Following the release of the original Armored Core trilogy via PlayStation Plus, it appears that there has been a major oversight in their updated functionality.
The original Armored Core trilogy comprised of Armored Core, Armored Core Project Phantasma and Armored Core Master of Arena.
Following the success of the first Armored Core, FromSoftware was quick to release an expansion called Project Phantasma.
One of the major points of Project Phantasma was that it could import your saved data from the first game. Effectively giving you a headstart on what was then a harder iteration of the first game.
When Master of Area came around, this same save transfer system was also present, allowing players to continue with their parts and money from the previous games.
However, these new PlayStation Plus releases do not have this save transfer system, so these games are locked out from each other.
The other big issue here is that the Human Plus upgrades that you can sneakily get in the first Armored Core don’t exist in the other two games, unless you transfer the save data from the first game with them in.
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In short, this lack of save crossover, which has been a defining feature of the Armored Core series for decades, is a really big problem
The weird thing is that some of the hidden parts from the first Armored Core have been found in the shop in Project Phantasma (shown above), so it seems that someone knew what was up at least to some extent.
The good news is that this should be an easy fix. Each of the three Armored Core games has separate save data files, which can also be backed up to the cloud via PlayStation Plus service.
Considering that the saved data is separated out like this, having another game read that data shouldn’t be difficult, at least in a technical sense. So this should be an easy fix.
Apart from that, Implicit Conversions has done a lovely job with the original Armored Core trilogy. I’ve been playing through the games just fine and everything old feels new again. It’s wonderful really.
While some are complaining about the lack of a more comprehensive button remapping setup, that’s just a skill issue.
People played the original Armored Core games back in the 90s just fine with the standard controls, so I don’t see why modern gamers can’t follow suit.
Thankfully, there’s already a bug report open on Implicit Conversions’ Discord server about this cross-save issue, so by all means, contribute in a suitably civil fashion about it.
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