Niall O’Colmain
Huge robots kicking each other upside the head, wielding all manner of lasers, machine guns, sniper rifles the size of tanks, blades, laser blades, all while blasting around skyscrapers, leaping about in desolate, annihilated landscapes, performed to an amazing soundtrack. If what I said intrigues you, go buy Armored Core V, right now. If it doesn’t, the game is probably not for you. If you’re on the fence, read on.
Armored Core V is the latest in the Armored Core series, which has spanned three console generations, and over fourteen different games, all made by FromSoftware (perhaps most well know for Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls). Since its last major iteration in Armored Core 4’s expansion, For Answer, the game has removed some of its newer features, bringing itself back to its roots somewhat. Gone are the overshields, the near infinite boosts, the world shattering weapons as par for the course. Now, the mechs (the titular Armored Cores) are roughly five meters tall, with a believable heft and weight to them, with the more apocalyptic weaponry being handed out as the final endgame measure, along with serious repercussions to using them (such as only being able to use them once per mission, and only being able to use the weapon for a short period of time). The overall look of the game has also become slightly less polished, possibly to try to combat the frame-rate drops that plagued certain missions in For Answer, which are non-existent in AC5.
The story…well, it’s a bit of a mess. In all the Armored Core games, the plot revolves in some way around corporations and a post-apocalyptic future (either caused or abated by said corporations), all told with a poetic and grandiose tone. Sometimes, it gets near the mark, but never quite hits it. AC5‘s story is treated as almost a side dish to the game’s mech battles and minor missions, to the point that you can play a good portion of the ten main story missions out of order and not miss anything major in the plot, as well as playing several smaller “order” missions without regards to numerical ordering. The order missions serve as both a side plot and a money making mechanism; the missions are generally short (about two to five minutes), and feature a singular objective to be completed (destroy this, locate that, fight this mech pair); the story missions, on the other hand, tend to be longer, multi-objective missions, sometimes lasting up to thirty minutes . It’s a good mix, and you can pick and choose what you like to play and when, though it does make the single player feel a little more disjointed than it should.
When starting the game off for the first time, the controls will feel a little…odd. It will be difficult to wrap your head around the mechanics, how to maneuver your mech around and how not to get shot constantly. Once you’re acclimatised to the controls, however, the gameplay becomes smooth and fast paced. While some may complain that the lack of a mini-map makes it difficult to locate enemies, or that the mech’s energy dips too fast and makes rapid transit impossible, there are ways that the game provides solutions to these problems. In place of a map there are recon units that grant warnings if an enemy enters their scan range, and there also exists a recon (scanning) mode that regenerates energy faster, allows you to scan enemies to get more detailed information about their weaknesses, but removes your combat ability. It’s also free to swap in and out of it, and the swap lasts only a quarter of a second.
While the game’s single player campaign might seem a bit daunting at first, don’t despair! You don’t have to go through it alone; you can either team up with a friend, or hire someone online to be your companion for the the mission; both order or story missions allow you to bring along a friend. You can also team up and go take on bigger missions which are only available online, known as territory missions. These provide a greater variety of difficulty and type of missions, and are best undertaken as a team. They also feature a special slot for a player to assume a commander role, and issue dynamic battlefield orders.
There’s a lot more in the game to talk about, like fully customisable emblems, personalized paint jobs, multiple weapon types, different armour types, variable legs (normals, reverse, quad, tank; light and heavy versions of all of them), but to discuss them all would take far too long. It’s a game you can easily get your money’s worth out of, if you should choose to give it a chance. It’s not for everyone, but if it does hook you, you’ll enjoy every minute of it.
