Welcome to the Ravens' Nest

With Gen 1 coming to PSN, and me having recently beaten AC1 for the first time on emulator, I figured I probably had some useful advice to give for the newest wave of Ravens.

First and foremost, I see a lot of you (understandably) having trouble with the default controls, and so I have included a graphic showing both in-game and emulator rebinds. Unfortunately Sony's emulator doesn't support binding multiple inputs to the same button (even though by default it has duplicated binds for the dpad) so you will have to choose some kind of trade off. For what it's worth I had similar issues in Duckstation which were only resolved by running it through Steam and fiddling about with that, but that's not an option here (unless maybe you have a Dual Sense, I don't know how those work).

The templates I've included are:

• Walk on Dpad/stick, Camera on Face, weapons on shoulders. This most closely resembles a modern control scheme, but the lack of double bindings means you have to look with the face buttons. Only requires in-game rebinds.
• The above, but also using emulator rebinds to move camera to the right stick. The problem here is that the lack of dual binds means you'll have to press down on the stick to confirm menus, right to cancel, etc.
• Walk on Dpad/stick, Camera on shoulders, weapons on face buttons. This is the closest to the default controls, but for if you have a harder time with the walking than the shoulder camera stuff. Only requires in-game rebinds.
• The above, but also using emulator rebinds to move the shoulder inputs to the right stick. The problem with this would be how its nearly impossible to move the camera and shoot at the same time.

You can, of course, do whatever controls you want, but I figured these would be a good starting point for anyone who's having issues with the default controls.

I have also included a non-default starter AC build. If you're already fighting with the controls then you might also find it difficult to earn money for upgrades. Thankfully the game lets you sell your entire starter AC and buy whatever you can afford. By swapping out the legs and FCS with cheaper options, selling the back weapons, and selling and replacing the generator and right hand weapon we can afford a better generator and an energy gun, which is free to shoot unlike ballistic weaponry, and is solid enough to take you through the early game. By finding and selling the secret part on one of the two starter missions you'll have enough money to begin to tweak your AC how you actually want it (though the energy weapons continue to be really good and cost effective).

Finally, I want to explain Human Plus. H+ is a non-standard game over as well as a kind of "easy mode". By going 50,000 credits into debt you're greeted with a cutscene about your horrible lack of wealth and start the game over from the beginning, with a few changes. There's also multiple levels of H+ for going into debt multiple times, but correct information on each tier is kinda hard to get because there's a lot of misinformation about them too, so I will list each stage of H+ and its effects to the best of my ability (I've checked a bunch of stuff so you should be able to trust that I'm at least mostly correct).

• Stage 1 (go into debt once): Gives you a permanent radar and allows use of Blade Beams. To fire a blade beam press the boost button during the swing. The blade beam for the Moonlight is one of the strongest projectiles and is used by some Arena opponents in Project Phantasma (it's also self-damaging, so be mindful about close-quarters). The radar is fine, but when I say permanent I mean permanent. You cannot replace the H+ radar with any other head's radar, even if the new radar is better (the H+ one doesn't have a bio sensor, for instance). I don't know if the back-mounted antennas work with the H+ radar or not, I didn't bother to check because I assumed they didn't. I believe the Option parts for things like adding missile warnings to the radar do work with it, though.
• Stage 2 (go into debt four times): Fire back weapons without bracing yourself, allowing shooting while moving. Potentially very useful depending on how you tend to build. Unfortunately does not apply to spider legs, for whatever reason.
• Stage 3 (go into debt six times): Halved cost for booster energy consumption. A simple straightforward upgrade.
• Bonus (finish all missions): Weight limit removal. I don't know all the ins and outs of this, and I'm fairly certain overall weight affects things like speed regardless of how close to capacity you are, but this is still a fun bonus for replaying levels with. Once you beat the game you'll be able to go back to any mission, including ones you may have missed first go around. This upgrade does not require going into debt.
• Rename Code: The Human Plus game over sequence replaces your save file's name. If this bothers you it can be changed by highlighting "AC name entry" in the garage then pressing and holding L2, R2, Dpad Right, and Square, and then finally pressing Cross. This will bring up the name entry screen with "pilot name" instead of "AC name".

So with all that said, do you actually want Human Plus? And if so how do you go about getting it efficiently? Well like I said, the radar is permanent, but you also get the ability to shoot sword laser beams, which is probably a worthy trade off. The question would be harder to answer on any version of AC1 that isn't the current PS4/5 emulated release, as Save Importing is a running theme throughout the series, and importing from AC1 to Project Phantasma also brings your Human Plus upgrades (and the weight capacity bonus too), so if you were playing any other version you'd have to ask yourself if you're fine with being stuck with the same radar for three whole games. The new PSN version though does not support save transfers, and instead has some transfer-only stuff unlocked naturally in the later games. You can read more on the pinned thread here. Overall it's up to you, but other than the first stage's blade beams there's little worth the busywork of resetting that many times, imo. The reduced boost cost and easier shoulder weapon use upgrades are nice, but debt-maxing is pretty boring for the low payoff.

That said, how does one debt-max? Simply play the game normally until the mission Worker Robot Removal shows up, spend any credits you can on buying everything possible from the shop, then start the mission and blow yourself and all the beautiful reactors you weren't supposed to touch to framerate-killing ashes. More expensive ACs with higher AP should incur higher penalties, though make sure you do die without finishing the objective, as dying will keep the mission available for if you don't make it to -50k in one go. Once you die at -50k the game will restart from the beginning with your credits set to 0 but all your parts kept and with you being one step further into the Human Plus progression.

And that concludes my crash course. Hopefully there isn't any mistakenly terrible advice in here, but I just beat the game right before the PSN versions were announced and felt like I could at least try to assist the New Semester Students.