Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I recently have been playing through For Answer, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Anyone else played others in the series, and how they compare?

It's also funny seeing the guys who got into Dark Souls as well (Patches, Ornstein).

Any builds/weapons people like a lot?

Played pretty much every game in the series. For anwser was certainly the fastest one out of them all, enjoyed it a lot.

I think for that one I really loved using Grenade cannons.

My god these games are my life (or close enough), though "recent" iterations (4/for answer and 5/verdict day) the game has been more online focused than story focused (though for answer had the best story of the 4 new-gen games).

As for builds I have a rather nasty heavy build using Argyos parts i think it was that with a bit of engine tweaking gives me nearly infinite energy for flying. Not bad for a tank .

Also Gatling Cannons. Seriously mount two, 1000 ammo each with a fast lock-on computer and the amount of dakka is ungodly (The GC's are kinda broken in each game anyway to be fair).

At the moment, I'm using an energy weapon ones (started with Interior Union) though I need specialised builds for some missions. The main one I use in the Collared and Orca matches is:

48AN Head (BFF)
Ekhazer Core (Algebra)
Tellus Arms (Interior)
Tellus Legs (Interior)
2 x Sirius Hi-Laser Rifle (Interior)
Back Boosters (Omer)
Flares (BFF or Algebra ones)
INBLUE or Lahire FCS (Akva Vit / Omer respectively)

Can't remember which boosters and generator I use though. I think I might need to rebuild to fly better.

I did Gatling Cannons and they were really good for missions, though I am thinking of making a light build.

Well heres the "super fly heavy" build. Its fine if your bad with the controls or just a general unit, but it isn't fast. More of an endurance racer than a sprinter.

Head- Hilbert G7H
core- Argyros/C
arms- Argyros/A
legs- Argyros/L
FCS- Inblue (for lock speed) or Laura (low EN cost amd good range)
generator-Argyros/G
Mainboost- Mb107 polaris
backboost- ekhazar- legb
sideboost- 03 aaliyah/s
overedboost- argyros/ao (for good AA burst without hurting thrust too much. if you want speed then the gan01-ss-o.cg is ok but with how tankish it is anyway...meh preferece.)

weapons depend on my mood. if its a BS mission like the hard glint mission dual gatling with in blue and dakka. anything else though depends on my mood.

I beat the Fort Answerer, though I had to buy parts to make a stock Latuna armed with only Laser Blades and Flares...

What do you think is the best starting kit in FA? GA, Interior, Omer or Independent?

I owned several of the earlier games, but the last one I owned myself was AC: Last Raven. I've played AC5 at my brother's house, and it was alright...kinda rough around the edges, though. I've been wanting to play Verdict Day...if it's cheap on Amazon, I'll pick it up!

Edit - Looks like most of the games are fairly cheap on Amazon, especially the PS2 ones that I didn't get a chance to play. Looks like I'm getting some games! Haha.

 Daba wrote:
I beat the Fort Answerer, though I had to buy parts to make a stock Latuna armed with only Laser Blades and Flares...

What do you think is the best starting kit in FA? GA, Interior, Omer or Independent?

If you have the Pilebunkers they work better. Equip two then burst up to where the wierd wing things connect to the body in the T shape, right at the corner? Hit both bunkers in the right spot it goes down straight away unless your on hard. Normal Mission S rank in like 20 seconds

And the starting kit i'v really not noticed much difference, you replace most of it pretty fast anyway one way or another. Maybe Independent lagging behind the others slightly is all : s I think it's one of those things that are down to preference.

 mega_bassist wrote:
I owned several of the earlier games, but the last one I owned myself was AC: Last Raven. I've played AC5 at my brother's house, and it was alright...kinda rough around the edges, though. I've been wanting to play Verdict Day...if it's cheap on Amazon, I'll pick it up!

Edit - Looks like most of the games are fairly cheap on Amazon, especially the PS2 ones that I didn't get a chance to play. Looks like I'm getting some games! Haha.

Mega_bassist local trade in game store had the PS2 games for £0.50-£1 each, and they've been known to OVER charge.

Silent Line was the last one I played. I liked them better the further along I got, but I just haven't had the consoles for the games lately.

I played the hell out of Nexus which was the first one I got. I stopped because I ran out of stuff to do. I've also played 3, Silent Line, and Last Raven and I remember 3 being my favorite one overall. Last Raven was fething difficult, and no matter what game I played, I wasn't very agile and always ended up with a tank chassis with big guns.

BTW my user name is taken from an NPC armored core from Nexus.

For Answer was an overly fast, and with the presence of lag-bladers, it made for a pretty broken mess too.
That said, once you got past said lag-bladers, it could be pretty fun. I used to go up against some Japanese players, and they're crazy good.

Verdict Day is probably top form for the series, even if it is a bit slower. The multiplayer is great (I'm guilty of not playing in a while, pokemon kind of took over my videogame time), and the mechanics really reward skillful and tactical play.
I've had great success as a high-speed sniper hunter/interceptor. Was actually one of the top 20 mercs on the international server before I stopped playing. Good times.

If someone wanted to throw together a Dakka team, I'd be down.

Yeah, verdict day was pretty great, far better then 5 when it comes to servers and such.

Haven't played in a while though, kind of done with my xbox.

Wait, people play the AC series online?

Yes? AC V tried the team thing, didn't work amazingly due to server splits.

In Verdict day this was fixed and 5v5 territory missions are actually extremely fun.

Just remember that skill in both building and playing makes people cry.

 Soladrin wrote:

Just remember that skill in both building and playing makes people cry.

Don't remind me. I'd always end up doing mercenary work, because my team just... wasn't good. There were a few decent ravens, but for the most part, it was like being dragged through glass. You try as hard as you can to keep people afloat, but they just keep sinking lower and lower.

I remember one guy wanted to take up the whole interception role while he was in a squad with me. I had to keep fixing his build for him (because he'd keep changing it), and even then, there wasn't much I could do but watch from the sidelines as he'd rush in and get totally obliterated, no matter what I told him, or how many times I told him (it also doesn't help that I'm not very good at piloting heavy ACs, which was all I was left with).

People watch you zoom around, taking out ACs left and right, and think that it must be pretty easy and that they could do it right off the bat. They don't realize that there's a lot more that goes into it than just moving fast and plinking things.

feth it, here's an example of me winning 1v4 in ACV just by knowing how to build my mech.

And yes, as you can see, I didn't even bother dodging or well.. anything fancy.

For what it's worth, all four of those guys are pretty awful. With the exception of the Quad, all of them had piss poor armour that was begging to be torn to pieces by a BR. That wouldn't be so bad, except none of them even tried to dodge.

You don't try to damage race an HRJ (especially that set of legs) with BRs when your armour is ~500.
So much for that 2000+ KE resist. No point in even investing that high, all it stops are the weakest of sniper rifles at that point. If your KE is higher than 1784, you're wasting it.

That quad wasn't very good either, although it didn't help that that team had absolutely no coordination (let's rush the guy one at a time!).

Jeez, I remember spending oodles of time switching and customizing my ACs. No matter how I had something set up, I always found some kind of flaw with it lol.

...time to go home and grind through some Last Raven. Feth, that game is unforgiving.

I know, it still felt extremely satisfying though. I mean, that was just the ACV cookie cutter build.

I later switched to super light weight with oxeye plasma rifles and pulse guns.

It's always remained a mystery to me how this game never made it to tabletop. Even as generic "not" models or anything, because dang some of the builds are pretty.

I ended up writing a fairly sizable guide for beginners, not that it received much attention.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/704811-armored-core-verdict-day/67423126

That's a good write up!

Also, I'm glad to see the good, old Karasawa is still in the game!

 mega_bassist wrote:
That's a good write up!

Also, I'm glad to see the good, old Karasawa is still in the game!

Offcourse it is, it's in every AC game. It's almost as prolific as the moonlight blade in FROM games.

I think it's actually named after one of the old AC directors or producers.

I was kind of annoyed when AC4/a called it "canopus."

 doc1234 wrote:
It's always remained a mystery to me how this game never made it to tabletop. Even as generic "not" models or anything, because dang some of the builds are pretty.

Yeah, that would be amazing. There are model kits, but they're quite pricy and probably too large in scale for gaming.

I recently discovered that you can make your own emblem, so was up until 1am last night making the emblem for 'Grengold', eventually settling for a gold leaf wrapped in thorns.

I've ordered VD, and I might look at some of the PS2 games, but the drive mechanism on my old PS2 is getting a bit dodgy these days.

Got both Collared and Orca endings now, I guess it's time to do the Hardmode missions?

I did the entire lot without using any of that RAM stuff, and when I loaded some of the NPC schematics, found they heavily use it! I might spend some seeing that I have some now.

 Daba wrote:

Yeah, that would be amazing. There are model kits, but they're quite pricy and probably too large in scale for gaming.

I used to have a few, but had to get rid of them, since I had no place to put them. They're absolutely gorgeous, but at around 8 inches tall, not something that would work well on the tabletop.

I recently discovered that you can make your own emblem, so was up until 1am last night making the emblem for 'Grengold', eventually settling for a gold leaf wrapped in thorns.

I was quite fond of my emblem, but I ended up doing some merc missions where people would drop me the moment they saw my emblem. Got even funnier when I ended up on the opposing team and completely swept a lot of them.

I've ordered VD, and I might look at some of the PS2 games, but the drive mechanism on my old PS2 is getting a bit dodgy these days.

VD and the PS2 era games are a completely different beast from AC4/a. Expect a game that's a lot slower and more tactical. VD is easily my favourite in the series, mechanics wise, but some of the missions in the older games are absolutely fantastic. Nothing quite beats the mission from Silent Line where you're flying around a military base, shooting up enemies, while a satellite cannon is blasting down on you from space.

As far as controls are concerned, anything from Silent Line and earlier might prove... difficult.

Got both Collared and Orca endings now, I guess it's time to do the Hardmode missions?

You're still missing the Old King ending. It's really, really hard.

Hard.. but worth it. Loved the old king ending.

And yeah, if you go into PS2 era games expect something that's a lot slower and simply put more clunky in controls. Story is way better though.

Story?

The closest thing to a story in any AC game is knowing that if you see a guy with a "9" on his emblem, you better get the hell away.

Also: satellite cannons

That said, as far as the older AC games are concerned, my favourites are Silent Line and Last Raven. Silent Line had the best story missions (Remember: satellite cannons), and Last Raven perfected the old AC formula.
And keep in mind, the best ravens look with their shoulders.

Also, does anyone else appreciate the amazing music in the AC games? 4/a had the best soundtrack(s) in the series (despite being from a videogame OST, "Thinker" could easily make it into my top 20 favourite tracks), but every one of them is worth listening to. It's a sound that's just so unique.

Khota Hoshino, the guy who does most of the music, leads a group called FreQuency, which does reprises of AC tracks. They have two albums out (Armored Core Reprises and Sunrise), both of which are fantastic.

I'll agree, the mechanics were quite clunky...but the first Armored Core was one of my favorite PS1 games. Can't get much worse than that! From what I played on ACV, I was liking the new control scheme, but it was just so different than what I was used to.

@Fafnir didnt know that about the music, will have to look then up later

Honestly the story has always been one of those things where you can leave it or read further into it. That said 5 and 4 seemed to have had the weakest of stories (as such as they are).

Also Oldking ending is best ending. His count down always gets me heh.