Struggling with Armored Core 6? Do the coolest thing possible

polygon.com:

Two things can be true: I am bad at Dark Souls games. I beat Armored Core 6.

To be frank, there were a couple of moments when I worried my time with FromSoft’s new mech mayhem simulator would end as the majority of my Soulsborne experiences end: With me bashing my poor reflexes against a “skill test,” and unceremoniously moving on to something easier.

In a fit of desperation, I tried an audacious strategy that would unlock Armored Core 6 and make nearly every boss battle a breeze: I did the coolest thing possible.

It sounds simple, and yet, its efficacy is inarguable. I think the game – without verbalizing it – wants to force this epiphany. The two most difficult boss fights in Armored Core 6’s early hours (and arguably the entire game, excluding the final boss) are the tutorial’s XXXL helicopter and the already-infamous Balteus, and both can be more easily overcome when you take a similar “ADTCTP” (Always Do The Coolest Thing Possible) approach.

The HC Helicopter isn’t a helicopter so much as a warship, filling the bulk of your field of view. My initial strategy was to treat the industrial complex the chopper calls home as improvised cover, boosting from one building to the next, taking cheap shots when the enemy afforded me an opening. The strategy only dented the helicopter’s health bar before the ship’s payload of heavy weaponry turned my AC into a pile of glorified paperclips. Worse, it looked silly and wasn’t fun.

Then I remembered my mech had a sword. Fighting a death-machine nearly 10 times my size with a sword seemed ill-advised, but also – as someone who has watched their fair share of anime – cool as hell. So, I challenged a steel god to a melee duel, and reader, I won.

I’m ashamed of how long it took me to