Revitalizing the Legacy: Unleashing Armored Core 6 for the Next Generation

Highlights

Armored Core 6 brings back the beloved mech series after a long hiatus, impressing fans with its trademark combat and customization.

The game provides a wide range of combat and customization choices, enabling players to personalize their playing style while also presenting a formidable challenge.

Armored Core 6 takes a fresh approach by offering focused missions and intricate maps, demanding strategic thinking and a cautious approach to conflict. Drawing inspiration from FromSoftware's RPGs, the boss battles add a contemporary level of challenge.

Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon marks the highly anticipated return of FromSoftware's beloved mech series after a 10-year hiatus. The game has garnered positive reviews, with its signature combat and customization being praised as its standout features. FromSoftware, known for its demanding RPG games, has revamped Armored Core 6 to present a formidable challenge to modern gamers, with revamped gameplay, missions, and boss battles. This evolution of the classic series caters to a new generation while staying true to its roots.

Armored Core 6 reintroduces longtime fans to the thrilling vehicular combat that made the series so popular. After being out of the limelight for almost a decade, the game updates many of its best elements, ensuring they resonate with today's players. The complex combat and customization options give players the ability to tailor their experience and create an AC that suits their individual play style. However, this high level of personalization comes with a significant increase in difficulty. Despite its welcoming nature, Armored Core 6 poses a challenge even for seasoned FromSoftware fans.

Armored Core 6 Rewards a Less-Violent Approach

Armored Core 6 introduces a different approach compared to FromSoftware's modern RPG games. Instead of exploring an open world and completing objectives, the game follows a narrative format where players must complete a list of focused missions for different military corporations. However, the mission maps in Armored Core 6 are more intricate than previous entries, requiring players to modify their Assembly and strategy for each mission. These maps and the core objectives of the missions bring new dimensions to the series' traditional combat.

While combat and customization have always been the highlights of the Armored Core series, Armored Core 6 emphasizes careful tactics in conflicts. Despite the addition of Repair Kits and checkpoints, the game's enemies are capable of swiftly overpowering players if they are not cautious. Armored Core 6 provides players with a range of strategic options, such as the ability to spot enemies through walls, catch them off guard, or equip themselves with better boosters to completely evade certain encounters.

Additionally, the act of firing a weapon results in a deduction of earnings from the completion reward. Each mission is equipped with an excessive number of enemies that surpass the minimum requirement to fulfill their core objectives, and players are generously rewarded for selecting their battles prudently. Nevertheless, in Armored Core 6, the adversaries possess a comparable range of possibilities, including the presence of unseen adversaries like the enigmatic "Unknown Craft" that only become detectable to players when they approach within a specific proximity.

Armored Core 6's Bosses Provide a Modern Challenge

Armored Core 6 does not follow the Soulslike formula, but it draws significant influence from FromSoftware's RPG offerings, particularly in its enemy design and boss battles. Right from the tutorial, Armored Core 6 showcases its inspirations. Players are thrown into intense combat encounters, where they are introduced to a range of adversaries that require specific strategies to overcome. One type of enemy, reminiscent of Soulslike games, wields a shield and can only be damaged by attacking from behind or staggering them. After conquering these regular foes, players face a formidable tutorial boss, the AH12 HC, which must be defeated to unlock basic tutorials and access the main campaign.

The enemies in the Armored Core series have traditionally included near-future technologies like advanced helicopters, massive battleships, and enemy ACs. However, in Armored Core 6, the bosses have been given a modern twist to align with FromSoftware's contemporary presentation style. These bosses showcase a variety of massive and fantastical designs. One standout boss, the IA-02: ICE WORM, confronts players with a colossal mech resembling a worm that emerges from the ground and moves erratically, causing damage. It then unleashes a powerful red energy field. With its evolved approach, Armored Core 6 ushers in the next phase of the series, combining familiar and innovative gameplay elements that appeal to both existing and new FromSoftware fans. Armored Core 6 can now be enjoyed on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.