Armored Cored VI: Fires of Rubicon Gameplay Footage, Oh My!
Contributed by DJMMT
So, I don’t really have a background in the Armored Core franchise. I’ve been gaming since before the original installment released in 1997. Over the years, I’ve been aware of the various installments that have been added to the franchise. But I’ve never actually played any of them. I couldn’t tell you why I never got into Armored Core before. I’m actually really into mechs. I love games, movies, and TV shows about mechs. One of my favorite anime from my childhood was Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (1995). One of my favorite PS2 games was Mobile Suit Gundam: Zeonic Front (2001). As a kid, I used to love to play Cyber Troopers: Virtual On at the arcade. But for some reason I just never got into Armored Core. Knowing me, it’s probably that I was too young when the first one came out, so I never ended up playing it. And then I didn’t play any of the sequels because I hate jumping into the middle of franchises, Final Fantasy notwithstanding. All that being said, I’m really intrigued by the upcoming Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon by FromSoftware.
I’m always happy to see FromSoftware recognized for games that don’t fall into the soulslike genre. In fact, before I ever played Dark Souls, one of my favorite XBOX 360 games was Chromehounds (2006). At that point in my life, I didn’t even know who FromSoftware was yet. Turns out I had already played, but never beat, two other games by them before Chromehounds as well. But I wasn’t aware of the company by name until Demon’s Souls (2009) on the PS3. It’s sad to think about the fact that a studio that made one of my favorite mech games has made several other mech games over the course of two decades and I just ignored them all. But this also gives me hope that I’ll really enjoy Armored Core VI, because I like FromSoftware games and I really like the only mech game from them I’ve ever tried. So I’m going into this game confident that I’ll have a good time.
Recently, FromSoftware released almost 14 minutes of narrated Armored Core VI gameplay footage. Before we get into the specific details, let me just say that this game looks awesome. Like not just awesome for a mech game. Just awesome in general. It’s certainly near the top of the list on my radar of games to buy at launch that I definitely don’t need.
I quickly noticed the parallels this game had to Chromehounds while watching the footage. You play as a silent protagonist working as a mercenary for a military operation funded by shadow governments and corporate interests. That’s literally the plot of Chromehounds. You spend most of your time being talked at by your handler who disseminates his unrequested opinions about the state of things while briefing you on missions. Again, that’s literally Chromehounds. Now, having not played any of the Armored Core games, that might be how the franchise usually works. So, it might not be that this game is taking notes from Chromehounds so much as Chromehounds took notes from it. In either case, it feels very FromSoftware mech game.
A large part of the gameplay is centered around mech customization, which I consider a necessity for any mech game worth discussing in detail. Even Xenosaga had mech customization to some extent, and that’s barely a mech game as far as gameplay is concerned. Customization in Armored Cored VI isn’t just for style. This is a FromSoftware RPG. The customization is about performance. I saw things like weight, AP, many weapon types, and power management. Even the types of traversal gear can apparently be customized. It’s gonna be a good time for mech addicts.
I really like how smooth the gameplay looks. The movement seems fast and fluid. A lot of mech games are comparable to a lot of tank games. Meaning the movement is slow and cumbersome. And that is not how a mech game should be. I want to feel like a Gundam pilot. Really cool to see that beam swords are a major part of the combat. And there seems to be limited ammo, so the use of swords might not be optional. There’s a lot going on in the HUD they showed. Like 9 or 10 different bars/meters you need to be watching at the same time just for your mech’s information. Then you also have to monitor enemy information. Some of the bars look exactly the same. To me it looks like the thrust/fuel bar for the player and the HP bar for the bosses look exactly the same. Though they are located on different parts of the screen. In my opinion, it’s a bit weird to use the same theme/color scheme for two different bars meant to denote completely different types of information. But it’s very possible that I’m just reading the HUD incorrectly, which is kind of the point I’m making. I’m not saying that this design is unrealistic or even uncommon for games like this. But it is a lot. It’s gotta be off putting for casuals, which I am not, thankfully.
As impressive as this footage is, and it is, it left me with a lot of questions. Questions that I absolutely need answers to before I would ever seriously consider spending $70+ to buy this game. And many of my questions are compounded by the fact that this is a FromSoftware game. Again, acknowledging that I have never played an Armored Core game before, so I’m not entirely sure what to expect or what falls in line with the mechanics of the rest of the franchise. With that, here are the most important questions, to me, that I had after seeing that footage.
1. Is targeting/aiming manual, automatic, or something else?
The game has a rather large targeting reticle. This is a must for a game like this, but it was unclear to me in the footage how aiming actually works. The person playing the footage seemed to always be on target, but it was not explained how this was happening. Was the player manually aiming, manually locking on to each enemy, or was the game auto-targeting for them? For a game this fast paced, that’s a very important detail when it comes to shooting with a PS5 controller; which is what I’ll be playing with.
2. What happens when you die?
More specifically, how does respawning work in this game? Do you have to restart the whole mission? Are there checkpoints? Do enemies respawn if you die without reaching a checkpoint? When you die in a boss fight, do you respawn at the fight, or do you have to reach it again? Honestly, I don’t want this to be a soulslike. In fact, the last thing I want is a mech game that runs this fluidly to be a soulslike. That’s not to imply that FromSoftware can only make soulslikes. Chromehounds and the other two games I played by them before Demon’s Souls are not soulslikes. But let’s not pretend that they haven’t leaned heavily on that style of game design since 2009.
3. How does fuel work?
There appears to be a fuel/thrust gauge, but the footage shows it constantly refilling. Is there a limit to this? Are there specific limitations that come into effect at certain times. Do you fall and take damage when you run out of fuel while high up in the air? Can you take fall damage in general? Can you extend the maximum length of the bar? Is this the equivalent of stamina? Does it cost in-game money to refill? I’m actually not worried about this issue being a problem, based on what I’ve seen, but the footage made wonder about this a lot.
4. How does ammunition work?
Along with fuel, the footage clearly shows ammo counters for each of the weapons the player has equipped. Meaning that ammo is finite. How do you get more ammo? Does it cost in-game money? Does ammo refill when you die, or do you have to get through the mission with what you started with regardless of how many deaths you incur? Is ammo gun specific, gun-type specific, or general?
5. Is this an RPG?
Are there levels and XP in this game? How does character development work? Are my base stats tied to my character or is everything gear contingent? Do I buy better parts with money I’ve made doing missions, or do I salvage parts from the field? They showed a ton of parts for customization in the footage, but didn’t explain how you gain access to all these options.
6. Is this game on rails?
I’m not one of those people who hates linear progression in games. In fact, I usually prefer it in most cases. But I am curious to what extent the player can customize their approach to completing missions. One of the things I really loved about Mobile Suit Gundam: Zeonic Front was that before you actually started missions you were given a brief and then able to create a customized plan based on the information given. The footage shows a mission brief, which makes sense for the military theme the game is going for. But are these briefs actually meant to help you plan your strategy for missions, or are they just plot dumps and then you always go the same way? I really like the idea of being able to use the missions brief to plan both my loadout and how I will approach each mission.
7. What is the damage ratio like?
Watching this footage left me quite skeptical about the difficulty in this game. This is a FromSoftware game. Meaning that I expect it to be very hard. And those boss fights look really hard. One of the bosses they showed in the footage looked like the fight where a lot of players will end up quitting the game. I assume there will not be difficulty levels, since it is FromSoftware, but Chromehounds had difficulty levels, if memory serves me, so who really knows if Armored Core VI will have them or not? What really stood out to me watching the gameplay was that the person playing was getting a ton of one-hit kills. So many of the enemies folded like paper. I’m fine with that, personally. But I have to ask if that goes both ways. Can you also be killed in one hit? If that’s the case, this game could suck for a lot of people, myself included. The guy playing wasn’t taking many hits. There were long sequences where they didn’t seem to take a single hit. I don’t assume that most people will be able to play that well. Certainly not before sinking in tens to hundreds of hours. But if that is the standard of play required to beat the game then I won’t be buying it until the price is very low. I don’t want to get stuck on the first mission for like 40 hours.
8. Is enemy behavior fixed or dynamic?
This is a pretty self-explanatory question. It kind of goes back to my death question as well. Is this a soulslike, where the enemies do pretty much the same thing every time and react to your behavior accordingly? This also connects back to my question about mission approach. If you can customize the way you go about completing a mission, will enemies respond differently to things? Do they always wait in the same places, or do they patrol and react based on what happens in the field?
As I said earlier in this post, the footage they showed looks great. But I have to say that I’m very surprised with how fast this game was delivered. It wasn’t announced that long ago and it’s releasing this month. I really want them to release a playable demo. Honestly, that footage should have ended with the announcement of a demo. The narrator basically set up such a reveal only to dash my hopes in the end. Going into the footage, I was not super interested in jumping into a franchise in the sixth installment. After watching the footage, I’m extremely interested. But I have reservations that I need to have confirmed, preferably with a hands-on trial, before I can commit to making a purchasing decision. I love soulslikes, as I have made clear on this blog many times. But I don’t want a mech soulslike. That’s not the experience I want when I’m role playing as a Gundam pilot.
