Armored Core Nexus Changed Everything... Literally. 

That and it's also revealed just what that unknown machine is later... ....A Prototype Pulverizer, only code-named Nine-Ball

Yeah but it is Nineball, or at least gen 3's iteration of it It's got his colours, it's got his loadout, it's a superpowered AI There's no coincidence.

@@linkkicksuNot to mention the obvious references to "9" in "Red Butterfly", the boss' theme.

​@@linkkicksu The real Nine-Ball from Armoured Core: Nine Breaker would like a word.

@@Drakrylos we do not speak of that... thing...

Was gonna say the same thing. At original resolution, and on a CRT, it just makes everything look kinda stonewashed.

You can even replicate this with PS2 emulators, if you put some graphics settings right and add a CRT shader you can make the game look like it did originally with the softened image and CRT look but still have a higher resolution than Original Hardware, and widescreen without stretching the image

The ending to Nexus was WILD because I had basically spent dozens of hours dicking around in giant military hardware and then suddenly it was the fucking Gotterdammerung and the world was ending. No other game I've ever played went from "zero emotional investment" to "I'm not crying, my eyeballs are just sweaty" with the speed and alacrity of Nexus.

The FCS change was probably a good a thing now that you can aim with the stick.

Yeah the AC balance nazis were VERY vocal on Agetec forums back then. They actually WANTED all of this bullshit nerfing for 'muh balance' in VS modes!?! Companies ALWAYS listen to the WRONG audience.... nothing's changed with companies bowing to vocal twatter commies, these days 🤷‍♂️

@@seb24789No doubt, yeah. It also likely was taken with additional consideration to the game's slightly slower speed. Unfortunately, it was a bit too strict and really pidgeonholed the old guard into a new control scheme that wasn't really comfortable for some of us. That From Software went back to giving AI ACs several gameplay advantages over the player (similar to how they used to have unlimited ammunition in the PS1 era) and other complications, 20-year-old me at the time got fed up and never finished it. I went back and revisited the game before AC6 this year and applied a couple of decades of AC-related experience (particularly from recent playthroughs of Daemon x Machina) to completely reconfigure the controller and build a lighter mid-weight AC with double Finger machine guns, missiles and rockets to maximize my action economy and muscle my way through most challenges. I actually started on the bonus disc before running the campaign, to carry parts forward through the 3.5 gen trilogy, so I was pretty advantaged in the main story once I began in earnest. All this aside, I still don't particularly like Nexus. It feels off-balance to me, and particularly cruel instead of merely punishing as many other From Software games are designed. I think this was probably due to time constraints from how AC games had an annual release schedule at the time with the series.

There a reason why Nexus is often considered the black sheep for 3rd gen. Ninebreaker effectively had to be made to fix all of the issues with Nexus and even then, the removal of OP-I alone still makes the second half of 3rd gen less fun as you're now against AI who effectively are cheating.

Actually FCS boxes and heat mechanics gives much more builds: different FCS works on different weapon lock type, high calorific value & EN output generator works on low heat high EN drain booster, but low calorific value & EN output with generator also works on low EN drain but high heat booster. Unlike the previous gen it's literally only one FCS & generator we will use

What about nine breaker and formula front?

The ending is so dumb to me. It's like fighting hail. "we must stand and fight" Must we? And who's this 'we', where the hell are you? This is stupid. I feel like I'm attacking rain. Why don't we just run or go inside or underground? To me, my nexus ending, is me saying F this, jumping off of Bayload City, then gently landing & racing away with my Hoverlegs. And I continue my adventure on Disk2 or Ninebreaker. Then Last Raven, all 3 with the same save file. And if you actually jump off, it's considered a mission failure, and you have to do the final mission again. And I've been fast enough to dodge those things for over a minute before it fades to black. What a sh!tshow.

​@@observingrogue7652I'm genuinely so sad for you, not in a mocking way, but the fact that you couldn't fully enjoy the game like I did

@@nakuroyuki I still enjoy the game. Even setting up challenges, like perma-death runs, forced builds, and only using parts from one corporation. But it's just so frustrating the stupid decisions the devs made with this game. Not just the dumb ending, but all the unfair limits put on the player, for no good reason. All this money I earned, and there's no way to obtain Human+ or OP INTENSIFY, when many opponents clearly have it. It's like the devs did everything they could to kill fun in this game. Love being highly mobile? Well have obnoxious overheating problems, you can only use missiles & rockets on your back, because any other back weapons immobilize you to use, missiles are borderline useless to use on another AC because of all the AC counters to them, missiles don't behave like rockets without a lock on, so you can't just be a missile build, you need something else to break certain things you can't lock onto, and the rockets your back is left with are even harder to aim, because instead of crosshairs, it's some stupid horizon animation thing. Exceed Orbit drones are frustrating to use, even worse to rely on, because they either try to hit something that's blocked by an obstacle, or they target enemies that are behind the thing directly in front of you, that's killing you. To nearly every build not a tank, Overboost is useless, because of all the heat & energy problems it causes. Want to dual wield weapons in your hands? Have have your aiming window shrunk, your lockon range reduced, and your left arm always delayed because it's at your side, not pointing where you're looking like the right arm. Disk1 of Nexus doesn't tell you how to unlock all missions, leaving you wondering if they game is glitching out, when multiple playthroughs & choices, still don't unlock every mission. Disk2 of Nexus doesn't tell you what you're doing wrong, so you have to do missions over & over again for an S-rank, because some are time based, only S-ranked with energy weapons, or some other hidden factor, again making you think the game is broken. I've had times, trying everything I could to S-rank some missions, then after hours of trying, I just reset the PS2, did the exact same things, and got an S. There's a great game here, but it's like the Devs did everything they could get away with, to screw with the player. Through all may playthroughs & challenges. I ask myself: What where they thinking? What the F is their problem? Why is it like this? What am I doing wrong? Why can't I do that? I feel like some of the Devs or their director needs to get knocked the F out, or justify these programming decisions. I can't tell you how many perma-death runs were ruined, because of the BS in this game. Other then that one Crest mission, where you have to get destroyed on purpose after 3 minutes, just to unlock a mirrored pistol, (and F them for that). You try 100 percenting Nexus, Disk1 & 2, without your AP ever reaching 0000. Even worse on top of that. Only use Mirage parts, then only Crest. I'm doing an evil play through challenge right now, being loyal to Mirage, even though they are entitled A55h0les for trying to rob Nexus. I still haven't been able to 100% Nexus with Mirage only parts, and continue this adventure by bringing this loyalty save file to Ninebreaker and then finally Last Raven, because stupid things about Nexus keeps killing me, forcing me to start this challenge all over again. The stupid & unfair limits Nexus puts on the player. And another part of the challenge, is not modifying the Loyalty AC for a specific mission on Disk1. Like you're building the best possible for whatever happens, which leads to disadvantages in certain situations, amplified by the other Nexus BS I mentioned earlier. Somehow, I'm still having fun surviving & restarting this challenge, but the senseless base problems of the game are so frustrating. It's like trying to engineer around problems, that you know shouldn't exist in the first place. The game would be SO much better, if the overheating & reduced-output weren't so ridiculous, and we can just buy Human+ abilities. What the hell were they thinking? And seeing Let'sPlays of the games before Nexus, just confuses me farther.

​@@observingrogue7652 This was written from pain. Recognizable, pure, suffering. I am sorry that you subjected yourself to the most awful AC game. Reading this makes me wanna do 2 things: 1. Skip the AC Nexus games. 2. Give you my condolences.

tbh I love heat mechanics in this gen, it gives you so many different builds compare to old gen it always only one generator to use

Where did you hear that at?

@@jamescaulfield6632look up Armored core nexus revolution

@@jamescaulfield6632it’s because that’s how the game released, came with 2 discs

@@JLLullaby So where did they put the other disc Because my copy didn't come with 2 disks.

@@JLLullaby I'm sorry you met the original I was thinking of armor core six

Isn't this the AC game that removed OP-INTENSIFY? That was already a watered-down, Human+ system and now it too was removed..... with NOTHING to replace it 👎

@@TexasHollowEarth This game is easy enough to beat without H+, and as for booster heat there's one booster that completely negate the mechanic because it has very low boost heat.

​@@cnhnxdon't forget that your generator's calorific value also contributes to heat. Looking at you Kongoh

@cnhnx - ... it's not about "needing" either for campaign missions. It's about having one for Arena and Vs modes. Also, OVERWEIGHT is sorely lacking, post-AC2:AA. It was the ultimate unlockable for AC1 and 2.... no penalty overweight mechs for ultimate builds. The older games in the series are the most enjoyable AND rewarding + have excellent long-term appeal 👍👍

Nah bro.... Another Age + Project Phantasma are my favorite Link VS AC games. They have the best selection of vs maps + the good parts weren't nerfed into the earth.

Haha, does AC5 even have proper boosting? I recall having to hop up buildings to gain verticality.... it was a bad joke of an AC sequel.

I didn't play any of it myself, but I did have a little snippet about it that got cut just because this one got so long 😅

FROM.... the name of a company that CREATES. MS just buys, steals, and bootlegs people's hard work + they're woke 🤡s.... pronouns in Starfield, which DOESN'T even have actual aliens to be confused about that sorta shit in the 1st place 🤷‍♂️

It was Agetec making things up for the localization. The Nineball connection was far less explicit in the original, with the machine's name just being a set of question marks. Though there is no question it was an homage to the old ones, it wasn't intended to be our good friend/source of trauma. Not explicitly, anyways. Ultimately I think the reason they did it is that displaying a name as "????" is a thing that the US market would accept TODAY, but it would look very wrong to most american players at the time(and likely be written off as a glitch that wasn't caught). And since Agetec recognized the reference, they decided to make the reference explicit.

@@CptJistuce I mean, how explicit did they have to be? The blown up computer core of seven hexagons would have been immediately recognizable to the player. The in-universe character wouldn't have recognized Nineball, so labeling it ???? is just dramatic irony. I don't buy that audiences back then would think it a glitch. I speak as someone who was alive back then.

@@jackspade5316 I agree with your view, but I also think the people running things at Agetec genuinely had such an inaccurate view of the customer base they still did this thinking what CptJistuce posited.

Ah that makes sense 😅 I really thought they had just blown out the audio by accident 😂

Indeed, it's intended to be a tragedy and Genobee points it out, that you have people making the same foolish decisions in pursuit of power as presumably caused the great destruction leading to Layered in the first place, again. But without Last Raven to follow it up, it's just a shoot the dog ending. So it's a good thing Last Raven is there. (Sorry Ninebreaker, but your just not that important here.)

Damn, I should've mentioned it in the video, but the blur was also there when I booted the game up on actual hardware to check some things, just less noticeable on there because of the lower resolution. Can't believe I forgot to write that in 😅

​@@notcolethe blur was designed for smoothing out choppiness and was tuned for the game being played on a CRT screen. A lot of people say it looks better on those, but I hated it even then, personally.

Option parts combined with parts optimized for cooling, a strong radiator and optized generator, or leg parts built for fast walking speeds mitigate overheating. There’s multiple ways to configure your setup to offset challenges. The game gives you the challenges, then gives you the tools to overcome them. This is why old ravens like me see the AC series as the rough blueprint for souls and souls-like games. Seriously, for the longest time an optimal early-mid game strategy was to invest in the fastest legs and the strongest energy weapons you could carry, then dance around enemies in the arena or on missions, laughing at them as you remain untouchable without boosting.

@@thechad7643 Yeah, i got around to the whole Overheating eventually. I finished the game minus a couple of mission branches and i never realized tuning was introduced in Nexus (thought it was a LR thing)

@@thechad7643 or just use the ANANDA radiator.... -_-

I uh.... I definitely knew that was a thing.... yeah 😅

Yeah the issue here isn't that retries were limited, like you said, that's just a core part of the franchise. It's that during my entire playthrough there was not a single mission that even offered 2 attempts before clearing off the map immediately. Also not being able to rematch Arena opponents was a let down for me since that's normally where I improve at the game 😅

Yes.... Armored Core is life. I've been a Raven since 1997 😎👍

I see that you’re a man of culture as well. 😎

the "stagger" meter is joked to be PA (Primal Armor not Pulse Armor) with extra steps

I actually found out earlier this week that PCSX2 has the patch natively available in the emulator if you go to the game's properties and check the patches tab (wish I knew about this 4 videos ago 😅) Other than that, some things that made big differences for me were setting Bilinear Filtering to Bilinear (Sharp), turning off Dithering entirely, and setting Blending Accuracy to High :)

@@notcole thanks so much for the response. I also been playing through the entire armored core series as well and I love seeing your thoughts after I beaten the game. The nexus is the first game where I encounter major graphical bugs.