Armored Core V for Xbox 360 Reviews by Gamers

I found Armored Core 5 to be a good game... In theory. The storyline is well thought-out and the voice-acting and cinematic scenes are very well done. The problems come in, at least for me, with the controls. Perhaps it was different in Armored Core 4, but in 4 Answer, the control scheme was simple and easy to manage, and very efficient. Those controls are mostly thrown out in Armored Core 5, and while I do like that I can now fire weapons with the triggers as opposed to the bumpers, the setup wastes the boost finesse that is found in 4 Answer. By putting the boost control in a trigger, 4 Answer allowed the player to ascend, hover, or descend as needed. Armored Core 5 takes that ability away by putting the boost control into a single button, disallowing boost height management and creating small but needless headaches. While it is understandable that AC design hadn't progressed anywhere near where it was in the previous title, there are several points in cinematic scenes for the campaign when the boost was used as in 4 Answer, but there was no way to emulate the feats in actual gameplay.

Due to the swap-up of controls, playing AC5 for the first time can become frustrating, especially when coming straight from playing 4 Answer. Another flaw, in my opinion, is the way the developers managed AC customization in the new title. While the previous game had a fairly simple and straightforward approach to creating an AC, this title seems to have wanted to break away from the norm and do its own thing, and the results are those that I personally think ruin that particular aspect. The overall feel of the Customization menu simply feels clunky, like it was added in as an afterthought instead of being a more important piece of the game, as I believe it should be.

Overall, while the storyline and movies for the game stand with powerhouses such as Halo in terms of emotional reactions, the controls bring it down hard, and the rating suffers.