Armored Core: Nexus

Armored Core: Nexus was created as a celebration of the series' first decade – FromSoftware offered not only a new story but also reworked missions from the original Armored Core and from Master of Arena, this time on a fully utilized engine from the late PlayStation 2 era. The game thus works both as a look back at the series' roots and as a current entry with modern controls, camera, and graphics befitting the year 2004.

The foundation remains building your own AC from a huge catalog of parts and taking on contracts for warring corporations, but Nexus added a finer physics model, more elaborate environment destruction, and improved explosion and smoke effects that were still missing in previous PS2 entries. The missions themselves are designed to make use of larger open spaces and a better camera, so battles in large hangars or between skyscrapers feel more dynamic than in Another Age. The remade missions from the older era also show just how much the series' gameplay had moved on in five years – the same objectives players knew from the original PlayStation play noticeably differently on the new engine, with different movement speed and differently balanced weapons. A hangar that the player knew from the first PlayStation as just a few gray cubes suddenly feels like a real battlefield here, with destructible pillars and real-time cast shadows.

Nexus thus stands at a crossroads – it's a new entry with its own story, but also a reminder of the series' history for players who only came to it with the PlayStation 2 and never played the older titles. The developers clearly bet that fans would appreciate the chance to compare the old and new versions of the same missions side by side and see just how far the technology had come in ten years, without having to dig out an old console just for the comparison.

Why play it: An interesting choice for players who already know the original Armored Core games and want to see how the same missions look and play with the more advanced technology of PlayStation 2.