Silent Line plays out as a direct follow-up to the events of Armored Core 3, something that pleased me as it's territory these expansions haven't really touched on yet. Even 1999's Master of Arena felt more like it was taking place in parallel with AC1 rather than after it. Unfortunately it doesn't really do much interesting with this narrative potential and we find ourselves doing a whole lot of the same thing for the same big corps from the previous game. Maybe that's the point though? For as dramatic as the ending of AC3 was our character's actions ultimately didn't 'change the world,' but only gave the powers that be a new frontier to conquer and ruin in the very same way they had the old world.

The amount of new parts added to mech customization are great and give you a whole new level of freedom to fine-tune your build. The arena is back yet again and once again nearly identical in execution. And there's a whole host of new missions boasting a higher challenge level than the pretty easy AC3. If you loved what that game was offering and were hungry for more than Silent Line will serve you well.

While the mission design here is inventive and probably a step above its predecessor, I also found myself worn down by the abundance of (often mandatory) defensive missions. This is about as personal as complaints can get but I really don't care for these types of missions much and I think the overload of them kept me from enjoying this expansion as much as I hoped that I would. It's still good, arguably the best PS2 Armored Core to this point, but I feel like it just never quite reached the heights it could have.