Armored Core 6 Is My Most memorable FromSoft Game That Doesn't Rebuff Trial and error

 

          Armored Core is back, and it's customization makes the experience more approachable.

Armored Core 6 PCA Lieutenant Rifle Shots

FromSoftware has a long history of drip-feed customization, where they trickle progression through to us as we work our way through a given game. As we work our way through Dark Souls or Elden Ring, we are given power-ups and items that slightly improve our chances of survival, always getting just enough to survive rather than inundating us with goodies. Armored Core 6 upgrades this formula, allowing a multitude of tweaks that allow you to drastically change your playstyle and your entire approach to threats altogether.

While Souls games revolve around certain equipment that you could base your entire playthrough around (with upgrades of early equipment often proving more rewarding than switching things up), Armored Core 6 values change and evolution, allowing you to alter your playstyle indefinitely.

Armored Core 6: ACS Anomaly Explained

Say for instance, you’re a melee-oriented caveman like me. Melee attacks take up energy, which is also tied to your rocket booster and propulsion. At the rate your energy is spent, you want a generator with a fast recharge rate. Explosive weapons are great at chewing through enemy shields, so you choose one that homes in on your enemy. At some point, reverse-leg bipedal legs will be available, which let you jump higher, granting better evasiveness, but with the trade-off that your mech is easier to knock-back and stun.

Enemy patterns are one challenge, but figuring out all the stats, and what benefits your style, is another. Armored Core 6 lacks the punishment factor of other Fromsoftware entries. Many of you know about the ‘Swag Souls’ phenomenon, where you make your build look as cool as possible but it is functionally useless when taking on bosses and tougher enemies. Of course, Dark Souls bestows de-buffs upon death, like a lower health bar and losing all of your collected souls, whereas Armored Core 6 doesn’t punish you for dying, which in its own way encourages and rewards experimentation.

Armored core 6 Explosion

You still learn from each death naturally, and when you try again you can do so with different weapons, generators, and equipment. This feat is difficult to accomplish in the Souls series, where you invest so much into armor and weapons that suit your class, not to mention the countless souls invested to boost your stats, like attack power or magic points. It’s easier to change styles in Armored Core’s garage, where your stats are only affected by your equipment.

For those not adjusted to its gameplay mechanics, it can take several deaths to understand, but the level in which you can kit out your mech makes nearly every tough encounter a cakewalk. Armored Core 6 may not have the brutal learning curves of a Souls game, but the visual payoff to dipping in and out of gunfire, while sniping down enemies as they explode in glorious fashion, is endlessly fulfilling.