VORSEY
Log Status
Completed
Playing
Backlog
Wishlist
Rating
Time Played
70h 0m
Days in Journal
4 days
Last played
October 30, 2023
First played
August 24, 2023
Platforms Played
I've never played an Armored Core before (or a mech game in general), but I tried this out on the strength of the trailer and my enjoyment of the Souls series. I was expecting good combat and got maybe my favorite FromSoft game? As soon as I took down the helicopter in the introductory mission I was really interested - dodging barrages of bullets and missiles in three dimensions (so much more dynamic feeling than Souls!). When I took down the first chapter boss after perfectly-difficult trial and error sequence, I was completely hooked. When that fight opens with the sky completely eclipsed with a fireworks show of missiles, and that fucking music kicks in - video games are rarely that purely awesome.
That was a feeling I had over and over in AC6. It's pretty certainly the coolest feeling game I've ever played. Soaring above ruined cities on giant thrusters, punching huge robots in the face with a giant captive bolt, getting shot across the ocean in an aircraft carrier sized railgun, fighting on a city sized ship in outer space: this game is full of moment after moment that completely awes with the sheer spectacle of it all. There are a ton of setpieces here that are sick as shit that feel like they would happen once in a cutscene in another series - and you do them over and over here. And it's all enhanced by From's (certainly not newfound) impeccable sense of scale and artstyle. Most of the missions aren't huge but they convey mindbendingly huge machines and endless destroyed cities that provide perfect backdrops to the core robot fighting.
The combat feels fantastic. There's a good variety of enemies and challenges, and the loop of mission > garage > mission is immensely satisfying - it's almost as much fun to look at the new parts and speculate about builds as it is to actually test them out. The missions themselves are a varied mix of search-and-destroy sorties, duels with other armored cores, bigger boss fights, defend-the-point, and even an escort mission (that isn't actually that bad). Outside of the first mission, I played largely after the patches, which I think smoothed out the experience and enhanced what was one of my favorite aspects - the vast array of viable weapons that you can taylor to each hurdle. Most everything I tried felt like it could get the job done if I wanted to make something work, and there were plenty of weapon types that seemed like they would be best suited to a couple of specific challenges if I wanted to tailor my loadout to a certain boss fight. These boss fights are magnificent, too. Spectacular visually, literally the best music Fromsoft has ever had in a game, and really solid difficulties that kept me completely locked in but rarely frustrated. It was truly a pleasure to play this game, even as I replayed it once, and twice to really finish the main story.
The story side of things surprised me the most. The game is told entirely through MGS-style disembodied voice lines, with the occasional log picked up mid-mission, and yet - it's probably the most emotional From game, with poignant and tragic moments and really well defined characters despite that definition coming purely from a voice (and sometimes a mech design). The story itself is captivating, evolving and deepening as you finish NG and move to NG+, which is largely the same but with some extra details and an occassional mission from the opposite side, before finally peaking in NG++, where the entire thing takes on a different flavor. We start out as a mercenary, a cog in a disgusting corporate war machine, defending one company's supplies before blowing them up for a competetor in the next mission. As the game progresses it hits on themes of revolutionary struggle and capitalist greed, colonialism and environmentalism, AI and humanity, and sometimes the familiar Fromsoft fare of a mankind dooming itself in its pettiness and excess. It's still on my mind weeks after I finished, remembering badass lines, marvelling at the way they managed to keep the story perfectly paced and intriguing through 3 largely similar playthroughs, and thinking about the way it ends. Game of the year.
That was a feeling I had over and over in AC6. It's pretty certainly the coolest feeling game I've ever played. Soaring above ruined cities on giant thrusters, punching huge robots in the face with a giant captive bolt, getting shot across the ocean in an aircraft carrier sized railgun, fighting on a city sized ship in outer space: this game is full of moment after moment that completely awes with the sheer spectacle of it all. There are a ton of setpieces here that are sick as shit that feel like they would happen once in a cutscene in another series - and you do them over and over here. And it's all enhanced by From's (certainly not newfound) impeccable sense of scale and artstyle. Most of the missions aren't huge but they convey mindbendingly huge machines and endless destroyed cities that provide perfect backdrops to the core robot fighting.
The combat feels fantastic. There's a good variety of enemies and challenges, and the loop of mission > garage > mission is immensely satisfying - it's almost as much fun to look at the new parts and speculate about builds as it is to actually test them out. The missions themselves are a varied mix of search-and-destroy sorties, duels with other armored cores, bigger boss fights, defend-the-point, and even an escort mission (that isn't actually that bad). Outside of the first mission, I played largely after the patches, which I think smoothed out the experience and enhanced what was one of my favorite aspects - the vast array of viable weapons that you can taylor to each hurdle. Most everything I tried felt like it could get the job done if I wanted to make something work, and there were plenty of weapon types that seemed like they would be best suited to a couple of specific challenges if I wanted to tailor my loadout to a certain boss fight. These boss fights are magnificent, too. Spectacular visually, literally the best music Fromsoft has ever had in a game, and really solid difficulties that kept me completely locked in but rarely frustrated. It was truly a pleasure to play this game, even as I replayed it once, and twice to really finish the main story.
The story side of things surprised me the most. The game is told entirely through MGS-style disembodied voice lines, with the occasional log picked up mid-mission, and yet - it's probably the most emotional From game, with poignant and tragic moments and really well defined characters despite that definition coming purely from a voice (and sometimes a mech design). The story itself is captivating, evolving and deepening as you finish NG and move to NG+, which is largely the same but with some extra details and an occassional mission from the opposite side, before finally peaking in NG++, where the entire thing takes on a different flavor. We start out as a mercenary, a cog in a disgusting corporate war machine, defending one company's supplies before blowing them up for a competetor in the next mission. As the game progresses it hits on themes of revolutionary struggle and capitalist greed, colonialism and environmentalism, AI and humanity, and sometimes the familiar Fromsoft fare of a mankind dooming itself in its pettiness and excess. It's still on my mind weeks after I finished, remembering badass lines, marvelling at the way they managed to keep the story perfectly paced and intriguing through 3 largely similar playthroughs, and thinking about the way it ends. Game of the year.