Welcome Back, Level 5

L5 Does Evangelion. the last of humanity lives blissfully unaware that outside their sheltered carefully curated lives in a safe heaven, the world is a wasteland where giant robots fend off the alien invasion that almost wiped us out and re-terraformed Earth to suit their needs.
A team of youngsters with the ideal reflexes and neurological capabilities is assembled to go outisde and pilot the new generation of giant robots called Evas Megatons.

The story unfolds in an open 2D sidescrolling rpg city while the combat gameplay is a full 3D (but not super expensive AAA, remeber, L5 is a AA dev that mostly comes from handheld games) mecha figther thats actually pretty fun. It invites comparisons to 13 Sentinels, another game I loved, but that drops the ball on the gameplay since the devs ran out of money and you dont really pilot the robots, you see them as dots on a radar (I'm still mad about that). But they made up for it with 10/10 art and a brilliant story. Which, yeah, this doesnt really match in those aspects but its clearly not attempting to be a Vanillaware title. The art and story we have here are actually pretty good too. So odious comparisons aside, both are great for different reasons.

Cons/Caveats to keep in mind:

• Mind that this is still story focused, and while they do add a lot of cutsomization and variety, its still a "cheap combat" that might feel like it lacks map variety or the scale doesnt feel very epic.
  
• There seem to be vestiges of what was a once a F2P model? The game has many screen where you accept rewards one after another, there are login bonuses which get sent to a "mailbox" and theres a battlepass? None of that is necesary at all to interact with but its really rare seeing it there. Maybe at one point the multiplayer was f2p?
  
• Remember it's a 1.5A game that feels like, i dunno a 3ds game? Might not be what you wanted for the price
  
• Another gripe is the amount of cosmetic DLC and the fact that something as simple as victory poses needs to be bought separately.

So yeah, those vestiges of a diferent kind of monetization and the fact that the scale of the combat feels a bit on the toyish side like Gundam Alliance SD rather than say AC6. I liked it as an arcady, charming robot action game, with a sidescrolling neat anime story on top. But Armored Core this is not

[h3] 13 Sentinels minus the brilliant art/story plus the ACTUAL ROBOT GAMEPLAY[/h3] Welcome Back, Level 5 L5 Does Evangelion. the last of humanity lives blissfully unaware that outside their sheltered carefully curated lives in a safe heaven, the world is a wasteland where giant robots fend off the alien invasion that almost wiped us out and re-terraformed Earth to suit their needs. A team of youngsters with the ideal reflexes and neurological capabilities is assembled to go outisde and pilot the new generation of giant robots called [strike]Evas[/strike] Megatons. The story unfolds in an open 2D sidescrolling rpg city while the combat gameplay is a full 3D (but not super expensive AAA, remeber, L5 is a AA dev that mostly comes from handheld games) mecha figther thats actually pretty fun. It invites comparisons to 13 Sentinels, another game I loved, but that drops the ball on the gameplay since the devs ran out of money and you dont really pilot the robots, you see them as dots on a radar (I'm still mad about that). But they made up for it with 10/10 art and a brilliant story. Which, yeah, this doesnt really match in those aspects but its clearly not attempting to be a Vanillaware title. The art and story we have here are actually pretty good too. So odious comparisons aside, both are great for different reasons. [b] Cons/Caveats to keep in mind:[/b] [list] [*]Mind that this is still story focused, and while they do add a lot of cutsomization and variety, its still a "cheap combat" that might feel like it lacks map variety or the scale doesnt feel very epic. [*]There seem to be vestiges of what was a once a F2P model? The game has many screen where you accept rewards one after another, there are login bonuses which get sent to a "mailbox" and theres a battlepass? None of that is necesary at all to interact with but its really rare seeing it there. Maybe at one point the multiplayer was f2p? [*] Remember it's a 1.5A game that feels like, i dunno a 3ds game? Might not be what you wanted for the price [*]Another gripe is the amount of cosmetic DLC and the fact that something as simple as victory poses needs to be bought separately. [/list] So yeah, those vestiges of a diferent kind of monetization and the fact that the scale of the combat feels a bit on the toyish side like Gundam Alliance SD rather than say AC6. I liked it as an arcady, charming robot action game, with a sidescrolling neat anime story on top. But Armored Core this is not