I miss the old days, but I love the new look.
In some way I miss them. I'm one of those people who spent 90% of his time on an Armored Core game BUILDING and armored core, mixing and matching parts, and adjusting to capture the exact kind of usage I was looking for. I would build a light and fast AC for arena battles, a medium AC for the indoor missions, and a hulking tank AC for the one on one long and harsh battles. Oh man.... all those parts.
Thank God for the graphics update, btw.
Well, it seems that noobs can't handle the endless hours of tweaking these days, so SOFTWARE made things simple but cutting down parts with small variations and various looks to maybe a dozen parts per selection. Energy efficient parts, energy resistant parts, defensive parts, fast parts, slow and heavy parts... mixing an matching is a possibility, but if you want to optimize for one role, say a heavy tank type, your AC is gonna look the same as all other tank-type ACs. Kinda sad.
I can live though. The constant boosting and quick boosts make vast improvements for the game and the idea of tuning and stabilizers makes up for the lack of hundred of parts. Unlike the old days, there is no heat to balance and energy can be more easily obtained in abundance with the right balance of parts. I went far beyond my typical three AC types because of this and made, so far, 5, the newest of which can basically fly indefinitely with more than 40k AP and two grenade launchers on its shoulders. I decaled the hell out of it, another feature i enjoy, and named it HYDRA. It's fun to play. I still have my fast AC which is amazing at evading and whittling down enemies, my medium true to form is still around, and I even kept my tank. Right now I'm trying to balance out an energy weapon only AC, but it's difficult to run energy weapons while flying, so there's more work to do.
Another new feature I enjoy is the PA, or Primal Armor, which I didn't understand at all when I first started playing the game. PA is a sort of shield that your AC is in that reduces incoming damage. At first I didn't notice how useful this was to have until the EGO BOOST mission where you can't have your PA active and I watched in horror as my AP dwindled down rapidly. Needless to say, I pay close attention to PA now.
A good variety of weaponry is still there from rifles, machines guns, snipers, bazookas, to blades, energy weapons, and missiles. It's satisfying enough. You still need to know how to balance weight with energy, though the interface is kinda dumbed down and easier to follow for noobs to the game. That's fine, I guess, but still part of me craves the old complicated balance of the old days. You can select with the Y button to see some more detail, but it's really not necessary.
They got rid of the AC rating system, thank god. I remember in Armored Core Nexus I made a light AC which went flawless in the arena challenges and it was only rated at a B. Lame.
The hard difficulty level is extremely frustrating at times. If you don't start out right, you're screwed. Some missions where you might have fought one enemy NEXT turning to a 4 on 1 fight on the hard mode. If you're not booting in the air and dodging within half a second, they basically pelt you to death. Otherwise, the missions have no substance. There's never a need to escape and you can ignore almost every enemy in the level to find your targets. If you take your time on missions your rank goes down and even though you've slaughtered everything on the map you're left with a hefty bill because of all the ammo and damage you used up and you make no money at all. It's best to just smash your way through without regard to the secondary enemies. All your primary targets are marked on your map in red so it's no mystery to there they are. I wished the missions were longer.
The story is as cryptic and unfulfillable as ever, with these brief voice over cut scenes about some crap that doesn't make any sense. The operator that guides you through missions is as detached and mysterious as ever as well. Maybe one day they'll poor some plot into these games.
This was really great overall, and I'll be spending plenty of time playing the game in the build portion to make better and better ACs. I've unlocked all the parts, so all that is left is to achieve an SS rank. This is my first owned XBOX360 game before I buy GTA 4 which is amazing from the hours or two I played. But anyway, I recommend Armored Core 4 for die hard fans and noobs alike. I'll see you online.