Ace Century Episode games

[Swooshiex]

I just read about the Ace Century Episode games. Some of them feature the Macross valks. Has anyone played these games before? How are they like?

Wikipedia is not very descriptive about the gameplay.

Thank you!

[Zoroastres]

Not very good.

The PS2 games have passable gameplay... but not that great. The PS3 game, ACE:R has atrocious gameplay. The only draw of the game is the crossover element, so you'd probably be better off watching vids of stuff on youtube and turning to something like Macross 30 for you gaming fix.

[Hikaru1234567890]

In ACE:R it wont let you wear the Super Packs and Armor Parts in all the missions, It will only let you use them in space and such.

[Renato]

I think there is already a separate topic for Another Century's Episode R that will provide more detail, but as others have said, it's pretty awful. I have it but I only got it for the Orguss. The valks in it are from Macross Frontier and Zero. Even StarFox on the SNES was better than this clunky, unresponsive, uncontrollable mess.

[Akilae]

Looked back at my own impressions of ACE:R in the thread and wow...

Yeah, don't get ACE:R, ever. It was one of the most un-fun action shooter games I have ever played. I eventually sold it at a huge loss being pretty sure I would never, ever want to touch it again.

ACE2 and ACE3 were FUN. Those two I highly recommend.

[Swooshiex]

Looked back at my own impressions of ACE:R in the thread and wow...

Yeah, don't get ACE:R, ever. It was one of the most un-fun action shooter games I have ever played. I eventually sold it at a huge loss being pretty sure I would never, ever want to touch it again.

ACE2 and ACE3 were FUN. Those two I highly recommend.

what makes ACE2 and ACE3 fun? is the gameplay like battlecry or macross 30?

thank you.

[Akilae]

ACE2 and 3 were fluid. Regular attacks felt like they actually did something, and you didn't have to wait for a gimmicky "tension gauge" to fill up to fire your missile swarm. Pop into the game and you can immediately start off by firing salvos of missiles. In ACE:R, you had to plink away at a (very underpowered) BB shooter of a rifle to increase you tension gauge for five minutes before you could fire off your first missile. Dashing in ACE2/3 also felt like there was actually a sense of movement.

In ACE:R, parts of the game also, for some reason, turned into rail shooters. The final stage of the Macross F is NOT a free for all where you fly your tricked out VF-25 and actively avoid Vajras to get to the queen. No. The game locks you into rails, pretty much flies for you, and you just sweep the targeting reticule over the screen... They called this the "Shift Chase System", and probably wanted to present something more cinematic. It fell pretty flat on its face.

The ACE games don't really control like Battlecry or Macross 30. They're From Software games after all, so different thought goes into the games. I would say that the ACE games are built around the idea of fast, agile bipedal robots, i.e., battroid. In ACE3 I think at the Sharon Apple Concert stage I spent 80% of the time in battroid in ACE. For Macross 30, most of the game time, barring the indoor stages, I have spent in fighter or gerwalk mode.

Overall, Battlecry and Macross 30 are good Macross games. ACE2/3 are good robot games.