To be fair, killing the Cataphract would be a lot more difficult if half your AC fell off every time you took a hit and Walter was too cheap to restock your repair kits between missions. Clearly losing three Hounds in a single assignment was what spurred Walter to actuall pay his repair bills. Heh.

Interesting that each of the ACs filled their own little tactical niche. 617's loadout is suited for close range assaults, 619 is set up for long-range bombardment, and 620 was given a little too much Coral in their implants.

They also had an entire PCS base of artillery attacking them.

I never realized that vertical missiles were actually effective against the cataphract, that'll be good to know.

I too see the Cataphract as a giant abrams tank

617, 619 and 620: Where the hell did you hide this guy when we fought this thing, Walter? ANSWER US, WALTER!

617 had nothing but a minigun by the time the fight with the Cataphract actually started. They lost the shield and pulse blade before it showed up, and it knocked the spread Bazooka off when it jumped over. 617 won by tanking a ram, actually stopping the Cataphract and jamming the only gun left straight into the weak spot, no lube.

"Just to prove they were losers" They fought through an entire battleground to get to Cataphract, and I doubt they where actually prepared for it.

Wouldn't it be so fucking cool if we got a DLC where you play as Raven, learn about Branch, and sort of run a parallel story fighting the PCA and RRI relics while 621 was running jobs for the corps and RLF? This would be a great opportunity for PCA parts that were previously unavailable to players to be unlocked.

617's weapon setup is really fucking strong, holy shit

621: No repairs?

You can make the builds even more accurate by limiting yourself to the 3 skill points that each one has (one only had assault armor, other had weapon bay, forgot what the last had)

imagine what a good pilot could do to the cataphract

Considering that those same lasers took out their parts with one blow it's safe to assume that 621 is just built different and has plot armor too further set the game tone, who knows honestly but hey those are some nice skills there.

What I love about each of the bosses that are not ac's the worm or sea spider is that they have weapons that seem to follow thr same rule our weapons follow

“THESE HOUNDS AINT SHIT COMPARED TO ME RAHHHHHHH”-621 talking to Walter moments after taking out the cataphract

Rise and shine. mister Walter. Rise, and shine.

Wonder what 618’s AC was like…I think Sulla mentions killing 618 in one of the attack the watchpoint missions

To be fair the reality we see in the story trailer is a lot harsher than the game implies, 617s pulse shield got taken down with 2 or 3 bullets and lost his sword cause the arm joint got shot off as they sped towards the bullets. While just before getting one tapped 619 completely levels a base with his back rockets (in the game buildings are completely indestructible and are encouraged to be used as cover from rockets). With finally 620 who gets both arms blown clean off with grazing shots from the energy canon on the back of the CATAPHRACT (however those shot in game serve to stagger AT BEST with really you needing to stand still to see severe damage) 617 going for the kill the way they did shoving the gatling in the neck of the CATAPHRACT and dieing from the Core Expansion due to damage was icing on the cake as to how harsh and grim the reality of Armored Core truly is. We could try but we'd get ran over and pushed to the side in game if we tried to match Assault Boosts with the CATAPHRACT let alone stop it and lift it and don't get me started on doing that much damage with any weapon let alone a single gatling even with direct hits from ACS overloads

Using fallen heroes's mech builds to beat the enemy that killed them on harsher conditions all just to piss on their graves. I can see this plot point used to introduce the villain/antagonist/rival in a mecha show featuring extremely modular mechas.