YMMV / Armored Core

• Best Level Ever:
  • The first game has "Guard Freight Train". You think that destroying all the planes before the train arrives is going to make the mission easier? The game then throw you into your first AC vs AC fight against AC Wildcat, complete with an introduction cinematic. It's kinda anti-climatic if you've got yourself the KARASAWA Plasma Rifle from "Destroy Fuel Depot" beforehand and use it to grind him to paste in 3-5 well timed hits, but it's a nice introductionary battle for those who just started the game.
  • Any battle with Arms Fort in For Answer counts for it's sheer destruction factor alone, but the mission "Defeat The Spirit of Motherwill" takes the cake. Once your VOB module exhausted, you're now had to make the rest of the trip by your own legs and try to avoid all projectiles that they throw at you at any time, and flying up there is no easy task, but once you get up close, you can easily slice your way through their ranks and obliterate all the gun emplacements to finish the mission. Savor it, because it ain't going any easier after that.
• Bizarro Episode:
  • The best way to sum up Formula Front is that it's what happens when BattleBots is taken to giant mecha levels. It doesn't tie into the continuity of the rest of the franchise, instead focusing on AI-driven competition battles where teams develop their ACs to be the champions. It comes off as something of a more clinical and realistic take on the Shōnen Demographic, right down to more corrupt teams trying to break the rules with something involving the "Master Data". Nothing this game placed down was ever picked up again for the rest of the series.
  • Nine Breaker is a similarly strange game that is entirely training programs and artificially simulated battles in a rare Breather Episode. Functionally speaking, there is no plot beyond fighting Nine Ball at the end, even if it might take place in canon overall, and it also came in-between the Cliffhanger in Nexus and the Darker and Edgier Last Raven. Even stranger is the questionable canonicity given it very, very loosely implies all of the prior games were the same universe. Most fans generally advise the game to be skipped over unless you want to import your AC from Nexus or one from this game into Last Raven.
• Breather Level: The mission "Destroy Cradle 03" from For Answer allows you to wreak havoc without needing to worry about any opposition. Savor the moment as much as you can, because the next and final mission for the Destruction Path will pull no punches against you.
• Broken Base: The one that still spark controversies all over the discussion is the inclusion of the Human Plus feature and the games that gives the players the access to it. Many players (especially veterans) treats the system as a crutch that trivializes most of the game that includes it, citing that the games aren't necessities the use of Human Plus and owe to the defender's frustration to poor gameplay. Defenders of the features however criticizes the developers for locking most of the features in an arbitrary crutch mechanic that should have been there by default, like not having to kneel to fire most of the available back weapons without using tank treads. The developers seems to listen to the latter as players are now have access to some Human Plus features from 4 onward, including the aforementioned shoulder-mounted weapon perks.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • In the early series, there's rarely any reason to not use the Karasawa Laser Rifle and Moonlight Laser Blade. They're not extensively heavy, they usually do the best damage for their categories, and they can be fit onto most builds without too much issue; find them in the first game and you'll see most players use them all the way to the end of Master of Arena. The biggest concern usually boils down to the Karasawa's fifty shots, something you can extend with an ammo-doubling shoulder pack, and even then it being an energy weapon means no ammunition refill costs.
  • Hope you liked shotguns and chainguns online in pre-patched 5!
  • Can't decide on how to tackle a particular V/Verdict Day mission? Strap two 3500 ammo gatlings and go wild!
• Contested Sequel: In a weird case, there is no real "ultimate" or "definitive" game in the franchise. While the first game all the way to Last Raven used the same general core gameplay, every other installment shifted the balance between story or the Arena, new gameplay elements or basic additions and removals and so forth, so fans would debate which game was the best of the bunch. There are a few particular standouts, however:
  • Another Age is a noted one to the original Armored Core 2 as perhaps the most blunt Mission-Pack Sequel in the PS2 era, thanks to not really doing anything to stand on its own two legs that wasn't more 2, removing the Arena entirely in favor of AC mission encounters, and being a gigantic collection of short missions across the globe with no overarching plot. Meanwhile Nexus is almost entirely contested for unbalanced mission design and overdoing the Heat mechanics, and Nine Breaker is criticized for being little more than a collective of battles and challenges, especially after the Cliffhanger ending of Nexus that was only followed up in Last Raven — which itself is criticized by some for being excessively difficult if you're not super into Armored Core.
  • Formula Front is often not looked on very positively entirely because the game takes the strangest option of helping program an A.I. for your Armored Core so it can do the piloting instead, or for really doing anything all that interesting on its own. Notably, the later revisions actually let you take manual control, but that's on the PlayStation Portable, meaning you simply lacked the level of control you had on consoles for prior games unless you trained on the PSP ports of other games beforehand. For those that do manage to get past all of this, though, it's otherwise a game filled with Arena battles to the brim, which is perfect for those into that part of the series.
  • Armored Core 4 and Armored Core: For Answer are considered by some fans to be the best in the series, particularly the latter by being an Even Better Sequel to the prior. But for many fans, rebooting the continuity for the third time, completely changing most of the gameplay to be far faster and more flight-focused, and becoming a more bombastic pair of games overall didn't fly well with the fans that preferred the more down-to-earth weightiness of the older games. Others see it as effectively a brief, fleeting Golden Age of the series at its apex, even giving the PS2 era a real run for its money.
  • Armored Core V and Armored Core: Verdict Day has two camps: you either were there with the games and loved them, or you considered them too far removed from even the 4 generation and too multiplayer-focused. They could go fast with the right builds, but the majority of these two games were focused on slow, tactical and competitive teamplay with a limited set of barebones (and rather difficult) story missions, making it hard to figure what audience the games were going for besides the dedicated PvP crowd.
• Crack Pairing: Shipping is rare in the fandom, but when it occurs it will invariably be this due to the impersonal nature of the series. Usually between the (usually male) protagonist and their (usually female) operator or an optional token female wingman that can be hired for one or two missions. Last Raven protagonist/Zinaida is also somewhat frequent, but the most popular by far is For Answer protagonist/May Greenfield.
  • As far as operators go, at least in Armored Core 2 the player's operator is shown to become quite attached to and concerned for the player over the course of the game, and AC 4 protagonist/Fiona Jarnefeldt is pretty much canon. Other times though, the operators are just as characterless as the player.
• Creepy Awesome: Chief reveals himself to be a very Ax-Crazy Artificial Intelligence with a twisted "love" for mankind, and those who initially liked him as a laid back fella loved him even more for it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: May Greenfield, from For Answer. As an entirely optional wingman, May has the bare minimum of characterization and a player can go through the entire game without even encountering her once. However, fans have apparently fallen in love with what little characterization she has, as a cheerful teenage girl who pilots a bright green Mighty Glacier engine of destruction. With a smiley face logo.
  • Jack-O is strangely popular in Japan with him appearing as a buff man with his AC's head wearing nothing but a piece of cloth on.
• Even Better Sequel: With Project Phantasma, Another Age and Nine Breaker as exceptions, the sequel game to each new "generation" of the series tends to be the more refined and better experience. Master of Arena would have the most balanced of the PS1 trilogy and the most in-depth Arena in the series, Silent Line would improve upon 3's parts, design and challenge with actual difficulty compared to the relative ease players had with the predecessor, Last Raven was a refined shot of adrenaline after Nexus controversially revised various mechanics, For Answer would basically be everything 4 wanted to be and then some, and Verdict Day ended up much the same to V.
• Fridge Brilliance: The name "Nine Ball Seraph." The Seraph rank among the most powerful of angels, yes; however, there's more to it than that. The Seraph(im) are also the 9th choir of angels. Conveniently, it's also the one Lucifer came from (as if we needed more proof that Hustler One is the Devil in robot form).
  • How can Nine Ball fire his shoulder cannon without kneeling (ignoring computer cheating)? He/It's an AI, and automatically gets Human Plus benefits.
  • Why Genobee do the same thing in Nexus? He's an AI too.
  • The chapter titles in Armored Core 4 are named after Agatha Christie's novels. The default name of the player character in both AC4 and FA is Unknown, AKA, "U.N. Owen", the alias of the murderer in And Then There Were None, which serves as the title of the final chapter of the game.
  • Why does Wonderful Body move in the way does? Because he was a Normal pilot and Normals are basically Armored Core's from the older games. (ie: he stops boosting to save energy)
  • How can the Chief keep firing the Giga Cannon Overed Weapon over and over without fail? Because he's also an AI.
• Fridge Horror: The last words of the "deranged" Raven in the Destroy plus escapee mission. "R... raven... watch... out... YOU... too..." Sounds like the ravings of a paranoiac, right? Think about them AFTER reaching the endgame, and what happens if you get killed after the corporate wars end. Instead of going back to the next screen, you see a short cutscene of a computer showing all of your player character's information, identity records, proof of even EXISTING, being erased.
• Game-Breaker: Almost every Armored Core game has one (or several).
  • A recurring one is the Moonlight Laser Blade and Karasawa Laser Rifle. In 4 and For Answer, Kojima weapons.
  • Reg 1.00 of for Answer has this with SALINE05s, White Glint's multi-missile launcher. Unlike other launchers, these ones have very good homing ability and most of the time, all 8 submissiles will hit the target. Firing them in rapid succession to an enemy NEXT will deplete their Primal Armor, at which the missiles will do double damage. One simply needs to use two of these in Reg 1.00 to cut half of the difficulty in Arteria Carpals, Hard mode. Of course, that kind of gamebreakerness is not allowed and since has been nerfed.
  • In 4 and For Answer, Grenade Launchers come into this territory (doing huge damage and area damage, only slightly less useful against the faster enemies), and blades do wicked damage against arms forts.
  • Also the finger machine gun in Project Phantasma, the has an incredible rate of fire, does massive damage, has a ton of ammo and is extremely light, but in got nerfed in Master of the Arena. They they brought it back in Silent Line.
  • Chainguns and shotguns in Armored Core 5 both of which can destroy any AC build with ease and take away all the difficulty of the final boss, thankfully the next patch will be nerfing them.
  • This list talks about overpowered weapons in the old era Armored Core games, and while the Karasawa and Finger are obvious listings, some surprises come in the form of two different handguns that have the strength of a rifle and can heat up an AC like a mother, as well as a sniper rifle with instantaneous lock-on time, a lightweight rifle with lots of ammo that was immediately available at the shop, and a machine gun that allows players to rip up enemies thanks to a ludicrous muzzle velocity rating. Oh, and for the aforementioned hand guns? They also have left arm variants, which means double the attack and heat. Hope you have a high-cooling and anti-shell mech that isn't a tank.
• Growing the Beard: The first game in the series solidifies all of the concepts going forwards, which is impressive as is, but it's pretty rough around the edges and lacking the Arena. Project Phantasma would expand upon the mechanics with more of a focus on story while introducing the arena for the first time, whereas Master of Arena was where it all came together for the best of the initial trilogy by integrating arena and story together. Armored Core 2, however, established so many new standards, mechanics and a higher degree of customization for the franchise going forwards that every single game up to Last Raven would use them and its engine thoroughly.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: RD is a Nervous Wreck deep down, is frequently admonished by Tara Strong's character, and is regarded by some of the fans as a shallow person. Now, which franchise does this character belong to?
  • One mission in the original game pits the player up against a gang called Dark Soul.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: One of the most common points of critique seen in reviews of the franchise- besides the often steep learning curve- is how similar all the main games are to each other, what with the majority of entries being Mission Pack Sequels, and even new numbered entries following a strict formula which has been omnipresent in the series since the first game, especially with regards to the plotlines and the gameplay loop. This is not as common with post-Armored Core 4 entries, which started shaking up the formula a bit more. The fanbase is a lot more forgiving in this regard, sometimes to the point of leading to the opposite reaction whenever a new entry is announced with newly added/removed features. Not helping the matter is the fact that the series' two most mechanically unusual games- Armored Core: Formula Front and (to a lesser extent) Armored Core: Nine Breaker- also happen to be among the worst rated games in the franchise.
• Memetic Badass: The practice tank in the V era has gained notoriety for almost always predicting any attempts to melee it and give you a oneshot boostcharge for your trouble.
• Memetic Mutation: The body seeks conflict / 身体は闘争を求める.^ExplanationA Japanese meme which is essentially the Japanese equivalent to "Half-Life 3 confirmed", originating from a 2016 tweet where a user claimed that the success of Pokémon GO will lead to people wanting a break from the cuteness as their body "starts seeking conflict", which will lead to Armored Core games being bought en masse, which will lead to a new entry being made. This quickly became a popular meme template where any given scenario leads to the body seeking conflict and in turn a new Armored Core being released. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing after the surprise announcement of Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon years later.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • It's easier to count the organizations and corporations that don't cross this. As early as the first game, Chrome and Murakumo are behind two separate terrorist organizations in Struggle and Imminent Storm respectively, not to mention other things such as Chrome's bio-organic weapons or Murakumo's shady work with the Human-Plus experiments. Once you've helped one of them enough, the losing side proceeds to either unleash superweapons from top-secret research facilities as a Taking You with Me means of spite, or attempts to fire a space cannon at the planet in a refusal to lie down and die, also respectively. These two have set the ground work for everything that follows in the series, and the downward track of just how bad it'll get.
  • In For Answer, the Destruction Path ending is this for the player. In the first mission alone, you destroy the five airships that compose Cradle 03 and kill 100 million people. Manage to beat the next mission, and you go on to destroy all of the other Cradles to become the greatest monster that humanity has ever seen.
  • If you needed any more implication that every last one of the Corporations in the 4 series are full of serpentine bastards, you'll get it after the last mission of Armored Core 4. Why? Their thanks for you taking down Rayleonard and saving their collective hides is trying to kill you for it, after burning your colony to the ground and presumably killing pretty much everyone in it. Oh, and they blackmail your partner and one of your closest friends into it, because if he didn't, they would've done the same to his colony. They even force him to use a Flawed Prototype instead of his own NEXT that will kill him painfully even if he succeeds. And on Hard Mode they send another LYNX just to cheap-shot whoever survived your final confrontation. It's no wonder your character takes on White Glint's mantle and leads Line Ark in for Answer.
• Narm:
  • In a franchise rife with corporate warfare and artificial intelligences, Project Phantasma's entire story revolves around an evil group trying to merge human and machine for utterly destructive power. Their name? The Doomsday Organization. It stops sounding like the series, and more like you just stumbled into a G.I. Joe parody, and is treated 100% straight. Not helped by the fact that the player's recurring Arch-Enemy, Stinger, is exactly the kind of evil, growly and rather arrogant villain such cartoons employ.
  • In Armored Core 2, the briefer for Emeraude rreally likes trrilling his R's for some rreason. It's harrd to tell what kind of accent he's trrying to prresent (though going by the name of the company, prrobably Frrench), which also makes it harrd to take him serriously sometimes. The rest of the voice acting isn't much better, particularly Boyle's infamous death transmission sounding less like the ominous recognition of your skill that it's supposed to be, and more like someone trying to remember a co-worker's name.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The only way to understand any story in this series is through the messages that are sent to you when you complete certain missions. Too bad that you'll be busy bypassing this part in favor of setting up your AC for the next arena fight or mission. It doesn't help that the story in the series is somewhat mediocre, and when the story does get good, From Software decides to Retcon it in favor of another game. Adding insult to injury, two of the games don't even have a story at all.
• Polished Port: 3, Silent Line and Last Raven were all ported to the Playstation Portable, where they suffer a bit from the lack of L2/R2 buttons and a second analog method, but are still fully playable with some effort. Extra parts and fights were also added to these versions, as was being able to import your AC from the first two games into Last Raven unlike the PS2 entries. While most fans would recommend the originals, they're absolutely playable and admirable porting work.
• Retroactive Recognition: Way back before she became Nanoha, Yukari Tamura was the "Standard"-type Computer voice in the first Armored Core trilogy, as well as being the occasional operator voice for the drop ship you are using.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Overheating in Nexus. While the mechanic was introduced in Armored Core 2, it was totally irrelevant to the point that you could get by with the starter radiator for almost every mission, with the only drawback being a vulnerability to heat-based weapons which only a few Ravens even use. It's only in Nexus that it became a problem, as you not only need a high-quality radiator, but you also need parts with high cooling or low heat so your mech doesn't fry itself in action.
  • When a unit dies, unless it's by overwhelming power they'll spend a couple seconds exploding before they're taken off the playing field. The problem is that your locks will still focus on dying foes like any other, meaning it's entirely possible that overzealously discharging payloads to wipe out the enemies in front of you can not only waste shots pointlessly, but end up giving another enemy the chance to shoot you in the process. And Last Raven adds Misaimed "Realism" to the mix by having enemies deal damage with their explosions if you're too close, rendering melee weapons far more dangerous to use as a counterbalance to their power.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: A variety of them, from never selling off parts to the shop which forces players to make due with much more stingy Credit economy, to limiting what types of weapons and parts they use for extra challenge such as no energy weapons so you always have ammo costs after missions, and for the early series the most notable one: no Human-PLUS enhancements through failing the game to intentionally get them. Seeing as a number of enemy AC pilots are hopped up on the full Human-PLUS suite, such a challenge forcibly puts the player on the backfoot unless they get damn good.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Rather infamously with Last Raven, where the game's method of demonstrating that everything's gone to shit is to give you two missions to choose from at the start. One's tough but manageable for a non-imported player save. The other immediately throws you against two other ACs in probably one of the hardest early game missions in the entire series, and an utter nightmare to fight with a starter AC. Welcome to the next end of the world.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "12 Steps", the garage theme in V, has a more than passing resemblance to "Teardrop" by Massive Attack.
• That One Boss:
  • Let's see... Stinger from Project Phantasma, The Frighteners from 2, the Massive MT and the Optional Bosses from Another Age, Leviathan and Ofanim in 3, Big White and IBIS from Silent Line, Agraya, Genobee and Nine Ball from Nexus, Nine Ball from Nine Breaker, Nine Ball from any game he appears in, Zinaida (On the Last Raven path) and the Pulverizers from Last Raven, take your freaking pick.
  • For some players, ANY AC of relatively equal quality is That One Boss.
  • When Losvaize makes a surprise appearance at the "Attack Urban Center" mission in the first game with her Valkyrie, there's a reason why the mission gives a timer to success by survival rather than trying to pick a fight with her. Defeating her is entirely optional — and, on a first-time playthrough, likely not possible to pull off thanks to her absurdly overpowered missile spam barrage that can destroy you in seconds even with the tankiest AC builds. The only reward for winning rather than escaping is stealing her spot on the rankings board post-game.
  • Sherring in 4 isn't exactly a pushover, either.
  • Zinaida from Last Raven IS the true final boss of the game, but she is one of the hardest fights in the franchise. She will really make you work for that final ending. And on PSP version of the game, due to an AI change, she is literally almost impossible to beat without using a specific AC build.
  • Nineball. Seraph. Yeah it's the Final Boss, but it qualifies due being a huge Difficulty Spike above anything you fought before (your armor is actually restored before the fight with it unlike everything fight in the game, that's how hard the developers realized it was). No matter how you built your AC, this thing's machine gun arms and laser blades can literally kill you in seconds, and it's hard to avoid its missiles as well. Compounded by the lack of cover and your inability to match his speed and flight ability. There's no real strategy for beating it, all you can do is shoot at it and try your best to avoid getting killed. Much less so in Another Century's Episode R, however.
  • Chief 'piloting' Exusia in 5 who is fast enough to easily kill the standard AC build in a few passes if you give him room to breath.
  • White Glint in Verdict Day. Missiles? Check. Fast and dodges a lot? Check. Primal Armor field so you can't hit him? Check. Assault Armor and a massive explosion? Check. A 2nd phase that you take damage wherever you go and it starts to dodge even more?! Check. And if that wasn't enough a bonus version of it exist somewhere and it's anyone's guess how hard it is.
  • How bad is the Bonus version? It now starts using it's VOB so it's even faster has a laser attached and divebombs the area.
• That One Level:
  • The final level of the first game stands out simply because it has one incredibly long, ultra tedious and obnoxiously bad platforming section solely to wear you out so that Nine-Ball can mop up what's left. Twice over.
  • Missions set in fog will sink your mission rating due to the time it takes to complete them.
  • Same with the above that one boss entry with any AC/NEXT being one the same goes for missions.
  • Occupation of Arteria Carpals. (It's That One Boss x4 or 5 on Hard Mode)
    Well, you deserve it, you bastard.
  • Arms Fort Answerer too, unless you know what you are doing.
  • White Glint the first few times you fight the bastard. Every time after that? Cakewalk.
  • AF Cabracan. Not because of the difficulty (it's a piece of cake), but the Land Mines and the Drones. It takes most of your ammo to take half of them out if you are using any guns, and you can forget about explosives because of their mobility. Oh, and they can walk through walls, apparently treating the sand you stand on as though it weren't even there, and making it impossible to hit them until they resurface. They are not designed with that ability in mind. They are also fairly nimble and airborne, making swords very difficult to use.
  • Sol Dios Orbit in For Answer
  • Any mission in Verdict Day that involve Autonomous arms. Unless you have scanned all the arms before hand and prepared for such, you will have an arm that is resistant to your weaponry.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • As far as this trailer is concerned, Video Game 3D Leaps are easy.
  • The opening cinematics for every game are usually pretty jaw-dropping for the time they were released, and, arguably starting with Armored Core 3, continue to look fantastic to this day.
• Win Back the Crowd: Verdict Day for the western fanbase as it has a better setup online, a merged US/EU server, better part selection, increased energy output across the board, Hardcore mode, White Glint and combining V/VD and the 4/4A continuities together.
  • Also applies to every expansion as it adds more to each engine, '4 to For Answer is a good example.