Armored Core V Review (Xbox 360)

Once you’ve done some single-player missions to get enough money for building a decent core, you may wish to move onto the heart of the game: online play. Working with another player in co-op mode is nice, but you’re quickly encouraged to start playing in duels or five-on-five team battles, some of which revolve around teams fighting for territory on a wide map. Joining a clan/team is encouraged, but not strictly necessary since you can use the ’mercenary registration’ mode to temporarily join others. Actual combat against other players runs smoothly most of the time, and the few problems I had seemed to be more the fault of bad networking conditions than anything genuinely wrong with the netcode. Team combat is particularly fun, as most players I’ve encountered are very keen on coordination and working together; the only real low point is if you’re unwillingly and randomly assigned to be the team’s Operator, serving mostly as an eye-in-the-sky with little combat role beyond relaying information.

Despite doing so many things right, there are two particularly nasty flaws that need to be covered. The first is that players honestly shouldn’t go into versus multiplayer right away, since the core you use in story missions is also the one you bring with you to online play. In other words, most people will have a head start on you in terms of parts quality; their cores will be faster, more durable, and have better weapons. Some degree of ’grinding’ to get a decent machine is thus required, which is a bit of a shame.

Perhaps more significant is that almost nothing is explained to you. It is assumed you have played previous Armored Core games, and neither the manual nor in-game tutorials offer more than the most basic of instructions. You must be willing to put in the time to learn the finer points of both the complex controls and core customization, which is very daunting. Some people will be scared away by this, and it’s hard to blame them. Nonetheless, there are resources online and people to learn from if you look.

For those willing to get past these barriers to entry, Armored Core V is incredible! Very few games with an active community offer the sort of ’mecha’ action available here, so it fills a real niche. I have some concerns about the use of dedicated online servers and how even the EULA makes it clear this game will go ’dark’ at some undetermined time in the future, but you’ll probably get your $60 USD worth of fun out of it before that happens.

 This review was based on a retail copy of the Xbox 360 version, provided by Namco-Bandai.