Fantastic game and well worth preparing by playing most the previous games in the series for, but even if you haven't it's just as good a newcomer experience I feel. There's only a few missions I really loathed (all NG++) because of specific enemies like the ones that are Armored Core equivalents of those little bone wheel fuckers from Dark Souls but overall wasn't enough to ruin the experience I had from start to end with this one. Fantastic game and well worth the three full playthroughs to see everything.