Reboot entry in the ever-popular mech series that managed to turn my disdain for the first entry around to craft an enjoyable, varied and addictive experience that I couldn’t get enough of.
| Developer | FromSoftware |
| Publisher | FromSoftware |
| Franchise | Armored Core |
| Genre | |
| PSTV | No |
| PSN | EU/NA |
World-building & Story
Humanity is driven underground following a catastrophic nuclear war and form a society known as ‘Layered’ who rely on ‘The Controller’, an AI, to manage their subterranean lives for them.
In this cramped space, three corporations – Crest, Kisaragi and Mirage – vie for land and assets and conduct sabotage operations against each other, occasionally paying the pilots of giant mechs known as ‘Raven’ who undertake this work for them. Armored Core 3 begins with you taking control of a new rookie Raven and working hard to progress up the Armored Core rankings and get paid enough money to improve your mech. Yet something strange is happening – the Controller appears to be malfunctioning and the corporations use this opportunity to grow their influence.
Acting as a new start for the series, Armored Core 3 delivers a surprisingly interesting story through mission briefings and radio chatter without ever featuring cutscenes or overt plotting. You’ll learn more about the three corporations – from Crest’s bio-experiments to Kisaragi trying to drag the other two down to their lesser level – as well as slowly uncovering the reasons for the Controller’s erratic behaviour. The branching story where you can choose to ally with any faction (including the rebels known as Union), reminiscent of Shinobido 2, is an excellent touch.
There’s no characterisation here but this literal post-apocalyptic world, where humanity lives in a series of underground cities and tunnels without being able to see the sky, is gorgeous to explore and exist in.
Presentation & Sound
While it isn’t really pushing the PSP and relies on a drab colour palette far too often, Armored Core 3 has moments of beauty in among its barren wastelands.
So initial impressions aren’t great. You’ll be dropped in arenas with fog to hide far off objects, pop-in galore and boring grey and brown colours everywhere. As you progress through the missions you’ll occasionally be given something far more fantastical though – an oil rig at sunset is basic but the lighting gets things just right, while a sprawling dam with multiple entrances is impressive thanks to its scale. Even the underground cities filled with green-windowed skyscrapers looks good in the right lighting and nothing is too taxing here to cause any particular slowdown.
You can customise your mech with different equipment which shows on screen from radar dishes to gigantic railguns and you can also alter their emblem, colour scheme and all sorts of other things. It’s quite fun to see enemy mechs in the arena battles (which can also give you ideas for your own) and the game shines when there’s two going at it in combat, flying all over the screen and launching projectiles at each other. There’s a handful of spectacular setpieces here too like a collapsing underground base or chase down an underground highway.
I really loved the soundtrack too, which was electronic and fast-paced like all the best Japanese games, with a sinister feeling underneath. Voice acting is more mixed, with some cheesy line delivery, but it gets the job done.
Soundtrack highlight – Bravado
Gameplay & Content
Considering I reviewed Armored Core a while ago and it never clicked for me, I was expecting to dislike Armored Core 3. And I did at first. Then something clicked and I ended up having an absolute blast that kept me playing until the fantastic conclusion.
So this is a mission-based mech third-person shooter. You’ll spend a lot of time outside of combat fiddling with your Armored Core in the armoury – you’re awarded credits from missions and use these to buy new parts, with a nice addition here being that anything you buy will be sold for the same price, which allows you to experiment with a load out that works for you. What I didn’t enjoy was that once again nothing is explained to you, meaning I was left digging online to figure things out – although I do feel my experience with the first game helped.
Each mech has a number of parts and you can swap these as you please, but you’ll need to consider your energy as each part drains this – so you’ll need a good generator to create as much energy as possible. But the bigger and better the items, the heavier they are and you’ll need strong legs that can hold all this weight – so balancing energy and weight becomes a big part of the puzzle. With that said, you can build how you like and it was nice to have the option of going for a lightweight, nimble mech or a heavyweight monstrosity that can carry a lot of weaponry.
This early confusion, combined with the awkward default controls, led to me initially almost giving up on Armored Core 3. You can boost, but this drains your meter so quickly and doesn’t do a great deal to dodge enemy attacks. Aiming is done with triangle and circle for up and down which is cumbersome and only strafing with the triggers felt any good. I was able to beat a handful of early missions just by having some good equipment but you receive deductions from your monetary reward for damage taken and bullets expended, which led to me quickly running out of cash for good upgrades.
Then – and I don’t know why – something clicked for me. I realised that on Vita, you can bind movement to one analogue and aiming on the other (shooting is assisted by an aim window, similar to Resistance Retribution, where you lock on to any target inside of it). Suddenly I was zipping around shooting and strafing with ease. I looked up an online video about movement mechanics shared by my frequent commentator iwazaru (thank you!) and learned how to ‘bunny hop’, which uses little energy but keeps your momentum going. I learned to switch directions often to evade bullets.
With this, I started breezing through missions. It’s completely ridiculous that none of this is explained to you in game (FromSoftware titles are notoriously obtuse) and I still struggled and had to look things up online, such as one mission where I was trying to leap and land on containers before I found out that there’s a specific leg type that lets you float on water, turning the whole thing into a breeze where I just got up close to my aquatic foe and murdered it with a machine gun. These mechanics should be introduced and explained to you in game, rather than hidden away in menus or on online forums.
Yet still, I was having fun. The mission design is an absolute highlight here and you are expected to change your load out to tackle the challenge at hand. One against a gigantic MT caused me some difficulty until I realised I could pay money to get a ‘consort’ in battle (an AI) who acted as cannon fodder, while I bought and equipped a sniper rifle to devastate it from afar. Another changes depending on whether you reach a door before your consort, with you failing to do this making the objectives a whole lot easier.
I quite liked that there’s a surprising amount of control and platforming involved too. The aforementioned dam needs you to carefully land on platforms without falling in the water (the hover legs are useless here), while the oil rig has similarly tiny ledges that you must balance on. The in game maps aren’t great but they are 3D and this is helpful when falling down underground caverns to help find your way back up and although most areas feel artificially enclosed with ceilings and walls everywhere, it’s nice that you can interact with them like destroying objects to gain extra cash from your hirer.
I also liked that you can choose your route through the missions as well, with the choices you make affecting what subsequent missions are available based on the three corporations (similar to Shinobido 2). If you get bored there’s the arena too, which is a series of 1v1 duels against other Armored Cores, which you can use to earn cash to spend on upgrades. I ended up absolutely loving this and spending a load of time trying to progress as it can really help you hone your tactics, plus it makes a nice change of pace (even if mission variety is generally great – assault, defend, extract and explore all being options).
It took me about 7 hours to see the campaign through which was a good length, although I still had plenty of arena challenges left and there are new weapons and items to equip and experiment with on subsequent playthroughs.
Conclusion
I had almost written off the Armored Core series as not for me based on the first release, only for this portable take on the third entry to absolutely win me over. Although it still suffers from a lack of explanations of its most important systems, the controls on Vita make it amazingly playable and the mission variety and customisation options on offer make this an addictive mech title. Be prepared to look things up online and hit brick walls in terms of progression fairly often but if you do commit the time and power through, there’s a rewarding experience here.
8.0/10
kresnik258gaming 
Heeeey! Really great to see this :)
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I was hoping you’d comment as I remembered what you’d said on the AC1 review 😉
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Do you also have Silent Line to try as well in the future? I dont know hows on Vita, but on PSP you could trasnfer save data between three AC games to get money and mech parts.
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I do indeed have Silent Line to try next and then I *think* Last Raven third?
I believe there is save transfer between them and I’ve heard that the difficulty ramps up significantly in the subsequent titles!
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That order sounds right. There is also Formula Front but it’s a different game and more like football manager in main mode of play (but cool for what it is).
As much as I love Last Raven, it could be one of the most brutal/hardcore titles FromSoftware ever did (even soulsborne veterans might struggle), so it should be played only after previous ones, haha. Well, actually it has interesting branching storyline, and different routes of playthrough are kinda easy/normal/hard route in some ways, so it would be good idea to follow guides on that.
But also using save data transfer (if it works), bringing with you parts and money from 3 & sl will also lend a hand. Btw, from what i remember in 3 and sl you can equip “cheat” part called op-intensify (unlockable, check guides if needed) that removes weight limits for some weapons etc, but its not available in LR at all 😀
On the other hand, id like to remind that its always good idea to revisit 3/sl to find/grind secret parts that might be pretty cool (if you are into such), sometimes they are hidden somewhere on stages, sometimes given as rewars for s-rank play of mission or defeating some of arena opponents (btw i really enjoy how funny arena contestands descriptions could be haha).
Btw, while in AC3 you could hire another mercenary for handing help, in SL you can “train” other pilots on special arena so they mimick your combat style and then you can use them as welli think; this also adds up to replayability.
In any case, have fun =)
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I do have Formula Front as well actually, I bought that on my Japanese account and apparently it plays in English which is brilliant.
I’ll see how I get on in Silent Line, that does sound exactly like my cup of tea – more of the same with save transfer and trainable AI. But I do struggle with challenging games and Last Raven might be too much for me.
Loved the arena descriptions in AC3 I agree 😀
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it is great to see this game covered, ive played every armored core game and this one is definitely on my favs. the campaign i think is very good and i had a lot of fun with it. the soundtrack in AC3 is probably my fav along with ACV’s.
yea the original game, it’s been quite a while since i played it, i liked it overall but i recall this one crazy platforming section in i believe the final or second-to-final mission that was really quite rough, haha.
i played AC3 on ps2, need to definitely give the PSP version a spin after reading this. thanks a ton!
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I *really* loved the soundtrack to this game, it’s stunning.
I hope you enjoy AC3 if you replay it on PSP or Vita!
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Some more info/commentary/questions on ac3
– Did you enjoy exceed orbit? that drone part of your mech
– Did you toy around overboost? some crazy stuff can be done with it movement-wise. Check out “cLNz0HUaoQY” and “oWBkh-5P-cA” on YT for nice demonstration with overboost sliding and quick turn extension parts equipped.
– Important addition of ac3 was ability to throw away a weapons; for example you spent all ammo, so you decide to throw it away – that way you gain more speed and better energy recovery, pretty cool for decisions mid-mission/mid-battle.
– I believe it ac3 was first AC where you could put non-sword weapons into left hand slot. So if you have exceed orbit type core, you can (in theory) use three weapons at once – HOLY BATMAN THATS SOME FIREPOWER. Or even more if e.g. you laingh orbit weapons (flying drones) before that. Really fun.
– On a related note, in addition to classic swords (including legendary moonlight blade from kingsfield/darksouls), you can use parry blade (they deal super damage but they are expendable). Whats more crazy, if you equip a shield in left hand, you can parry like a knight with it. Super clunky and perhaps not worth the risk, but interesting.. see this vid – “j78ViA_JxOs”.
– Also if im not mistaken, 3rd AC was the first one to allow you enter missions while being overweight. In ac1 game just would refuse, but here you can enter (and enjoy all the penalties haha).
– When you hired mercenaries for help, did you only use mechs? I think its super funny you can invite helicopters or trucks 😀
– Speaking of graphics. 3 and SL on PSP are downgraded a bit, as in models are lower in polycount and textures are not as crisp as on PS2, also it may lack some effects. LR and FF look better, still not 1:1 as PS2 originals, but more eye candy. But I think, on small screen it’s just “fine”, also mechanical designs by Shoji Kawamori (known for Macross, Eureka 7 etc.) are just legendary and sweet (same with others who worked on series like Takayuki Yanase, Daisuke Satake, Akira Takimoto, Masahiro Miki, Wataru Inata, Makoto Kobayashi, Kaichi Satoh and others).
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– Is Exceed Orbit something you get after you beat the game? Because I seem to remember reading that it’s something that you can save transfer over to Silent Line, but maybe I’m thinking of something else.
– I could not get overboost to work well (is that the thing where you rapidly dash around and use up all your boost?) – I’ll check out all those videos.
– I did not know throwing away weapons was a feature! I actually didn’t know you could enter missions overweight either, I assumed it was just like AC1 where it wouldn’t let you.
– I did like hiring mercenaries but I think I only used the helicopter once, on that mission where you’re in the desert and you have to fight a gigantic thing.
– I actually thought 3 looked pretty nice, like obviously quite basic at points but it gets the job done. I’m expecting similar from SL and LR but that’s fine.
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There are three types of core parts you equip. Standard core that does not have anything fancy, OB core that gives you ability to use overboost, and EO core that gives you exceed orbit weapon – which looks like soemthing that comes from top part of your mech and starts autofiring at enemies (need to be inside FCS to register the hit, otherwise will miss)
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