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I have never really played the old AC games. My only experience is through AC4/4A. I loved those games, it was great to be able to pilot a mech that wasn't slow but also wasn't arcady.
I S-ranked the missions and took out the other mechs in the "Arena", but after all that there wasn't much to do. The multiplayer was ok, but it resulted in strafing battles.
ACV seemed to have taken the opposite end of the gameplay experience.
I'll start with gameplay:
It plays close to how AC4/4a played. There's some differences but they aren't huge and it is easy to adapt to. The ACs are smaller. They are half the size of what they were in AC4/4a. This is due to the amount of urban combat you will be fighting. There is a noticeable emphasis now on how you take on enemies. It no longer becomes strafing battles, if you take on a ton of damage or your energy runs low, it's best to take cover somewhere. The large buildings help make it easy to duck into some alley and recover your energy.
Because of the urban combat, one addition seems to be the Scan Mode and recon units. There is no longer a minimap to find your enemy. You shoot a recon unit and enter Scan Mode in order to locate the enemy. This also allows you to "see" through buildings. This also puts emphasis on the "Operator" in PvP. The Operator sees a map of the territory and players on their team. The players will need to use the recon units to allow the Operator to gather more battlefield information and relay that to the team.
As far as the standard AC features:
There's still a good amount of parts to use, but it seems to be tied to you Team Level(I'll go over that later). More parts are made available once you hit certain team levels. You also find parts in missions or get them as rewards. Customization is also still here and in great detail. If you're a solid emblem creator, you have a good variety of patterns and "brushes" to use. I actually prefer this type of creator as it requires some skill to create amazing decals/emblems.
Controls are pretty standard. There is no longer a left and right shoulder weapon. Instead it switches out to the weapons so there's a slight delay when switching. Boosting and overall speed have been slowed down and you can now jump-scale buildings.
Single Player:
You still have about 90 missions total with about 9 story missions that can actually take a while to beat. It won't take long to beat them but the story missions are no joke and can take a while to S rank. The 80 or basically "kill target" missions, sometimes with targets being other "boss" ACs. There is no Arena so the AI AC fights are all in those order missions.
The single player experience isn't great, but if you're a completionist, there are "scrap parts" in most missions to look for and collect, and there's also the challenge of S ranking missions.
Multiplayer:
This is the bulk of the game. If this doesn't interest you, then rent the game. Before you even start you need to create or join a team. Joining an established team gives you access to a huge list available parts already. It also gives you access to other players that can help you coop those missions. There doesn't seem to be a huge focus on trading in the game. Money is easy to come by and so are most parts. But if you wanted to trade emblems/decals you can.
Modes:
Conquest: this is probably the biggest addition to the series and why I think it is a step forward. This allows teams to capture territories on a map. There are lots of territories within regions of the map. The team with the highest Territory levels will show up as the leader of that region. Conquest battles are either invasion type of defense type. There's more detail on how this works in forums so I won't go into that. These are generally a mix of PvE and PvP. The overall system seems to work but there are quirks in trying to defend your territory, which hopefully is ironed out later on.
Mercenary: Players can put themselves up as mercenaries. Once you register, you become available for other players to be recruited. When you register, you'll be put in the AC test room until a job comes in. The job details are displayed and you are given the choice of taking the job or declining it. There is a merc rating that ranks you on how much money you have made. Mercs who want to climb the leaderboards need to be careful which missions they take. The pay generally isn't great and you'll end up losing money if you take on too much damage.
Free Battle: This is a pvp mode. You can do a quick match or choose a match type. There are team battles, FFA, and duels. Pretty straight forward and fun.
Mock Battles: Your team can setup mock battles for practice.
As far as the multiplayer experience, there is lots of stuff to do. And even if you're on your own, you can hire mercs to help you out.
I do have some issues with the game.
Graphically, it's ok. Everything is just so dark and drab and it makes it difficult to see detail in other players' ACs, but all that goes out the window when you start fighting.
The support from Namco Bandai isn't that good compared to From Software's support of the JP version.
The manual is 5 pages, which is ok if there were other "official" places we can go to for information, perhaps an in-game manual or an official forum. There is none of that here.
If you're in the EU region, you also may have a problem trying to get matches. It is sounding pretty empty there and we can only hope that NB can merge the non JP regions in the future.
As far as the NA region, the population seems to be fine. I have no problems getting merc jobs and you can get in on a good variety of missions that way. I'll also note that I didn't experience too much lag in the games. I see it here and there but its not common.
The PS3 version also apparently suffers from FPS issues. I have not noticed it since it doesn't affect the overall gameplay. I also found this game loads up missions very fast. Even navigating through the menus and going into assembly was a quick load.
If you're a fan of the series I'd add another star on my rating. I knocked it on the SP experience being such a small part of this game and the lack of Arena. It's a good game overall but for the uninitiated it can be tough to get into.
EDIT 04/20/2012
I have to knock down a star in less than a month.
If you are playing purely for Single player and a huge AC fan, then I'd keep the star there.
For people looking to play Multiplayer in the Conquest or Free Battle, you may be disappointed.
Defense missions require players to wait in a room for their territory to be attacked. There is nothing to do but change you're AC configuration and the wait is indefinite.
In Free battle and merc, you need to be on at the right time, otherwise there won't be anyone else on.
In addition to the above issues, there's also Namco Bandai. The japanese version of this game is already on 1.03 to fix various parts balances.
For all other versions:
Thank you for contacting Namco Bandai's Customer Support Department.
We currently have no information regarding any upcoming updates for the North American release of Armored Core V at this time. This information will be posted on the official Armored Core V website and on our Facebook page if any new updates become available. Please keep checking them periodically for any new updates as they become available:
Namco Bandai Games America Inc. Customer Support
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I'd still recommend the game in hopes that a larger community would mean greater leverage in getting NamcoBandai to do something, and better matchmaking for multiplayer.
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Hilarious the number of people on here crying about the game being "constantly online"...Do you guys just blindly buy everything or is it just video games? If you did ANY research at all you would have read in the hundreds of articles/write ups before release that the game has a persistent online world. I personally think it's great to be able to jump into a mission, keep an entire team of friends together, track their stats, work together and trade parts/money together at any time. If none of your team is online, you can hire mercenaries (other real players) to come in and help you out. If your team becomes strong enough, you actually control parts of the world map which other teams will then try to overthrow. The game controls are MUCH improved over AC4/4A and the upgrades are all still there. Tons of parts/mods/weapons/boosters/frames to collect and try. My only gripe is that the visuals somehow look worse than AC4/4A but considering it runs online with little to no lag, I'll accept this minor gripe for the good of the gameplay. The game has a ton of potential to be long lasting, you just have to decide for yourself if you are a turtle in your basement and only want to play by yourself or if you want to take a chance and have some fun with other mech fans. Hop on in!!!
Buy Armored Core V Now
My experience so far with the game has been a great one.
As stated in other reviews and a number of articles online and in magazines, Armored Core V is fixed toward a multiplayer experience. Since it's so close to the game's release, it's difficult to get the best grasp on the game, but for the hours I've played so far, I'm very, very excited to see what's ahead.
The focus is on players creating teams and interacting with their teams taking different territories and getting their rating up. There can be matches of up to 5 vs 5, which I can't imagine with gameplay being intense enough on 1 vs 1. There is an offline mode and one can play through story missions, or simple order missions to take out individual NPC ACs or units of tanks and helicopters. If you do play online, one other person can join with story or order missions, and the help is definitely appreciated. It's not an easy game, so for those looking for a decent challenge, there's one to be had. Like I sad, I haven't even had enough time to completely flesh out the big team aspects of the game, so I haven't seen the 5 vs 5 yet.
The mechs this time around are smaller, quicker, and more nimble. Smaller biped mechs can fit between buildings and climb to the top of taller ones to snipe and hide. It makes the combat much more fast paced.
There's a ridiculous amount of customization when it comes to the mechs. Each part can be painted individually, and can be labeled with completely custom labels. There are 500 parts to choose from, and I'm sure, with the game being a largely online experience, that many more parts will be released. There is also a large amount of customization when it comes to teams as well. There are team emblems, team paint jobs, tag-lines, how players are accepted into teams (player-vote, screening, free-to-join, etc.), even down to how the players are paid after missions are completed.
As for the complaints toward the graphics, if you haven't played the game during the most intense moments, I can understand why it's a little scaled back. I can't imagine it running well when there are 10 mechs battling it out with constant destruction and firing. The game looks awesome enough. The blurring effects are great, lighting is good, firing and explosion effects are fast, and the animation of the mechs themselves is fluid and believable. The textures are a little lower-resolution, but I haven't studied them as much as I could have. I tend to focus more on gameplay, and to say the least, I'm enthralled.
There's a lot to learn initially, and the game pretty much just dumps you into it beside a few tips to read through throughout the menus and the introductory mission. It's been rewarding so far.
I'll come back and edit this review if anything else comes up, or if there is a common frustration that I haven't come across yet.
All-in-all, if you're a fan of the Armored Core series, and don't mind the game being online-focused (which at this point, 90% games are, and I believe is for the better), it's very worth it.
Even if you're new, I would head to your local video rental store, or Gamefly and such to try it first, but don't be surprised to find yourself enjoying it.
Read Best Reviews of Armored Core V Here
A couple of months ago I got the itch to play a mech game. I wanted to hop into a mech, loaded for bear and go blow stuff up. I thought about Mechwarrior 4 and Steel Battalion. Of course I don't have a gaming PC or an original Xbox, so those were out of the question. I had played the demo for Armored Core 4 and didn't like it much. I spent time reading every review I could on every mech game for this current generation of consoles. I even went out and threw down 20 bucks on Front Mission Evolved.
Most mech games nowadays get crap reviews. And I had read quite a few on Armored Core V. When will I learn? After playing Front Mission Evolved for a bit, I still felt like there was something I was missing. It's not a bad game, it's just not a great game. So I went to youtube and started watching every video I could find on ACV. Despite all the negative reviews, I was liking what I was seeing.
So I bought it, and guess what, it rocks. If you are looking for a mech fix, look no further. The thing I like most about ACV is that you can pretty much tackle the missions however you want. Do you want to go through with blazing speed and destroy enemies as fast as possible? Can do. Do you want to be strategic and stealthy by climbing tall buildings and sniping your enemies? Can do. It is completely up to you.
There have been a few complaints leveled at ACV that are completely unfounded. But first let me cover a few things. As you have read, when you start the game you must create or pick a team before beginning your first mission. If you are smart you will find a team with a high score. I found one that had a score of 60 and it was free to enlist. The team score is important because you have access to more parts. The main menu consists of three screens. Most reviewers only talk about the world map. But there are in fact two other screens. The team screen where you see all the info regarding your team and the garage/workshop. The workshop is where you assemble, buy and sell parts, paint your mech, and test your mech. This is an area that gets little coverage in reviews. Instead we are told that the garage costs you money every time you use it. This is only true if you use it "in mission" The main screen workshop costs nothing to enter. Your money is spent on parts. And when you are done assembling your mech you can test it out in the test area. This area can be set up with enemies so that you can see what kind of damage your weapons do. In this area you are not charged for damage or ammo use. So it's like a free for all. Pretty cool.
The world map gives you access to campaign, order, extra, mercenary, and conquest missions. You can replay the campaign and order missions as often as you like. And this is where the game is so much like Gran Turismo. Every mission is rated. S, A, B, C, D. You are given a rating upon completion. S being the best. You are given money for every mission, which of course will be based on your rating. There are subquests in every mission that you can complete in order to increase your rating. So, like Gran Turismo, you can keep going back to try and beat your previous rating until you get an S. And then you can replay as often as you like to get cash. Completing missions also gives your team more points. This of course unlocks more parts. And like Gran Turismo you'll want to upgrade your mech to achieve the best possible outcome.
Gran Turismo doesn't have a story. It's not about story, it's about simulation. That is the case here as well. In my opinion the story is not integral to the gameplay. For me it's about the building of the mech and the destruction of my enemies. Some complaints have been leveled at the mech assembly. One reviewer stated he thought he had equipped all kinds of bad ass weapons only to find out that he had taken them all off. Well that's because he didn't spend enough time in the workshop figuring things out. Does it have a steep learning curve? Kinda. Is it trial and error? Yes. But once you understand how things work, it will become very easy. I'll give you an example.
I wanted to get a new sniper rifle. So I bought one. But when I went to equip it I couldn't find it. What happened? The mech has several locations to equip weapons. Left and right arms as well as left and right bays. When you place a weapon in one of the bays you can switch it out on the fly with the weapon on the same arm. So what I realized is that in order to get a new weapon in say my left bay I had to unequip my left arm. Take that weapon and put it in my left bay. Then when I bought the new sniper rifle it was available to me when I went to equip my left arm. See the arm weapons when purchased only show up in the arm slots. Not the bay slots. Confused? I was too until I figured it out.
Which brings me to my next point. In most of the reviews they state that the steep learning curve is off putting and give the game a lower score because of it. And yet a game like Demon's souls, also made by from software, has a learning curve that will make most casual gamers cry. That game however, was given rave reviews and lauded as one of the greatest games every made. That folks, is what we call hypocrisy.
So if you are looking for a mech game with DEEP customization, replayability, and the ability to play as you see fit, then look no further. I would recommend this as a purchase every day of the week.
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I used to play armored core for answer online, and I really got upset at how these guys online would fly around shooting at you and you didn't know which direction they were shooting at you from, it was really annoying, and i had to stop playing armored core for answer online cause of that, it was just too frustrating, I wouldn't even be able to hit the enemy mech at all cause of all the flying around and circling going on. But now thanks to From software answering my e mails they agreed that all the flying around and circling was too frustrating, so they finally did something about it. Now in armored core 5 buildings everywhere, so no more circling around in circles, and now also, they took away the mechs ability to fly vertically, in short they fixed the 2 biggest problems with armored core,
and now it is better than ever, and the detailed graphics of the cities is the icing,
well done guys.
