Armored Core 6: decent From Software game, but a bad Armored Core game

[Blackmage]

I've completed one playthrough and have started NG+. As someone who has been playing Armored Core since the 90s and owns every game except Formula Front and Verdict Day, this is my conclusion in a past/present comparison.

Difficulty Progression:
The difficulty of past Armored Core titles progressed steadily along with the game. This is what you would normally expect from nearly any video game. AC6 is easy cruising until you run into a boss, then the difficulty spikes. The constant ups and downs in intensity really throws of the pacing of the game.

Boss Presentation:
The bosses of past Armored Core games were introduced in the story early on, and you knew why they were going to be tough fights later in the game. In Master of Arena, you're looking for revenge on Nine-Ball, and Nine-Ball makes an appearance in the tutorial mission and shows off his guns. In AC4:FA, Spirit of Motherwill is shown in the intro cinematic. You knew Arms Forts were one of the key attractions of the game, and you'd be hyped and ready when those missions came up.
In contrast, many of the bosses in AC exist solely to give the player a boss fight. Balteus, the C-Spider, and Ibis all come out of no where and attack you for only because From Software decided they wanted to put a boss fight right there in the level.

The Boss Fights Themselves:
The boss battles in both past AC games and AC6 were DPS races. The difference is bosses are common and have attack patterns in AC6. Whether that is an improvement or deviation is up to you. To me, it's just different. I could have lived without the attack patterns because I pretty much ignored them all with double shotguns and double songbirds.
Regarding the tutorial helicopter - who's first thought is to attack a helicopter with a sword? Seriously? This isn't Ninja Mecha Gaiden! In the old games, you'd load up your AC with missiles, or grenade launchers, or bazookas, or a sniper rifle, and use cover while fighting from a distance. That was my first instinct, and as you can guess, it took me a few tries to beat it. So much for "play the game how you want."

Mission Rewards:
Money is plentiful, debt is gone in AC6. They might as well have just rewarded the parts instead of money.
Past AC games gave meager payouts. You might be able to buy one part after one or two missions if you sold another part to make up the difference. If you failed a mission or your repair/ammo costs exceeded your reward, the game progressed and you continued on with less money. Tough. That's mercenary life.
If you did go into debt, the original games rewarded your persistence with Human Plus augmentations. These old games are tough, and so there is no shame in benefiting from H+. But the gold medal was to complete these games without H+ or OP-I (which I have).

Checkpoints:
There is no sense of risk or failure or incentive to play an entire mission well. You can reload the checkpoints and fight every boss at full capacity. Achieving S rank is about the only excuse, but I haven't unlocked anything from S-ranking missions so far.
In the old games you had to complete the entire mission with what you loaded your AC with. No repair kits. No checkpoints. No supply drops. If you messed up, you did the whole mission again. Only a few levels resupplied the player, but they were few and far in between. Yes, AC5 did resupply drops, but it cost you money to use them, and they weren't checkpoints.
We were told missions would be longer in AC6, and checkpoints were meant to compensate for that. Nope. AC6 does not have 20 minute missions, as we were led to believe before the game came out. The missions in AC6 are actually still very short. Missions without bosses can be completed within a few minutes. It's the boss battles that are long because of their inflated hit point values. The checkpoints are there so you can keep replaying against the bosses without having to replay the whole level.

Replaying Missions:
Replaying missions was a privilege you got at the end of the game in past AC games. It was not readily available for you to grind for money and buy the rest of the parts. They probably should not even reward money for replaying missions at all with how lucrative mission rewards are in AC6.

Parts:
I was very surprised you don't even begin with the shop unlocked in AC6. And when it does become available there are so few parts to choose from. The idea behind Armored Core is customizing your AC how you wanted. That is why in the past games, up until AC4 and AC5, about 60-70% of the parts were readily available to you from the very beginning. Not provided to you on a slow drip.

Stagger:
Unless you're using the linear rifle to one-shot light MT's, this game is built around the stagger system. With the notable prevalence of bosses and heavily armored or shielded targets, the go-to guns are high-impact weapons. This is because if you can't deal impact damage to a boss, it's going to be like trying to take down a M1 Abrams tank with a BB gun. You'd sooner shoot your own eye out than win.
Thus, the stagger system has actually led to optimal methods to play through, and trivialize, all of AC6, most notably: double shotguns and double songbirds. In other words, it means AC6 has "best builds" which is not at all how Armored Core is supposed to be. Using these weapons made the game so easy it felt like I had cheated, and it was not at all fun for me. But it was either that or get stonewalled by bosses. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Final Thoughts:
I understand games and game design needs to change with the times. Audiences change, interests change, hardware and software becomes more capable, etc. But change can be either good or bad, depending on your perspective. It is perfectly possible AC6 is going set the standard of all future Armored Core games, and I'll have to live with that.
But there is hope. Even the developers openly stated want to bring debt back (it would be a start). It was only removed from AC6 to make the game accessible to newcomers. Now that the franchise has been rebooted, maybe they'll release a followup title addressing all of AC6's shortcomings as an "Armored Core" title. Fingers crossed.

tl;dr:
Read it or don't comment.

[KharnTheKhan]

Yes thank you for the 1000th reiteration of this opinion

[sudebu]

Originally posted by NeroMacharius:

Yes thank you for the 1000th reiteration of this opinion

Yes thank you for another useless comment that adds nothing to any conversation.

[duckpie]

too long

[IDBT]

Frankly, I feel the same way you do.
This is a great action game, but it isn't "Armored Core”.

[Gearwar]

Can't comment on previous AC titles, as this is my first, but I do agree that money seems superfluous in this game, to the point why I wonder why even have it to begin with.

That debt mechanic sounds interesting and would definitely elevate the whole game experience. The checkpoint system is needed given the boss encounters in some level. It would just be frustrating to go through a whole level only to try out a new boss strategy. Also the attacks are so poorly telegraphed at times, more often than not you just die to the camera.

The game feels fluid and plays fine, but man it sure wasn't refined as well as it should and could have been.

[Blackened Halo]

this game is very archaic in the level design and 2 steps back from what From Software is now known for

[Oobaneko]

I didn't played any of AC, but I were expecting more realistic Japanese mecha game with hardcore part in designing your mecha that suits your playstyle and to be versitile and pretty adaptable to any kind of situation or, in rare occasions, change loadout to suit nore specific goals. Just like in metal wolf Chaos DX, in souls games even.
But there are no real point to be that deep, be casual and win. I really do not see the reason to be "skillful" in game. In Ultrakill I see the reason: besides two awesome bosses behind rankwall (and not for nothing), you really wanna try to be better in that game. And it's not feeling or looking masochistic, unlike AC6. In ER I really wanted git gud and I git guded a lot with pretty hard weapon of choice, despite casual elitist whining, I even started to use jump as dodge mechanic.
In Hunt Showdown I really love hardcore part that allows overplay and be overplayed by literally with no firearms against semi-auto shotgun.
Heck, even Zelda TotK are hardcore, because have very deep mechanics. AC6 is casual, because of shallow mechanics.

[RX-3DR]

It's hard to say which came first, the Checkpoint/Supply system resulting in bosses just being thrown everywhere, or bosses being thrown everywhere only for them to realize that a lot of the boss fights would be a frustrating experience of spending 5 minutes rushing to a boss, only to realize you still don't have the burst firepower to deal with it fast enough.

The problem with the stagger system is that it creates only 1 playstyle. People talk about builds and whatnot but in the end, the only way to fight a boss effectively, is to have 4 weapons to dump impact until it staggers so that you can dump more damage. Anything that isn't about attacking as aggressively as possible is thrown out the window except for 100% stagger alphas. There's no such thing as evasive hit and run outside of grunt killing.

[poppindancers]

I'm also someone who played all but one. And I like it.

Here, 1/100 of what you typed but the same statement.

[ПΛПО Dragoon]

This is my first title but I feel what you are saying, I have to agree with the stagger, boss presentation and the combat increase. If you don't stagger there is no point, it's just a long drag out style fight, And the main enemies are super weak and easily killed off. Until you meet a boss which smacks you down.

I actually like the sword/melee but fully understand you point. That the game changes from shooting matches to just close melee rushes because of it. In the pvp and with the core enemies, almost all of them use a sword or melee simple because of how much it stuns. Sniping is practically gone from combat.

I do wish we had more parts unlocked so we could mess with styles

[BKo]

Originally posted by poppindancers:

I'm also someone who played all but one. And I like it.

Here, 1/100 of what you typed but the same statement.

Same

[hoimingmissile]

Yep. In AC games you were a mercenary pilot taking jobs, souping up your rig, budgeting(!), etc. This game suffers from FROM's signature soulsborne style of game design: "Big Boss Battles but everything else is an afterthought".

In previous AC games it always raised pulses when a rival AC showed up unexpectedly during a mission. In AC6, an AC shows up and I'm like "get out my face bruh" as I shove past on the way to a mecha-themed flying demon wielding flame swords or a mecha-themed giant wielding lava hammers. I haven't seen this touched on much amongst the more common points of criticism but the entire setting feels less sci-fi and more low fantasy as a result of these ludicrous boss designs.

[Blackened Halo]

Originally posted by hoimingmissile:

Yep. In AC games you were a mercenary pilot taking jobs, souping up your rig, budgeting(!), etc. This game suffers from FROM's signature soulsborne style of game design: "Big Boss Battles but everything else is an afterthought".

In previous AC games it always raised pulses when a rival AC showed up unexpectedly during a mission. In AC6, an AC shows up and I'm like "get out my face bruh" as I shove past on the way to a mecha-themed flying demon wielding flame swords or a mecha-themed giant wielding lava hammers. I haven't seen this touched on much amongst the more common points of criticism but the entire setting feels less sci-fi and more low fantasy as a result of these ludicrous boss designs.

I think games have evolved since the last AC game (which was basically 2 console generations ago!) and AC6 is stuck in the past with its mission and level design. What a shame

[Abyssal Shift]

As an AC Vet since the PS One demo disc, I agree 100% with the details you pointed.

I wouldn't go as far as to call it a bad AC game, as AC has evolved many times over the course of the series. In both good and bad ways, AC5 and ACVD are trash, but AC6 is a step in the right direction. They just need to ground some of the other things.

[Mass Actual]

I wonder if AC6 would be better without the stagger mechanic. A part of me thinks yes, it'd be more varied and all play styles would be viable. The other part says no, it would be a long dragged out fight without finishers.