A bit better than Armored Core 1 (mainly on account of the arena and the final level not being horrible 3d platforming) but the awkward controls haven't changed.

The arena itself is a bit odd since it varies from annoying as hell agile enemies to a variety of slower ones that all just let you kill them. The guy who would run away until you ran out of ammo or got him to low health was funny though. I imagine the extra arena stuff is better but I've still got like 10 games to play in this series so I'll be moving on.

Also it's funny how this managed to have a better story than Project Phantasm despite having far less story missions and cutscenes. Poor Stinger had less personality than the evil AI. I would say I like the original game's story more but it pretty much doesn't have one until you get to the twist so that seems a bit unfair to Master of Arena which put more effort into it.