Armored Core: Master of Arena

Armored Core: Master of Arena is the fourth entry in FromSoftware's original series and also the last one to still run on the first PlayStation. Players assemble their own combat robot (AC) from dozens of parts – legs, weapons, generators, and radiators – and use it to complete mercenary contracts as well as arena battles. The emphasis on building a machine to match your own tactics, rather than one universal loadout, set the series apart from the mech action games of the time, and Master of Arena refined this system to perfection on the original PlayStation.

The game essentially unifies the content of the two previous standalone add-ons, Project Phantasma and Master of Arena, into one cohesive package with dozens of arena opponents and branching missions that split based on the player's decisions and choice of employer. Compared to the first Armored Core, it added significantly more garage parts, finer-tuned movement physics, and an elaborate arena ranking system that forced players to constantly upgrade their machine and hunt for better combinations of weapons and legs if they wanted to climb higher among the elite pilots. The missions themselves placed greater emphasis on variety of objectives – from classic elimination of enemy ACs to convoy defense to raids on fortified bases and escort missions, so players learned to build their AC for the specific task rather than one universal all-purpose loadout. New weapon types and special parts absent from previous entries were also added, extending both the time spent tuning in the garage and the time spent in the missions themselves.

For hardware of the time, this was a technically demanding game – loading times between missions were long, and textures and models pushed up against the console's limits, so the game demanded patience, but it offered the most cohesive and comprehensive experience of the series' entire first generation. The mechanics tested here later became the foundation for the transition to the PlayStation 2, where the series finally got hardware that matched its ambitions.

Why play it: For fans of mech action and machine building who want to see the roots of the Armored Core series before it got its graphical and technical upgrade on the PlayStation 2, and who will also appreciate the rawer, slower pace of the first generation.