This is the good shit, 👌👀 👌👀 👌👀.

Holy shit I didn't think emojis would actually work--

Armored Core 3 is one of the Big Deal games in the series, and if you've experienced the first two generations beforehand it's both easy to see and a little hard to articulate why. On a fundamental level it's very much more of the same, but this is arguably the all-around best execution of the "oldgen" AC formula.

Apart from the gameplay feeling slightly faster or at least a lot smoother than its predecessors, AC3 is a brilliantly structured game. Missions are fresh and varied with both creative objectives and some of the best level design in the series, or certainly the best thus far. I can only recall, like, one interminable featureless gray labyrinth in this game. Listen, that's really good for Armored Core.

The pacing is the smartest since AC1, if not moreso; it's not embarrassed to ease you into things at the beginning, and the difficulty curves upward at a steady and reasonable angle, not too quick or slow. If it's possible to quantify the difficulty level of a game as being good or bad, I'd probably vote for 3 as having the best in the series; it's absolutely a brisk challenge, but it's never a slog like 2 and rarely a tilt trap.

Certain missions also give you some very interesting options to modulate the difficulty in the form of consorts. In essence, and bear in mind that these are available on a per-mission basis, you can sometimes bring along an NPC ally or even two... if you're willing to split the paycheck. The more effective partners generally cost more; it's a nice new layer to that crunchy economic decision-making I associate with oldgen.

Speaking of options, the game opens up some fun build approaches that its predecessors didn't have. Mainly, for my money: it's technically the first Armored Core where you can put a gun in your left hand instead of a sword or shield. It's an extremely limited set of guns--a flamethrower and two varieties of howitzer, all still intended for close range combat--but the howitzers at least can still do wonders for your DPS at midrange. My arena/AC duel go-to loadout is machine gun+howitzer, it fucks. Also of note is that gen 1 and 2's "Human Plus" easy mode has been reimagined into OP-INTENSIFY, an optional part you can equip or unequip at will. That's neat! Less neat: you unlock it by beating the game. Not so much an easy mode, then, but a reward God Mode. Hey, it's still less stupid than the easy mode in Pokemon Black/White 2.

As for the story... well. 3 is so much the platonic ideal of an Armored Core story, and that's a value neutral "platonic ideal," that it's kind of just like. A pseudo-remake of 1? This game is generally considered to mark the series' first timeline reboot, taking place in a different continuity from the first two generations--but what it does with that is... basically the same plot as the original Armored Core. That's kind of a goofy decision, if we're being honest, but not without merit--it's able to to lend a bit more gravitas to the the first game's ideas. I do really like 3's ending; it feels more hopeful than 1's while still maintaining that sense that the future is uncertain. ...I should probably check Spoiler Warning now. Ah, well.

The similarities to AC1 dovetail with the game's all-around quality and (relative) approachability to make it an excellent starting point for getting into Classic Armored Core. I'd go so far as to say that if you only want to play one oldgen game, period, it should unambiguously be 3. It's a beautiful vertical slice of the series' fundamentals.