Last week, we snuck into the bowels of Ubisoft's San Francisco office and strapped ourselves in for some mechanized madness with Armored Core For Answer. While the subtle word play of the title may not translate particularly well (the "For" part is a pun as For Answer is a sequel to Armored Core 4), the series' classic brand of heavy-hitting mecha battles has suffered no such degradation during its voyage from Japan. In fact, Armored Core For Answer has quite a few new tricks up its sleeve in the form of a new booster addition for long-range insertion, exploding Primal Armor, and enriched story details to make a bit more sense of all the combustible carnage.
The Ultimate Erector Set
As with past iterations in the franchise, Armored Core For Answer follows your adventures as a member of an elite mercenary organization that fights exclusively with giant mechanized robots called NEXTs. One of the series' hallmarks has always been deep customization and mech-creation tools, and For Answer provides all of the usual options for crafting your mech into the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. Some tweaks to the user interface facilitate building mechs that specialize in particular areas, because you can now sort different robot parts according to a wide variety of specs (like weight, energy consumption, attack power and the like). This by no means simplifies the process of creating an armored juggernaut, but it makes building a NEXT that emphasizes swiftness over armored defense significantly easier.
One new feature can be found buried in the stats for certain over-boost parts and augments the standard Primal Armor (energy shield) of a NEXT to emit a hugely destructive pulse of energy. Dubbed Active Armor, this feature builds a charge within the NEXT's generators and unleashes it through vents which extend from a variety of locations on the main body (you can see it used at the end of the opening cinematic below). In our experience, Active Armor seemed to be mostly flash with little substance, because opportunities where it would be especially useful are quite rare. It makes for an imposing sight as a weapon of last resort, at the very least.
Scorched Earth
Armored Core For Answer is set in a bleak future, at a time when the constant combat waged between giant robots has left the Earth a ruined wasteland good for nothing but the mining of a few remaining resources and more robot fights. Humankind has mostly taken to high-Earth orbit to ensconce themselves within Cradles, giant lumbering airships that serve as aerial colonies, leaving the mercenaries and their NEXTs to battle on behalf of feuding mega-corporations in the blasted hellscape below. Over the course of the last few games in the series, the franchise has taken a decidedly more mature (if not totally pessimistic and grim) view on the politics of a planet besieged by a never-ending robo-calypse, but ACFA suggests that there may be a light at the end of humanity's arduous journey. It's you, of course.
The For Answer portion of the title refers to you as "the answer" to all of the calamities and corporate warfare that have left the Earth a seared ruin. As you proceed through the various missions offered by corporations that should be familiar to long-time fans of the series (like Omer Science), the jobs you choose to accept will in turn affect the status and health of the corporations. Each corporation has been given its own sort of personality which is communicated through enhanced briefings with improved visuals and voice acting, and those you choose to back will gain ground in their relentless pursuit to overthrow their rivals.
Ultimately, you will be the one to decide the outcome of centuries-old conflicts between these corporate behemoths and you will see this play out in one of Armored Core For Answer's three distinct endings.
