It's impressive how much they managed to get right in the first installment. One thing I'd really say "needs" changing is the menu which is missing some crucial QoL stuff that was added in the sequels.
Actually way ahead of its time in a lot of ways - the movement mechanics, customization, and writing in particular - but a lot of discussion around this game (and the rest of the series) unfortunately revolves around the control scheme, which is very much of its time. Hopefully with the release of those analog control patches these games will start getting the respect they deserve.

This was one of the most miserable experiences I've had with a videogame.
Every map is made of corridors and square rooms that look as bland and forgettable as they can, there's basically no way to avoid damage other than "take it and hope they die first", not a single button placement in this control scheme makes ANY sense. The story is written and delivered in the usual From Soft fashion: a whole lot of nothing told in incomprehensible fragments of nonsense. Barebone mech customization will make sure that by mission 6 you pretty much have what you're gonna need for the rest of the game, the pacing is all over the place, learning curve is a vertical cement wall, if you manage to learn anything from a game that categorically refuses to explain what you're supposed to do. Which is saying a lot, considering you start with a mandatory tutorial mission after which you know less than before.
I'll do you a solid: the last mission, the floating mines one, starts with a From Soft trope, "just put 100 enemies in a room", goes into an endless extremely precise platforming segment completely out of nowhere, and then another From Soft trope, "what if the same boss, but twice". Skip that one unless you love suffering.
In fact, skip the whole game, spend your time on better activities, like pondering why we keep pretending that From Soft isn't completely incompetent.

Armored Core stands as perhaps the strongest reminder that the defining qualities attributed to the Souls series already defined FromSoft's design philosophy a whole decade prior.

AC's credits add greater weight to defeat than a simple loss of progress, but they also heighten the potential windfall that comes with victory - much like the titular souls of the Souls games. Missions are often playfully constructed, sometimes as a joke the player gets to play on the enemies but other times as a joke played on the player. Player builds act as an in-game difficulty slider, and the equipment on offer provides a fun combat sandbox to engage in. The game's narrative is gleamed through logs, emails, and flavor text even!

A game that was so exceedingly ahead of the curve it needed an all-time classic to translate its design philosophy into a form acceptable for the masses.

Gotta respect this game for throwing you in with almost no explanation, then turning you loose to accumulate massive amounts of debt before you can even think about buying anything from the shop. Though I think most of the game’s mechanics are pretty easy to figure out on your own. I love when devs treat the player as actually competent.

The way the story and gameplay are integrated here is kind of a masterstroke. Read the first few mission descriptions and you immediately know exactly what kind of corpo hellscape this game is set in – a dystopia you need to continue to propagate in order to have fun building your giant war machine.

Said giant war machine customization system is very engaging, not only in choosing how to allocate your hard earned cash but balancing all of the AC’s other weight and energy demands as well. That said I did have a few qualms with the actual gameplay, which is held back a little by that classic PS1 jank. All things considered I think the 3D movement here is actually pretty good, but I found myself often fighting the camera – if not the controls. At least it’s thematically appropriate here that maneuvering a giant robot is somewhat cumbersome.

I enjoyed exploring the various settings the missions take you, some with some great ambience when not backed by the (equally as great) soundtrack. Though many of these areas are very confined and labyrinthine, which doesn't lend itself well to the high octane combat the game expects of you.

The final level’s demand for platforming is a huge drag (ie: landing on moving platforms while you can’t see fully above/below you and also have to adjust for your momentum) and leaves an irritating blemish on an otherwise very solid game!

The original Armored Core fulfills the mech-mercenary fantasy/simulation better than any of its successors. As I played I found myself really thinking about how I could best optimize my machine and playstyle for optimal payout. Which jobs were worth taking? Which parts could get the job done with minimal cost and risk? After all even if you can equip the strongest parts it's hardly worth it if it means you're going to be blowing more money on repairs and ammo than you make during a mission.

There are no risk-free ways of making money or arena to accrue massive amounts of cash. Every mission you go on has a long-term impact on your situation. AC1 even has a completely diegetic game over/easy mode that'll kick in if you lose too much money (carried on only into AC2 and dropped thereafter).

It's in this respect that Armored Core 1 remains worth playing, as while many of its sequels are still great, even arguably better games, none of them provide quite this same gameplay loop. Only Armored Core 2: Another Age even attempted to do so (a factor totally lost if you bother to import a save from AC2), but its mission design lacks in comparison to AC1.

Speaking of there are some truly inventive stages here and never once did I feel like I was playing through 'filler.' AC1 has a uniquely eerie atmosphere particularly punctuated by certain levels like the trek into a seemingly alien insect hive, or as you venture deep into an underground facility while a disturbing radio broadcast plays. You can also easily see how From Software drew from their experience creating dungeon crawlers like King's Field when creating the labyrinthine indoor bases.

Mission briefings and emails tell the bulk of AC's paranoia-driven, dystopian story full of shady groups and backstabs. These little snippets tell you all you need to know about the kind of world the game takes place in indirectly. The interesting feature in which taking missions for certain groups may open up or close a particular branching path to you had a great debut here. It's a great system but one that also begs to be built upon further.

While later games in the series may have mechanics or features you prefer I think this Armored Core is well worth coming back to for anyone because of the purity with which it delivers on that original concept. Later games would drag the franchise into all manner of different directions, but only AC1 let you experience that original concept in its most raw form. It also simply remains a fun game full of inventive design and appealing core gameplay even all these years later. Don't pass it up under the premise its sequels are everything it is and more. Armored Core stands as a unique, singular experience within its franchise.

I can see myself getting really into this series! I played through this entire campaign, then spent a little time in Project Phantasma but skipped Master of Arena entirely. Think I get the picture of these gen 1 versions without having to play all three of them to completion. Maybe one day if I really want to push myself, but prob not. Interested to see where the series takes me in the coming generations. Control scheme is very weird to get used to, but I'm slowly coming around to it. I also don't see myself beating any of these blind, not necessarily from a story perspective, but much like other noteworthy FromSoftware games, some of the items / descriptions / mechanics are just super obscure and warrant some research, especially as I try to burn through their backlog a little more quickly.

Humanity sleeps in the machine. It gurgles for breath, suffocating beneath smoke and gunfire within the netherworld. I grip the joystick with hands like claws; the sweat feels wrong, like oil on water. Heads-up display signals flare all around my vision as I wrench the exoskeletal warrior through warehouses, space stations, and forlorn caverns. When the foes aren't robots, they're pilots just as feckless and desperate as I. The job is king—morals are optional. Captains of industry march us inexorably towards doom, and I'm just trying to keep my head down, chin up against the rising tide. The harder I fight, the deeper I explore, the more I sense the great chain of being start to fray.

Armored Core…that pit of vitality lying within the most veteran of mercenaries, and an apt title for the series to follow King's Field. From Software staff would tell us they bungled their way into developing this game to begin with, but it's appropriate they'd shift from one dark fantasy to another. Both series deal in obscure, arcane worlds, just with divergent approaches to non-linearity and game complexity. They started life as 3D tech demos before unfolding into realms of mystery and danger hitherto unseen on consoles—the kind of innovative experience Sony hoped would set their PlayStation apart from the competition. And for all the nitpicks and missed potential I can (and will) bring up, it's impressive how effectively this studio captured the one-man-army appeal of mecha media versus other developers' outings at the time. From a simple animation test to one of the studio's core franchises, it's a hell of a leap. [1]

| From this point on, you are…a Raven… |

Mecha action games on the PlayStation weren't in short supply before Armored Core (AC) arrived, though I'd forgive you for believing that. The earliest examples—Metal Jacket, Robo Pit, and Extreme Power—all featured some amount of mech customization and variety in scenarios, but always with caveats. None of them had the storytelling emphasis that From Soft's game introduced. At most, Extreme Power let players choose which missions to attempt first, acquiring points to buy new parts if successful. But that still lacked elements like e-mail chains and running a deficit after overusing ammo and/or failing missions. Robo Pit introduced the extensive parts system within a 3D versus fighter context, and Metal Jacket focused on simpler open-field battles a la MechWarrior. (Though the latter remains maybe the biggest influence on so many mecha games to come, it didn't receive a PS1 port until the same year as Armored Core.)

If anything, I see a lot of commonality between the first AC and Front Mission: Gun Hazard, the latter releasing in 1996 with some notability. Combining the series' heavy geopolitical tone and intrigue with a game loop and structure akin to Assault Suit Valken, Squaresoft's game reviewed well and prefigured the genre hybrids they'd produce for Sony's machine. Critically, they also reworked the parts-as-equipment framework from Front Mission, balancing it with arcade-style pacing and more wiggle room for players wanting to test drive multiple builds. The trouble with mecha xRPGs, then and now, is motivating constant character creation (aka editing your mecha) in order to complete stages, ideally while avoiding damage and long-term costs that could ruin a playthrough. I have no way of knowing if the original AC devs were familiar with Gun Hazard and how it elegantly solves these issues via its mix of complex story, set-pieces, and missions designed to reward creativity.

It's hard enough to make a sci-future this dreadful so enchanting and replayable. Armored Core's semi-linear plot and trickle feed of environmental worldbuilding go far in reifying the player's ascension to ace pilot, a new hero of chaos. People are right to point out the jarring, confrontational "initiation" battle, a middle finger to trends of tutorialization beginning in the mid-'90s. Surviving this teaches one to never fully trust the world they're thrust into, be it the obtuse mecha controls or the machinations of agents, corporations, and other Ravens contracting and challenging you. The fun comes from accepting these additive layers of masochism, a reflection of the decaying worldview which From Soft presents without irony or pomp and circumstance. It's on the player to investigate and understand their predicament. Future series entries add fleeting moments of cooperation and optimism to mitigate the grim bits, but the tone here's consistently muted and adverse. Absent are the triumphant flourishes of Gundam or even VOTOMS, replaced by an engaging but ever-present indifference to the erasure of people and elevation of proxy warfare.

| You have the right…the duty to find out. |

Opening missions in this game settle into a formula of scout, destroy, rinse and repeat, followed by a shopping spree. It's never quite as comfortable as you'd hope; browsing for a new radar attachment after gunning down protesters feels ever so morbid. Nor are you interacting with fellow Ravens during the majority of a playthrough, instead fighting or helping a select few through happenstance. Armored Core keeps players at arm's length from the consequences they wreak upon the world, often chiding them through AI monologues and tetchy e-mail chains. This odd pacing and story presentation lets From Soft transition between unusual missions and plot beats without breaking a sweat. The further you work for Chrome or Murakumo to the other's downfall, the murkier the mystery gets, with ulterior motives of anonymous agents pressuring you into service.

Thankfully there's a decently balanced in-game economy to support the amount of experiments and risk-taking the campaign requires, though not without problems. Buying and selling are 1-to-1 on cash return; you'll never enter the red just through shopping. Instead, the way most players wreck their run is by abusing ammo-based weapons and continuing after failing missions with mech damage. Save scumming isn't a thing Armored Core looks down on, but it will go out of its way to promote ammo-less tactics with energy swords and simply dodging past optional foes. Around halfway through the game, it arguably becomes more important to scour levels for hidden parts instead of relying on the diminishing returns from Raven's Nest inventory. I wish this first entry had done better at keeping the market relevant, but it wasn't to be.

My go-to build throughout the story was an agile, energy-focused quadrupedal range specialist dressed to the nines with secret parts. (If the game let me use the Karasawa with these legs, oh boy would I have been unstoppable!) Sure, there's a lot of fun one can have with beefy machine guns and missile options, but getting the most cash out of missions requires plasma rifles and mastery of lightsaber stabbing to play efficiently. While Project Phantasma struggled to balance the economy back towards non-energy offense, it wouldn't be until Master of Arena that the series largely evened out the trade-offs between common mecha archetypes. For instance, tank-tread mecha in this first game are actually damn powerful due to a lack of movement tricks for the bipeds, but it all falls apart when it's time for platforming or quickly escaping. Bipeds often get the class-favorite treatment in this genre, yet struggle to wield a variety of parts and weapons to handle most challenges this game throws at you later on. That leaves quad-legs builds as the most flexible and resilient option at higher levels of play, a flawed but interesting subversion of what's usually seen in mecha anime and manga. (Ed: Yes, I'm aware reverse joint legs exist. No, I don't use them in a game that punishes jumping all the time. Later AC games handle it better.)

With all these incentives combined, the pressure to learn the classic Armored Core control scheme and physics becomes bearable, if still overbearing. I've come from other tank-y mecha games like Gungriffon, so the adjustment period wasn't too bad for me, but I get why many newcomers stick with analog-patched versions of the earlier entries. Memorizing the timings for boosting before landing to minimize lag, or how to effectively pitch the lock-on reticule and snap back to center, matters more than anything in the first couple of hours. Then add on tricks for circle strafing back away from enemies, often while firing guns or launching missiles, and the combat evolves from awkward plodding into a dance of destruction. And there's no arena mode here to let you practice these techniques in a consistent, scaling environment. A veteran Raven or horse of robots can descend upon you in any of the mid-game/late-game missions, requiring quick reactions and establishing a zone of control (or retreat). It's sink or swim in the truest sense. Past the teething phase, it's easy to return to this control scheme and feel one with the AC, even after years have passed. I won't doubt that full dual-stick analog controls will work even better and enable a longer skill progression, but I adapted to the famous claw-grip style quicker than expected.

| "Pledge allegiance to no one!" |

Any problems significant enough to keep Armored Core below a 4-out-of-5 rating or higher must be deep-rooted in the game's loop and structure; that's sadly true for the level and encounter design here. I'm far from opposed to dungeon crawling in my semi-linear mecha action-RPGs, at least when there's room enough to blast around duels (plus verticality to reduce the claustrophobia). Still, a few too many stages in this debut feel like holdover concepts from King's Field II instead of properly scaled settings to wrangle a mech through. The difference between enjoying "Kill 'Struggle' Leader" and dreading "Destroy Base Computer" boils down to whether or not the story framing is compelling enough to justify zooming through non-descript (though nicely textured) hallways for most of their runtime. Occasionally the designers get clever with metal-corroding gas, inconveniently placed explosives, and other traps to keep the spelunking varied; I had a hoot tearing through the insectoid lairs like I was playing an antique musou game! But later series installments improved these confined missions with more arena-like rooms and affordances to players who make it far in and then can't win due to a sub-optimal build.

If I had to speculate, wide open-ended maps are less common here simply due to hardware constraints, be it rendering ACs and other actors in any abundance (regardless of level-of-detail scaling) or the enemy AI struggling with pathfinding in combat on a broader scale. It's a shame regardless since bombarding installations across water ("Reclaim Oil Facility"), going en guarde with a berserker atop a skyscraper ("Destroy Plus Escapee"), and rampaging down public avenues ("Attack Urban Center") offer some of the best thrills in Armored Core. Objective variety and complexity never reaches especially high regardless of mission category, so just getting to rip up groups of MTs, droids, and ACs goes a long way. Defending a cargo train in the desert starts off humble, then escalates to defeating a full-bore Human Plus combatant interceding on the situation. A series of undersea tunnels and chambers, well-defended and secretly primed to implode, threaten to bury you while avenues of escape close off. A select few dungeon crawls also open up in unexpected ways, particularly those set on space stations where vertical engagements come into play. I didn't think mecha and sewer levels could work, but here I am grinning as I pursue Struggle operatives down waterways or methodically undo their bombs within a rat's maze of air treatment tunnels.

Armored Core rarely has bad missions so much as disappointing or overachieving ones, which makes the finale so uniquely odd. By this point, the entropic cycle ensnaring Chrome, Murakumo, Struggle, and adjacent organizations has caused untold devastation across the earth. Now even the Raven's Nest falls, revealed as the illusory sham of governance it always was. Even bit players in the narrative pitch in, waxing over e-mail about the futility of these conflicts and what's really driving it all behind the scenes. So, with all this build-up and conspiracy baiting, I had high hopes for the last hour, wishing for an epic battle and world-shattering revelations to boot. Sure, I got the latter (if in a minimal, trope-adherent form), but instead of satisfying gladiatorial action, I had to ascend the fucking cubes. Everyone's got a horror story about "Destroy Floating Mines", it seems, and I'm just glad to have survived this much awkward, drawn-out platforming using my quad-leg AC. Squaring off against Nine-Ball afterward isn't quite enough to compensate either, not unless you can have an even pitched fight against this iconic rival and win the first couple of attempts. (The penultimate chambers also reflect poorly on the camera's ability to track fast-moving combatants, even if it makes for an exciting sequence.) I can still appreciate how From Soft didn't explicate too much at the end, instead trying to confound players with interesting questions and non sequiturs in the level design itself. It's all a big joke and we get to grimace through it.

| Shape Memory Alloys |

In conclusion, it's a good thing From Soft nailed all their game loop, distinctive mechanics, and interweaving systems here. The original Armored Core is unfortunately limited with how it challenges players, both in level design and mission pacing. Not having an arena to lean on makes completing the missions with maximum efficiency more of a priority, which can lead to excess retries and scrimping on investments in hopes of affording something better later vs. smoother upgrades in the short term. (I do appreciate how only fighting other ranked ACs within missions makes the Ravens' dynamic more hostile and contradictory, but the game does so little to expand on that angle.) These problems sting less knowing that, as a prototype of adventures to come, this game still accomplishes so much with so little.

Not many series strive to reach a profile this high while teasing players with details out of reach and mysteries about its development unanswered. Anyone invested in the wider world Armored Core hints at, from the shadowy groups running these underground beehive cities to the horrors hiding behind Human Plus, has to read through "data books" (artbooks) and track down magazine previews for scraps. We're only now getting English translations of the artbooks and related articles, all of which are coloring the fringes of the AC universe while only letting trace amounts of humanity through the barrier [2]. And as far as these games are concerned, pilots' backstories and white papers on neural augmentation procedures amount to nothing. Heroes and villains drop in and out of history like mayflies—only shocks to the system register on the scale From Soft's using. We're just along for the ride.

It feels like there's still so much else to analyze here: how the studio crowbar-ed their King's Field engine into handling these pyrotechnics, the peculiarities of Human Plus endings as difficulty modifiers, let alone the timely yet appropriate electronica soundtrack. A lot of PS1 releases from this period struggle to make the best use of their developers' skills, assets, and remaining CD space. I wouldn't say Armored Core succeeds at the latter, using only a few FMV sequences at key points in the story, but it's a remarkably lean and appealing game relative to its own premise. Replays come naturally thanks to multiple Human Plus tiers and the freedom to play all missions upon completing the story (plus making new saves to transfer into Project Phantasma). The controls here, though lacking in finesse, carry forward into a good chunk of the later games, with concepts like boost canceling staying relevant even after the switch to analog. Contrast this maturity with all the pratfalls From Soft made during their King's Field days. They'd learned how to not just lead in with a better start, but retain their creative momentum on budgets larger and smaller with each sequel.

Armored Core represents a coming-of-age for the PlayStation as it entered the midpoint of its lifespan, setting a bar other mid-sized studios could aspire to. Its rough edges hardly mar what I'd call one of my favorite experiences in the system's library so far. Maybe I'm going easier on this one due to my enthusiasm for the genre and the myriad themes this game explores, from cyberpunk dystopia to the malleability of history in the post-modern. It could just be that the core game's so, uh, solid after all this time. I chose not to rely on Human Plus for my first playthrough and that might have helped. No matter how you approach the series today, it's awesome to see it debut this confidently, and plenty of players must have thought so too. The Armored Core series became From Soft's backbone for a decade before the Souls-likes came to replace it, and what AC achieved for mecha games (and ARPGs in general) can't be overstated.

| Bibliography |

[1] Alex “blackoak,” trans. “Armored Core – 1997 Developer Interview - Shmuplations.Com.” PlayStation Magazine. 1997. Shmuplations. https://shmuplations.com/armoredcore/.
[2] Reddit. “Translations of Pages 103 to 105 from the Book Armored Core Official Data Book.” Accessed January 14, 2024. https://www.reddit.com/r/armoredcore/comments/x940dj/translations_of_pages_103_to_105_from_the_book/.

Great game and definitely worth a play-through, which I managed to do in two sittings. The biggest issue really is just the presentation, which could have been done better, but since you're a mercenary, context and story doesn't matter too much, does it? It's a perfect level of challenge, as by the end of the game, I had only lost five missions. If you find the controls hard, just give it another hour and really experiment with the customization; after that, you will be over that hurdle easily. The variety of missions and how short they are will keep you coming back, and the flavor text before each one really immerses you that much more to just keep pushing forward. 

a wild experiment for the--then nascent--FromSoftware. ARMORED CORE proves to be a rock solid foundation for its genre and a game that still stands on its own as a worthwile experience.

one of the rare examples of a game that actually benefits from the artifacts of its age. the slow methodical controls and the delibarate combat mechanics kinda providing a simulacrum of "real" mech piloting.

this, combined with the game's carefully designed missions, create an addictive and rewarding gameplay loop. said loop rewards player progression and mastery of the movement mechanics with increasing levels of freedom.

ARMORED CORE has a pretty perfect amount of mechanical complexity. the customization is at a level of being rich enough to entice you with upgrades and build possibilities, while being agile enough to keep the game generally... arcadey.

the aforementioned missions do a fantastic job of touring you through the game's depths. they're often more creative and atmospheric than you would think for a "game about giant robots". it uses whatever little dropplets of storytelling it can leverage to build one hell of a strong tone.

some of the later missions create genuinely intense "plot twists" and set pieces that you will remember for a long time. this hand-crafted designed coupled with a very considerate difficulty curve make loving ARMORED CORE completely effortless.