SquareEnix, take my money and give us the War of the Lions DLC, please.
I need End Game/New Game+ material for this masterpiece of masterpieces.

Oh yeah, this is a review, I forgot that.
10/10 Story Chess the game. Everyone should play it. It doesn't matter that it is 30 years old, this game will grab you like nothing else if you're a tactical fan at all.

Until about 7 hours ago, I was so ready to use my Democratic powers for liberty and freedom and tell the Sony Bugbots to go back to 1997.
Thankfully, Democracy prevails.

I was around for the first Armored Core.
This has been what I've been waiting years, decades, for.
Pure. Mecha. Garage.
Also there's a great action game in there, too!

I thought I was going to hate this and find it bland.

I was happily proven wrong, told to shut up by my brain and enjoy the game.

There was this slight intimidation at first, this feeling of not knowing anything and not knowing exactly what to do. Then, with a little help from some friends, I was chopping down forests, beating up Greylings, and before I knew it, I had damn nearly started a lumber company and built some fun houses and explored more than I have in most survival games.

Strap that ax to your back, get your armor on and go be a vikingr.

YES! But
Yes, but. . .
Yes. . . But!

That's what this review is going to come down to.
Yes, this game is fantastic as a platformer and in that regard it has held up well, classic NES rough and tough. But at least there are three levels of difficulty, so casuals can play it for the memories, and harder players can play it for the challenge.
Yes this game is about nostalgia, and more importantly, a very niche part of 1980s/early '90s nostalgia. It isn't just the redone graphics, or the remastered audio, its that nearly the entire original voice cast came back to do this, and for some of them, it was their final project. You can hear how happy they were to recreate these characters in some of the lines. But if you were not form this era? If you like the new Duck Tales show more (which is fine! Its a good show, too!) then this game is gonna be kinda jarring. Its stuck in time, but perfectly so.
Yes, you should get this game if you like platformers, it is a masterpiece and you can see how it and other early Capcom games influenced platformers forever! But, it is still a niche item.

A polished diamond, with a heavy nostalgia tie in.

Campaign? Boom, done, one of the best.
Multiplayer? Flying death dealers, blam.
PvE? Yup, four pilots wreck huge AI waves.
Easy to pick up, amazing to master.

I'm a few hours in, barely honestly at that, and I think I can sum it up:
Armored Core fans, rejoice. For the rest of you, its a decent game.

It isn't to say the game is good or bad, its that I've played this game before a decade ago, and the quality hasn't kept up with the times, but the nostalgia is well tuned, minus the terrible story. This is a real mixed bag.
On one had, the combat is fun, if not overly inventive, but the speed is nice.
On the other hand, I feel like there is a ton they "could have done but didn't" and that's an issue to me; it feels "mostly" complete.
They took the best parts of the old AC games, added a new thing you never really use, and made sure to make it accessible for new players without negatively alienating the nostalgia/older players. You're not as harshly punished for messing up as you were in the old AC games, and perhaps better than that is the K/M controls over a controller (You can finally aim in an Armored Core game!) accuracy.

There is no excuse for how badly written this game is, though. Not since the first Drakengard game have I had such ire for badly written anime plots in a game. Some of the voice acting is so over the top, I literally cringe in repulsion. I don't blame this as a translation error, either. This is just poorly written despite it's required tie into a game mechanic.

If you like giant robots, third person (REALLY well done third person, too! Takes up a 1/5th of the screen and nothing distracts or disappears while you play, a good HUD for sure), and customization, (of the robots, NOT the characters, oh no, that character creator HAS to be a relic of the PS2 era anime character generator, and looks as much), then you at the very least check this game out when it goes on sale.

If you're an Armored Core fan baby, then do yourself a favor, get this game.