FromSoftware does it again.
After FromSoftware’s incredible run from Souls to Sekiro to Elden Ring, Armored Core 6 is a near-radical departure: short, relentlessly paced missions, forgiving retries, and an empowering arsenal that makes it clear you are a one mech army instead of some nasty little guy. Its lean approach holds it back in a few minor ways, but a big budget game this dead set on what it is and what it is not is a precious thing in 2023.
It may have taken FromSoftware a decade to return to its love of mechs, but it was worth the wait: Armored Core 6 is a « we’re back on our bullshit » slam dunk.
This would be a great action game in any year, but I’m particularly smitten with Armored Core at this exact moment in time, sandwiched between epic 100-hour RPGs and following the mainstream success of the boundless Elden Ring. It could scarcely be more Elden Ring’s opposite: instead of being dumped into a wide open world, you select missions from a menu and then deploy your mech after a short briefing. Missions are usually over inside 10 minutes and are 100% protein, either hurling you straight into a short frenzied battle or peppering larger environments with snack-sized combat encounters that culminate in 1v1 showdowns against other ACs or massive bosses. After each, returning to the menu to tinker with your AC and buy new parts is a well-earned exhale.
I can imagine concocting these scenarios in a childhood sandbox, staging my action figures for battle atop moist parapets and upside-down bucket mountains and then knocking them over one-by-one with my favorite Gundam. Remember making the sounds of explosions and laser beams with your mouth as your toys met their operatic ends?
Armored Core 6’s missions are that simple in construction and that thrilling in action. It allows you to snap together the pieces of your ultimate mech and then manifests those imagined backyard battles with a pink and neon green death machine (should you choose to go wild with the paint options) that can make it rain lasers and hellfire, no mouth sounds needed. AC6 prizes nothing as much as fulfilling the fantasy of piloting one of these immense metal machines and feeling incredibly cool while you do it.Fashion cores
This is Top Gun: Maverick for anime nerds like me who grew up enraptured by Mobile Suit Gundam instead of F-14s. I will have to spend the next few months restraining myself from commandeering Discord chats to talk about the articulation of these mechs, and the little jolts of glee I got from watching each individual thruster change direction as I skated along the ground. And watching the hot flames flickering out and turning to steam when standing still. And the neon bloom of a plasma blade felling a lowly mech or an entire battleship in one charged up blow.
I always find one sound effect to hyperfixate on in a FromSoftware game—in Dark Souls, it’s the bwaaam of parrying with your shield, a sound so concussive it gives « anti-tank rifle » rather than « little guy swinging his arm through the air. » It’s ludicrous, but it also makes perfect sense for the most powerful sound effect in the game to play when you are, for just a moment, literally invincible. Halfway through Armored Core 6, I found it: for the next 12 hours I punctuated every mission with the DUN-DUN of a Songbirds, a shoulder-mounted cannon that fires two anti-tank rounds in a devastating burst.
Each shot packs six times the explosive power of a single missile and far more impact damage, sending heavily armored four-legged mechs reeling when I score a clean hit.
