So, Armored Core and Project Phantasma were good. To be clear. Nonetheless:
This is where Armored Core gets good.
Much like Project Phantasma before it, Master of Arena is much shorter than the first game, at least going by the number of missions. Also much like PP, this is not really a bad thing. MoA does not particularly have time for tedious or repetitive missions. They're not exactly the standout best in the series, but they're solid.
But the more interesting thing about progression in MoA is that it doesn't all happen in missions. The title is a bit of a giveaway, but unlike in most Armored Core games, the 1v1 duels of the Arena mode are, here, a mandatory part of the story. Mission progress and arena progress gate each other by turns; there will often simply be no missions available until you've spent some time in the arena, and you need separate authorizations, earned after certain missions, to be allowed to challenge different ranks of arena opponents. This could feel restrictive, I suppose, but to me it was a fun way of pacing and structuring the game. You're never doing One Thing for too long, and the fact that you never really know when you're going to get more story can do a surprising amount of work to keep you on your toes.
Said story is probably the thing that makes the game stand out most, at least in relation to very early-series Armored Core. The reason the arena plays such a large role in the game is that you're playing as one of the few AC protagonists to start the game with a specific, stated goal all his own. To wit: a Raven killed your family, and you became one to hunt him down. Complication: the guy you're looking for is called Hustler One, pilot of the AC Nineball, who also happens to be world's top-ranked Raven and the reigning Arena champion. Unlike most Ravens, for the MoA protagonist, mercenary work is the side hustle, a means to an end; he's here to climb the Arena ladder until he gets Nineball in the ring, and murder him.
(Well. Hustler One is who he wants to murder, but it's generally fandom convention that it's fine to just call the character Nineball, for several reasons including the fact that the early games themselves tend to use pilot and AC names pretty interchangeably. But also crucially for the reason that Nineball is fun to say.)
You're still a silent protagonist, but right out of the gate this is a lot of agency and personal investment for an Armored Core protag. There's also an interesting bit of continuity into AC2, or at least a popular and pretty well-supported fan theory about that.The downside is you have to play AC2.
The Nineball stuff is all particularly intriguing if you've played AC1, which also features Nineball as the top ranker and as a major antagonist. I won't spoil what his Whole Deal is, but suffice to say it's both a huge cliche and a pretty fun twist in terms of execution. The "sports anime with a revenge plot" setup goes off the rails very excitingly, culminating in a final boss that is one of my favorite fights (and robot designs, play the game quick, they're reissuing the model kit and preorders are still open--) in the series.
I'll be honest, I did legitimately like the game overall better than the other PS1 entries, but that boss by itself accounts for quite a lot of why I rank it so high in the series as a whole. It feels like something out of a bigger-budget series; it's got more cinematic oomph than anything in even most of the later AC games.
The music also bears mentioning. Honestly it's borne mentioning in most of the games and I've been neglecting it in my reviews (I think both the gen 4 games sound even better), but it must be said that Master of Arena's soundtrack is a big standout for gen 1. Old-school AC music is always catchy, and has a distinctly eclectic style, but more than one song in MoA steps up into Banger territory.
Master of Arena is great, but it does not, exactly, stand on its own. The story is closely related to that of the first game, to the extent that this one's ending might not make sense without having played it; most of its content is bonus arena modes (the main arena is integrated into the story, but there's enough other shit to do that the game had a second disc); you'll even have a hard time grinding money to put together a good AC if you didn't transfer a save file. It's got "gaiden" written all over it, a side game between main entries. But goddammit, it's a really good gaiden. I'd go so far as to say that playing Master of Arena is a really good argument in favor of playing Armored Core 1.
And also, again, god the fucking robot is cool.
This is where Armored Core gets good.
Much like Project Phantasma before it, Master of Arena is much shorter than the first game, at least going by the number of missions. Also much like PP, this is not really a bad thing. MoA does not particularly have time for tedious or repetitive missions. They're not exactly the standout best in the series, but they're solid.
But the more interesting thing about progression in MoA is that it doesn't all happen in missions. The title is a bit of a giveaway, but unlike in most Armored Core games, the 1v1 duels of the Arena mode are, here, a mandatory part of the story. Mission progress and arena progress gate each other by turns; there will often simply be no missions available until you've spent some time in the arena, and you need separate authorizations, earned after certain missions, to be allowed to challenge different ranks of arena opponents. This could feel restrictive, I suppose, but to me it was a fun way of pacing and structuring the game. You're never doing One Thing for too long, and the fact that you never really know when you're going to get more story can do a surprising amount of work to keep you on your toes.
Said story is probably the thing that makes the game stand out most, at least in relation to very early-series Armored Core. The reason the arena plays such a large role in the game is that you're playing as one of the few AC protagonists to start the game with a specific, stated goal all his own. To wit: a Raven killed your family, and you became one to hunt him down. Complication: the guy you're looking for is called Hustler One, pilot of the AC Nineball, who also happens to be world's top-ranked Raven and the reigning Arena champion. Unlike most Ravens, for the MoA protagonist, mercenary work is the side hustle, a means to an end; he's here to climb the Arena ladder until he gets Nineball in the ring, and murder him.
(Well. Hustler One is who he wants to murder, but it's generally fandom convention that it's fine to just call the character Nineball, for several reasons including the fact that the early games themselves tend to use pilot and AC names pretty interchangeably. But also crucially for the reason that Nineball is fun to say.)
You're still a silent protagonist, but right out of the gate this is a lot of agency and personal investment for an Armored Core protag. There's also an interesting bit of continuity into AC2, or at least a popular and pretty well-supported fan theory about that.
The Nineball stuff is all particularly intriguing if you've played AC1, which also features Nineball as the top ranker and as a major antagonist. I won't spoil what his Whole Deal is, but suffice to say it's both a huge cliche and a pretty fun twist in terms of execution. The "sports anime with a revenge plot" setup goes off the rails very excitingly, culminating in a final boss that is one of my favorite fights (and robot designs, play the game quick, they're reissuing the model kit and preorders are still open--) in the series.
I'll be honest, I did legitimately like the game overall better than the other PS1 entries, but that boss by itself accounts for quite a lot of why I rank it so high in the series as a whole. It feels like something out of a bigger-budget series; it's got more cinematic oomph than anything in even most of the later AC games.
The music also bears mentioning. Honestly it's borne mentioning in most of the games and I've been neglecting it in my reviews (I think both the gen 4 games sound even better), but it must be said that Master of Arena's soundtrack is a big standout for gen 1. Old-school AC music is always catchy, and has a distinctly eclectic style, but more than one song in MoA steps up into Banger territory.
Master of Arena is great, but it does not, exactly, stand on its own. The story is closely related to that of the first game, to the extent that this one's ending might not make sense without having played it; most of its content is bonus arena modes (the main arena is integrated into the story, but there's enough other shit to do that the game had a second disc); you'll even have a hard time grinding money to put together a good AC if you didn't transfer a save file. It's got "gaiden" written all over it, a side game between main entries. But goddammit, it's a really good gaiden. I'd go so far as to say that playing Master of Arena is a really good argument in favor of playing Armored Core 1.
And also, again, god the fucking robot is cool.