Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon

[OCH]

FromSoft isn't messing around!

 

Giant Mech✔️

Missile launcher✔️

Big gun✔️

Laser sword✔️

Jet propelled agility✔️

 

..And go! This isn't Metroid however, this is your standard tool kit. Master it quickly.

You get about the first couple minutes to introduce you to the controls. Then, you're on your own. Free to roam and battle as you wish. Your first objective has four markers, to be approached in any order. Naturally there is a lot of distance between each and From is quick to demonstrate that the enemies have the advantage. This is their base, you are the intruder. Be prepared to fight waves around any given corner. Some nice little Codec-like voices are your only warning the enemy has spotted you. The controls have come a long way since early AC's. After only an hour or so, I get what they were saying about taking what they've learned from Souls (more from Sekiro, really) and applying it to AC. Combat is fluid, reactionary and fast-paced. It all feels really intuitive, however. I imagine the first boss will be a rude awakening to any new to AC. I died a handful of times.

But, this isn't Souls. This ain't no Vanguard either. 

I didn't defeat the boss by learning it's patterns, tells and counteracting them. No, I beat the boss by making the most of my own abilities. Your handler gives you one hint to dodge a specific attack. But it's more important than it seems. I mentioned Sekiro before, because you have the same meter system to the boss fights. Get the bar into the red with sustained damage and not only does this put the boss in a stunned state. But they take more damage too. Be careful that it does work both ways. Not to mention the cooldown to all your weapons and dodge/agility capabilities. This is all demonstrated in the first boss fight. When I "got it", I smashed the boss quite easily.

 

I didn't get long to play today and likely even less time tomorrow. But just from the opening mission, I'm very impressed.

[mfnick]

Stop comparing it to Sekiro or I’ll have to buy it.

 

Sounds good. Not an AC guy but this looks flashy enough for me to want to try it. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I played a few missions. Not sure what I would make of it yet. I'm impatient to unlock both the arena and more parts, they're kind of stingy about it early on.

 

The hardest part was that helicopter boss early on, which is basically about taking cover, boosting to mitigate the amount of bullet damage you take, going under it to break its tracking and lifting up off the ground to avoid the missile splash damage charge at it (kikiri counter being the analog there I suppose, with this being a bit more manual). After that it got way easier to the point of being basic, until the 'wall' mission. That said it's not really like Sekiro, it's just the combat director speaking a similar language but with robots I guess

 

I find the game makes me dizzy though. It's visually a bit overstimulating with the onscreen spam. But AC has generally being about hitting the right kind of movement groove and assessing risk so it may be a skill issue as well. It seems to favor these big open levels, the ones I did in the other AC games were more like corridors. Except in AC4/FA where they were big again, but I think those games were more straightforward than this one.

 

I'm finding it a bit hard to manage energy. My booster eats so much of it, speaking of it seems like all the boosters have a flat energy consumption rate so you have to make those energy savings elsewhere (or go for a really light AC that boosts faster). I've already changed out my generator, as that's the first thing you should generally do. Again though they really do limit your parts early on so you can't really develop an AC that fits your playstyle, is my impression of this first chapter. It feels kind of reigned in. I've heard that changes however.

 

This one mission I'm on is like robots storming normandy beaches or something. You have to attack a wall and there's a ton of missiles that each 30 percent of your AP. So you have to preempt the missiles and go down in this big trench, then boost up and fling off a bunch of locked on missiles on these anti air guns. Then when you're at the wall there's this miniboss I've not managed to deal with. Time for bed, I decided.

[mmmark]

Armored Core on Xbox is £35 on eneba and I’m finding it difficult not to dive in head first. 

[mmmark]

Sod it. Bought.

[mmmark]

Unsurprisingly I’m not very good at this 😢 I’ve gotten to the first “boss”? The helicopter, and have been killed 5 times.

 

It tells me to stay in the air but I can only do so for a few seconds. Then on the ground I lose where it is until fire reigns down on me 😔 

 

I’ll try again later.

 

I am enjoying it tho. I have it in graphics over fps mode with RT on which only is in use in the garage I haven’t seen yet. It looks nice but I couldn’t say amazing as I’ve only seen the first level and it’s almost entirely grey. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Discourse with this one has been interesting to observe, over the past year in particular. AC ppl not liking how people think it's going to be mechs with Souls, and now Souls people playing it and finding the mechiness and assembly screen a culture shock

 

Specifically, it's a bit of both. To the point I wonder what Och makes of it, given how he found those Elden Ring bosses. It's mostly AC at its 'core', but very Souls in its difficulty spikes and how they expect you to overcome them. If I'm honest, I'm just over Souls at this point and the homework required for each encounter. Not that these aren't spectacularly designed battles, but in those earlier AC games the difficult fights still spoke a common language as you were mainly fighting mechs, so if you understand your own capabilities you understand theirs as well and can answer them quickly. That's still a fact in this game.

 

But the big scale encounters are a real grind I'm finding, and that helicopter fight is not going to prepare you for what they make you fight at the end of chapter 1. There's some guides online about ways of 'cheesing it', which is an option I guess (imo a bit boring though). I've gotten down to 20 percent a few times. But to be honest, the game is so visually overwhelming that I can't really follow it or approach things in a very strategic way. It took me forever to learn how to fight a boss in Elden Ring, and I found the game miserable because of it. With the mist ashes, it just became boring. This is mechanically a lot more interesting than Elden Ring, every different part effects your mech's physicality in very significant ways, with big interactions between each other. This screen alone shows you on the left side all the things that equipping a pulse rifle does to your mech, it doesn't just change firepower. It also changes things like the values on the right which are about energy recharge and quick boost recovery and such. 

 

 

Which is the cool part of these games and why I found the PS2 ones so fun. When you adjust the weight of your mech or equip a different booster, or a more generous generator. The connection you feel with the mech you built, the immersion in controlling it and tailoring it to your specific needs and gameplan. That's really interesting, and it's clear this series should not have been so overlooked for so long. But this entry takes it to a more exhausting level for me though, I just don't like modern From Software games. I'll probably see this one through, as it's immensely more interesting and has actual skill expression and build diversity, unlike Sekiro which was very linear in how you play it and a dull game imo. But it's very difficult to fight these things, I'm not good at it and can't follow the on screen carnage. I'm playing at native 4k 120 hertz so it's not like I'm wanting for pixels and fluidity, I'm just old I suppose.

 

I'll probably beat this Barteus boss guy and feel elated, but I'm really worn out by this

[one-armed dwarf]

I beat him. Not super pleased with the clear but a W is a W I guess. Or at least a reason to stop feeling so tilted for a bit

 

Early on was mainly using the sword to close the distance in missile barrage, as a kind of fast movement option to kite the rockets. but found it more effective to just use the sword more regularly during moments when the boss seemed punishable. You have to be careful tho as he has a grenade he will shoot at you if you do unsafe shit

 

 

Predict a lot of people will quit at this guy

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah I think that chapter 1 boss is designed as a sort of filter. Like Fr. Gascoigne, Gargogyles, Genichiro on the tower etc, it's the boss that forces you to learn how to play the fundamentals, and if you don't figure it out you simply don't win (OR, build a tank and apparently you can rough it out, must try that on NG+). I know From keep saying this isn't Souls, but well I still think it's designed a lot like Souls. At least the other AC games I played didn't put such a big roadblock up front, maybe when I go back to play some more of them I'll find stuff like that.

 

It's better beyond that fight anyway. Chapter 2 was relatively brief and I mixed it up with the tetrapod. Beat that chapter end boss pretty easily, and am now doing lots of missions in ch.3. I want to try all the different options out. Here's a random arena fight where I used it. No spoilers here

 

 

On another note, this game has pretty good HDR (this youtube video is in HDR, as was the other one, so if you watch it on a youtube app on a TV or phone you should see it). I did have to turn the brightness up though as there were a few fights which were in very dark rooms where you couldn't see much. I usually turn HDR off, cause it often looks bad and just makes it hard to see what's going on. But they don't go overboard with it here, the explosions and fireworks are obvious HDR highlights but the palette of the game other than that remains muted, so image readability turns out pretty good overall. Elden Ring also had great HDR, as did Sekiro, so that's one thing From are ahead of the pack on.

 

A lot of the problems I had early on with being overwhelmed turned into being more of a skill issue and approaching things from the wrong mindset, and finding myself in the middle of a crossfire of bullshit. Right now I've built another mech for chapter 3 which is based around melee with the stun baton, and has a booster with the highest amount of melee thrust (makes homing 'stinger' attacks faster), and a charged up energy shotgun in between baton cooldown. It's been hard to get going with however, as I'm used to being able to fight at range. I'm trying the shields out too, they have a stat which gives you a split second of very high defense which seems like it massively dampens damage without needing to use energy to dodge, but as a counter to that they overheat easily. This build is definitely the hardest one to figure out so far.

[OCH]

The Wall and the Juggernaut!

That's where I am right now. Just did a fun level called "Operation: Wallclimber". This one reminded me of Hitman IE. Putting in the prep-work, saves you a lot of aggro later. Charge in head first and it doesn't matter how good you've got at dodging, you will die. Take your time and assess the situation and the mission poses little challenge. I've also been frequently playing around with my assembly at the moment. This mission I ultimately opted for a close combat build. Complete with prerequisite Shotgun. Which helped a lot with the boss. It was almost the land equivalent of the helicopter boss. Except faster and harder hitting. This is your second mission with allied units and arguably, this one does less damage than the previous NPC's. Again, several attempts later, boss dead with a satisfying slow-mo laser sword final hit.

 

One minor grip I have at this stage is the codec dialogues that happen during boss fights. There is too much going in during the fight for me to either listen to the VO or read the subtitles. According the post-fight dialogue. I actually missed something important to the plot...🤷‍♂️

 

Also been working my way through the training missions. So far, when I've got enough funds. Definitely leaning towards the quad legs. Less so the tank treads. As I didn't really enjoy the feel of that assembly.

[one-armed dwarf]

Yeah, tanks are mad boring.

 

I'm going to use them for the last chapter tho, cause apparently they're OP lol.

 

I beat chapter 3 last night, much longer than the other ones and the final boss of the chapter is not a dickhead this time. Probably the easiest chapter (with chapter 1 being the hardest just because of its final boss, even though every other mission is easy as fuck in it). Just a cool action sequence, very anime. Specifically this anime (spoilers)

 

Spoiler

 

 

Also had a very interesting mission with some lore stuff, also involving a fight in a big city. The missions in this are all protein, no filler. Doesn't waste your time ever

 

Except maybe the one where there was this annoying mission without a checkpoint where you had to fight the mech equivalent of one of those Dark Souls black knight guys. That kinda got tilting. But the missions in general feel a bit more varied and are pretty well paced in Ch. 3. Some of them are slow and involve a bit of salvaging. I suspect from the trailer with the mech salvaging parts that there was initially going to be a bit more exploring in this game, and that would be how you salvage some parts. But I think it got 'scrapped'.

 

I unlocked a deployable laser pod last night, so I'm going to make a build based around keepaway pressure and then zoning in during high ACS with the boost kick and/or stun baton, or maybe pile bunker. Getting better at using the shield to reserve energy instead of wasting it all on quickboost spam.

 

Overall I'd say this is my favorite From game since Bloodborne, but not my favorite AC game. Again it's just a bit too Dark Souls, not bad but I wish there was a bit less strafing and dodge spamming in its combat at times. At least the verticality makes its combat much more interesting than Sekiro or Souls/Elden Ring, more than one way to deal with a mechanic

[one-armed dwarf]

Got to the last boss on my route last night, there's some missions marked 'Decision' which can have differing outcomes. Came close to beating that boss, but now Starfield is out it's on the backburner

 

Overall, I can't really figure out what they were trying to do with this game. I like it a lot, but it's all over the place in terms of difficulty. Insane wall at the end of chapter 1, a much better balance of difficulty and level gimmicks in chapter 2. An overall not very challenging chapter 3, with a few spikes here and there. Chapter 4 very easy, except for its last boss. Which is the only one that feels appropriate for the stage of the game you fight it in, but you can still landslide it with the right loadout. Which is also fine, because that's what AC is. Then some chapter 5 cleanup. Balteus is so difficult but nothing reaches that level again on the initial playthrough, so either it's an overtuned entrance exam and FROM fucked up the difficulty balancing here, or they just intended that mission to teach you everything you need to know to play the rest of the game

 

I think the weirdness in difficulty comes from the fact that the old games don't have checkpoints 99 percent of the time, or supply sherpas. So you had to build a mech that could take on an entire level, account for versatility and economical weapon choices. In this, you don't have to do that, so some of that difficulty and pre-planning evaporates. They try to account for that with Souls style boss fights, but they don't always fit well within the context of the freeform build options this game provides. Which is why they put it S ranks the way they did I suppose, but it means the game is missing a middle ground here and kinda doesn't feel as well designed as older titles even if it's more polished overall

 

A game with this much agency in how you build your mech will probably lead to really different experiences. It's fun picking parts together and looking for ways to mitigate damage which aren't just about spamming quickboost. Found one design that let me just vertical thrust and passively drift past most kinetic ordnance, feathering the shoot button on flamethrower to slowly burn them down without overheating the weapon and letting some plasma drones chip away at them as well. Which was great from a resource management perspective, that made the most complained about mission online very easy on my playthrough. The mech design theory crafting is something you can lose hours to, and I plan to dive into PVP a bit more to come up with a design that shuts down the dual shotgun spammers. Shotgun-bots are like the Ken players in Armored Core 6. Annoying, but they're so common that eventually you will come up with a counterplay and they will still only have their one limited gimmick, random shroyukens/shotgun stagger. The level design is often great in this with interesting mission gimmicks, but I still don't really love the dodge spamming in an AC game. it kind of forces you to use the hard lockon I feel like, which leads to twitchy encounter design that again feels more Elden Ring esque in my view (tho For Answer was also like that)

 

Apparently NG+ is very good in this so maybe my view will change when I do that.

[one-armed dwarf]

Ranked matchmaking update

 

 

Should get back to this over the break