The Let's Play Archive

Armored Core 2: Another Age

by ACES CURE PLANES

Part 1: Sortie 1 - "Working for terrorists... Thankfully."



Sortie 1 - "Working for terrorists... Thankfully."






Pilot: Crimson Soul
AC: Crimson Rage

Strengths:
-Can do ovewhelming damage with his flamethrower if he gets close
-Light weight lends itself to his strategy of high mobility

Weaknesses:
-Absolutely pitiful defense and AP, will crumble under just about any offense
-Could use a better booster choice, one focused on a high speed approach rather than efficiency, would greatly improve the build

Strategy:
Crimson Soul is a weird bird. Not just because he' going full on flamethrower focus, but because he comes so close to pulling it off and then does a pratfall on the landing. He's got a decent blade, good ultralight build going, but going with the plinky plonky base missile launcher and lower-mid thrust output booster really hurt the design. As an AI opponent though, he's absolutely nothing to write home about. The difficulty comes from not damaging the goods in the warehouse rather than surviving the encounter.

Keep your distance and try not to spray-n-pray too much, and he'll go down before he can even singe your paintjob.



Another day, another Ace's Garage revamp. From now on, we'll be covering anything I simply don't have time for in the videos, from lore nonsense to location information or just our usual mechanics talk. That's not to say Garage is going to be text only, just that video segments will be saved for when they're more appropriate. Today though, we'll be covering changes made to Another Age on the whole.

As I mentioned in the video already, we have the fancy new green reticule to designate when we've got a wall inbetween us and whatever we want to shoot at, but another new change is that we finally have analog control! Hooray! Sort of!

This isn't to say that we can now do proper twin stick aiming like a modern shooter, no, we're still stuck aiming with the shoulder buttons, nor does it mean that analog movement allows for walking slowly or at different speeds, walking is still effectively "top speed" or "nothing". Nope, all it means is that now the left stick works as just another option for the D-Pad, that's all.

However, instead of things they added, let's talk about what's different. Notably, Limiter Release took an incredible nerf, now giving you infinite energy for a shorter period, and puts you in OB Down state for longer. As well, the input is now L1+R1+L2+R2+R3, from L2+R2+L3+R3 in AC2. But of course, in Another Age, these aren't bound to the buttons, but rather the inputs associated with those buttons, meaning that if you're like me and put Move Left/Right on L/R d-pad and Turn Left/Right onto L1/R1, then you can't enter Limiter Release, not even using the D-Pad and left stick simultaneously. Womp womp.

They've also rebalanced a handful of parts to have different performance or various nerfs. The most frustrating to me is a massive decrease in the power output of the high output generator, the HOY-B1000, in exchange for a higher capacitance. Of course, testing (AC2 in the top-left, AC2AA in the bottom right) makes the capacitance change questionable. This is because of a system-wide stealth nerf to all generators, related to how energy output and recharge works. The exact extent of the changes are unknown, but suffice to say, high mobility builds took a pretty noticeable hit.

That's all for this round of "Aces bitches about Another Age though. Tune in next time as we try to get a-Head of the competition.



Retzki Lab
Ocean Base