We were contacted by a reader who wanted our thoughts on Armored Core 6. We tried and had a lot of thoughts. We’re not done with the game but played a decent bit through.

Armored Core has always been one of those series that I knew of, but it never made me want to play. Frim’s other games like Dark Souls and Tenchu are rated highly. I played them and thought they were basic, clunky and had bad design. Armored Core I can say is the best of them.

Armored Core has some pretty good gameplay. The lock-on system works the best and well. Theres a lot of mech customization for weapons and paint wise.

There doesn’t seem to be much of a story. Just some missions for different companies and gangs. It’s almost like MGS:PW but less story. I started skipping some of the briefings.

The graphics are an issue I have. Many Japanese games now do this thing where the environments will be basic and look like on PS3 and it has this visual noise and grainy look. Nier: Automata and FF16 were two other games that did this. It’s jarring to see some graphically impressive mechs in meh environment. The environments have some diversity. The lighting at times can pop and some vistas can look good.

Another issue I have is the destruction. Mech games usually have a lot of destructable environments. There’s some destruction but you’re just pushing over some structures and trees. You can’t do like in Mech Assault, Rampage or Just Cause, it’s just basic. On top of the maps just feel empty.

The combat is fluid but there’s some stuff, I don’t like. The bosses have a ton of health, and in the beginning your pee shooters don’t do anything , so you use the sword. The mini bosses have just as much health and are a pain. Some reviews said there was a big difficulty curve. My issue is the mission structure wasnt done well. You go from a mission of fighting through a base’s defenses. The next will be go defeat these two people and the mission is over. Enemies can be diverse and different types can be cool like the cloaking robots. But it gets annoying when they cloak then can teleport across the map and snipe you.

People call this game Armored Core 6 out of 10 and I understand. I think it’s good gameplay that could’ve been a great game. But it was held back by From’s basic design and bad ideas carried design carried over from Souls.