Me when Mirage hires me to do war crimes: " FREE MONEY! 🤑🤑🤑 "

Me when Crest hires me to do war crimes: " FREE MONEY! 🤑🤑🤑 "

Me when Union hires me to do war crimes: " I'm a mercenary, but I'm still human. Today, I stand before you to express my deep concern about the devastating impacts of war and to advocate for a world that prioritizes peace and diplomacy.

War has long been a source of immense suffering, loss of life, and destruction. It tears apart families, communities, and nations, leaving behind scars that can last for generations. We must remember that there are no winners in war—only profound losses on all sides. The human, social, and economic costs of conflict are staggering. Lives are forever changed, dreams shattered, and futures stolen away. Innocent civilians, including women and children, bear the brunt of the violence, often caught in the crossfire with no means of escape. Let us not forget the toll war takes on our moral compass. It devalues human life, promotes hatred, and perpetuates cycles of revenge and suffering.

As a society, we must reject this path and instead embrace peaceful means of resolving conflicts. Peace is not a sign of weakness; it is a testament to our strength as human beings. It requires courage, compassion, and an unwavering commitment to dialogue, understanding, and negotiation. We must seek common ground, recognizing that our shared humanity far outweighs our differences. We should prioritize dialogue over confrontation, and diplomacy over militarization. By engaging in respectful and inclusive conversations, we can build bridges, foster understanding, and find peaceful solutions to even the most complex of conflicts.

In closing, I implore each and every one of you to embrace the power of peace. Let us be champions of diplomacy, advocates for justice, and voices of reason. Together, we can build a world where conflicts are resolved through dialogue, where peace prevails over war, and where the rights and dignity of every human being are upheld. "

After the jam-packed send off to the 2nd gen that was AC2AA, AC3 came in to kick off the 3rd gen with all new stuff. A new timeline, new corporations warring, new parts and mechanics, and so on and so forth. Arena and normal mission structure has also returned, absent from the last game. My favorite new feature this time is definitely the advent of left-handed guns. Though in its infancy now, with only a few guns to choose from, it really sowed the seeds for it to become a fully fledged feature in later games. Other than that, I don't have much to say. Missions are great, customization is even greater, and the soundtrack is wonderful. I like the more orchestral, grand approach they took to the songs this time around.

And In My Heart is a fucking banger.

Armored Core 3 was a captivating experience that was unfortunately brought down by a struggle to find an internally consistent logic in its game design as well as a distracting, game-long search for authorial intent in determining what the “Armored Core Experience” is. I take partial blame for this, as AC3 is my first AC, but not the entirety of it. I think AC3 is a very thoughtful game, but I can’t help wondering if it's so thoughtful that it illuminates the parts of its design that fail to measure up.

At first blush, Armored Core 3 is focused on balancing: (1) heart pounding, exhilarating mech combat with (2) the stress and seeming mundanity of managing the costs of battle with (3) extensive preparation to mitigate those costs, and hopefully finding satisfaction in all three. I think Armored Core 3 succeeds and struggles in multitudinous ways with all three of these, but I find the second and third parts of this equation generally confounding.

There is a tremendous sense of weight and consequence to having thoughts like, “goddammit, that missed howitzer shot cost me $400,” monopolize your mind during missions over the course of the game. More than any explicit text about complicity in a three-way corpo war crime turf battle, placing a mental price tag on everything that happens during a sortie substantially enhances the game’s thematic prioritization of war from a cost equity perspective over an ethical one. From the top down, on a macro and micro level, by the corporations and by you, armed conflicts are viewed primarily through the lens of: what do I stand to gain or lose and how likely am I to gain or lose it. Missions open with a screen that, among other things, estimates your success, blatantly feeding you into a meat grinder of a cost analysis calculator. Even as your estimated success percentage plummets well below 50%, you are still thrown feet first into the fire because you are cost effective. Your life represents an opportunity to realize expected value for someone with their own best interests in mind, and the same could be said of your relationship to many of the environments you plow over.

So actually, I was just kidding about all of that. What actually happens is that you enter the arena and make a bazillion dollars and then can operate at a loss for comfort the whole game and then you win. There isn’t really a way to expand on this point, I think the problem with the arena is fairly obvious: it gives you too much money and ruins the economy of the game. That’s kind of a massive issue in a game like AC3, as it detracts from what makes the idea of a strict economy appealing, but besides all that I’m a really big fan of the arena! It does a great job of making the other AC pilots feel like people with personalities, reflected in their fighting styles. It makes the world feel larger than you, that it continues moving and shifting without you. When you fail a mission, these are the people that step into your place and take your lunch money. And yet, unfortunately, it single handedly ruins any sense of balance or stress monetarily. I could suggest a bunch of fixes: fighting in the arena costs money like missions do, losing in the arena sets you back a couple ranks but doesn’t refresh the rewards, etc. but the point is, the arena doesn’t work as it stands, and it's kind of a big deal.

Now that money is a complete non-issue, what’s left to consider? Mech assembly of course. Unlike AC3’s economy, which I believe has one glaring problem, mech assembly is harder to pick apart and I’m more conciliatory to the notion that I just don’t “get it.” To put it in as plain of terms as I can: AC3 contains missions that are either very difficult or have fail states that are easy to trigger without certain builds, but also systematizes defeat by making it an expected part of the game so that once you fail a mission you can just continue on. The reason I take issue with this is that the game absolutely does not signpost in any way what a good build for an upcoming mission would be, and as a result, I would often start a mission and recognize pretty immediately that I don’t stand a chance. Oh this is a really long mission I need way more ammo than this, oh this is a boss level I need something more powerful, oh I need to be better at flying for this level, and so on. A seemingly easy response to this issue would seem to be exercising my extrajudicial authority to save scum and customize my mech to fit the levels after scouting them out, and indeed, for most of the game this is what I ended up doing. It was fun and seemingly supported by the lack of an autosave feature forcing you forward, but I couldn’t help but feel a little bit bad about imbuing myself with knowledge I was not supposed to have, and weaponizing it to cleanly execute missions in a game designed around managing your losses.

This dynamic gets at what makes AC3 a little hard to grasp, an experience that sort of slips through my fingers; what is the point of customizing my mech? To personalize it? But that clearly doesn’t work. As mission preparation? But that feels like cheating. The only way through AC3 I can think of that feels like it conforms to my half baked perception of the “spirit of Armored Core” would be to play through the game without ever loading saves whilst taking notes on all the levels, then playing through again, using those notes to hopefully actually beat it the second time. Buddy, I got a lot of games to get through, you're going to have to live with me time traveling a bit with a couple self imposed restrictions. I can imagine someone reading this and thinking “it isn’t that serious, dude, just load a save,” and sure, maybe I’ll feel the same way when looking back years from now, but I can’t shake the feeling that AC3 only has a save feature because it cannot reasonably be beaten in one sitting and that therefore using that feature in a strategic way feels like going out of bounds. It feels like I’m manipulating a restriction of the medium more so than engaging with a system, and that's a shame.

Despite this review being largely critical, I thoroughly enjoyed AC3. Although it's my first AC game, I’m pretty encouraged to dive deeper into the series, though I suspect when I emerge from the other end, AC3 will not be my favorite. Also, if you are reading this and are an AC vet, feel free to chime in with something you think I missed or would be helpful in alleviating my anxiety about the gameplay loop, I’m very green.

Seldom is a game devoured by me quite like 'Armored Core 3', and this has left me feeling a little undercut on my task here. I can't remember the last time I beat a game this fast, let alone sat down for 16 hours across two days to do nothing but play it. Maybe I’m a depressed neet, or maybe this game is just goated, who can really say for sure? At any rate, upon reflection on my time with this cult classic there's honestly so little of FromSoftware's work here that I feel is worth criticising, and while all my game reviews have done an excellent job in making me feel totally useless, here I worry that this piece will be me grossly wasting your time beyond previous levels, dearest reader. That’s not supposed to be an insult to the game, mind you, just my writing ability. This is all because although 'Armored Core 3' is far from the most profound work in this fabled developer's catalogue, it has put the mecha series into an ascendancy which holds so much potential that it leaves me hungering for more in a way that I have never felt with previous entries, which is going to make this review seem more like me verbally gushing ceaselessly from every orifice because I’ve properly noticed the beginning of something great before it’s full form physically causes that phenomena to occur.

Now that I’ve overly drawn out the worst opening of my entire critical output on the internet, this is a good time to start by stating that mechanically speaking, this is the best title yet. Naturally. All but barring only one glaring balancing issue. The game is as smooth as the series has ever been, with a great selection of weapons and parts, as well as great potential for detailed builds in its welcome array of optional parts. The addition of ranged left arm weapons and the economic leniency underpinning the whole experience means I got into customising a variety of ACs in this game more than any other instalment. However, builds that involve overheating are just simply too strong. Most bossfights in this game are of course other ACs, not to mention the whole alternative progression of the Arena mode, many of which are simply left in the dust due to certain weapons which generate loads of heat. Paired with a flamethrower, these selections are hilariously overpowered and I simply refused to touch them unless I got into a battle that was really chewing me up quite badly. Such fights did not, however, include Ace funnily enough—despite everything I had heard about him—of whom ya girl sent to the own-zone in one short attempt. I'm definitely not proud, nor editing this review post publication to include me bragging, you don't have any evidence because I am a perfect princess. Other than that though, no notes, still an excellent combat system with tons of nuance and a great mechanic-system relationship.

From the offset of the game's very impressively animated opening short, the presentation of '3' is the most oddly distinct part of it to me given how much it controls and often looks like—superficially, at least—the Generation 2 titles, while still decidedly pulp there's an emerging angelic coldness to the tone of the game that is truly discerning the series from it's mecha peers. Choirs peering through like blinding white gleams of sunshine over the indifferent concrete monoliths of electronic beats, these textures cascade over peerless, aimless metal in one of the more elegant science fiction aesthetics of the Playstation 2. As a nice technical aside, 'Armored Core 3' boasts Dolby pro logic II surround sound which really brings the best out of the mix in music and SFX, resulting in probably the best sounding machine gun of any 2000s action game. FromSoftware's work here truly illuminates a vision of what 'Armored Core' was to be all this time, and while continuing to excel in the ludically thrilling battles the series has always done well, it is strange that I have so much more to praise about the artfulness found in the direction of 'Armored Core 3', but this really was, in my identifications, the true beginning of FromSoftware's iconic and hauntingly picturesque moments. Such a word by popular outlets limited only to their hack and slash titles, under-recognised is it in their older projects such as this, but the framing of some sections is so strong that I'd forget to even whinge about map reuse. In the final leg of the game, hurtling toward the final set of missions, a sortie sees the player taking on a goliath MT, captured in the reduction of the 4:3 tunnel vision, the metal beast sets above a sea of sand, wings outstretched. The moment you look up to lock it into your FCS, and the image is cast of the desperate glide across the wasteland Arena map—now devoid of the visual noise it once had, a clean, static battlefield of endless soft oranges and metal monoliths—is such a moment of spectacle for a game of 2002 that is to such ends rarely so elegantly and subtly framed even today. Still undeniably pulpy—an attitude heightened in effectiveness across time with it's safely played texture work and environment scales given the hardware—'Armored Core 3' is the elevation of the series in all presentational respects, resulting in a remarkably well paced and artfully keen experience.

Mission quality, variety and purpose here is far and away the best of the series thus far, in fact, I'd go as far as to say there are no letdowns. The worst a sortie gets in 'Armored Core 3' is forgettable, and even then not frequently. The variety of Areas have been sorted in conceptual factors by the separate sections of the game's new setting, the underground city of Layered. Yes, this is a reboot trying to retell the same story, but it does so with so much more specificity in world building. The 'Armored Core' of 97' was by no means bad at this element, with its cold writing, barren locations and dehumanised presentation, but '3' achieves such things with more compelling premise of an AI controlled, lulled civilisation, like 'Arx Fatalis' by way of 'The Matrix', and defined mission locations that give character to each descending level of Layered to better inform how life there truly comes together. This means each level possess an inherent attribute of environmental storytelling that is so accessible to inference; the highest level is a nature deck featuring what appear to be falsified ecosystems, hosting a few personal favourite missions such as the bossfight mentioned before as well as a thrilling thievery operation on a sunken ship. Beneath this layer though is the more residential city areas, banal transit places like highways and mazes of grey-guarded roads where one mission asks you to quite literally just be a big annoying robot to lure out security forces in your disruption of the vapid commute. The game skips the commercial and jets straight for the appropriately industrial in the lowest layers, giving a genuine and well textured feeling of progressing more forward to the predictable threat of the AI Controller gone amuck in the metal heart of the city.

While maybe a trite advancement in the narrative, the motivations of the AI antagonist are positively not so, perhaps those who played 'Master of Arena' will recognise the beat being revised here, but a creature of automation manufacturing jet fueled, commercially militant violence in the light of it's hopelessness at the prospect of humanity seeing anything other than the metal funnel they meander submissively in under-earth is so elegant a connection to the broader themes properly initiated in 2000s 'Armored Core 2' that it makes the enchanting final cutscene of '3' all the more a perfect closure, in brutally harmonic correlation with the instances of fellow Ravens turning against you when the winds of change that follow you brush past their tender feathers. Truly one of the studio's greats, and a daring stage set for the future.

A great introduction to a new generation of Armored Core and the reduced difficulty makes this one of the best introductions to the series in general, though for anyone who beat the previous games this will prove to be one of the easiest in the franchise which takes away some of the shock value when an AC suddenly appears in a mission, drastically reducing your chances of survival (or slightly in AC3's case).
Story is the most cohesive it's been yet, though perhaps one of the most predictable and straightforward too. Again, great for new players, less so for series vets.
The increased production values let these mechs feel as great as ever, easily one of the best things this game has over AC2, even if I slightly prefer that game's grittier aesthetic. Here every part feels a lot more unique thanks to the extra effects and animations at play.
I also massively appreciate the less irritating mission and enemy design over AC2/AA - no more 'your mech can't jump this cliff fuck you lol' moments, for once I didn't feel the need to save after every mission.
One of the best main themes ever composed, at least boot it up for that (but I'd stick around for the sick mecha action too).

- Mom, can we get some EN weapons?
- Honey, we have EN weapons at home!
- Mom what the fuck is wrong with you we have 3 and they all suck ass

Game is fun though. Not a fan of how the standard arena is 'cause I like the flatter ones, but it's good.

completely superior to the first two generations in pretty much every regard. has the same narrative concept as ac1 but it's told in a way that's significantly less stiff and amateurish. no nine-ball tho - kinda tragic

could be a tad harder by the end (that final stage was a little toothless, albeit a cute nod) but it's all killer and no filler nonetheless. not one mission felt like an eye-rolling¹ waste of time²

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1. armored core 2: another age
2. armored core 2: another age

Quien iba a decir que lo único que necesitaban estos juegos para funcionar era buen diseño de misiones. Como shooter mantiene los mismos problemas que arrastra la saga: el resultado de los combates depende más del equipo y armamento previo que de la pura habilidad, se puede romper el juego de la misma forma que puede ser frustrante y el strafin contínuo sigue siendo la ley. Aun con eso, tienes quizás la mejor acción de mechas que puedes encontrar en 3D.

Es además el primer AC con una historia centrada e intrigante más allá del contexto capitalista típico de la saga. Cuando lo único en lo que crees, ese Dios que guía las vidas de todos, comienza a actuar erráticamente y dar muestras de mal funcionamiento, qué te queda. Es divertido ver las distintas reacciones y cómo evolucionan a lo largo del juego. Los que se niegan a aceptar la realidad, los que desesperan, los que se resignan y los que toman la iniciativa y actúan para cambiar las cosas. Y para terminar, el final más luminoso y esperanzador de cualquier juego de From Software.

This is exactly what AC2 should've been initially.

Again, the same dynamic of AC1, so very similar to AC2 but polished out. I still think if you're going to try this series for AC6 you could skip AC2 because this game is basically AC2.5.

Gameplay is a lot smoother overall; the annoying lockbox snapping is still here, but other previous issues like weapon balancing, the level design, and pacing for the most part are fixed, and thank god the menu is not a slug to traverse anymore. It's also a better introduction in terms of difficulty because AC2 starts unforgivably hard from the beginning, and AC3 is still hard but eases you into it. Don't be tricked into thinking this one's going to be easy because of the first levels because it features the second-hardest boss in the series so far, which is a really cool fight. As for negatives, the story, even though it got rebooted, is still just...there. Nothing of interest, but that could change in the next games.

I think I'm going to stay with it for a while because I just love the Arena mode, and I want to upgrade my OP-Intensify to transfer it to AC: Silent Line.

★★★ – Good ✅

Sadly I just think I'm never gonna be an Armored Core kinda bitch. I did enjoy starting this game off and finding myself once again utterly swamped with options and mechanics to understand, but once I got a decent build going, idk, it lost some of the magic for me? Hoshino's OST bangs undeniably but the actual missions I feel are largely pretty repetitive, largely being big grey rectangles for you to circle strafe around in. This is totally fine if you have fun with the gearhead side of the game, but I just don't have that kind of buildcrafting mindset, it's the same thing that usually makes me tap out of Diablo like games. Game is fucking oozing depth if you have that grindset tho, when I got the new types of arms and legs I lost my mind

insanely based game.

this is where you wanna start if you're a newbie to the series as it's the easiest to get into and has a unique aesthetic design that i rarely see other games try to do.

play it.

Coming into this from playing armored core 1 and I was surprised how similar the games are even after two generations of AC games. The major difference from 1 is the arena which lets you bolster your income early on and takes off a lot of the pressure to perform. I kind of miss that in a weird masochistic way.

My first AC game with an arena mode, this was like video game popcorn, especially compared to the missions which are stressful and sometimes frankly unfair. Getting to balance between the two really takes away from the grind these games can be at times.

AC6 is right around the corner, I'd like to try to get into for answer before that comes out but I doubt I'll have the time.

And so my journey to become the Armored Core Freddie begins! I decided to start with this one on a recommendation and I'd say it was a fairly good idea.
I'd want to believe you get just about everything you can hope from in the series from Armored Core 3. Several different mech builds to design to your liking, lots of arena fights, and missions that test your ability to control your mech in different combat environments. I'll admit, I fought with the controls for most of the game and even got very frustrated near the end with a few missions in particular. But I'm still coming away from this game more positive than negative.
Not many games I've played give me this many options to customize a mech to have spider legs and a chain gun on my shoulder. And I think those aspects will always outshine a less than favorable control scheme. I'm willing to admit with time that I could definitely get used to how this game feels to pilot your mech. But I also hope they make it a bit easier going forward.
Would recommend!

Insert clunky controls meme, its fun though and the learning curve of these games is not like what I was expecting for its type but once you get over how potentially overwhelming it seems at first it becomes addicting and the customization is rad. Having L3 to actually move the Armored Core in this one unlike AC2's dpad PS1 control scheme makes it easier to recommend. However its still hard to suggest to get into here with even its older elements so maybe jump to a later one or really try your hand at this.