Armored Core 6 is a masterpiece in the making | Hands-on preview
Despite Elden Ring coming out well over a year ago now, there hasn’t been a game since that comes close to fulfilling my gaming needs. FromSoft are masters of storytelling and the ways in which they feed you lore, but what they always get right is how their games respect you, teach you, and reward you. Combat is always second to none, and that satisfaction from success is found through a deep understanding of the fight and the challenge. Armored Core 6 isn’t a traditional FromSoft game, or at least not compared to Dark Souls or Bloodborne. It feels new and exciting while still featuring the hallmarks from one of the best developers around.
I was fortunate enough to play Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon for a solid four hours recently. Playing through the opening chapter, I got to see tons of combat and mechanics, but I also got to see how the game is laid out and where those challenges lie. One of the first things that jumped out at me is how missions or objectives are presented to you. This isn’t a world ripe for exploration. There are no bonfires or checkpoints, and there’s no continuous world to journey through. “But that’s ridiculous!” “That’s not what I wanted!” “Where’s my Yarnham with robots?!” I here you, people, but trust me, it works.
You’re given missions at various locations across this fractured world known as Rubicon 3. There’s an energy source present that multiple corporations want a piece of, and it’s your job to help them, working out who to trust, work for, and fight against. From the hub screen, you can take on sorties for these organisations. One might include destroying turrets, taking out bosses, or gathering intel. Once completed, you’re transported back to base. Once you’ve completed a mission, you can’t go and wander around and explore, but there’s still that overwhelming gratification from destroying enemies and getting the job done.
As you complete missions, you earn money that can be spent on new upgrades and weapons for your mech, and this is where Armored Core 6 gets interesting. It caters to different playstyles. While there’re no classes to choose from, you slowly customise yourself to find a perfect setup for your mech. You have a multitude of long and short range guns, melee blades and more, but the meat of combat comes from what you have stacked on your shoulders. Missile launchers that hit directly, or plasma bombs that drop from the skies like mortars can all be bought and equipped.
About two hours into my time with it, I felt unstoppable. I’d found a build I liked and stuck to it, but as enemies changed and challenges started to differ, I was forced to tweak my setup in order to defeat some of the tougher enemies. It took a while to get used to the sheer amount of battle options I had. One of the best features of combat came to me early on. I had to take out this armoured helicopter, and I just couldn’t break its shield to stagger it and render it momentarily vulnerable. Once I was informed by one of FromSoft team, I used by blade to do up-close damage of a high degree, and it was a gamechanger.
This is where Armored Core 6 felt like a FromSoft game. You’re rewarded for your patience. No enemy is invincible, you just need to master their attack patterns and make full use of your arsenal. While it wasn’t as punishing as other titles in the developer’s back catalogue, it was still challenging. Thanks to the wealth of upgrades and appendages you can buy, I adored just how varied combat can become. Another big difference is the fact that battles aren’t confined to the ground. You can fly through the air for a set amount of time, reigning down fire from above.
This also helps to get out of the way of incoming attacks, offering a ton of ways to destroy and evade. The omni-directional combat is fluid, but more importantly, it feels fresh. This franchise has been around for decades, but FromSoft has become the benchmark within the genre. Yes, it feels familiar in some ways to their fantasy titles, but it does a lot of different things while harnessing the core mechanics of them. I adore these developers, and I’m grateful they exist because few are able to provide such a perfect-feeling gameplay loop in a variety of genres.
The art style is on another level, too. It looks phenomenal, with all of the various locations ripe with detail. Even the mechs themselves are intricately designed. It’s not just in how it looks where Armored Core 6 is visually impressive. The scope of battles are bigger than they’ve ever been. Having missions crafted in this way allow for certain set pieces to be achieved. One such moment occurred where I had to venture into a desert-like setting (reminiscent of the epic Radahn battle from Elden Ring) and evade lasers coming from a weaponised mining ship known as STRIDER. After dodging these lasers and taking out nearby mechs, what stood before me blew my mind.
This gargantuan ship was moving across the landscape, and I had to get on board to destroy it. As I finally got on, I had to destroy the ship’s sub-generators before taking out it’s huge weapon known as the Eye. It floored me at how good it looked, and as it fell to its mechanical knees, I had to take a moment to take in what I had just witnessed. In those four hours, I saw a lot of things that took my breath away, and I can’t wait to see what else awaits when Armored Core 6 comes out in August. It’s one of the best-looking games I’ve seen in a while, and when paired with its tight, comprehensive, and rewarding gameplay, players are going to be in awe.
With tons of customisation options for your mech, responsive and varied combat and traversal, and stunning visuals, Armored Core 6 has all the trappings of a great FromSoft game. There’s a lot that differs from the likes of Dark Souls and Elden Ring, such as the omni-directional combat and mission layouts, but it works much better than I thought. It feels like an action game in the best way, and in a lot of ways it reminded me of the original Metal Gear Solid in the way dialogue is present and the political structure at the core of its story. I honestly can’t wait to play the full release, and it’ll definitely be up there come Game of the Year time.
Armored Core 6 is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S|X on August 25th.
