Armored Core

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

Armored Core is a Video Game series developed for a fuckton of consoles by From Software, you know, the Dark Souls guys (Already you know the plot is a scavenger hunt for puzzle pieces lost to the ages, and this was even before Souls was a thing).

"A heroic last stand against impossible odds? Sounds like a normal day for the Ravens..."

General Idea

Battletech and Gundam's video game baby using the guy who designed mechs for Macross (PS1 and PS2 era only) and the Japanese version of Battletech, tragically cut short by the infamous Harmony Gold. Truly a winning formula.

Armored Core puts you inside the cockpit of one of many mechs as a "Raven", set into mercenary warfare throughout the series various universes in a third-person shooter scenario, each with a different story and only vaguely sharing the same storyline until it gets changed every two or three installments. The battle system can be kind of wonky at first, but eventually one picks up it's eccentricities and begins to understand why its fans have been begging for a new installment for a decade and promptly creamed themselves when VI was announced.

Concepts

All the games share similar terms for objects and stuff.

• Armored Cores (shortened as ACs): The highly modular mecha you play as and sometimes fight against. Think an OmniMech, but faster, with lots of jump jets and universal Torso Cockpits (which are quite a rarity in BT). They're named as such as the core contains most of the vital parts and is protected by the armor in the limbs and the head. Designs are quite varied, and an AC can be anything from a hyperlight and slender stickman that can fly endlessly to a tank with arms and lots of deadly weapons.
  • NEXT: Unique to 4 and For Answer. NEXTs were bigger and more powerful ACs powered by Kojima Particles. Their unusual energy source allowed them to move faster than planes (Over Boost), gave them energy shields that made them nigh-indestructible (Primal Armor), detonate the shields to create massive green explosions (Assault Armor) and use horribly deadly weapons. Unfortunately, Kojima Particles are highly radioactive and a deadly pollutant that's so inimical to life on Earth that all the fighting in 4 left the planet as dead as Holy Terra would be without its hives. For that reason, after the events of For Answer, Kojima technology was forbidden and destroyed, and NEXTs have been lost to history by the time of V and VD. The only organization that still uses Kojima tech in the fifth-gen games is the Foundation, which is led by a crazy emo that wants to destroy humanity.
  • Unmanned Armored Cores (UNACs): AI-controlled ACs, who can potentially be much more dangerous than even an expert Raven. These have been a part of the series from the very beginning (Nine-Ball could pilot two UNACs at once against you), but they've mainly had prominence in Silent Line (where you can train an UNAC as a Consort with your own piloting skills), Formula Front (which is where their artificial brains' name, the Formula Brains, come from) and Verdict Day (where they can be Consorts once more and play a major role in the story)
• Consorts: NPC partners who can fight alongside you in missions and get some of the mission's reward in exchange. They have the most presence in the early 3rd gen games, in which they can pilot anything.
• Karasawa: A (usually) powerful laser rifle that has appeared in all of the games since the first (If you wonder about 4, it's strangely called "Canopus" in that one). Named after Yasuyoshi Karasawa, the first game and Project Phantasma's producer who died during the latter's development.
• Laser Blade: A staple throughout the series. Laser blades are the main melee weapon of ACs, a blade of pure energy that's usually mounted on the left arm. Since 4 (although the third generation made an experiment with the KAW-SAMURAI2/SYURA weapon arms), Laser Blades can be used in both hands for all your mecha-Baraka fantasies.
  • Moonlight: Armored Core's incarnation of FromSoft's Moonlight Sword, which has appeared in many forms since all the way back in King's Field. This one is the strongest laser blade in the games.
• Muscle Tracers (shortened as MTs): Lower-end mecha used for multiple purposes besides combat. They come in all sorts of forms and sizes, and can be unmanned or piloted. In some continuities, they're the Armored Cores' immediate predecessors technology-wise. In most games they're the main enemies you fight besides more conventional vehicles, other Ravens and weird, ancient and spooky superweapons. Some games also have General Purpose Armored Cores (GPACs), who are a midway point between MTs and ACs in sheer power. Think of them as AC's equivalent of BattleMechs and IndustrialMechs.
• Ravens: Mercenaries and hired guns that pilot Armored Cores. They usually band under organizations run by the Ravens themselves, with some meddling from corporations. A thing should be noted, though: While all Ravens are AC pilots, not all AC pilots are Ravens, and there are a few outliers that either work independently or are straight up corporate soldiers that only work for their own side.
  • Human PLUS: While most Ravens are normal humans, some have heavy modifications that make them even deadlier pilots. Since the first game up to Another Age, if you have more than 50,000 credits in debt (This requires either being an utter failure of a Raven, or intentionally failing), your pilot will be unwillingly modified and reverted to the start of the game. But in exchange, you'll get powerful new abilities, like an integrated radar, longer-lasting boosters, the ability to fire energy waves from your laser blade and the ability to sortie with overweight ACs. While the lore states that the process can have unwanted side effects (like going batshit insane or dying young), fortunately you don't have to deal with the consequences. In some cases, Human PLUS also slows aging, like it did with 2's bad guy Leos Klein (a 90-something veteran with the body of a middle-aged man)
  • LYNX: Like Ravens, but for NEXTs. They also have some H+-like enhancements that allow them to control their ACs like extensions of their body.

Universes

• Original (AC1 to AC2: Another Age) Universe - Comprised of 5 games, and is the first timeline explored by fans. The general idea is that mankind has been forced underground by nuclear war, and has been otherwise completely taken over by mega-corporations, who have been engaged in proxy conflicts by use of the mercenary Ravens. In AC1, you find out that all the conflict has been the result of a rogue AI by the name of Hustler One, and go merk that as quick as possible. AC 2 sees man trying to get to the surface to begin terraforming Mars, and brings the action there instead of to earth, where you gotta stop the corporations and also a failed coup from glassing the planet's surface and protect humanities future.
  • Most of the side games in this storyline were mostly one offs that barely affected the overall plot outside of fleshing out the universe; AC1's "sequels" in Project Phantasma and Master of Arena were mostly self-contained stories if not just arena battlers.
    • Armored Core - The original that set the basis for the latter ones, and often many players' entry point. Pays are very meagre. Don't care about what the oldfags tell ya, get Human Plus ASAP.
    • Project Phantasma - The first game with an Arena. An early experiment on character-centric lore, including a Finnish lady as your partner, a doomsday cult and a crazed pilot as the bad guy. Also known for being released only FOUR months after the first game and for having the most OP gun in the series, the FINGER machine gun that can melt the final boss in seconds.
    • Master of Arena - The one with the largest Arena in the series, which was so big the game was released in two discs to contain it. Also known for introducing Nineball Seraph, an enhanced version of Nine-Ball as the final boss.
    • Armored Core 2 - The first PS2 game. Armored Core but IN MARS. Also has alien weapons, for some reason.
    • Another Age - The last of the first timeline. Just a mission pack sequel set back on Earth. You can fight the PS1 era bosses too in it.
• Layered (AC3 to AC: Last Raven) Universe - Also comprised of 5 games, only now no longer on the Playstation 1 so the story was allowed to get much grander and/or complicated. 3's plot is more or less the same as 1 only with a much more fleshed out world concept of a series of interlocking underground cities known as Layered, which provide artificial sunlight, food, and weather patterns, all of whom are being vied for by corporations while an AI called the CONTROLLER (or DOVE if you talk moonspeak) takes care of the administrative part of their governments. However, due to their age, CONTROLLER has begun failing and is becoming self-aware, and the Raven may be forced to destroy it, lest it get completely out of control. Each sequel then sends you to the surface.
  • Silent Line - The realities of trying to begin colonizing a blasted hellscape of earth means there may be some places where their best can't always go, and it results in a mysterious place on the surface called the "Silent Line". It's revealed that a satellite laser cannon fries whatever gets close to the line, and then it gets so pissed about all the Corporation nonsense happening at it's border that it moves away from the line to blast through the Corporations' headquarters. Finally done playing grab-ass, the corpos create The Coalition to attack the Silent Line. The secret surprise inside the Silent Line is that DOVE/CONTROLLER had a little AI brother that would wake up just in case of human fuckery and blast the hairless monkeys back into the dirt. Has nearly twice as many parts as 3, but some of them are just copies with different stats.
  • Nexus - You know all those corporations playing nice? Yeah that's long gone now, and a new one just showed up with a special material they're hoarding. Shit gets complicated. Got a polarizing reception among the fanbase due to questionable development decisions, like making everything too vulnerable to overheating (Shoot your buddies with the CR-WH79H3 (funny fire pistol) and watch as they melt through the floor), dull mission design, an awful graphics filter that makes the game look blurry, overly balancing many weapons and setups (including the series staple Karasawa) to the point of nigh-uselessness, and cutting OP-INTENSIFY and making it NPC-only.
  • Nine-Breaker - Finally there's some peace after a shitzillion years of war, and the worlds top Ravens are set in an intense training regiment to hone their skills. Basically a game-sized tutorial for Last Raven with some rebalancing, which made it controversial but not to the same level as Nexus.
  • Last Raven - The world's a mess again due to Nexus' ending. The Ravens revolt! What remains of the Corporations band together to fight against a rebellious group of Ravens now only known as Vertex. You choose which side gets to live, Raven. Also known for being horrifically hard even if you port a Nexus/NB save (really, two of the first missions pits you against powerful ACs, doing those missions with your starting mech is suicide).
• Formula Front - Nine-Breaker again, but AC pilots are now athletes instead of mercenaries. The original version only came out on Japan, but the PSP version made it stateside, while also fixing the game's main flaw... you couldn't pilot your ACs in the PS2 version IN A GAME SERIES ALL ABOUT MECH PILOTING!! How did that mistake make it past playtesting will be a mystery for the ages.
• NEXT (AC4 and AC4A) and Post-NEXT (ACV and AC: Verdict Day) Universe - A new particle called "Kojima Particles" gets invented on earth, and the corporations decide to just take over the fucking world, using super ACs known as NEXTs. They ultimately succeed but also scour the landscape, forcing humanity to live in floating cities called Cradles. On to the sequel.
  • For Answer - Continues right where everything left off. The corporations are vying for resources while also keeping NEXT pilots in line by building enormous fuck-off weapons that you obviously trash over the course of the game, and finally someone figures out that space-travel is a thing and can be done and eventually sets off a massive war to either blow up the network of cannons keeping them down, or keep order. Or just blow up the Cradles and be done with it.
  • Armored Core V - You fight the mysterious FATHER and it's corporations, and then at the very end you fight a Nine-Ball expy. It also tells the story in a confusing backwards order but it's otherwise understandable. Also all the bipedal mechs got an expandable riot shield shin guard on their right leg (because Tacti-cool). Considered by many as the worst in the series for being excessively focused on multiplayer PvP to the point many of the game's systems depended on it, which made things go badly when the servers shut down less than 2 years later. Uniquely, parts had rarity (but you could only get rarer parts with shekels). (though like any game with a community, emulation, unifital pvp severs and 100% save file safe shareing exist for those that want to experience V along with other).
  • Verdict Day - One Hundred years later, shit has gotten less bad over time, and naturally that means it's time for faction warfare. Vote now on your phones, and by phones, we mean mechs. It also has just a shitload of callbacks to For Answer, including a modified NEXT as the final boss, ultimately revealing V/VD are distant sequels to the 4 era, in a world that was ruined by the Kojima particles. Fixed many of V's issues, which made it better received.
• VI Fires of Rubicon:: First leaked back in January 2022, had a full reveal in December. Armored Core but IN SPACE. Humanity is better off (maybe?) than in prior entries, with an interstellar civilization. What is currently known is that the game's set on the ruined world of Rubicon-3, with a strange substance called Coral that can set the stars themselves on fire. Of course, the megacorps want that shit and there's now Ravens killing each other across Rubicon-3's industrial hellscapes over the resource. Seems to mix the best stuff of prior generations, with 3's AC designs, 4's intense speed and Primal Armor, and 5's weird weapons and Scan Mode.

Notable Characters

• Nine-Ball: A big red mech that, on your first thirty tries, will absolutely stomp your shit flat the minute you begin the battle against it. Designed to be the true final boss of any game it's in, Nine-Ball is usually a crony of the corporations or a Rogue AI. While it appeared as mech that can be built with parts available to the player, its second appearance saw the debut of an overpowered boss version called Nine-Ball Seraph that is built from parts you can't access and will wreck your shit at least once. Arguably the series mascot up until Armored Core 4.

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  thank the devs you only had to fight the #1 pilot 1v1 before he challenges you to a 1v2 rematch in the next room.

• White Glint A big white mech that became the AC4 era's mascot. Guardian for the independent colony of Anatolia and member of Line Ark, This NEXT is such a beast that it's the only reason why keeping Line Ark from imploding. Despite this bold claim, White Glint is only ranked 9 on Collared's roster (implied to be deliberately not trying). Due to terrible translation issues in both AC 4 and For Answer, you'd be forgiven for not knowing who he was. In 4, he's your former ally / bff / final boss; in For Answer he's "you" from 4 (and he took the name from the original WG), albeit with a unique frame. As for whatever the fuck the thing in Verdict Day is... it has the same head, but the owner is a crazy as fuck emo that wants to finish what humanity started and kill us all, and the pilot is a World Eater in all but name.

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  psst, nothin' personnell kid.

Gallery

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Arena Entries

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  Starting life as a mech pilot, the infamous rogue has wandered far to kick fools off ledges.

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  A wooden AC?!

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  Wooden AC2, does it mean Kongoki pilots Solid with an exercise bike, or Is it powered by the Wheel of Pain.

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  Surprisingly effective. Flamers in first-gen games were deadly AF. And they're just as useful against ACs in Nexus

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  A classic rivalry...

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  but we know who won...

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  A believer of Dakka