Man, in 2023, it’s really hard to get heard through all of the macho “git gud” guff but as a fan of Armored Core since its inception: this game is not what I was expecting. I am disappointed.

I adored Armored Core as a series because it was steeped in the management of myriad statistics and unimaginably many ways to combine various parts to get to the collection of statistics you wanted. It was about navigating maps that were sometimes open and sometimes long and winding. It was about having a mech that can hit hard for a small open map or has enough ammo and energy for a long, exploratory map. It was about kitting out your AC for each and every mission to accomodate for every detail given in the mission briefing.

With the exception of AC4 and to some extent, AC5 (and Formula Front, I suppose), the piloting was really rather ancillary. Sure, it was fun. Sure, there were things to do. But really, as a pilot, your job was to leverage your AC’s strengths while mitigating its weaknesses.

AC6 turns all of that on its head.

AC6 feels very much like a Souls action game akin to Sekiro just with an added dash command. You dash around, trying to fill up an arbitrary bar just so you can deplete another bar all while managing your own bars. You do this while looking for patterns in a boss, avoiding their attacks, and waiting for “your turn”. Cool, if you like that sort of thing. But the focus now really is on the action aspect rather than your builds. Of course, you can still build ACs but it feels much more like kitting out a Souls character than it does studying numerous values and piecing them together in ways that are both effective and affordable.

My gripes:

• The game seems to dish out AC parts as a reward rather than giving them to you as the core gameplay itself.

• Why do I not have a radar?

• The image editor is more restricted than it used to be (no more free-form pen tool)

• Why can’t I build an AC whose generators offset my energy usage?

• Why is there a stagger gauge? Why isn’t staggering instead a function of the kinetic energy behind my weapons and the stability of your AC?

• Why do my weapons do insane damage to normal enemies and virtually no damage to bosses?

• Ammo counts seem insane. I could be misremembering but I’m pretty sure the shoulder-mounted missile pod in the first mission reported having 150 missiles.

• Energy is just a meter limiting your dashing and jumping. It feels very much like a Dark Souls stamina gauge. I suppose if I’m charitable, I could say it feels like AC4.

• Speaking of Dark Souls, you now have magical repair kits akin to Estus Flasks.

• Combat seems very much of the Sekiro/Bloodborne dodge => stagger => damage variety. It seems much less viable to just walk in with a massive tank, soak everything thrown your way, and accomplish your mission. It also seems much less viable to use distance and terrain to your advantage. The smaller scale of the ACs in AC5 really gave me hope that terrain would be coming back as a major feature but it hasn’t. Moreover, you can’t build an AC that can fly off in to the stratosphere and rain hellfire from the sky.

This game feels very much like Sekiro with robots, to me. It’s a game that is 95% action and 5% mech building. Even the action element doesn’t try to feel like giant lumbering mechs engaged in combat. It feels like Gundams darting around while pulling both energy and ammo out of the ether in order to keep up the pace of the action. AC4 was very “super robot”-like but at least AC4 retained the core conceit of combat by virtual of stat interactions.

The bosses also feel distinctly Dark Souls-ish. They’re big, imposing trials. I long for the days of Nine Ball and White Glint.

Does this game have stats? Sure. Do you build ACs? Yeah. But they are not the focus of the game anymore. This game is about piloting and at that, the piloting has been massively changed to feel much more video game-y and Dark Souls-like. It’s about identifying and reacting to patterns. If you can do that, you’ll be in very good shape to complete missions despite your build. In fact, I fully expect to see streamers with goofball AC versions of “nothing but my underwear and a torch” runs through the game.

One of the greatest joys I got out of the previous AC games was in finding clever ways to complete missions. If a mission was too hard for me, then I would try to construct an AC that allowed me to win the mission outside of the way the game wanted me to win. It was such a joy. It was facilitated through the fact that parts were numerous right from the get-go and the game mechanics centered around the interaction of dozens of statistics. Few things felt better than pummeling an AC with shots that they couldn’t handle and keeping them in stun lock.

Sadly, this game is hell bent on you playing the game as an action game. You will be required to both understand and become proficient in the action mechanics or else you will fail missions. Mech building is a secondary activity.

There are plenty of games that do that already. What I wanted was Armored Core.