ARMORED CORE™ VI FIRES OF RUBICON™

Review

Set in a distant future where mega-corporations fight for the control of a rare and powerful resource discovered on planet Rubicon 3, Armored Core VI follows the story of C4-621 (callsign Raven), an independent mercenary who tries to make a name for himself working for multiple factions under the guide of a mysterious handler, Walter. As Raven, you slowly unveil an intricate plot made of conflicts, politics and power struggles that will decide the fate of humanity. Playing the previous Armored Core games is not required; I stopped at AC3 back on PS2 and this feels like a fresh start, even if they are thematically connected. While there are some sparse cutscenes throughout the game, most of the story is narrated through audio conversations with a variety of different characters. Understanding the story is not complicated, but since there are no real characters appearing on-screen it can be slightly confusing, particularly at the beginning, to remember each one of them. An artwork of the characters’ faces (or their mechs) while speaking would have been really helpful to identify them more easily.

Instead of an open world structure (like in Elden Ring), you select missions through a classic menu, receive the briefing and then deploy. Completing each mission rewards you with credits (known as COAM) that you can spend on upgrading your mech. All missions are really well varied and often include many events like meeting with new allies, enemy ambushes, mini-bosses, change of objectives and more. Later on, you can also have an input on the story by making important decisions, like choosing between two missions from two different corporations, that change your next missions and even the ending. The game automatically saves after each mission, so you can’t go back and make another choice, but you must finish the game first and play again through new game plus to unlock the other endings. This guarantees a very high replayability and reduces the repetitiveness of new game plus.

Your mech can be equipped with four weapons (arms and shoulders), ranging between laser swords, shields, railguns, rocket launchers and much more, plus three component types for boosters, generator and fire control system. Assembling your own mech is incredibly satisfying thanks to the variety of weapons and visual customizations. You can use predefined color schemes or manually color every single part of your mech, while also adding decals and creating your own emblems through an image editor. It’s really easy to create unique AC builds and swap between them, though you can only do it before starting a mission. During some longer missions (often involving boss fights) and after being destroyed, you have the option to enter the Assembly menu again and change your build, but you can only equip the gear you have already purchased, so make sure you have spent all your credits on a variety of different weapons and components because you will probably need them. The fact that you can resell equipment at the same price you bought it is also great, as it encourages you to try different builds without any penalty.

There is a basic tutorial that teaches you how to play, but more tutorials get unlocked as you progress with the story and they offer components as a reward for completing them. The mech’s omni-directional movements are very smooth and depending on your build; you can dodge, jump, fly and use your assault boost to quickly reach your target while shooting and avoiding enemy attacks. There is a great sense of verticality in the world building and you will often move through open environments with different height levels.

If you thought that Dark Souls and Elden Ring were difficult and not accessible enough, Armored Core will make you reconsider them. Most of the regular missions are a walk in the park for sufficiently skilled players, but in a more classic soulslike tradition the game suddenly pits you against incredibly challenging bosses that you have not been prepared to fight until that point. Plus, some bosses change their combat pattern after losing 50% of their health, which makes them even harder to beat. The difference is that in a soulslike game you can farm souls, level up and try again. Here there is no level-up and you must rely solely on your brain, your mech and your skills. Learning the enemy movements and types of attacks is fundamental, but it’s even more important to understand how to assemble your mech in order to exploit the enemy’s weak points (because they all have some). You have an entire arsenale at your disposal and you must simply find the correct approach for each enemy. You can heal yourself using three repair kits and if you fail you can load the checkpoint, change your gear and try again, which is very user friendly if you think about it. I absolutely love this kind of challenge, but I understand that the sudden difficulty spikes seen during some boss fights might not be for everyone. In any case, From Software probably makes the most fascinating boss fights seen in a videogame. The boss encounters are epic and fighting a laser-shooting machine that is a hundred times bigger than your mech is truly a one-of-a-kind experience.

After reaching a certain point in the story you will unlock the PvP online mode. This allows you to create a public (or private) room that other players can join for 1vs1 or 3vs3 battles and of course you can join other players’ rooms. From what I saw, the PvP community is very active and it’s easy to find skilled players who are harder to beat than the bosses you’ve already fought. My suggestion for PvP is to only try it when you are near the end of the game and your mech is fully upgraded, otherwise you will probably be at a disadvantage.

Now I have mixed feeling about the graphics. While the world-building and art design are gorgeous, I don’t like that some environments look rather flat, sometimes even blurred, which you can easily notice when you get closer to the textures. I think that Elden Ring, while being open world, showed a lot more detail in its environments (at least on PC). Fortunately, lighting is very convincing and the visual effects are always spectacular, especially the explosions, sparks, dust and weather effects. The performance is also very good as I didn’t experience any bug, glitch or technical issue.

Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon is the ultimate mech experience and one of the best games I’ve played this year. The omni-directional movement is smooth, the assembling and customization options are nearly limitless, the combat is always exciting and the maps are gorgeous to explore. It’s a challenging game for sure, as it goes from easy to beat missions to incredibly demanding boss fights, but if you understand how to efficiently build your AC, adapt to the situation and exploit the enemy weaknesses you can overcome pretty much any obstacle.

Review written by Sonic Punk for Zeepond.com

ARMORED CORE™ VI FIRES OF RUBICON™ Steam Store Page