Armored Core 1/72 Project Magnus by Kotobukiya

This was my first Kotobukiya Model Kit, and it was a bittersweet experience

First of all Ill take the negative aside, my kit came incomplete, an E-8 piece was missing, I contacted the company I bought it from and they told me that they couldn't do anything since I already started to build this kit, as a result I started to slack of on the build, I was thinking whats the ´point of keep building this if the kit will be incomplete? so I didn't care as much for hiding seem lines or having a perfect paint job. But as I kept building the kit started to look awesome and I realize that that piece is barely visible as you can see on the pictures bellow:

The weapons could also use a little more love from the engineering team, mostly are two pieces snapped together and that's it, with a little more love and a few extra pieces those could look even more badass than the look 

This kit has almost no mobility, but that's O.K., this is a Mech, big giant robots are supposed to feel heavy, stiff and dangerous, so, I guess it's forgettable once you see it alll put together. 

The fit of this kit is tight, so tight that you'll need to push very hard the two pieces to get the all the way, this is a plus and a con, on the plus side you'll have a very tight looking assembly, on the con you wont be able to take the two pieces apart without at least, breaking the connectors.  

Another thing that could be a pro and a con is the plastic, this comes in a very shiny blue, I mean it´s really shiny, awesomely shiny, so as you can imagine is also very hard and very fragile, so stress marks are something you'll have to avoid everytime you push those tightly fitted pieces, also, gate marks are a given,  

Another type of plastic is mat finished, again it´s awesome how flat colored it is, no cons on that one, it's soft and i looks awesome.  

And the last type of runners are some metallic looking ones for the weapons. 

Also this would benefit of more waterslides, with a few warning and caution sighs this kit could look even more realistic.

And that´s about it for the cons, as you can see the rest was uphill for me with this kit 

The sample pics of this kit always show it stiff and to be honest not very good looking, the arms and legs have a very thin front profile, also they always show it with straight legs and straight shoulders, giving a very stiff and not very cool looking vibe to it, but i'm happy to report that this kit looks awesome, it really feels like a heavily armored and weaponized machine of destruction.  

before I started with the build I had already decided to do a very heavy drybrush on the weapons, to make them look overused.  

The detail on this kit is awesome! 

This is one kit that you can have an awesome looking kit doing a straight out of the box build, this is a kit that you'll paint because you want to, not because you need to.

With a little paint here and there you can kick it up a notch

The Model comes with two heads, the woody woodpecker head:  

And the samuraijester head: 

Neither of those are specially good looking but they get the job done 

I dont like the shiny stuff so I got rid of the factory clean look with a flat coat and some drybrush to make it look like it has been in a few battles 

For my final comments, if you are into armored core or if you like mechs go get this kit! 

don't look at those boring shots by kotobukiya, believe it will look killer and aggressive on your stand, if you can ad some warning and caution signs it will make it look better.
My overall score is an awesome 8.