My favorite moment of this game, is the arena mode. This is the first time it's been put in the series, and what I really loved about it, was how much fun it was.
50 opponents, and at the end of it a crazy good weapon. The main story doesn't have a lot of missions, but the main focus is the arena. Bringing over your armored core from the original game is a treat, and then adding new parts to it makes it even more fun. This is definitely one of my favorite series in the PS1 era. That in, buying a physical copy of this is insanely expensive. The current PS5 version Is unfortunately missing the functionality to carry over your AC from the original armored core game to this one (as of this typing). Which is a definite shame.