Banpresto have a pretty sketchy record when it comes to mecha action games. After numerous botched attempts they did the smart thing and hired From Software to helm a series of mecha games called Another Century’s Episode. Linked in spirit to Banpresto’s turnbased strategy focused Super Robot Wars series, it featured multiple mecha from disparate mecha series in an action game context all high fiving for the win. Of the three games that were released on the PlayStation 2, it’s hard to find fault with any of them. From Software knew what they were doing and had finally been allowed into the playground where all the cool mecha toys were kept, so the results were obviously rather wonderful.

When ACE:R was announced, there was a sizeable amount and quite justifiable excitement over the game. As this would be the first entry to be in HD on a new and more powerful console. However, as this was meant as “rebirth” Banpresto mistakenly involved the SRW team on the production, most probably to bring the two massive franchises into a closer alignment – or some such mind numbingly stupid corporate agenda. The outcome is something rather unfortunate indeed.

Before I delve into ACE:R it’s worth clarifying what made the first three ACE games such great fun to play. Despite being based around a variety of very specific mecha licenses, each of which had esoteric nuances of their own, From Software picked a functional middle ground and then riffed off that for each series. This meant the core of the game had to give a large amount of control to the player to make the pop-cultural nods to various anime series work.

This transpired via a a two tiered combat setup, you could either fly around and shoot with greater accuracy or initiate a boost dash that limited your turning rate and forced you to find a good ballistic arc on your shots. Couple with this the ability to do quick lateral boosts for dodging, which also fed into your boost gauge, meant you you had lots of movement options at your disposal and a very fluid animation system that could be interrupted at any point. Added to all this was the fact that all your weapons were active on start of each mission and whilst often infinite in ammunition they had to be managed in terms of their reload rates.

The last aspect of the older ACE games was the camera setup, as it allowed you to not only look at your mecha from any angle in game but also aid in what targets you wanted to select. You literally would reposition the camera towards an enemy and select it directly.

As the games progressed, the boost dash became more nuanced as dashing directly past an enemy would put you at a disadvantage as it would turn the mecha around and have you boost backwards at a slower rate – leaving you vulnerable to attack. The weapons also became more numerous per unit and easier to manage. Not to mention the wonderful aspect of having in-game cel shaded characters from the respective series to ground the respective licenses in their host anime.

All of the above is now pretty much absent from ACE:R.

In place of the original boost dash is a new approach that only really allows the player to cover distances quickly, you can’t fire your weapons during this now and the animation delay means you have to gauge when to release the dash – otherwise you’ll often over shoot a target. This means the only real way to initiate combat is via the non-boosting mode of movement, which leaves you vulnerable (as it did in the original games). To make matters more awkward, doing quick boosts isn’t a simple matter of just flicking the left analogue stick but a combination of a direction and pressing the X button. Couple this with an appalling lack of feedback on how many times you can quick dash without being left prone, originally you just had to manage a boost gauge but now you have to second guess the mecha’s animation instead, makes the whole aspect of movement very frustrating. Just the basics of moving around the environment have been become very restrictive, to the extent the changes feel wholly necessary. There is a new shield option, that negates most ranged attacks from enemies, but this is something that doesn’t work very well as the game doesn’t really message the types of attacks which will actually cause you damage.

Apart from the neutered approach to movement, the game now drastically limits each of your weapons in terms of their usage. This is the down to a new “Tension” system that fills up when you use your very basic (read: awfully weak) range weapon or close-combat. Each time a bar is filled that unlocks other attacks, the more bars you have available the more powerful attacks you can use. This is one of those design decisions that, on paper, sounds brilliant but in reality is not too dissimilar to nailing your gentleman vegetables to a wall.

To clarify, each mecha has its signature attacks and weapons effectively locked-out from use from the start of each mission. To make matters worse, in order to have enough tension bars available you need to upgrade the new pilots stats. So not only does the game deny you much of the combat variance from the off but it also expects the player to grind away before they can even use them effectively.

There are also awful interface decisions with the tension system too, as each panel has to be scrolled through to reach the different attacks. This means you can often have one or more panels that act as a deadzone to reach the attack you want. This is in stark contrast to the original games’ approach, where all the attacks were directly available.

The final element that really ruins this game is down to how it deals with mecha transformation and consequent control knock on that now affects the game camera. Specifically, someone played Artdink’s recent Macross PSP games and decided to copy the controls that mapped the transformation to a direction input on the analogue nub. This worked brilliantly on the PSP as you could pick any mode of your variable fighter with a simple directional flick. This functionality is now present in ACE:R for all mecha that transform, but the controls have been mapped to the right analogue stick instead of the d-pad. This means the camera control, that facilitated the specific lock-on to enemies is now absent – as it now needs a combination input (with L2) and it has look spring not to mention reverting back to your orientated view when released, which is just awkward. What transpires is a nightmarish selection of lock-on options, none of which let you really pick the target you want during game.

Annoyingly, the transformation setup also massively limits the usage of the mecha modes of most of the mecha now too – with the Macross Frontier units being notable. This is down to the change in setup for units that don’t hover in their respective series. Meaning that the player has to manually maintain altitude via the shoulder buttons. In addition, the armored variants from Macross Frontier can’t be used on the ground based stages in the game – something that was dropped in the last ACE game on the PS2 as it was just annoying (despite being accurate to the series in question). Not being able to freely fly around in battroid mode, like the older games, is just idiotic too.

Overall then the game is a functional mess and whilst playable it’s not really enjoyable as the overt restrictions make it very frustrating – simply because you never truly feel in control of the mecha you’ve selected.

The presentation is also pretty budget too, as inter-mission narrative segments look as though they were lifted straight from SRW XO and they lack any kind of spoken dialogue. The in-game cut-scenes are also criminally long and the character animation on the face, when shown as a thumbnail in the corners of the screen, is just laughable. As all they do is generically move their mouths without actually being in-sync with the speech. Again, all this being in stark contrast to the previous two games where entire characters were rendered and animated in cel-shaded 3D models. To add insult to injury, vast swathes of these awful cut-scenes are unskippable and accompanied by the catchy notification of “not skip movie”.

The thing about all these changes, is that many of them feel SRW induced. From the tension system, to the grinding of pilot stats and the annoying menu system in the game’s front end; it’s all very out of place. The biggest tell tale sign though is the emphasis on long and rigid animations. In that the game, to look at at least, appears dynamic and impressive but when you actually play it is just plain unwieldy. Even the overtly generic quick dash “teleport” animation that all the mecha use seems like the unavoidable concession From Software had to make in order to fit in all the verbose melee animations (this being a criminal waste, as the original games had wonderful and unique animations for each of the mecha – which gave them character and helped to cement them in the mythos their host series had created).

The sad thing is that ACE:R has sold very well already, almost guaranteeing further sequels. However, Banpresto need to realise that the sales stemmed from the genuine quality of the three previous games and not this one. Considering the pretty widespread gamer dissatisfaction with the game, here’s hoping Banpresto step away from the series and let From Software do their jobs again.

Tamashii: 5/10