Armored Core 6 Impressions: FromSoftware Used Its Blank Check to Make More Armored Core, And I Couldn't be Happier

ign.com:

It's been interesting to watch the reaction to Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon. After its expanded showing at last week's Summer Game Fest event, one attendee summed up the overall mood around the game with a dismissive, "It's just more Armored Core, isn't it?"

Well, yes. Handed what amounts to a blank check after a decade of hits including Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, FromSoftware has opted to return to one of its earliest hits. This is FromSoftware being defiantly FromSoftware, ignoring the pressure to turn Armored Core into another Soulsborne game and making what it wants to make.

“The essential direction of [Armored Core VI] was to go back and take a good look at the core concept of Armored Core and what made that series special," FromSoftware's Hidetaka Miyazaki told us in an interview last year. “So we wanted to take the assembly aspect, assembling and customizing your own mech — your AC — and then being able to exact a high level of control over the assembled mech…we wanted to take those two core concepts and reexamine those in our modern environment.”

In short, it's definitely more Armored Core, and frankly, I couldn't be happier.

The demo shown at Summer Game Fest had the essential DNA of the series, down to the grim industrial megastructures and the emphasis on energy management, and many of the demo's crucial elements will be familiar to longtime fans of the series. The AC shown has a gun in one hand, an energy sword in the other, and missiles on both shoulders. Success is predicated on managing such disparate elements as heat dissipation and energy generation to create a mech that can take on all comers. Completing a mission — Armored Core VI is mission-based rather than open world — earns you money