Armored Core V

Armored Core 6 is the first entry in the series in a decade and marks its entry into the mainstream. While the franchise wasn’t exactly niche before, it didn’t approach the notoriety that FromSoftware’s Souls games have achieved. However, it finally got a chance to shine by piggybacking on the overwhelming hype from Elden Ring. Suddenly, gamers who wouldn’t have looked twice at a customization-focused mecha combat game were ready to jump into the cockpit of an AC.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is an amazing game that has a few shortfalls, one of which is the horrible camera system. It is a difficult game, but once you get the hang of it, you will have a lot of fun.

It feels like a game built around the idea of hitting a boss, leaving it for a week, and coming back to destroy that boss in the very next attempt. Time away from Armored Core 6 is just as good as time spent with it. You never stop thinking about it or its universe, and it’s rare for something so vast in scope and scale to be so immersive too.

If you can’t play online, Armored Core V is rather dry, but if you can, it’s a detailed and substantial mech experience made loads better by the addition of other people. It doesn’t do anything to make the genre more accessible, and you’ll have to be prepared to scale a high entry barrier and deal with its accessibility issues if you want to get into it - but if you do make the effort, you’ll find that this is the best mech game in a long time, one that’s deep enough to satisfy even the most seasoned player. Let’s hope it manages to sustain the active player population that it needs to really ...

For those of you who nothing about the Armored Core series, it is a mech-based game developed by From Software which plays out as a third-person shooter where you pilot large mechs called Armored Cores, or AC for short.  At its heart Armored Core V is an MMO.  Yes, there is a single player element to the game, but it is essentially an MMO game where you and up to 20 other online gamers team up do battle online, attacking and defending various territories.  Granted there is much more to it than this, but I thought I would give you a quick description of Armored Core V in a nutshell.  I should w...

The graphics in Armored Core V won’t exactly get any praise from anywhere. The buildings are all the same model, the environments themselves aren’t super impressive, I’m not a fan of the color palette used, and the effects look really dirty. I will compliment the game on the attention to detail on the mechs though because changing through all the different pieces in the assembly mode is worth it just to see all the little details put into it.

There’s something to be said for the concept of Armored Core V. Even though From Software’s design structure will practically force players’ hands into multiplayer roles, it serves to highlight the best of what the game has to offer — a clan-based, omnipresent competition where multiplayer battle creates its own narratives. None of it, though, atones for dated graphics; tedious, ultra-repetitive gameplay; poorly designed missions; and a disorienting C-movie story that only pales in perplexity to a muddied and way-too-technical-for-its-own-good mech customization interface.

Giant, stompy robots are just awesome. It doesn’t really matter what they actually do, as you just know that whatever it is will be epic regardless, and everyone involved in said hijinks will be having a hell of time. Top examples obviously include Optimus Prime, Voltron and Robbie (DANGER! DANGER!), but Japan has a whole roster of epic examples and treasured series. Armored Core is certainly one that holds a special niche in Japan while never quite exploding onto the radar of western audie...