Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the room.Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubiconis not a Soulslike.
That’s absolutely not the case.
There’s no intricately-designed interconnected levels here, no bonfire equivalents, no enemies that respawn when you rest.
Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon review
In fact, AC6 is remarkably traditional in structure.
Reader, that part of me was foolish and wrong.
From the first moment you take the controls, piloting your mech feels fantastic.
The titular ACs aren’t the lumbering brutes of Battletech, instead they’re pure Mobile Suit Gundam.
Actually, that would have been great, can we have that as DLC?
It’s surprisingly effective!)
It’s not just the weapons on your AC that can be customised to your liking.
There’s plenty of scope for customisation without being overly granular and fiddly.
The single most impactful component is the legs, which come in four varieties.
It’s deep without being clunky, and Frankensteining together your ideal AC for every challenge is a joy.
It keeps you hungry by never quite offering enough.
Yes, the pilebunker makes for a righteous killing blow, but that means sacrificing firepower at range.
You’ll always wish you had space for one more weapon, or just a little more speed.
You get dropped into the introductory mission, which teaches you the basics, with minimal fuss.
On the flipside, it’s still bloody tough.
With how user-friendly the game is otherwise, it feels weirdly dissonant.
The weakest element of AC6 meanwhile is undoubtedly the storytelling.
Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon accessibility options
Subtitles and fully remappable controls.
While AC6 is slightly lacking in narrative pizazz, that doesn’t detract from the game as a whole.
There’s still enough meat on the storytelling bones to provide the genre-appropriate melodramatic moments.
Finding yourself on the opposite side of the battlefield to a former comrade?
Horribly arrogant and self-important antagonists?
Beloved wingman swooping in to support your scene-stealing heroics?
This is the scenery-chewing brilliance that the mecha genre’s all about.
