly amazing in 5th gen, fun in 4th gen….but good lord almighty they are a pile of absolute HOT GARBAGE in most of 3rd gen. Essentially, as Raven Republic put it long ago, these are like an Ice Pick you attach to your mech. Unlike an ice pick, however, these things take about 3 seconds to actually throw out, they take away your main weapon, they have astoundingly limited ammo, and because someone was apparently just a dick in the design department, they even overheat your own AC on use. This is barely noticeable with the smaller variants, but something like the MARS will often throw you into an overheat upon use, since you probably took a bit of heat damage to even get close enough to use this awful thing.

Having done parry blade runs of 3 and SL, I can safely say that only the first two parry variants are even worth using, the heavy one can set you on fire from even daring to do a follow up swing.

If you are wondering about their name, the parry blade is one of the few weapons that can’t be knocked out of it’s firing animation, since it’s main use is to be a very heavy damage punish against someone using a laser blade on you. You may think that you will just launch this perfectly to prevent the blade in the first place….but yeah, that’s not even remotely practical. Challenge run or AI weapon only.

Recovery Extensions

These are a part that would later become essential to the series, but alas…they are a tad sucky in their infancy.

Armored Core 3 brought in two variants of these: Energy and Heat recovery.

While both of these sound incredible on paper, they decided to go on a percentage based system for these first two. They may have meant to make them more effective as your situation was more dire, but they seemed to scale based off of what was left. So, if you had 50% energy, you would recover to about a full bar, if you were at 10%, you’d go to 20%. Let’s just say they were exactly awful for getting out of a Jam, but did work well for speedrunning in combination with hover leg abuse.

The Radiator extensions seemed to function similarly, though they almost always seemed to recover only about 10-20% of your bar, which I guess is somewhat realisic, considering it’s literally some space heater looking thing sticking out of your shoulder. We would never see these come back after Silent Line, so presumably they couldn’t make this part work.

Lastly, in SL we saw the ECM recovery system, which was pretty much the epitome of “meh”. There was exactly 1 mission where they would be useful, but would presumably counter the CROW invisibility extensions. Still, there’s better stuff to go there, and we never saw them again.

Solid Shields

As if there weren’t enough game changers already, Silent Line brought with it the addition of Solid Shell plating you could put on the shoulders and left arm. Unlike the energy variants, this meant that you could carry around additional armor for lighter units, allowing you to trade equipment slots for damage reduction from certain directions.

The rub lies herein, however: Due to what is presumably a programming bug (Of which there were several), the side shields actually reduce stability, rather than add it. So, this means that you take less damage with more stagger. Even heavy builds seem to suffer from this, though the shield on the arm seems to be fine in this regard. Additionally, you only ever get the bonus of the higher of the two armors, meaning that equipping a full set of armor will simply give you two breakable layers of more or less the same value, rather than the amazing defensive bonus you may have expected. Either way, when used on an ultra heavy build, they can still become nigh invincible using these.

These would later be refined into a nice bonus in Late Third Gen, and an awesome disposable armor system in Verdict Day.

Inside Weapons

Not to be mistaken with other Inside Parts, but aside from gadgets, we finally got shootable goodies en masse in 3rd gen! Back in 2nd gen there was just the plasma droppper, which now became the contact bomblets, but we also got Napalm Rockets, Portable Rockets, Generator Jammers, ECM Makers, Radar Decoys (Worthless, frankly), scatter mines, floating mines, and travelling mines, along with some other nifty gadgets all over the dang place. This was finally a category worth thinking about! Napalm in particular became very strong in late third gen, though Gen Jammers and Radar dupers were later removed.

AI Customization

As if there weren’t enough changes already, Silent Line brought with it the Custom AI system, something which allowed an AC to be trained like a toddler by fighting it hundreds of times. It’s hardly the fastest way to do things, but this was an incredibly fun system to play around with. In fact, there was an utter champion that we like to call Mr Javelins that made a several custom arenas for the community to fight.

Check it out HERE

Parts Damage

While it would be a few games until we got full limb damage, a la Front Mission, we did at least get parts damage in this game. There’s a caveat to this, though, as all parts had only a certain amount of damage they could take from a certain projectile type. Strangely this meant that losing your weapons or extensions was rare to missiles or grenade cannons, rifles and sniper rifles would shred them like no tomorrow. I will never understand why they did it this way, but this would also be the only game that used this type of system.

Whew, OK, let’s talk about other things now. Like Missions and Such

Right, so uhh…early third added a lot of stuff. There’s even some things I didn’t get into, like scatter bazookas, laser shotguns, assault pistols, heat weapons, and so on. There’s just a ton, and many actually didn’t make it past Silent Line.

But why was that?

Well, to be totally frank, here’s how it breaks down:

They realized AC3 couldn’t have the features that they wanted, so they went ahead and said “OK, we do what we can, and make sequels till we get it all in there”. So, they did. AC3 was, for all intents and purposes, a spiritual remake of AC1 in that way, and many others (Plot, designs, locations, missions, etc).

Quick Tangent:

Funny note here, this was the first time in the series that an AC actually made it to two separate intros. The light gecko-looking guy with all the missiles from the AC3 intro actually makes it back in Silent Line, only to get blown to bits again. He’s not very good at this whole surviving thing.

OK, back on track. Aside from wanting to get all these feature into the series, there simply wasn’t time to adjust and balance every type of part that they introduced.

In no particular order…

This meant that things like howitzers would have needed unique trajectory mechanics, and would have been redundant next to left arm grenade cannons, so they were dropped.

Things like ECM extensions and radiators weren’t worth fixing, because Radars and Cooling Tuning would later fix them.

The Heavy Shell EO was removed simply because it would have been too overpowered (a sniper linear cannon that can be auto fired at the tap of a button), plus was reworked to better fit Hangar mechanics down the line

The weapon damage mechanic would have been difficult for the game to handle next to the part damage system, since weapon damages were based off of projectile type, and parts were handled with raw damage. So, to make part mechanics matter, this was also dropped.

The AI system was hard for them to implement, so though it was arguably the main event in SL, it was actually given it’s own game down the line with Formula Front.

Lastly, the Double Arena, which was moreso just moved into the Main Menu Arena, which also allowed for 3 v 1 fights. Unfortunately, there’s no single player way to access this in the PSP remakes, but it’s still accessible if you play online (more possible than expected)

That Story I said I would mention

TLDR, Silent Line is the best example of the expansion sequel for this series, in my opinion. It expanded on all of the previous mechanics (and hilariously added a new main menu arena…while leaving all of the names the same), and has a story that takes place logically in the aftermath of the last game.

AC3 largely follows the plot points of AC1: You are a mercenary, stuff’s going haywire, and clearly an AI is behind it all by the end. You fight more and more ACs sent by that AI, and the arena adjusts based on who lived or died throughout the game. Eventually, you have a showdown with multiple ACs and a giant USB drive, nothing is too mind blowing, but it feels very fitting. You are just a guy doing their job, there’s no super villain, just a busted computer in need of fixing.

Unlike first gen, which took several large steps and new plots, or second gen, which just popped all the extra content on a disc and called it a day, Silent Line happens right after AC3. While it’s unclear if you’re the same pilot, comparatively little time has actually passed, with humanity having left the underground, and rebuilt some cities to expand their ever growing need for explosions.

Despite expanding and warring, this is still considered a time of relative peace, and the part availability reflects this, with the first example of logical limiting of available equipment in some time. I always personally liked this, as it allowed for playing around with arguably worse or older parts early on, giving a better sense of progression than many other games in the series.

As the AIs start showing up and scaring the higher ups, limits on parts are removed farther and farther, though this one definitely has the tightest budget of the series so far.

By the end of it all, it’s clear that you’re really just fighting a stationary defensive system, there’s no real big bad this time, and quite frankly, it’s a nice change in my opinion. (Also, it’s cool to see the first example of adjusting, multi-stage boss fights with the final boss of Silent Line)

At any rate, I think we’ve just about covered what there is to cover with these first two games. To say they added a lot to the series is an understatement, and even though these two are my personal favorite to do challenge runs of, I would be the first to agree that they are far from properly balanced. Actually, this is usually not a complaint aside from the multiplayer, as it does make the game a lot more chaotic and fun than many others.

With that all said, I hope you found this informative, and join me next time for the first major shift in the series, the first time the community was split down the middle with good reason, and the first time that there was actually some semblance of multiplayer balance: Late Third Gen.

Sincerely,

Coffee Potato, someone way too enamored with Rockets in these games.