Welcome to Rubicon-3, Raven. Prepare for combat. Unmarked Spoilers ahead!
- The Story Trailer
gives us a glimpse of Handler Watler's previous three "hounds"—617, 619, and 620—on a mission to reach and destroy a lone Eye laser cannon. 619 perishes en route, but their AC's missile barrage clears the way for their teammates. When the CATAPHRACT emerges, 620 runs interference, drawing the PCA weapon's wide cannon away from 617. This gives 617 time to get in close to the CATAPHRACT, shoving their Gatling gun against its head and firing point-blank until the enemy mech is neutralized. And after that, 617's AC is heavily damaged, but still able to activate its Assault Armor Core Expansion to destroy the Eye, at the cost of themselves.COM: 617, lost. Reporting to Handler Walter… Mission complete. - As per usual, the Player Character is a One-Man Army who changes the tide of battle simply by raining down gunfire and missiles, and for once, it's not just against fellow AC pilots and corporations. One enemy faction you encounter later in the game is the Planet Closure Administration, which is essentially the space police of Rubicon-3 meant to keep people from trespassing on the planet. In Chapter 3, they come out in full force to quell the chaos and anarchy that's been happening on the planet's surface. And you proceed to mop the floor with them in almost every single encounter.
- Want to destroy an enemy in Difficult, but Awesome style? The Pile Bunker is slow to use, but a charged hit on a staggered enemy does so much damage to their health bar that even some of the deadliest bosses in the game are virtually deleted with the right setup.
- "Destroy the Weaponized Mining Ship" sees you tasked with destroying the Strider, the "crowning glory" of the RLF as they've converted a Coral mining rig into a walking weapon. Your job is to destroy it. While it's no Spirit of Motherwill, there is no denying how awesome it is to see your AC scale a giant metal behemoth by shooting down one of its legs. The RLF is so desperate to try and kill you they go so far as to detach the back half of the rig, but that doesn't stop you from moving on and taking out the generators powering the Eye, the Strider's main weapon which shoots a giant freaking laser beam. The moment the Eye is destroyed, the Strider proceeds to collapse in on itself. A few seconds later? Boom.
- "Defend the Old Spaceport" tasks you with taking on more PCA goons and drive them out of the Spaceport that you and Rusty occupied. That is, until you, Walter, and Ayre realize that the battle is already over, the place littered with scraps of PCA mechs. You soon discover that a lone AC stands above the metal corpses: the original Raven, the mercenary whom you stole the callsign from at the start of the story. Their operator has them fight you not to take back the title, but see if you are worthy enough to keep it. So if their awesome moment has this Raven singlehandedly take down an entire squad offscreen, this will be your awesome moment to take them down.Raven's Operator: Let's see how far they can fly...on borrowed wings.
- Rusty shooting the Ice Worm with the railgun, pictured above. You can even see in the distance the spaceport glowing before the shot is fired straight to the worm's head the moment the worm is out in the open.
- Some of the bosses deserve some special mention for not only being grand spectacles but also continuing the FromSoft tradition of kicking your teeth in and the satisfaction of bringing them down.
- AA P 07 Balteus is a simple PCA mech in an aircraft that rains down what can only be described as mecha bullet hell. It will rain down entire swarms of missiles that come at you from almost every direction, and in its second phase, it will occasionally switch to trying to melt your AC with a spinning flamethrower attack.
- The battle against the C-Weapon IA-02 Ice Worm feels as if Armored Core took a page from the Radahn Festival. The threat the Ice Worm poses forces the Corporations and RaD to join together to take it down. V.IV Rusty is in charge of manning a railgun to snipe the Ice Worm's secondary shield when it is at its most vulnerable; while G5 Iguazu, V.II Snail, and "Chatty" Stick join you on the ground to destroy it. In order for Rusty to actually shoot the damn thing, though, you need to take down its primary shield, which you accomplish with an experimental shoulder-mounted Stun Needle Launcher. By the end of the fight, it's just you and Rusty as the Ice Worm Turns Red in its attempts to kill you. And you come out on top, as always.
- Speaking of Elden Ring, ever wonder what an AC modeled after Malenia, Blade of Miquella would look and act like? Meet IB-01 CEL 240, a Coral-empowered mech who protects Institute City from any would-be invaders. We are not joking about the comparisons here; CEL 240 is a Lightning Bruiser with wide-reaching long-range laser blade attacks that can and will mess up your day. And in case you're hoping it will be like other AC mechs and the worst it will do is heal itself, it's second phase begins when its AP is reduced to zero and amps the ante by tenfold as it is even faster, it hits harder, and has brand new attacks. Fortunately, that's also where the comparisons end; unlike Malenia, there's no way for CEL 240 to steal AP from you to heal itself like the Blade of Miquella does. Plus, unlike Malenia, it's a mandatory boss. Defeating this boss will be difficult, but it's by no means an impossibility.
- The "Liberator of Rubicon" and "Fires of Raven" ending routes each bring out different flavors of The War Sequence, both of which are awesome in their own right:
- In the "Liberator of Rubicon" route, Ayre sends a call to arms for the Rubicon Liberation Force, asking them to back up 621 while they stop the second Fires of Ibis. When you start the mission proper, you see Rubicon's surface where battles are happening all over the place. Better yet, Rusty shows up in a brand new AC to help bring down Xylem, bringing to mind how the two once fought together during "Operation Wallclimber".
- After helping you with the Smart Cleaner, Rusty splits off and gets an Offscreen Moment of Awesome in taking down Arquebus' Interceptor Fleet; the same one you would have had to deal with yourself during "Breach the Kármán Line" on the Fires route. Even more awesome is that unlike you, Rusty doesn't have backup from Carla or the Xylem's cannons, meaning he's tearing through Arquebus' ships entirely on his own while you're dealing with the Xylem and V.II Snail. Which consequently makes Walter's feat of one-shotting Rusty from behind before he could even react even more badass on his part.
- Defeating V.II Snail in the "Liberator" path is probably one of the most satisfying kills in the entire game, because he's such an absolute bastard that has screwed everyone over at the slightest provocation and intended for a Fate Worse than Death for 621 and Walter, you can't help but feel good about destroying his Arquebus-version of Balteus as he dies screaming along with all the ideals of the company going up in smoke. And on top of that, if you feel like it, you can kick his ass on the way to fighting "Cinder" Carla to get a few more licks in before the Arquebus Balteus fight.
- If you chose the "Fires of Raven" route, "Breach the Kármán Line" will make you happy you chose to side with "Cinder" Carla. As the colony ship Xylem makes its way into space, you are thrust into The War Sequence that will see you take on the entirety of Arquebus a la One-Man Army, with "Cinder" Carla firing laser cannons to assist. Thankfully, due to the concentration of Coral at this altitude, you are given unlimited energy with which to fly and dodge as you wish, making you feel all the more like an utter badass as you utterly shred the entire Arquebus fleet! And the cherry on top of this mission is a final duel with V.IV Rusty in one of the most challenging, but exhilarating, AC fights in the game. It looks and feels like you're playing a Gundam game and not just Armored Core.
- While "Alea Iacta Est" doesn't feature The War Sequence like the other two endings, it does feature a hell of a boss. At first, it looks like you're going to fight ALLMIND, who's decided you have fulfilled your purpose and will absorb 621 and Ayre's consciousnesses into itself...only for Iguazu, the AC pilot with an ax to grind against 621, suddenly takes over the A.I. in a bid to finally kill his "rival". The first half of the fight starts off with Iguazu leading four souped up MTs outfitted with Assault Armor against you, and in the second, Iguazu switches to a more dangerous and heavily modified IB-07 SOL 644 (not unlike the one Ayre uses on the "Fires of Raven" route) and is backed up by two Sea Spider units, though at this stage Ayre is now fighting alongside you in a customized EPHEMERA unit. Halfway into the second phase, however, Iguazu finally gets frustrated to the point of releasing a wave that knocks Ayre out of the fight, forcing you into a one-on-one duel. Even when his AP is depleted, Iguazu tries to attack you one last time, but ends up overclocking the already damaged IB weapon to the point of exploding, finally putting him and ALLMIND out of commission. While he may not have been as impressive as other characters such as Rusty, you can't deny Iguazu's stubborn determination.
- It also is worth mentioning the fallout of beating ALLMIND. You activate her plan, but let everyone keep their free will. The Coral can finally make Contact with humanity at large. There's no way of knowing how this will turn out, but the die is cast.
