Tons of people have said "temper your expectations, AC6 isn't gonna be a Soulslike", and yeah, they've got a point. But AC6 still has two important cornerstones of the other FROM games: cool boss fights, and character customization.

At its core, Armored Core 6 is a game about movement. Movement feels good, movement depletes your stamina bar, and you want to make sure you don't run out of stamina in the middle of avoiding an enemy missile. You have automatic aim (which is influenced by what targeting computer you have equipped) so shooting isn't really a question about aiming for enemies, instead you wait for the right opportunity to fire and focus entirely on moving: find cover, aim for the backside of armored enemies, and so on. For how frantic the gameplay looks, you generally make very calm and informed decisions as far as shooting is involved.

Mech customization is RIDICULOUSLY in-depth, and you need to take a lot of things into account (such as choosing parts that work together), one of the primary unlockables are blueprints that lets you just pick things that work according to the developers but there's plenty of room to customize your playstyle. The main four types of gameplay are allrounder, dodge-focused, flying and heavy weapons, with plenty of options to branch off in each. For instance, flying builds can use both quadruped legs (can hover at lower energy cost) or bird-style legs (jumps very high so you can engage flight easily) and work well with both grenades and homing projectiles, but if you don't mind getting launched into the next neighborhood every time you fire you could also use them with a railgun and use your altitude to bypass cover. Dodge-focused builds can capitalize on their speed by using armor-piercing melee weapons but also get more mileage out of energy weapons that run off your stamina bar (since they naturally have more energy), and so on.

But it all really boils down to just finding stuff that works together - find the movement style you prefer the best (hit-and-run? in-your-face melee? carefully sniping from afar?), pick weapons that let you fight that way, and then build a mech body that supports those weapons as best as possible - for high recoil weapons you want slow stable legs, for hit-and-runs you want the biggest jet engine your weight limit supports, and so on. When people say "your mech really feels like yours", this is what they mean - incrementally arriving at a built that you enjoy playing is a really fun process and you can feel every step of the way.

Content-wise the game does that weird thing Nioh also did where you get tutorials AFTER the point you would've needed them, like the detailed explanation of basic mechanics only after you beat the tutorial boss (which is a pretty massive difficulty spike on par with Iudex Gundyr from DS3), and the challenge is generally pretty high, but a lot of it generally comes down to picking the right loadout for the situation (you can change it after dying if you realize you choose poorly, thankfully) and missions are generally pretty short, mostly having just a handful of encounters and maybe a boss at the end (though chapter finales will have multiple back-to-back bosses)

The game is surprisingly short if you just plow through it (people have reported 20 hours, I can't confirm this first-hand yet since I just beat the first chapter), but if you speed through the game you're basically playing it wrong - there's extra-hard missions exclusive to New Game Plus, arena missions that are just 1-minute miniboss fights, hidden collectibles to find, and of course replaying missions trying to get the best ranking. All of this stuff contributes to unlocking new robot parts, since the store upgrades whenever you reach certain completion scores, and of course the money you earn will be needed to buy parts.

All in all, this is a really good game and now I wanna go back and play all the other Armored Core games sometime (and then get disappointed they don't have all the cool QoL and polish 6 added, presumably...)

Tons of people have said "temper your expectations, AC6 isn't gonna be a Soulslike", and yeah, they've got a point. But AC6 still has two important cornerstones of the other FROM games: cool boss fights, and character customization. At its core, Armored Core 6 is a game about movement. Movement feels good, movement depletes your stamina bar, and you want to make sure you don't run out of stamina in the middle of avoiding an enemy missile. You have automatic aim (which is influenced by what targeting computer you have equipped) so shooting isn't really a question about aiming for enemies, instead you wait for the right opportunity to fire and focus entirely on moving: find cover, aim for the backside of armored enemies, and so on. For how frantic the gameplay looks, you generally make very calm and informed decisions as far as shooting is involved. Mech customization is RIDICULOUSLY in-depth, and you need to take a lot of things into account (such as choosing parts that work together), one of the primary unlockables are blueprints that lets you just pick things that work according to the developers but there's plenty of room to customize your playstyle. The main four types of gameplay are allrounder, dodge-focused, flying and heavy weapons, with plenty of options to branch off in each. For instance, flying builds can use both quadruped legs (can hover at lower energy cost) or bird-style legs (jumps very high so you can engage flight easily) and work well with both grenades and homing projectiles, but if you don't mind getting launched into the next neighborhood every time you fire you could also use them with a railgun and use your altitude to bypass cover. Dodge-focused builds can capitalize on their speed by using armor-piercing melee weapons but also get more mileage out of energy weapons that run off your stamina bar (since they naturally have more energy), and so on. But it all really boils down to just finding stuff that works together - find the movement style you prefer the best (hit-and-run? in-your-face melee? carefully sniping from afar?), pick weapons that let you fight that way, and then build a mech body that supports those weapons as best as possible - for high recoil weapons you want slow stable legs, for hit-and-runs you want the biggest jet engine your weight limit supports, and so on. When people say "your mech really feels like yours", this is what they mean - incrementally arriving at a built that you enjoy playing is a really fun process and you can feel every step of the way. Content-wise the game does that weird thing Nioh also did where you get tutorials AFTER the point you would've needed them, like the detailed explanation of basic mechanics only after you beat the tutorial boss (which is a pretty massive difficulty spike on par with Iudex Gundyr from DS3), and the challenge is generally pretty high, but a lot of it generally comes down to picking the right loadout for the situation (you can change it after dying if you realize you choose poorly, thankfully) and missions are generally pretty short, mostly having just a handful of encounters and maybe a boss at the end (though chapter finales will have multiple back-to-back bosses) The game is surprisingly short if you just plow through it (people have reported 20 hours, I can't confirm this first-hand yet since I just beat the first chapter), but if you speed through the game you're basically playing it wrong - there's extra-hard missions exclusive to New Game Plus, arena missions that are just 1-minute miniboss fights, hidden collectibles to find, and of course replaying missions trying to get the best ranking. All of this stuff contributes to unlocking new robot parts, since the store upgrades whenever you reach certain completion scores, and of course the money you earn will be needed to buy parts. All in all, this is a really good game and now I wanna go back and play all the other Armored Core games sometime (and then get disappointed they don't have all the cool QoL and polish 6 added, presumably...)