Wishing for a "Maybe" button
After playing more I think I can comfortably give this a No.
This game swings from asleep at the wheel to balls-to-the-wall hard depending on what mission you're on. Is there no boss? You can finish it in your sleep, literally go in with your AC having no weapons and beat it easily. Is there a boss? Now the game is challenging you to the point of being unbearable.

The sheer amount of visual noise in boss fights also make learning what to do about every attack quite frustrating, especially since bosses will regularly overlap attacks if you damage them too quickly or stagger them mid-attack.

Another issue with the learning curve is that you don't gain access to even the most basic tutorial simulations until you've defeated the crushingly oppressive "tutorial" helicopter. A massive gunship that flies in and out of the invisible walls of a cramped arena raining artillery barrages, firing a constant hail of bullets and firing arcing missiles that track you constantly.
Its an absolute nightmare for anyone unfamiliar with Armored Core and blows all the heavily memed on "tutorial bosses" of all of the soulsborne games well out of the water.

The levels are huge and gorgeous but you're constantly hemmed in by holographic borders stopping you from going in many directions, the worse I've seen is an invisible wall stopping you from flying across a gap to a location you're going to end up going in a minute anyway.

The mech customization is neat but your options are very limited for a long time. On top of that you have to navigate in and out of menus to buy and sell whatever you want because you have a limited amount of money but you can sell things for full price, which really means that you don't have a limited amount of money, you have a limited 'inventory' capacity. Its kind of just silly and forces annoying extra menuing for no good reason.

As for the weapons themselves a lot of them are wholly underwhelming to use, or just aren't very good, while other weapons are just flat out good at just about everything. You won't notice this against standard enemies on standard levels (as I mentioned before you could go in entirely unarmed on a non-boss level and punch and kick your way to victory without breaking a sweat) but when up against the vast health pools and brutal barrages of the bosses of the game the shortcomings of most of the arsenal will come into stark view.

For bonus context: I've never played Armored Core before this, my only experience with the From Soft catalogue is the Souls Games, Bloodborne & Elden Ring, all of which I have completed both solo and coop.


Edit: Something I forgot to mention which has become increasingly grating with every mission completed... The stun mechanic. Every time you get hit by any attack a bar that steadily fills up until you are stunned. Avoiding damage is extremely hard, you're constantly taking chip damage, barraged with all manner of attacks, scattershots and explosives. Unless you're extremely skilled you're guaranteed to get stunned at some point, especially when fighting bosses or elite enemies. This stun lasts for a full couple seconds, which in a game as fast paced as AC6 is an agonizingly long time, killing all momentum and taking away all control.
Enemies also have this mechanic but unlike you they have a much greater resistance and seem to recover from any damage done to this bar very quickly, while any done to you the player sticks around for a long time... Its most egregious against bosses where they will regenerate their stun bar almost as fast as you can add to it, seemingly at random.

Its just an extra, unnecessary layer of punishment for getting hit that is heavily weighted against the player.


TL;DR if you're someone with limited funds but especially limited time and aren't super invested in armored core you can safely put your money and time somewhere else. This game is wholly savage and uncompromising in its difficulty and for some that's a selling point but for others its not the point of videogames.

After playing all 3 endings and S ranking about 70% of the missions (not like I could refund the game so I may as well muscle through to the part where it "gets good") I'd like to make some additions to my review.

The game doesn't truly become a game until you hit NG+, where you have almost all the unlocks a mountain of cash and start getting new, more interesting missions and plot threads that you don't get in NG.

A number of the final bosses are a huge pain in the ass but eminently doable, just not very fun. The most fun I had was doing a very aggressive melee build with a rocket fist and a laser spinny thing which would obliterate the majority of enemies with relative ease, granting something of a power fantasy, which while more enjoyable than the stifling grind of the NG playthrough was still not wholly satisfying as the whole ACS load stunlock that the build revolved around kind of just made it a kind of One-Punch-Man sort of vibe, fun at first to obliterate enemies that previously gave me trouble but lost its initial lustre as I repeatedly slammed enemies into pulp with a single blow.

I wasn't particularly tempted to switch out of this build however as the alternative was to plink away at enemies at range with only a handful of weapons that did more than tickle opponents I voted to stick to the quick and easy build (my attempts to shake up the build with my free hand and shoulder slot reinforced this feeling as numerous weapons I thought would be interesting were wholly ineffective).


The endgame bosses are also a total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of design in my opinion, constant blinding blasts of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ filling your screen with epilepsy inducing flashes while you struggle to keep track of whatever the ♥♥♥♥ is going on.
The final boss of the NG++ ending especially left an unpleasant taste in my mouth after beating it as it went from one awful fight design to another and then for its final form, turned into an Elden Ring boss but you have no iframes to roll through the arena spanning AoE attacks.


There is SO MUCH I want to like about this game, zipping around in a cool mech smashing up hapless goons for cash was very fun and satisfying but there's just a handful of extremely obnoxious mechanics that feel incredibly tacked on (Attitude Stability/ACS Load being the crowning king of all awful tacked on game mechanics) and just not enough of the things I had fun with in the game...

[strike]Wishing for a "Maybe" button[/strike] After playing more I think I can comfortably give this a No. This game swings from asleep at the wheel to balls-to-the-wall hard depending on what mission you're on. Is there no boss? You can finish it in your sleep, literally go in with your AC having no weapons and beat it easily. Is there a boss? Now the game is challenging you to the point of being unbearable. The sheer amount of visual noise in boss fights also make learning what to do about every attack quite frustrating, especially since bosses will regularly overlap attacks if you damage them too quickly or stagger them mid-attack. Another issue with the learning curve is that you don't gain access to even the most basic tutorial simulations until you've defeated the crushingly oppressive "tutorial" helicopter. A massive gunship that flies in and out of the invisible walls of a cramped arena raining artillery barrages, firing a constant hail of bullets and firing arcing missiles that track you constantly. Its an absolute nightmare for anyone unfamiliar with Armored Core and blows all the heavily memed on "tutorial bosses" of all of the soulsborne games well out of the water. The levels are huge and gorgeous but you're constantly hemmed in by holographic borders stopping you from going in many directions, the worse I've seen is an invisible wall stopping you from flying across a gap to a location you're going to end up going in a minute anyway. The mech customization is neat but your options are very limited for a long time. On top of that you have to navigate in and out of menus to buy and sell whatever you want because you have a limited amount of money but you can sell things for full price, which really means that you don't have a limited amount of money, you have a limited 'inventory' capacity. Its kind of just silly and forces annoying extra menuing for no good reason. As for the weapons themselves a lot of them are wholly underwhelming to use, or just aren't very good, while other weapons are just flat out good at just about everything. You won't notice this against standard enemies on standard levels (as I mentioned before you could go in entirely unarmed on a non-boss level and punch and kick your way to victory without breaking a sweat) but when up against the vast health pools and brutal barrages of the bosses of the game the shortcomings of most of the arsenal will come into stark view. For bonus context: I've never played Armored Core before this, my only experience with the From Soft catalogue is the Souls Games, Bloodborne & Elden Ring, all of which I have completed both solo and coop. Edit: Something I forgot to mention which has become increasingly grating with every mission completed... The stun mechanic. Every time you get hit by any attack a bar that steadily fills up until you are stunned. Avoiding damage is extremely hard, you're constantly taking chip damage, barraged with all manner of attacks, scattershots and explosives. Unless you're extremely skilled you're guaranteed to get stunned at some point, especially when fighting bosses or elite enemies. This stun lasts for a full couple seconds, which in a game as fast paced as AC6 is an agonizingly long time, killing all momentum and taking away all control. Enemies also have this mechanic but unlike you they have a much greater resistance and seem to recover from any damage done to this bar very quickly, while any done to you the player sticks around for a long time... Its most egregious against bosses where they will regenerate their stun bar almost as fast as you can add to it, seemingly at random. Its just an extra, unnecessary layer of punishment for getting hit that is heavily weighted against the player. TL;DR if you're someone with limited funds but especially limited time and aren't super invested in armored core you can safely put your money and time somewhere else. This game is wholly savage and uncompromising in its difficulty and for some that's a selling point but for others its not the point of videogames. After playing all 3 endings and S ranking about 70% of the missions (not like I could refund the game so I may as well muscle through to the part where it "gets good") I'd like to make some additions to my review. The game doesn't truly become a game until you hit NG+, where you have almost all the unlocks a mountain of cash and start getting new, more interesting missions and plot threads that you don't get in NG. A number of the final bosses are a huge pain in the ass but eminently doable, just not very fun. The most fun I had was doing a very aggressive melee build with a rocket fist and a laser spinny thing which would obliterate the majority of enemies with relative ease, granting something of a power fantasy, which while more enjoyable than the stifling grind of the NG playthrough was still not wholly satisfying as the whole ACS load stunlock that the build revolved around kind of just made it a kind of One-Punch-Man sort of vibe, fun at first to obliterate enemies that previously gave me trouble but lost its initial lustre as I repeatedly slammed enemies into pulp with a single blow. I wasn't particularly tempted to switch out of this build however as the alternative was to plink away at enemies at range with only a handful of weapons that did more than tickle opponents I voted to stick to the quick and easy build (my attempts to shake up the build with my free hand and shoulder slot reinforced this feeling as numerous weapons I thought would be interesting were wholly ineffective). The endgame bosses are also a total shitshow of design in my opinion, constant blinding blasts of bullshit filling your screen with epilepsy inducing flashes while you struggle to keep track of whatever the fuck is going on. The final boss of the NG++ ending especially left an unpleasant taste in my mouth after beating it as it went from one awful fight design to another and then for its final form, turned into an Elden Ring boss but you have no iframes to roll through the arena spanning AoE attacks. There is SO MUCH I want to like about this game, zipping around in a cool mech smashing up hapless goons for cash was very fun and satisfying but there's just a handful of extremely obnoxious mechanics that feel incredibly tacked on (Attitude Stability/ACS Load being the crowning king of all awful tacked on game mechanics) and just not enough of the things I had fun with in the game...