Just as the PlayStation 2 was on its way out, Banpresto commissioned From Software to make one more Another Century’s Episode game for the system. Dubbed “The Final” it was meant to be the end of that console’s line of games.

Like the time between the first and second games was very short, it was no different for the third game. Though the vast number of improvements seen in the second game made way to a more modest set in the third game. Much of this was down to the fact that the core game was thoroughly excellent by this point, so making drastic changes wouldn’t have made much sense. In any case, this was and still is one of the finest games in the Another Century’s Episode saga.

After the success of the first game, it was going to be fairly obvious that Banpresto would follow up and fund From Software to make another one. However, From Software didn’t just pump out more units but instead reworked pretty much the entire game from the ground up.

From the core dash mechanics, to the lock-on system and how all the weapons worked. Whilst the playable unit roster did indeed increase, what made this game so special were all the linear improvements to the game itself. It’s amazing to think that they managed to pull it all off in such a short space of time too.

Way back in the gloomy depths of 1998, Banpresto decided to release their own third person action game. Utilising their mecha anime intellectual property licenses from the highly successful Super Robot Taisen series of games, it was called Real Robots Final Attack and was released on the PlayStation. It is also important to note that nobody bought it.

Around about the same time, From Software were in the process of releasing their second Armored Core game, called Armored Core Project Phantasma. The already large number of Armored Core fans pondered that a From Software version of Real Robots Final Attack would have been an amazing game. It took Banpresto almost eight years to figure this out (and now From Software are on their twelfth Armored Core, game in case anyone was wondering).

Another Century’s Episode (or simply ACE) is what Real Robots Final Attack should have been; more importantly the holy union between Banpresto and From Software is now a wondrous reality.

Sequels are all fine and dandy, but cashing in on a sequel just seems a tad cheeky surely. Armored Core 2 Another Age falls into this slightly capitalist category. Set directly after the events of Armored Core 2, the Nerves Concord is undergoing drastic changes and the purpose of the Ravens is becoming less and less clear, now that the warring corporate factions have exhausted their resources. More importantly, we are back on Earth now, or what is left of it. Armored Core 2 is a bad game. Armored Core 2 Another Age is, therefore, an equally bad game. On the surface, this is true to a certain extent.

However, for all the game’s faults, Armored Core 2 Another Age has a few surprising tricks up its mechanical sleeve. Armored Core 2 Another Age is a mission based game through and through.

The Arena has gone, but in its place are double the number of missions(about a 100). Mission selection is done by navigating a world map. The further you progress through the game the more parts of the map, and consequently more missions, you unlock. Another big development for the series is that of the game’s difficulty. It is hard, damn hard.

Cast your mind back to the halcyon days of the PlayStation 2’s release. There are no “killer app” launch titles, and Sony executives are in the process of having a hissy fit. The PS2 desperately needed something that the PR leeches could market, unluckily for From Software they got their timing wrong.

Historically, the Armored Core franchise has received a very small, yet dedicated, following in the West. This is mostly a byproduct with the way Westerners view big robots. In that, unlike Japan, we haven’t had almost thirty years of big robot pop-culture rammed down our gullets. It goes over heads. Naturally, in Japan anything linked to big robots is equated with the Second Coming. Armored Core is primarily aimed at the Japanese market, simply because they actually want to control 20 metre tall anthropomorphic bipedal robots. Abroad? It is a very different story altogether.

So from the off, Sony’s PR machine picked the wrong game. To make matters worse, the final game sucked. Whether it is was all the pressure from Sony that rushed the development cycle, or the PS2’s crazy architecture, or even just plain bad luck. The final product was particularly sub-par.

There are a few anime series tie-ins that are almost always functional travesties when it comes to gaming adaptations. One of those has been Ryosuke Takahashi’s Soukou Kihei VOTOMS. Every single game has treated Armored Trooper (AT) combat with a fastidiously rigid approach and missed the actual functional parameters of the mecha themselves. The problem lies with the Scopedog, the Gilgamesh’s multi-purpose and mass-produced AT.

In each of the AT’s feet you have hidden wheels that, once engaged, allow the mecha to effectively roller-skate at high speeds. In the series, the momentum of the AT has a direct role in how the mecha “banks” into corners, but the literal idiocy that ensues is down to the fact that, in the anime, the mecha are manually driven. This means tracking a target and rolling are controlled independently. Now in an AT you have sticks and pedals, so this approach makes sense. The sticks control the torso, turning and target tracking, but the pedals handle the rollers. All of this fits with that control setup, but mapping that directly to a pad will produce the functional equivalent of wrestling with a ferret. It’s overly complex and incredibly frustrating, something that multiple PS1 games have confirmed on numerous occasions.