Armored Core 4/4A: Outrunning my own Motion Blur

[Atlatl]

If you don’t have much time or patience but want a feel for the game, only watch the videos with a hype scale of 6 or higher!

Trailer

What’s this?
Armored Core 4 is a game where you play a psychic mercenary with a giant (Eva size) robot that pollutes everything around it with magical radioactive particle shields and pulls enough Gs to reduce any normal human being to red paste! Also you fight other robots and the occasional terrifyingly massive moving structure.

AC4 is the 12th game in the Armored Core series and came out in the US in 2007, with its expansion For Answer coming out in 2008. The series is pretty popular in Japan and was basically From Software’s cash cow up until the Dark Souls series came out.

This is the first installment of the series in the 360/PS3 generation and the first one to be released on something other than the Playstation. It’s fast: so fast that the netcode couldn’t effectively handle the upper limits of mobility, resulting in an exploitable phenomenon known as blade warping where you could change direction and attack before the next packet was sent. It was also the first to feature really widespread multiplayer functionality, which wound up being a major source of frustration to a lot of fans since it played more like a fighting game than the giant robot games of previous generations. I loved it and loved the pace, but I was also more often the stomper than the stompee. I’ll wax nostalgic about multiplayer meta if anyone cares to hear about it.

Why would you do this to yourself?
A few years ago I did an ACV LP and had a lot of fun with it (except for the ~80 money grinding missions) and I’ve got the itch to play these two games again, so why not record it.

OH I LOVE THE PART WHERE YOU
NO STOP

NO PLEASE NO

Yes I know if you’ve played these games you’re probably very excited to share your love of the series, but the vast majority of people never have (and probably never will) play the older games, so please have some restraint and don’t post spoilers, especially concerning the big setpiece fights.

Having said that, AC4/4A had a script so bad that it confused the localization team, and in one notable instance they weren’t even sure who was actually supposed to be speaking one of the lines and subsequently attributed it to the wrong person. It’s confusing and very anime and they try to show, not tell but it really doesn’t work out well.

If you have no idea what’s going on, that’s normal! Just ask.

What do those walls of numbers mean?
I’ll be keeping the gameplay and the garage time separate, as there’s a lot of customization and robot number crunching that can be done. Considering how short all the missions are and the fact that there are only 74 missions across the two games, it’s extremely likely that in a normal playthrough you’ll spend the majority of your time customizing and shopping and waiting for the game to load. That’s boring and I won’t be uploading a lot of videos like that!

Having said that, I would like to talk about the mechanics at some point so that people who haven’t played have an idea of what I’m looking for in parts.

Do the tank thing!
Maybe just at the beginning. Tanks are pretty unplayable towards the end of 4, and there are even some missions where you might not even be able to fly high or far enough to finish them in 4A. I’ll show off some slow stuff at the beginning and gradually ramp up to the fast builds that this game got renowned/reviled for. With that in mind, I’m still up for recommendations.

My first questions to you:

Do you want me to do videos with talking about game mechanics or screenshots with text writeups?

Keeping in mind I only have 16 layers, any suggestions on the first emblem? (I’m just going to make yung venuz if nobody says anything)

What about paint scheme?

Opening
Tutorial
Chapter 1: Pax Economicahahaha yeah right
Garage 1: where I’ll spend most of my time
Paint Shop 1: #verified
Chapter 2: A Glorified Paperweight
Chapter 2: Free Fallin’
Garage 2: Quickboost Mechanics
End of Chapter 2
Chapter 2 Arena/Simulator Supercut (no comment)
Desert Wolf Hard Mode
Chapter 1 and 2 Hard Mode Comparison (no comment)
Chapter 3 Part 1/2: Defend This House
Chapter 3 Part 2/2: Let’s Start a War
Chapter 4 Arena Supercut (no comment)
Paintshop 2: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BOY
Chapter 3 Hard Mode Comparison (no comment)
Chapter 4 Part 1/2: Go Fast
Chapter 4 Part 2/2: A Train in Every Game
Chapter 5 Arena Supercut: they can’t handle the MP meta (Arena Complete)
Chapter 4 Hard Mode Comparison (3x AC Battles)
Paintshop 3
Chapter 5/6 Part 1/2: BFFs Never Say Die
Chapter 5/6 Part 2/2: makes me cry every time
Chapter 5/6 Hard Mode AC Fights
Chapter 5/6 Hard Mode Trash Mission Supercut
Armored Core 4: For Answer Opening
4A Tutorial and Intro Mission
Garage 3: 4A Garage Layout and Speed Comparison
Ordered Battles 30-23 Supercut
Chapter 1 Part 1: Kerbal Mech Program
Chapter 1 Part 2: you get what you pay for
Chapter 1 Part 3: Futurehuge
Paintshop 4
Ordered Battles 22-16 Supercut
Chapter 2: fuck trains
Ordered Battle 15-7 Supercut
Chapter 1 and 2 Hard Mode: Land Crab Battle
Paintshop 5
Defeat White Glint Hard Mode
Ordered Battles 6-2
Chapter 3: RIP Line Ark
Chapter 3 Hard Mode: this incompetent maintenance team
Ending 1: Ask No Question, Get No Answer
Chapter 1 NG+: The Drone Apocalypse
Chapter 1 NG+ Hard Mode
Paintshop 6
Chapter 2 NG+: damn Strayed you lookin a little thin
Chapter 3 NG+: We’re Nihilists, Lebowski (less final mission for clarity)
ORCA Ordered Battles: please note half these guys are dead already
Ending 2: The Answer Justifies the Means
Paintshop 7
Ending 3: ok I understand we’re in a gray area but there is actually a wrong answer to this
Normal Mode Cleanup
Dumb Hard Mode Cleanup
Fun Hard Mode Cleanup
Last Missions Hard Mode: Old King Lives

Extra: The Real Occupation of Arteria Carpals Hard Mode Experience (warning: lots of angry yelling and fightgame salt because those were all the times I got close)

[Enrel]

Part of me was really hoping the title would be true. It’s amazing how much this series changed from the PS1 era. I honestly don’t remember as much movement as you’re doing in the first episode.

[Atlatl]

We’ll get much quicker later, it’s just tough to be mobile with the starting parts and almost no money. The huge complexity change in movement from the older generations is part of what soured a lot of fans when this game first came out, and From Software toned the pace down quite a bit in V and Verdict Day.

Update 1:

Paint Shop 1: #verified
Chapter 2: A Glorified Paperweight
Chapter 2: Free Fallin’

[Atlatl]

Companies!
There are way too many corporations running around in the giant-robot-post-apocalypse, so here’s a quick guide to who’s who before we start making the list shorter things start getting screwy:

Global Armaments (GA)
GA is the biggest company of them all and features two major subsidiaries: Cougar, who builds their boosters, and MSAC International, who is responsible for their FCS and missile technologies. Prior to the National Dismantlement War, they focused entirely on conventional military technology. They make big, blocky middle-weight parts with high AP and good defense.

Arisawa Heavy Industries
Totally not Mitsubishi. Arisawa’s the Japanese company that makes super heavy parts and grenade launchers. They’re close allies with GA and the president of the company is a NEXT pilot that we’ll meet later.

Bernard and Felix Foundation (BFF)
A European company that focuses entirely on sniper weapons and high stability parts. They have a strong rivalry with GA. Their pilots are really annoying to fight.

AkvaVit
One of the companies that developed the Kojima technology that gives our mech shields and ridiculous boosting abilities. They’re small, based out of Northern Europe, and focus on high technology parts like FCSs and strong PA components.

Rayleonard
A Canadian company! Also a thinly-veiled Raytheon reference. They’re leaders in the field of Kojima technology and have the most high-performance, high-mobility parts out of all the companies. They’re also a massive energy conglomerate and produce a lot of generators. They want to diversify and get into the ballistic weapons business! Berlioz, the guy in the intro video, works for them.

Leonemeccanica and Melies
Two European companies that make energy weapons and energy-centric heavy parts. Leonemeccanica is the dominant corporation in Africa.

Omer Science Technologies and Eqbal
Omer is the other company that independently developed Kojima technology. They’re based out of the Middle East / West Asia and are known for lightweight parts, missiles, and laser blades. They have a major subsidiary called Rosenthal that produces their balanced, mid-weight line of parts. Eqbal is technically a separate company but they always band with Omer. They make super light parts and are based somewhere in the India / Pakistan area.

Omer has a colony called Aspina that’s somewhat similar to Anatolia in that they’re a research focused colony. They develop AMS systems, which is the thing that the NEXT pilots psychically link to in order to have a high degree of control over their NEXTs and also so they don’t turn their brains into jelly while they go from 0 to Mach 1+ in <1 second I guess. You can use it if you’re not psychic but you’ll probably go insane or just outright die at some point. Barbaroi is one of those poor guys.

Technocrat
Barely a company. Their HQ is in Russia and they only make unguided rockets.

Update 2:

Garage 2: Quickboost Mechanics
End of Chapter 2

[Enrel]

I do appreciate the level of detail you go through on this.

[Fefnir]

I think my favorite company of the lot is Technocrat, because in a sea of effective ones with plenty of purpose and backstory in the world, Technocrat’s the one that’s just sorta there.

[Atlatl]

Yeah, I feel like Technocrat was the first time they included a company that was flat out failing without you being there to blow up most of their assets.

For the hard mode stuff, keep in mind that the only thing I get for S ranking a hard mode mission is a single point of FRS memory which won’t even carry over to 4A, so I won’t spend a lot of time on those except to show off the minor differences from the normal mission. If there’s a major difference or an important part that I’ll get (i.e. Desert Wolf), I’ll show the whole thing.

e: Until I went to do the next arena supercut I kinda forgot to cover the incredibly deep and well-detailed cast of characters we’re facing. Two terms that I’m not sure were explained yet: Irregulars are pilots who don’t work for any company, and Originals are the surviving pilots from the National Dismantlement War, ranked by order of performance.

He’s probably the only guy I feel bad about killing in all of these games.

We’ll fight him in chapter three. He’s pretty bad and manages to outlive the rest of the White Africa movement. Speaking of which, I feel like that’s a pretty unfortunate name localization.

Fun fact: the physical blade has so many hit detection problems that the only way I’ve seen them used was dual wielding on a fast quad that would slide directly into you.

I’m not even going to waste my time killing him in Sandstorm Citadel Hard Mode.

You get the shotgun arms for beating them, but they’re so, so bad. Dual wielding Eqbal shotguns is better in every single way. I used them for a few of the arena fights just to confirm.

He just drives straight at you and shoots. That machinegun sounds real scary though.

Bad.

Can’t aim.

Between the bazooka arm shot’s ridiculous hitbox and the AIs godlike aim, you’re pretty much forced to fight him from long range. He’ll kill you quick even in a high defense tank.

You fight her later in a hard mode mission. Surprise! It’s in an enclosed space that will be entirely engulfed by the heavy missiles’ explosion.

GAE is an odd bunch. We’ll see her later as well.

Grenade launchers are only dangerous because of the splash damage and their high stun. They’re hard to aim and only explode on impact, so if you stay airborne and move at all then you’ll probably be safe.

Update 3: E X P L O S I O N S

Chapter 2 Arena/Simulator Supercut (no comment)
Desert Wolf Hard Mode
Chapter 1 and 2 Hard Mode Comparison (no comment)

[Atlatl]

Plot summary through end of Chapter 3 at the end of this post. Here’s a fun game: come up with an idea of what you think is happening before reading it and see how far off you are. Also, I need an idea for a new emblem because I’m not ok with what I just made.

Update 4: a good game

Chapter 3 Part 1/2: Defend This House
Chapter 3 Part 2/2: Let’s Start a War
Chapter 4 Arena Supercut (no comment)
Paintshop 2: WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY BOY
Chapter 3 Hard Mode Comparison (no comment)

In this Arena/Simulator:

Part of some well-off family that works for BFF. She has another sister, Lilium, that we’ll meet in 4A.

Francisca’s little brother. The Kojima Cannon on his back can easily chop off half your health or even one-shot you if you’re in a lighter build, but I can’t remember ever seeing him use it.

A BFF engineer who does field testing and likes to analyze battles. His jammers are annoying and bad.

A huge dickhead that works for Leonemeccanica.

Her name is in reference to someone who acts as your operator later in Project Phantasma and also a nod to some characters from a giant robot VN. At the end of the game she retires and becomes the operator of 4A’s protagonist, Strayed. I’m fairly sure this is never explained in the games.

Cool child soldiers, Leonemeccanica.

There’s a localization mistake here because Ay-Pool is definitely a woman. We’ll see her around throughout both games. She’s pretty incredibly bad. AS missiles just launch with no lock and head for a nearby target, which might happen to be other missiles or things you normally wouldn’t want to waste ammo on.

Has killed more Ravens than anyone else except Anjou. Her sniper rifles will stunlock lighter mechs, making her generally terrible to fight.

He’s BFF’s pilot coach and acts as a mentor for a large number of Ravens. He’ll become real important in 4A.

The only thing worse than his paintjob is his build.

Yeah I’m really sorry I should have just rerecorded that fight.

Self-absorbed and likes to get stuck on level geometry.

A pretty unremarkable guy.

Plot Summary:
Keep in mind that a lot of the plot explanation comes from two art books that came out around the time of 4A and never had a translated release.

There’s a guy named Professor Jarnefeldt who worked for Rayleonard (maybe) and helped design the AMS system and the first NEXTs. He moves out to an independent research colony, has one child by the name of Fiona, and his earnings from his designs are apparently Anatolia’s only real source of income. The player is a normal pilot fighting for someone in the National Dismantlement War and at some point gets rescued by Fiona and brought back to Anatolia.

Professor Jarnefeldt gets old and dies, leaving a member of his research staff - Emil Gustav - in charge of the colony. The colony has a financial crisis, so Emil decides to use their test AC for mercenary work to make ends meet. Luckily the player has freakishly high AMS compatibility! This marks the beginning of the game, which Emil is narrating after the fact through all the inter-chapter cutscenes.

Anatolia makes a bunch of money by getting their start with GA and then diversifying a little bit. Everything’s fine and dandy until Fiona starts to realize that murdering people for profit isn’t all that it’s cut out to be, followed closely by work following them home in the form of the last members of the White Africa movement coming to attack the colony. This is the Retaliation mission. Fiona is now extremely uncool with their mercenary getting all this attention since it could result in more attacks on Anatolia.

Fiona demonstrates that she’s the smartest person in this game because she’s the only one that realizes that shipping off your only defense asset to make all of your money is a terrible plan.

There’s a schism forming between GA’s two branches, GA America and GA Europe. GAE wants to split off, but GAA decides to violently stop the split through the following plan: hire Anatolia’s mercenary to attack GAE’s Hedje Facility and kill everyone trying to split off, claim Anatolia’s mercenary went rogue, then send in Menno Ruh to kill the mercenary after the fact. GA looks good and has a solid coverup going. Instead, Anatolia’s mercenary crushes Menno Ruh and Anatolia basically tells Akvavit the whole story, kicking off a war between corporations. This is from the Internal Purge Hard Mode mission.

This chapter we’ll get real famous.

[Atlatl]

Alright I’ve got a bunch of explaining to do before you watch this next set since the game won’t do it for us:

Anatolia’s Mercenary is still working pretty directly for GA and getting famous. Interior Union is the alliance/merger of Leonemeccanica and its subsidiary Aldra with Melies. They make up most of Europe. GA is fighting it out with BFF right now. Rayleonard, concerned that people still see them as a new/small/weak company, start to make more and more direct attacks on other companies. The thing you’ll see in the last mission of Chapter 4 was made by Rayleonard.

Update 5: [muffled eurobeat in distance]

Chapter 4 Part 1/2: Go Fast
Chapter 4 Part 2/2: A Train in Every Game
Chapter 5 Arena Supercut: they can’t handle the MP meta (Arena Complete)
Chapter 4 Hard Mode Comparison (3x AC Battles)

From this Arena/Simulator:

Tepes V. -> Vlad Tepes -> Vlad the Impaler. I don’t think a real vampire would die of Kojima poisoning though.

Part of Berlioz’s crew and going insane from AMS feedback/Kojima poisoning. The lack of ammo probably doesn’t help with those missions. Those Kojima Cannon arms are gimmicky as hell and you only get 4 rounds, so really two shots. You also have to charge them by draining down your shield, and if something happens to destroy it (like someone with two shotguns charging you) then you won’t be able to do anything. Fully charged they’ll one-shot anyone, but you’re better off just dual wielding the Kojima gun that Tepes has instead.

Has a cool moonlight blade. Shinkai’s her boyfriend I guess?

I don’t know how he manages to get a lot of friendly fire considering he doesn’t have GLs or large missiles.

Probably has the best overall build out of all the NEXTs. Part of Berlioz’s crew.

A test pilot that just got promoted to full time LINX for Rayleonard.

A wannabe knight with rad laser cannons that look like wings. Noblesse Oblige is basically Rosenthal’s mascot.

They don’t even tell you that she dies off screen, it’s just implied by Emil and she’s one of the few not accounted for by the end of this.

Saphirus Force is an absolutely terrible name. It sounds like it should be a kids’ show.

Stoic girl.

Big scary dude piloting an all black AC. Is pretty good at his job and has no personality.

An old friend of Old King, who we’ll meet in the next game. (he’s a great guy don’t worry)

This guy is totally nuts due to some combination of being an asshole, AMS feedback, and getting deployed too many times.

One thing that I haven’t really shown is that this guy isn’t just some dweeb that announces his name and gets beat up by us all the time like some Team Rocket member. In Desert Wolf and Empress he’ll actually come to your aid under certain conditions if you’re doing poorly on normal mode. He’s really just supposed to be your bog-standard perfect rival/comrade, we just don’t see that side during normal play. If this were some trash VN or anime then he’d retire after the war and marry his childhood friend Fiona and have a great time at the beach with Anatolia’s Mercenary.

I’ll probably be done with AC4 tomorrow so we can all move on to the infinitely better game, For Answer. I would like a few suggestions from the viewers:
[b]- Seriously, I need to change this emblem.

• Care to see any particular paint scheme?
• The soundtracks in these games can get real repetitive since they’re not super long, so what should I use for the next supercuts? (not eurobeat)
• Are there any mechanics, tactics, or in-depth parts explanations that you wanted to see?[/b]

Also update schedule will slow down to a more normal LP pace once we start 4A.

[Enrel]

Well for me anything with purple in it will be a choice paint scheme.

Mech games should always have a heavy metal soundtrack. I don’t write this law, I just appreciate it.

Anything else should be LPer’s choice. Even the music.

[Atlatl]

Purple it is!

Update 6:

Paintshop 3
Chapter 5/6 Part 1/2: BFFs Never Say Die
Chapter 5/6 Part 2/2: makes me cry every time
Chapter 5/6 Hard Mode AC Fights
Chapter 5/6 Hard Mode Trash Mission Supercut

wait what the fuck
Ok yeah FromSoft really could have done us a favor and added character names to text boxes so you weren’t trying to figure out who that guy in the giant AC was based on voice recognition. I mean, not that it would have helped answer anything, but hey. Here’s what happened: all of the Chapter 5 and 6 Hard Mode missions are the canon ones, where Mido Auriel and Leonhardt die but you roll in and singlehandedly murder every active BFF and Rayleonard LINX over the course of a few days. Then you blow up Rayleonard’s HQ. Every single person and company, including Emil, is terrified of you.

Fiona falls in love with the mercenary and gets them a vacation. Omer raids most of Rayleonard’s assets, gets their hands on the 00-ARETHA, gives it to Joshua O’Brien, and threatens/blackmails/hires/whatever him to go blow up Anatolia thinking that they can just assassinate the mercenary while they’re at home. But it turns out the mercenary wasn’t there? Or the NEXT? Who brings their redeployable nuke on vacation with them? Did they get back just in time or was this some sort of weird staycation a few miles away? In any case it turns out the person who just ended a war by themselves is always strapped. Always.

Omer sends Celo to kill one or both of the combatants, but he dies. The mercenary gets real sad about killing Joshua O’Brien and decides to take up the mantle of White Glint to continue fighting for friends and homeland and against the establishment. This is the White Glint that appears in For Answer. Fiona and the mercenary run off together and start their own colony out in the ocean called Outer Heaven Line Ark. Nobody bothers them because the mercenary is the scariest person on the planet and their spite knows no bounds.

Kasumi Sumika does the sensible thing after surviving and retires to become an independent coach and an operator. She changes her callsign to Serene Haze and picks up a talented young LINX by the name of Strayed.

So much Kojima contamination was released by the war that the surface is becoming less habitable. The corporations start housing people in giant flying cities called Cradles so they can stay out of the contamination. Welcome to the post-post-apocalypse. Concerned that NEXT technology is getting out of their control, the corporations build super massive mobile structures called Arms Forts to fend off those wily LINX.

Anatolia’s mercenary has some sort of vendetta against BFF and tries to take out their Arms Fort, the Spirit of Motherwill. They’re getting old and can’t quite handle it, though:

Armored Core 4: For Answer Opening

Don’t worry, Strayed is much better than them.

[Enrel]

WOW! You went completely Eva. Thought to be fair I never watched the anime but the purple one is legit the only thing I know about it.

[Atlatl]

I forgot how much I love GA’s super unenthusiastic mission briefing guy. The voice cast for this game is much better and you’ll probably be able to recognize some of the voices throughout the missions.

Update 7: help i dont know how to drive this thing [frantically mashing buttons in cockpit]

4A Tutorial and Intro Mission
Garage 3: 4A Garage Layout and Speed Comparison
Ordered Battles 30-23 Supercut
Chapter 1 Part 1: Kerbal Mech Program
Chapter 1 Part 2: you get what you pay for
Chapter 1 Part 3: Futurehuge

Potato. Those demolition blades are maybe ok for some missions but are definitely a gimmick.

She has extremely high AP and defense, and the kojima missiles will wipe out a third to half of your health in one shot.

It feels like almost all of the best Lynx got murdered by Anatolia’s Mercenary in the Lynx War and now that we’re two apocalypses deep everyone’s dropping in their benchwarmers.

Perhaps the only sensible pilot we’ll see in these games.

The generic duo.

Like I said in his mission, this guy’s more of an in joke for people who played the PS1 and PS2 era games and he moves in a pretty similar manner.

With everything sped up so much, energy weapon tanks can be pretty good up close. Still not mobile enough to not get murdered by arms forts and giant superweapons, though.

[Fefnir]

Oh wow, you weren’t kidding. This game picks up quickly, both in terms of actual speed and getting you fighting a gigantic murder fortress in chapter 1.

[Atlatl]

Yeah, it’s really the reason that quite a few people just skipped straight over 4 since this one was so much better. Playing through three times to get all the endings is actually enjoyable and one of the endings features the hardest mission of any game in the series by a long shot.

Update 8:
The phantom, exterior like fish eggs
interior like suicide wrist-red
I could exercise you, this could be your phys-ed
cheat on your man homie AGHHH I tried to sneak through the underpass, man!
Can’t make it, can’t make it, the shit’s stuck!
Outta my way son! WALL STUCK! WALL STUCK! Please! I beg you! We’re dead!

Paintshop 4
Ordered Battles 22-16 Supercut

This guy has some pretty goofy dialogue if you take him as a consort in the missions.

Kojima blades are no joke, unlike the rest of this build.

It’s pretty stupid how much better she is in the arena fights if you don’t have flares.

He doesn’t really use those triple rockets much so he’s actually a threat if you’re not bringing 3 MGs to the fight.

May Greenfield is also pretty good because she’s pretty tanky, so worst case scenario she can at least serve as a distraction. She’s also really friendly

May Greenfield is too good and cheerful for this brooding corporate edgelord world.

I was going to say something about a fan club but I guess I already got beat to the point.

This guy’s more annoying than anything else. The machineguns on his back fire 4 bullets at once and would be extremely dangerous if he wasn’t juking so hard that it throws off his own locks. If you’re really slow and let him get on your side then he’ll melt you, though. Those X-SOBRERO body parts from Aspina are the lightest in the game and you can do some really gimmicky speed builds with them.

This guy has a similar build to the one we’re using now, just with grenade launchers instead of machineguns. If you attempt to stay on the ground and fight him or don’t pay attention to his shot timing, you’ll get stunlocked and killed really fast.

[Enrel]

I love suicide assault missions like that. “Alright so we’re going to attach a huge rocket on your back. Try not to die and get in close.”

[Atlatl]

I need more suggestions for supercut music and emblems or else I’m just gonna rotate on what we’ve got so far (or go off the deep end).

Hey the hard supercuts for what I’ve done so far will come a little late, I was planning on doing them after the first ending but I need FRS memory really really badly (you get 5 for completing each hard mode mission, with an additional 1 for S rank) and the hard mode missions are at the point where I can’t just chump them with any random build I’m using. I’m going to put all the real difficult ones into a few videos due to time.

Also this Ordered Battle supercut features me playing really bad and I need to start doing fighting game style warmups in test mode before recording from this point on.

Update 9: just walk away

yeah sure buddy
Chapter 2: fuck trains
Ordered Battle 15-7 Supercut

Ordered Battles:

The Eqbal/Algebra light quad build is insanely fast despite the high EN cost from the legs and it’s a huge pain maintain any sort of distance from them.

From like to name things after classical composers, but they like Ornstein enough to put him in another game.

This guy somehow managed to not even show up in these games even though he survives, but I guess it’s easy to not die if you don’t go outside.

Those spiky things on her shoulders are additional boosters that you can put on you shoulder and back slots. While fun, you can get fast enough that it starts to make it real difficult for you to maintain a lock on so I never messed around with these as much as some of the other parts.

A huge jerk.

This guy has a bunch of unused voice lines that implies he was originally supposed to be piloting some 00-ARETHA that shows up again later, though instead he just dies off screen and is the reason that ORCA is looking to recruit Strayed, since they need a go-to pilot for the risky missions.

White Glint is rank 9, which is why we don’t fight them in the Ordered Battles.

This guy’s still kicking despite a pile of dead students and his original company getting destroyed.

He’s a good guy and one of the few pilots that isn’t a real punk.

[Atlatl]

Update 10: 2000 km/h sideways is, in fact, too fast, so I’ll settle for 1500

BEST GENERATOR, GET IN
Chapter 1 and 2 Hard Mode: Land Crab Battle
Paintshop 5
Defeat White Glint Hard Mode
Ordered Battles 6-2
Chapter 3: RIP Line Ark
Chapter 3 Hard Mode: this incompetent maintenance team

Ordered Battles:

She’s still kicking and I’ll actually bring her along for one of the missions.

This guy is like 100x better and less dumb than his predecessor, but still insists on FIGHTING WITH HONOR.

Number 4 was the unidentified quad AC that was blackmailing Patch the Good Luck so we’ll get him on the next playthrough.

A huge jerk who also cares a lot about protecting human life. She’s our main ally in the last chapter while we’re nominally fighting on the side of The League. Too bad they’re pretty much complicit with ORCA’s plans so she’s the one who drags us along to stop them from downing all the Cradles.

The last surviving member of her family and a total blue blood.

And Number 1 was Otsdarva, who sunk into the ocean during the fight with Anatolia’s Mercenary. Actually he faked his death to join ORCA as a double agent or something dumb and you can tell it’s still him by his AC and the samey looking emblem.

[Atlatl]

For the chapters from here on I’m not going to record the missions I’ve already done before. There are some missions with NG+ cutscenes after that I’ll have to record but I’ll try to dump those into their own video for the sake of not wasting everyone’s time watching me play the same missions several times over.

Update 11:

And mankind will be safe to dream, floating above the clouds.
Ending 1: Ask No Question, Get No Answer
Chapter 1 NG+: The Drone Apocalypse
Chapter 1 NG+ Hard Mode

uhhhhhhhhhhhh hold up

Here’s what the first ending and the new game plus cutscenes are going to show (more like strongly imply) as we go towards the next ending:

• Otsdarva (the top Collared Lynx) also goes by the name Maximilian Thermidor (the leader of ORCA).
• Otsdarva is actually a double agent for Omer.
• ORCA is possibly 1) a honeypot operation for enemies of the League and/or 2) a way to set up Omer to take control of space and become the most powerful corporation and the savior of humanity. (way more on that as we go but keep that in mind)
• Otsdarva fakes his own death during the battle with White Glint at Line Ark. The MAIN BOOSTER MALFUNCTION was possibly collaborated with the Anatolian ahead of time so that he could go back to being Thermidor and get back to ORCA’s plans.
• The conversation between Malzel, Julius Emery, and Neo Nidus shows that Hari died during an ORCA mission to take out an Arteria facility during the Cabracan/Motherwill timeframe and now they need a replacement pilot to be their heavy lifter.

[Atlatl]

Since there aren’t a lot of hard mode missions remaining, I’m going to put the rest of the dumb ones into one cut and the difficult/hard ones in another after I’ve shown all three endings. I’m also going to cut in one of the hard mode missions after the end of chapter 3 mission because it happens to have a cutscene after it that I feel like should have been in the normal mode of the league ending for clarity but whatever. There are also another 2 league missions I missed so I’ll go back and get those.

Update 12:

Paintshop 6
Chapter 2 NG+: damn Strayed you lookin a little thin
Chapter 3 NG+: We’re Nihilists, Lebowski (less final mission for clarity)
ORCA Ordered Battles: please note half these guys are dead already

A bland dude who we kill in one of the first few missions.

He’s the unidentified quad AC that was with No Count.

I think he’s supposed to pilot the 00-ARETHA that shows up in one of the hard missions, but almost all of his plot/lines got cut from the game.

The third guy who shows up in the No Count Hard Mode mission. His pet is a giant burrowing cockroach.

Those dildo-looking things on the shoulders are assault armor boosters that I’ll use later on.

The highest ranking not-double-agent member of ORCA.

This is the tank guy we fight at Big Box.

He has Anje’s moonlight. We’ll get it after defeating him. It’s extremely good.

The vega hi-laser rifle she uses is very powerful and she can make the fight at Arteria Cranium really difficult if you’re trying to FIGHT WITH HONOR or not rely on Nobless Oblige that much.

The weird thing on his back is the assault cannon, and all it does is extend out the assault armor blast in a straight line forward. Mostly useless because you can’t aim it up or down, but it can zone out a large swath since going into the area after the blast will still drain PA.

His weapon loadout is the same from his other AC. His plan gets explained really late in the game and there was probably a less convoluted way to go about doing it but who am I to judge.