From Software 'n such

[Steamflogger Boss]

Yeah not so much hating and more just cackling about their coming descent into horse eff valley.

[Sima Tuna]

that is an incredibly lukewarm take lmao

I like my takes how I like my tea: lukewarm.

[evil_ash_xero]

You guys playing AC VI?

I'm still getting a handle on it. It reminds me of a early 2000s game. Which is good and bad.
Overall, it's pretty cool. I have issues with the short nature of some missions. But I'm WAY early on.

[Volteccer_Jack]

I have issues with the short nature of some missions.

I haven't played AC6, but the norm in Armored Core is for most missions to be only a few minutes each. A mission taking ten minutes would be "a long one" based on my experience with the series.

[Lander]

Hell yeah, I'm playing AC6! Been too busy boost dashing around and refining AC-LN-01: CRASH RANDAR to post

Spent an hour making an emblem (no prizes for guessing what it is ), another doinking with controls, and another digging Old Faithful out of the deepest recesses of the cupboard for maximum ergonomy.

Control
The game has a crazy input ceiling, up there with 4A. No second-staging this time, but hold actions are common across all weapon slots, so remapping jump / quick boost to the shoulders is nontrivial. Feels like you either need to use a paddle controller, or put up with build-specific remapping to get that essential thumbs-on-sticks setup.

Bindings for reference

Cross - Boost
Square - Target Assist
Triangle (Left Paddle) - Quick Boost
Circle (Right Paddle) - Jump

L1 / R1 - Arms
L2 / R2 - Shoulders

L3 - Assault Boost
R3 - Interact / Mode Shift (Manual Reload w/shoulders, Assault Armor w/L3)

Up - Repair
Left - Left Choice / Manual Eject
Right - Right Choice
Down - Scan

Might swap Manual Eject and Repair so the D-Pad mirrors the face cluster's tertiary-actions-next-to-stick layout, but I don't know if that'll cause wasted heals from overlapping inputs yet.

Though stick deadzone is a joke by default, feels close to 50%. Thankfully you can map right stick to mouse to get silky-smooth aiming via steam input, and the game doesn't freak out over it, but I hope it's better-tuned than that on console!

PC Port
Runs well under Proton at launch too, which I was wondering about after Elden. 4K120 at maximum on a 6900XT, and the only obvious drops have been when popping Assault Armor in the middle of a busy fight.
The only bug I've seen is a rare and minor case of certain missile explosions turning bright green if you embed the camera in them, so it's pretty good as launch builds go.

Edit: Was crash free for the first two days, but I started getting proper into customization, and have had ~5 or so all while menuing between Assembly and Parts Shop. No progress lost, but the From launch experience of having the game CTD and then tell you off for closing it wrong is still very much alive

Gameplay
Gameplay is great. Feels like a refinement back to a more diverse Real Robots setup after 4A's crazy boost party - still intense, but with an overall more rounded base. Legs acting as mobility classes is sweet; they all feel distinct and good. Didn't think I'd like tank treads, but I'll definitely be doing a build with them after taking the tutorial AC for a spin. NANI, AC DURIFTO!?

Feels hefty, in the sense that a good pilot can turn that weight into elegant boost weaves, and the kit has various loadout-specific rotations that can be learned in order to keep the action going at all times.
And the animation work is really good. They made sure to put in lots of cool little corner cases in for things like slamming into an enemy mech, neutral heavy landing, crossing center-screen during horizontal quick boost, etc.

Modern From bosses are an awesome addition to AC too. Duels and Arms Forts were always intense, but the middle ground of big industrial loaders and mobile weapons platforms makes for some excellent fights.
Fairly smooth progress so far with a general-purpose build. The Watchpoint fight forced me to put up my dukes and learn to stagger with every available resource, and I'm now taking a break from the concluding encounter of Chapter 2, which is a hard wall.

Tens of attempts in, and I can get it to 1/4 life consistently with an aggressive Missiles -> SMGs -> Blade -> Boost Kick -> ... -> Assault Armor rotation, but that last chunk is herculean. Feels like it's time to hit the lab and make a counterbuild.

Edit: Ended up squeaking by after swapping in dual shotguns and plasma missiles. I should probably just sell all the shit I'm not using, since the exchange rate is 1:1, and I'm getting stuck in the loop of not feeling moneyed enough to splash out on a full secondary AC.

Customization
Still getting my feet wet here, but I've refined a couple of builds to the point where they're worth showing off

AC-LN-01: CRASH RANDAR

Medium weight high-mobility skirmisher.
Burst MGs for CQC pressure, Grenade Launcher for stagger burst, and a Pile Bunker to finish the job.
Best suited for ground battle on account of its powerful energy-hungry booster.

AC-LN-02: RANDAR BURN

Lightweight air superiority unit.
Assault Rifle for midrange pressure, Laser Rifle for stagger and charged burst damage, Explosive + Plasma missiles for flexible single-target / crowd damage.
Recharge-focused generator to support lengthy air time.

Grumps
I guess my main gripe so far is the combo of no traditional minimap and low FOV; the compass pips and scan help a bit, but it's easy to lose track of situational awareness at times.

Other Bits
Story-wise, I think it's probably the best-told AC I've played. Top-notch presentation as expected from modern From, and the traditional corpo / corpo / AI stuff is spiced up with some interesting sci-fi material. Getting the Ace Combat handler VO to play Walter was a canny move as well - just the man for the job.

Let's see, what else... The OST is far from the series' most weird or interesting, but it gets the job done. Very future space war, very grim. C-Beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.

I'm still getting a handle on it. It reminds me of a early 2000s game. Which is good and bad.
Overall, it's pretty cool. I have issues with the short nature of some missions. But I'm WAY early on.

The shortness of certain missions stuck out to me as well - the way it sprinkles in a one-room MT dunk or short timed sandbox for flavor.

Personally I dig it, adds a bit of sim feel and variety next to the longer assaults and big setpiece encounters. Though Chapter 2 felt like it had longer missions on average.

[ryu]

Been to busy to play anything lately. How come there's so little discussion on AC6 here? Everyone too busy playing to post?

[scrilla4rella]

Been playing and loving it so far. Had to spend two evenings in a row to defeat the chapter 1 boss.

It’s really an excellent package with no trace of live service features or nickel-and-diming DLC to be seen.

I think Lander had a good summary. I’m particularly impressed with the writing and directing of the story. Nothing too innovative but its execution is near flawless.

The world building is evocative in a way that surpasses past AC games IMO. It also has some interesting story concepts that align neatly with the game design (ludonarrative harmony?). Perhaps similar to the Souls games, but my experience with that series is quite limited.

Performance on PC is excellent, highly optimized.

Old AC fans and Gunpla bros will eat this up.

[bcass]

I'm up to chapter 3, and am mostly enjoying it a lot so far. As someone who has never played an Armored Core game before, but have somewhere close to 10,000 hours accumulated on the Souls / Bloodborne / Sekiro games, it's been a tough learning process. It has the exact same love / hate relationship you get with all the other From games that you get on your first playthrough. When you get a build right for different situations / bosses it's super-satisfying though. The art direction is occasionally phenomenal, possibly one of the best looking sci-fi games ever made. Similar with the OST, top-notch and often very subtle instead of a load of techno noise that would have been the approach taken by lesser creatives (see "AAA" studios). After I've rinsed this I am tempted to try out the older AC titles.

[Blinge]

Been to busy to play anything lately. How come there's so little discussion on AC6 here? Everyone too busy playing to post?

I tend to play games on my own schedule and won't rush to get a new game early. I find the need to discuss everything and be there around release time a bit cringe, personally. I don't really have that phenomenon in me.
That's just me though, I get why people do it.

On the video content side there's no point trying to compete with the big boys around this time either so no incentive there.
Hell, someone's already uploaded some kind of punching only run where they purge all weapons and beat the game that way??

**

As for other Fromsoft I've finally got the Elden Ring platinum after finishing my 3rd playthrough.. in 14 hours.
I decided last saturday that I was gonna start and finish the game in one day. Couldn't do it; I was held up by Maliketh (
But yeah definitely didn't enjoy horse-riding simulator for such a long period

The strategy I employed was look at one busted bleed build guide "OP in ten minutes" kind of deal on youtube, and follow it closely.

Eventually the only way I could beat Maliketh with that build was to abandon the lvl 85 dream, go grind at that endgame Albinauric farm until I was level 105. Also go get the Mimic Tear and upgrade that to +10 (this took an hour, roughly)

After that, he went down, ubernerd boss went down. I solo'd (no ash) WWE/Grappler man first try, then had to use mimic to beat Mr Golden Order

safe to say I won't be touching Ringo Eld again for a while.

[Sumez]

Talking about the games you play is cringe?

[Blinge]

Cmon man you know that's not what I mean

[Sumez]

I'd hope that's not what you mean, but it's unclear what you actually mean.
If you are excited for a game and want to play it when it releases, I think it makes sense you'll be talking about it online too. The Discord servers I'm in are flooded with AC6 talk these days.

I'm too behind on that whole series to be hyped for the game at the moment, but I'll get around to it eventually.

[Angry Hina]

After clearing AC 3 some weeks ago and not being quite happy with this one (Post of Jul 25), I skipped Silent Line and went to Nexus.
I was much more pleased with Nexus. The technical updates are again (if there are any at all) sparse but they did some things which helped a bit, having a tiy bit more modern look and feel.

There is a graphic filter kinda blurring the whole game a bit. Its cheap but it works for me, having a little less steril look in the actual gameplay. Also there are more cut scenes in which explosions and walking mechs causing this shaking effect. So you remenber some times, that you in fact play kinda big robots, which is good.

The mission design is not revolutionary but they had more variety in terms of the graphical presentation and the actual walkable area design compared to AC 3.

Sadly the overall story arch and its climax is a bit more uninteresting compared to AC2 and even AC3 and From only delivers boss like battles in the last three stages and again not even surpasses the work put into the more special Missions of AC2. But the struggles between the corporations worked better for me.

(I also like, that OP-Intensify/Human Plus isnt a thing anymore)

I again recorded the last three missions as I did in AC3:
https://youtu.be/a63sAgPj8P4

Oh, nearly forgot... If you loose in one o these last missions, the game will again not accept to play further and simply not have beaten one mission more. Like in AC3 you have to try again. In AC 3 you have to reload the game, which sucked hard and was very time consuming. Nexus just lets you start the mission again in the mission select map which is great. Sadly I did not need that many tries this time but if you struggle more with these, this is a big improvement!

[Blinge]

I'd hope that's not what you mean, but it's unclear what you actually mean.

unclear to you maybe. I will have to spell it out then

If you are excited for a game and want to play it when it releases, I think it makes sense you'll be talking about it online too. The Discord servers I'm in are flooded with AC6 talk these days.

Yes, as I said before, I understand why people get on the hype train and want to discuss it feverishly. The same is true of the youtube space and the discords i'm in too. I just don't have that bone in my body.

I've even had someone on discord question me as to why i'm not playing the new thing.
( and as a side note in the comments of my Patches video people said things like "what do you mean you haven't finished Elden Ring. You've had a year!" as if when a new game comes out everyone all buys it on the same day as the same communal lived experience )
Not me. Never been one for peer pressure either.

I'm too behind on that whole series to be hyped for the game at the moment

Yes and a huge proportion of the hyped kiddies and modern Fromsoft souls bros in the zeitgeist are 'behind' too. and by behind i mean they've never touched an AC game. Not saying it's bad, just saying it didn't stop them..

[Sumez]

What's the cringe part though?

[Blinge]

This but AC6.

or another way to express it: talking about new games is fine.
rushing to get new thing for the express purpose of being around at the moment of release is a bit cringe to me, as is FOMO related to it.
That's just me. I'm sorry if you've taken umbrage at my use of the word.

[evil_ash_xero]

I finally platinumed Elden Ring, as well. I was just missing an ending, so I had to go thru the game 3 times. I wasn't in a major hurry.

I'm enjoying AC6. It plays a lot like a game from the PS2/XBox era. The bosses are modern From, though, as are the snappy controls. I am playing this game as it comes at me, but
I do look up build guides for bosses (except the first one and Juggernaut). I don't want to waste half my life figuring out the right load out to beat a boss. They are frustrating enough.

Definitely happy to have a good game come out. Well, that I like, anyway. People are talking about how this year is amazing, but almost nothing is to my liking.

[Lander]

Finished up AC6 NG+ and NG++ to round out the endings, as well as filling out the LOGHUNT program.

NG++ True Ending Spoilers

G5 Iguazu - god king of all jobbers, and chairman of the sewing club - is the lynchpin that ends up toppling ALLMIND's plan!? You gotta be fucking kidding me
I suppose it's thematically solid to have total irrationality be the one thing overlooked by the all-powerful AI; human chaos and whatnot, but still. What a scrub!

I really like the way they made the AI overlord an elective element this time - much more interesting to have the player's hunger for OS chips inadvertently feed the uber-LLM enough combat data to take over.

Going to move on to S-ranking next, which will take a while. 59 missions, caramba! I was expecting 20-30 tops, but it's as meaty as you'd hope.

They did a great job of varying things up on the second and third run - plenty of surprises and new missions to keep things interesting.
Though it's a bit less branch-heavy than the older games; forks quickly join back into the mainline, with later choices being the ones with real impact. Not a bad thing per se; it plays up the independent merc angle nicely, but could be considered linear in a sense.

For the most part, I'm sticking to my initial appraisal; game's good, and brings various modern From touches to the series without losing the soul of AC.

Feels great to master - you go from stumbling around like a baby deer to fully exploiting all of your movement options and feeling like an accomplished pilot.
Progression is signature; you start off hungry and have to scrounge while gitting gud, reach a comfy midpoint where progress is smooth save for intense boss fights, and eventually put together a mech roster that can stomp anything with the right planning.

Customization is simplified versus the older games - no more separate booster slots, per-part weight distribution, or other nitty-gritty bits, but I don't miss them much. There are still enough meters to make you sit and think a while during assembly, and the combo of quick-test QoL and lower complexity makes it a lot easier to figure out what works. Weapon roster is smaller too, but more effectful for it; no more trash weapons or same-but-better duplicates, so everything has its place.

Speaking of, I came up with a few new builds:

AC-LN-03 MOON RANDAR

Middleweight hover unit. Dual linear rifles to take advantage of staggerless charge shots, and generous missile racks for raining death from above.
AB-focused thruster makes it surprisingly good at chaining boost kicks.

AC-LN-04 DEAD RANDAR

Stuck on an encounter? DEAD RANDAR. Boss got you down? DEAD RANDAR. Taxes? DEAD RANDAR.

Ridiculous amounts of health and defense. Heavy bubbleguns do respectable base damage and melt through shielding, and shock lances create huge chunks of stagger on top of ACS error buildup.
To be honest, I tend to avoid using this unless I'm getting hard walled, because it feels mad cheap. Stomps all over most bosses.

AC-LN-05 RANDAR NO KEN

Melee rushdown unit. Pulse Blade / Laser Blade on the left side, and Alucard Gun (tm) / Laser Orbit on the right for pressure.
Dual blades effectively cancel out eachother's cooldowns, so you can pile on the stagger. High risk, high reward.

And refined the original two with NG+ parts:

AC-LN-01+ CRASH RANDAR

Dual Chaingun, the seemingly inevitable conclusion to all of my general-purpose AC builds cuts through most things like butter.
The Laser Lance is for anything that can't simply be BRRR'd to death; powerful gap-closure, good damage, and can be canceled into Assault Armor halfway for optimal point-blank damage.

AC-LN-02+ RANDAR BURN

Heavier legs to support a Chaingun and Detonating Bazooka, and Kinetic / Laser Orbits to free up cognitive bandwidth for evasion.
Able to stay airborne for a long time, and nicely maneuverable while still packing enough punch to be satisfying.

Which is probably the most effort I've put into building in an AC game, and there are tons of parts I didn't put to use.

Still impressed at the story - definitely the best-told I've seen from the series, and it manages to do the modern From thing of establishing a cast of memorable characters with their own shit going on who you gradually come to understand over the course of multiple playthroughs.
War Bro Rusty is great, but G1 Michigan is the secret favourite - the man talks mad shit constantly, and it's a joy to hear him drag his long-suffering squad over the coals. OORAH MAGGOTS, SHAPE UP OR SHIP OUT!

The soundtrack turned out to be a bit more weird and interesting than expected, but only in the last third of the game when things start to really kick off.

And on the topic of kicking off, the game has some genuinely awesome setpieces. Chapter 3's boss deserves a highlight - not the best replay, but as a setup it's absolute mechaporn.
Chapter 4's is impressive too, though for very different reasons; sphincters familiar with a certain latter-day From title will clench instinctively

Though the exploration stuff feels like it could have used some more QoL, since secret density varies heavily by map, and the single loghunt checkbox in the mission select screen doesn't give enough context on what's left to find.
Bit of a pisser to have to replay again because you missed one bronze log from an out-of-the-way drone zako, but it's manageable enough.

Lack of minimap is still a shame, but I got used to the compass + scan setup to maintain awareness in group fights, as well as selective use of hard lock to deal with the faster more crossup-heavy bosses.

So overall, great game. Glad to see AC return in style. Not ready to make any wild proclamations about best this or favourite that, being that we're still deep in the honeymoon phase, but it's quality stuff that stands tall alongside the rest of the series.

Wojak Piñata

Well, there's a difference between buying the new thing and talking about it simply because it's new and trendy, versus doing so because you're invested long-term and have been looking forward to it.
Not that I'd expect the former mindset around these parts; I hear it's nothing but traditionalist oldheads

For my part, online presence for the game has seemed kind of barren relative to its apparent success. The lesiurely pace of Shmupsfarm isn't an accurate yardstick, but actual discussion elsewhere seems few and far between - Steam forums are the usual cancer, and the Reddit is nothing but emblems. GameFAQs of all places seems to be the most chatty of the public-facing spaces.

And christ, the state of tips'n'guides during release week. I swear Souls games are at least decently well-enumerated at this point in their lifecycle, whereas AC6 is a swamp of AI-generated journonsense that ranges from incomplete to outright misinformation.

Now go here and defeat <spoiler-ass final boss name that absolutely does not appear in this mission> to automatically receive the collectible.
(Which in reality is actually two collectibles, several rooms prior.)

Pah! I guess all the real guidesmiths must be busy doing their due diligence.

[Immryr]

I've been playing AC6 too. I'm somewhere in the 3rd chapter, so don't have any real fully formed opinions, but I'm really enjoying it so far. It doesn't play quite like any other AC game I've played, but any fears I had of it veering too far towards souls game territory turned out to be misplaced.

[bcass]

Another thing I will say is that co-op is sorely missed, and for someone who has accumulated thousands of hours crafting very specific builds in Soulsborne titles just for co-op (to assist other players), it will hurt the long-term appeal of AC6 for me. I can understand why they did it for this first major outing for the series, but I think some really cool bosses could have been made that take into account the co-op element. From have only really started to experiment with this idea (in Elden Ring) and I hope it's something they expand on in future titles.

[Sima Tuna]

this first major outing for the series

AC6

I get what you mean, but my autistic side goes absolutely mental when reading that.

AC1 was groundbreaking for the time.
AC2 was a solid refinement and a large leap in technology.
In between, you had the Arena and other dlc/expansion refinements to the formula.
AC3 came along and made a bunch more refinements to how the games played, and expanded upon the Arena integration.
Silent Line and Nexus added their own bits too. Silent Line had cool-ass boss battles and Nexus changed the economy with the used parts system and other alterations.
AC4 was the first AC to go full Super Robot. You could always fly forever with certain parts combos (even without cheating,) but AC4 made it standard and added shitloads of boosting, turning the speed up to 11.
AC For Answer had those massive, multi-story boss battles. I think AC4 had them too, but For Answer definitely did them better.
AC5 focused more heavily on online integration and multiplayer.

Like I said, I get what you're saying. For you, this is the first major outing. And it's the first AC game since From became identified with soulsborne gameplay and combat. But AC used to be that thing that From was known for. In mecha gamer circles, people knew From. And why? Armored Core. Just like how people might know From because of Shadow Tower or King's Field. All those games before the Souls era. Sure, none of them was ever a smash hit like Souls, but they did well enough within their genres. The older AC games are definitely quality, so whether you like this one or not, go check those out when you're done with AC6. You should be able to emulate all of them easily.

I guess it's just the boomer in me that wants to re-assert the validity of titles published by From prior to the era of Dark Souls.

[bcass]

AC6 is going to outsell all the previous titles by some considerable margin, and it will be mostly Western-led sales too. In that respect, and given the huge marketing push in the West (first time ever for an AC game), I think it's safe to say that this is the series first major outing.

[Lander]

Pff. 14 games in the series before 6, and not one of them a major outing? C'mon man it succeeded so well that they had to funnel the runoff into other mech series like Chromehounds, Metal Wolf Chaos and A.C.E.

That aside, modern games biz numbers are going to make anything old look piffly, given that the industry exploded over the last few generations and is consistently posting best-ever results for any concrete metric you care to throw at it.

(And yeah, co-op would be really nice. PvP is well and good, but it's never been my scene. I'd prefer Jolly Joint Operations.)

[bcass]

It's done so well now because of its reinvention, and because FromSoft are at the top of their game, not because of the era in which it has been released. There are plenty of developers out there the size of FromSoft who are not having anywhere near their levels of success. If there are more AC games going forward, AC6 will be the template they all build on, not the older games. As good as some of the older titles may have been, non of them will have the impact that 6 will have. Outside Japan, they were extremely niche titles. I know because I was around back then, and although I'd heard of the series, it was not something that had even remotely penetrated the West, something which AC6 has most certainly achieved. AC6 is the breakout moment for the series, IMO.

[Angry Hina]

The PS2 was very weak on quality games at first and AC2 came out in this time. The competition was that weak that AC2 had double page reports in german magazines. If it had appealed to many people, it could have been a big start even in the west. They had the chance

[scrilla4rella]

The PS2 was very weak on quality games at first and AC2 came out in this time.

So true. AC2 was one of the first meaty games released on the system for me.

Forgot to mention the music of AC6. It's fan-fucking-tastic.

[Sumez]

AC2 must have at least sold fairly well, because I see used copies all the time inside those huge lots of garbage games people throw around in second hand sales.

3 on the other hand, man that's a rarity in Europe for some reason. I ended up just importing a copy.

[Angry Hina]

3 is not so hard. At the moment (of course) Last Raven has rediculus prices (its the only AC game Idont own yet (and 6)) and nine breaker is much more expensive too.

[evil_ash_xero]

I like the arena battles. It's like a small Virtual On game within this game.

[Lander]

The era of release defines the standard by which success is judged. Ergo, holding the series at large to a modern global AAA smash hit standard to qualify for the vague moniker of Major Outing isn't particularly meaningful, outside of the dull now numbers > then numbers (obv.) that tends to dominate modern games discourse.

Breakout moment by said modern standard, sure, but that misses the context of its place in the PS1 / 2 era. AC was no Final Fantasy, but it was known and prolific, unlike various other JP-centric series that also subsisted on their local market for years.

From's rise to midas studio status via Souls is why AC6 has done so well. I daresay they could pull any of their old IPs out of the catalog at this point and have it do gangbusters simply because they're on a 6-game no miss streak with accompanying captive audience.

As for templates, reinvention is expected from AC. Every numbered title after 2 has rebooted the setting, and each mainline game is a progressively-more-major rework of the core systems. Stopping that in the face of modern AAA costs isn't entirely out of the question, but series history doesn't support the assertion. It's always been a mech-shaped mirror for the current state of From's art.

I like the arena battles. It's like a small Virtual On game within this game.

Yeah, they're pretty good. Nice way to show off parts that the player hasn't unlocked or tried too, though dual chaingun BRRR -> Laser Lance -> Assault Armor solves most of them quite quickly

Nifty way to show off the NPCs before meeting them as well - I'm fairly sure you can find all 30 of them scattered around missions as allies or minibosses, and each has dialogue that supports the little backstory that shows up in the arena.