Armored Core

About Armored Core

Armored Core (1997) is FromSoftware's third-person mecha shooter in which a mercenary Raven pilots a fully customisable robot for warring corporations on a ruined, underground Earth.

Armored Core in Depth

After a cataclysmic war called the Great Destruction wipes out most of humanity, survivors live underground for fifty years while corporations rise to power. The two largest, Chrome and Murakumo Millennium, fight constantly for supremacy, giving endless work to mercenaries called Ravens, who pilot powerful mechs known as Armored Cores for the highest bidder and are supplied by the neutral Ravens' Nest. The player passes the Raven Test, receives mail from the Nest's operator "R" and from a Murakumo agent, and takes corporate missions until both companies collapse; the final mission, requested by the Nest itself, is implied to be a trap to kill a Raven grown too powerful.

In single player, players choose missions on terrain from desert bases to space stations; levels are very open, with enemies appearing from all directions. Guns, rocket launchers, lasers, missiles and swords can all be fitted. Ammunition and repair costs come out of mission rewards, even on failure, and the money earned buys weapons and parts. Cores are highly modular, so that swapping leg units, for example, can make a mech faster, and Game Revolution put the possible combinations "in the very high millions". Pay rises with progress, and choosing some missions locks out others, creating branching paths that differ on replays. A two-player versus mode works through split screen or the PlayStation Link Cable.

Making Armored Core

FromSoftware developed it for the PlayStation, approaching Shōji Kawamori before the console's launch, when player-designed modular mechs were one of the only fixed ideas. Kawamori felt too much freedom would undermine a distinctive look, so he proposed modularity around a core block, which FromSoftware adopted as both the mech concept and the title. Sony Computer Entertainment released it outside Japan. It was favourably received, especially for customisation and multiplayer: GameSpot found the upgradable options "almost as charming as the gameplay", EGM called customisation its best aspect, GamePro said robot mechanics would enjoy "shopping through the detailed onscreen catalogs", and IGN called the multiplayer "the real meat of the game".