The Another Century Episode (A.C.E.) games appeared firstly in PS2 with 3 outstanding games, later we got A.C.E. R for PS3 and A.C.E. Portable. The main point of these games is to mix different mecha anime series and see what happens, kind of like the Super Robot Wars games, but instead of being a tactical turn-based game, this one is pure action, we choose a a robot from a vast array and the destroy anything that comes in sight. Another noteworthy different with Super Robot Taisen is that here most units are what are call Real Robot (Gundams, Patlabors, Valkyrias…) while the only Super Robot (Mazinger Z, Golion, Voltes V…) is Aquarion, but all said, with its 3 different forms and all the main pilots of the series. So, so far we have the recipe for success, a bunch of popular anime series (Gundam Seed Destiny, Full Metal Panic, Macross F, Macross Zero, Code Geass, Super Robot Wars O.G. and a few more) and the best developers for a robot game, From Software (Armored Core) wich already did a wonderful job with A.C.E. 1, 2 and 3… but it wasn’t mean to be…
If we speak about pixel and polygon count, well, no doubt the graphics are much better than the PS2 games… but that’s just half the story, the main problem is that this game doesn’t use any kind of anti-aliasing technique so you will see plenty of edges… when you are playing, with the quick movements it’s somehow mitigated… and then you have the cinematic scenes created with the same engine of the game, and let’s just say it’s not pretty, the scenes are generally pretty much static with just the camera rotating slowly and the characters speaking… so you an see pretty much every one of the edges of each polygon. About the sound, pretty much what you expect, nice sound effects and plenty of voice work, but, you see, in A.C.E. 3 and a special version of A.C.E. 2 each unit used the vocal theme of their respective series and now the only series with some songs is Macross F which appear in some special moments and stages, all other units use some melodies from their series.
The real problem with this game is the control. I admit it, the first time i played the game i thought it was “broken” there was no way to pilot the robots with that control, that’s never a good sign, luckily you can change the control scheme within the configuration, so after messing with a few options i was ready to go; you see, maybe i’m kind of clunky with these type of games and maybe other players find that the control is perfectly OK, but as i have just stated, i could fix the control to my taste, but that’s not even the problem… the problem is the attack system. All units have 2 basic attacks, a short range attack (punch, swords…) and a long range one… both are quite basic and will get you nowhere, i mean, sure they work with small fries, but with bosses? No, against them you have to use “the other” attacks, and here lies the problem. In past games using additional and more powerful attacks it was a matter of pressing 2 buttons at the same time, you could only use each of those attack so many times and then you had to wait for that particular attack to recharge; here it works a little bit different, to use those more powerful attacks you need to fill a bar using your standard attacks, then you can use them which quickly deplete the bar, so you have to fill it again… it’s bothersome to say the least.
It’s not what i would call a bad game by any stretch of the word, but it could have been so much better without that single bad decision…
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