I’ve never really had much interest in anything Mecha until recently. None of the Anime caught my interest and prior to Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon’s announcement last year the only video games I was aware of that are centered around big robot combat were Zone of the Enders and Mechassault. The lack of Mecha in gaming always surprised me and I always lamented that fact since as a genre it would be more fitting as a video game than anything else. Now that I’ve played through some of the Armored Core series and now VI and want to share my thoughts on the newest game and how it compares to others in the series that I’ve completed (3, Silent Line, 4 and For Answer). This article will contain minor spoilers for chapter one of Armored Core VI
What I like:
UI
The fact that VI is playable on PC natively is an underrated improvement. A large part of the game is based around building an AC that will suit the mission best. Navigating it with a mouse instead of just a controller makes every aspect of building faster on top of the UI having smoother and quicker animations in general. The garage screen does look plain compared to the PS2 era games but I’ll trade it’s speed over aesthetic any day.
Graphics
Before the game released I saw a ton of people complain that the graphics look bad but that doesn’t account for the fact most of the environments are destructible and that there’s a lot of space to fight inside especially compared to previous generations of AC. Then again, most of the people who said that probably bought Starfield instead.
Operators
The supporting cast of VI is my favorite of any AC I’ve played and I really like that they all play a role in the story instead of just being faceless radio men. Handler Walter and Ayre aren’t the first AC operators that showed care and concern for the player character but they have the most fleshed out stories and character arcs out of any of the others I’m aware of, except for maybe the operators in 4 and For Answer.
Controls
I haven’t played the game on a controller but being able to finally aim with a mouse helps the game a lot. You’ve always been able to rebind controls in AC, but having a full keyboard allows for more comfortable control schemes instead of having to claw grip a controller like in the 3rd Generation of AC. Thank you From and Bandai Namco for creating a PC port.
Mission Design
Missions in VI are great. The premises are very simple but there’s usually some kind of twist in them such as an enemy AC approaching at the last minute. Secret AC parts have finally returned for the first time since the 3rd Generation along with Data logs (lore) and Combat logs (unlocks more parts) make the missions fun to replay as well. Except killing Swinburne, who thought it was a good idea to have a stealth section?
What I don’t like:
Music
The music in VI is very bland which is very unfortunate since Kota Hoshino is a great composer and has been with the series since Master of Arena (1999) and all the games he worked on have had great soundtracks. The OST in VI seems like it was trying to be atmospheric background noise like in the Souls series and I understand that with From’s new audience they can’t put the genie back in the bottle but Fires of Rubicon is going to use the Armored Core name it should sound like AC as well. Compare the Garage theme in 3 and 6 which are both composed by Hoshino. In 3 it’s very exciting and makes me want to jump in to another mission, VI sounds like something you’d fall asleep too.
That’s not to say there were no tracks that I liked. I enjoyed Balteus’ theme and all of the credits songs but considering the pedigree of not just AC but the rest of Hoshino’s work, the best I can say is it’s mid. The OST becoming atmospheric may also be the reason why the game lacks an opening movie, which is very unfortunate because all of them in the past were a joy to watch. I challenge you to watch the opening to Armored Core Nexus and tell me you’re not excited to at least try the game afterward.
Tone
It may be because the first AC I finished was 3, but I loved the atmosphere of the old games where many of the missions had you doing objectively bad things solely for the paycheck. Such as destroying a monorail full of civilians at the behest of a corporation to frame the incident as their rival’s doing, the very fist mission of AC1 where the player is asked to blow up anti-corporate protesters and one of the penultimate missions of For Answer where you kill 100 million civilians. You don’t get much of that in VI, the worst crime you can commit off the top of my head is killing a newbie AC pilot that was testing a prototype.
Seeing as how the player character is an augmented human freak it’s a bit of a shame that there’s not much wetwork for him seeing as how that’s likely what he was made for. In fact the way that Raven/621 (player’s character) is treated by the cast is very anime protagonist-like in general where he more or less becomes “The Chosen One” in the last couple chapters of the game. I like anime and I can’t say I dislike this either but I definitely prefer the old games in this regard.
AC Parts
The biggest problem VI has is that there’s a very small selection of parts. Weapons that existed in previous games such as shoulder mounted chainguns are absent and most of the weapons that are present only have 2-3 variants each and some of them are just direct upgrades. This is also where many of other players’ complaints about overpowered weapons are coming from too. For example there’s only two machine guns in the game and neither of them are very powerful (I say this as someone who used one against a final boss) which makes the chaingun an obvious choice to someone who wants a rapid-firing kinetic weapon. This scenario repeats in almost every part type: there’s three shotguns and one is clearly the best, two tetrapod legs that are very similar, and the songbird is easily one of the best back weapons in the game.
I really liked Armored Core VI. Some aspects I loved of the old games weren’t carried over unfortunately but it’s still worth a play and doubly so if you’re a Fromsoft fan. If you’ve never tried AC then VI isn’t a bad game to start with either, though it may be hard to play the old games if you go with the newer ones first. Good luck, Raven.