Now I too shall walk this...
Silent
Line


It was okay. Top Ranked Arena guys were pushovers which was disappointing. I really loved that one mission where you're apparently supposed to compete with other AC's to qualify for a high risk, high reward mission but you can just kill them and earn your spot through scummy means. Highlight of the game for me.

Impressive how easily you can jump from AC3 to this; Taken together they really do feel like two sides of the same game, especially given the way you can import your old AC from the previous title. Weird to say, but I was thrilled that I still had to do all the same resource management I praised last time, and made all the better now it’s bolstered by some great mission design as well.

I know I’ve complained about the way missions can blur together in some of my other write-ups on the series, but there’s a noticeable uptick in the amount of variety to lend the action some more definition. Something like a stealth sequence sounds like it should be incompatible with the bulky glory of Armored Core, but it works- one of many moments in the game that keep the pace up and makes the prospect of a new batch of contracts all the more exciting. Even the late-game crawls through factories and secret installations are made distinct through radio chatter and unique objectives, racing against the clock or working in tandem as pilots slowly become more frantic over the course of the mission.

If AC3 was a little sterile, then this a game with a lot of heat, a lot of drama- it’s become clearer to me as I’ve gotten my thoughts down what I like and don’t in games, that I’ve realized I'm drawn to a strange balance of arcade immediacy and narrative context, and Silent Line excels in that regard.

A couple of stray thoughts, more on what I’ve played in the series in general so far:

- Normally the volume of items and gear would be poison for me, but I think the series handles equipment really well. Tons of tradeoffs for devoting yourself to one strategy or the other, and even builds that feel like they should be objectively superior to everything else can still have good reasons for being traded out. Tried so many different loadouts on the last level, but the winning build came down to dual-wielding one of the starter machine guns, which I was able to get more value out of than high-tech laser rifles and the heaviest parts I could piece together. I guess the distinction is that the gear doesn’t feel like an attempt to manipulate players into staying on longer, but a broadening of the possibility space- there’s always a chance even the most mundane part has a place to shine later on.

- The short mission design has also grown on me quite a bit as well, letting you speedrun past easy missions and then get straight into the action on whatever’s giving you trouble. The cycle of dying, changing your kit, and making another attempt is really tight, and makes taking wild swings with experimental builds much more inviting.

And despite all this- starting from the beginning and trying to work my way to The Last Raven in the appropriate order to make sure my AC had the right specs, I still died in two seconds on the first mission.