Before I start talking about the game, let’s make it clear that the director here is not Hidetaka Miyazaki of Dark Souls, but Masaru Yamamura, who was the lead game designer on the also excellent Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Armored Core 6 takes place in the very distant future on a planet called Rubicon 3, with the game’s story centering around a newly discovered substance called Coral, which can be used as both an energy source and a form of data. Some companies run to take advantage of it and do not consider the inhabitants of the planet, nor the damage it can cause, and this is where we – as the main characters – come to take a stand.

The main protagonist is a mech named C4-621 and its operator is Walter, a pilot who fights for the good of all, but will fall into too many traps without realizing it, while others try to make him everything they want This is more or less the story of the game, without wanting to tell you anything more because of spoilers. What I will say is that it held me from start to finish, without being overly impressive. Anyway I would venture to say that Armored Core 6 is not focused there.

What it focuses on is undoubtedly its gameplay. And what gameplay is this… At first it seemed chaotic to me and I couldn’t get used to playing at all, nor could I get used to its quite demanding handling. Armored Core 6 is a hardcore action game with fast-paced combat that focuses on mechs (robots) and a lot of customization.

FromSoftware delivered a gameplay truly par for the course and I can say that it hooked me from the first moment I put the game to play. In the beginning, naturally, I didn’t have a lot of gameplay options, but as I progressed through the missions, I unlocked a lot of gear and I could build my mech however I wanted with no restrictions. To understand, the mech can hold two weapons, in the right and left hand.

For example, in my right hand I almost always had a high damage rifle equipped and in my left a plasma type rifle that threw beams to remove the enemy’s shield faster or a gauntlet that charged and carried a very strong melee beam attack . However, the equipment doesn’t stop here, the mech can also equip missiles and other weapons on its shoulders, left and right, as well as change its head, legs, arms and body in general. Imagine that from the very first hours, I didn’t have a classic robot with legs, but I had equipped “legs” that were brought in tanks and had wheels to move a little slower on the tracks, but with more endurance and life. They had made my mech something like a tank so it wouldn’t take so much damage.

Fans of the series will definitely be very happy with this, as customization has gone to another level. Also, there is the option to change the color of the robot without restrictions and you can paint it from dark shades to very bright pink, and also put stickers on it.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, there is the classic lock so you don’t lose them in front of a battle and it needs a lot of study especially if you are facing a difficult enemy. Many enemies have an energy shield and this needs to go down first in order for them to take damage and their health bar to go down. Usually, this bar drops faster with energy weapons such as the energy sword I had equipped on my mech’s left arm. I should also say that there is a lot of variety in the enemies, it has several bosses and many areas-tracks that really drop jaws.

The missions felt a bit like Metal Gear Solid to me, and at the beginning of each mission there is a briefing with the Handler talking about what is going to happen while giving various information. However, a lot of missions are similar to each other and that threw me off a bit especially at the beginning. In addition to the central missions which are the essence of the story, there are also the arenas, where there are various 1v1 duels with NPC mechs and it is a way for someone to farm money if they want to upgrade for example.

I should also say that if you are not that familiar with FromSoftware games and especially with Armored Core, it would be good to know, before you buy it, that we are talking about an extremely difficult game. The game made it quite difficult for me especially in some boss fights which I found many times “sadistic” and I said to myself “there’s no way they’ve done that now”. I can think of a certain boss in the first 10 hours of the game that wreaked so much havoc on my screen with rockets and other projectiles flying at me and I was like it can’t possibly be that hard.

I was literally screaming at the brutal difficulty of it. However, I think that’s also the magic of FromSoftware games, the courtesan doesn’t coddle the player and take him by the hand to get him through a rough patch. He wants you to learn the mechanics and study the boss in depth to take him out. I should note somewhere here that I played in performance mode on the PlayStation 5 to keep 60FPS and I can say that it had minimal differences compared to the graphics mode, which even activates ray tracing through a button in the settings. The game looks clearly better in the graphics mode with 30FPS, but in a game like this, with so many intense battles, I think there is no debate that it is better to have a smoother movement. As for its sound,

Finally, let me say that I didn’t encounter a single bug and the game is quite neat in all respects. Also, the title also supports online PvP squads, which means you’ll be able to play with other players’ mechs over the internet, but I wasn’t able to test that.

The only thing that spoiled me a bit was that the haptic feedback and adaptive triggers features are not supported – at least in the review code I had. I don’t want to imagine how the game would improve its experience if it supported these two features…