Gamers in the UK were certainly prepared to cross the fires of Rubicon 3, as GfK reports that Armored Core VI launched straight to the top of the sales charts this past weekend.
FromSoftware's triumphant return to its classic mecha combat franchise was well-received at UK retail following mostly positive reviews, but Armored Core VI was also the only new release to land on GfK's weekly top 10 chart for the regional market. The rest of the sales chart comprised of strong performers from previous months including Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and FIFA 23. Even Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga makes a major comeback thanks to being part of a new PlayStation 5 bundle.
| Game | Platform | |
| 1. | Armored VI: Fires of Rubicon | PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / PS4 / Xbox One / PC |
| 2. | Mario Kart 8 Deluxe | Switch |
| 3. | The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom | Switch |
| 4. | FIFA 23 | PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / Switch / PS4 / Xbox One / PC |
| 5. | Hogwarts Legacy | PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / PS4 / Xbox One / PC |
| 6. | Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga | PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / Switch / PS4 / Xbox One / PC |
| 7. | Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate | PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / Switch / PS4 / Xbox One / PC |
| 8. | Minecraft | PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / Switch / PS4 / Xbox One / PC |
| 9. | The Witcher III: Wild Hunt GOTY Edition | PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / Switch / PS4 / Xbox One / PC |
| 10. | Grand Theft Auto V | PS5 / Xbox Series X|S / PS4 / Xbox One / PC |
Stages have really odd split difficulty. Everything before the bosses plays like run of the mill Armored Core, at least as far as you blowing the hell out of fodder enemies with whatever build and weapons you choose, but when it comes ot 1 vs 1 bosses (as opposed to a boss that's more of a 'scenario', akin to blowing up multiple targets while being shot at, or like the final round of American Gladiators
The balancing elements they added to alleviate some of that switcheroo in design is you now carry up to 3 repair kits, which was never a thing in the past games at all. On top of that, there's a checkpoint system, so when you die at the boss you can typically start it from the checkpoint. Then there's resupply drops that will often appear just before a boss fight, or a tough scenario encounter, which keeps you from running out of ammo on more specialized weapons with low ammo counts when you need it. Lastly, when you die and restart from a checkpoint you now have the option to swap out parts on your AC, so in the event your current loadout is no good against a boss, you can change things up.
Of course, that still doesn't alleviate the fact that it's very far from traditional armored core boss fights. You're going to want to remap your controls so they mimic souls combat, as you're going to be slamming on that quick boost button, which is a stand in for the 'souls roll' mechanic (only you get no i-frames), but also will be jumping a lot and activating boost (which works like generic sprinting and is best put on L3 -- it costs no energy to use this kind of boost so it should always be on).
What I particularly hate about the setup is that Miyazaki straight up lied about just how 'soulsy' the game was going to be. He ran his mouth to do damage control and make sure the changes weren't going to piss off AC veterans that didn't want souls influencing AC, but that's exactly what they did. They seemingly had no faith that AC could survive or perform as well as their Souls titles, and because they have a publishing contract with Bamco, only Bamco was going to publish any Armored Core games. That does mean that Bamco themselves were likely calling the shots and wanted that setup with the game, and they also would have been able to demand that the game feature no coop multiplayer and only pvp.
With the difficulty of these bosses, coop would have worked beautifully and there's nothing in the narrative that couldn't have justified another AC (player) helping out, as you have several guest ACs in specific missions who do just that (but don't stick around for most bosses). This was more of a cost cutting measure as paying for PVE server infrastructure is just something Japanese publishers continue to refuse to want to due (mostly having to secure a server farm in California at the very least -- which Bamco actually has....)
It's still a solid game. To unlock everything you have to run through newgame+ twice (3 whole runs), and you can also instantly replay any missions you cleared so it's easy to farm cash to go buy some other part(s) you may need for x content, etc. In prior games you could only replay content by going into newgame+, so that's a nice change. I'd give the game a 7.8/10
It has some issues with the controls being finnicky, and the UI is poorly designed. It's pale white and blends into so many of the bleached contrast of many stage backgrounds that it's hard to see your lock on reticle, let alone spot enemies. They also removed the radar/map that previous games had. Now you have to hit a 'scan' button, which will send out a radial pulse at different ranges (depending on your AC's chosen head and it's scan range stat). This will ping enemies within your scan range and they become highlghted yellow through walls. Having a dedicated radar and map screen is still the better design, so this was a walk-back. There are some stages where you aren't given a clue where to go and you have to just go exploring, and other scenarios where you're given a blue waypoint marker but it can be difficult to see with the UI being the way it is.
The narrative presentation still leaves much to be desired. From Software just cannot do a hard narrative, though it should be said that this AC title has the strongest narrative of them all so far, but it's not saying much. Your character is still a silent protag' and all your one sided conversations with other characters are purely through radio chatter in missions and the pre mission briefings. This is just pure laziness. There's no way after 30 something years in the business that From Software should be developing any aspect of their games like it's still the PS2, or even PS1 age. They do need to be held accountable for that, and reviewers these days refuse to do so as that whole system is gamed by publisher marketing arms to death; sanitizing criticism and 'influencing the influencers' with invites to test the game and then go blab praise on it on their YT channels for glory mongering. (Bamco did that here to an extreme, as they did with Elden Ring)
The sound design and music -especially the music, are standouts, which definitely helps the overall scoring. Stage design is serviceable but does tend to blend together, even if the environments change from a desert look to snowfield environs. It isn't open world, but the stages do range in size from fairly large to underground caverns and tunnels, as needed for the plot. Your AC's movement controls are clunky. It doesn't function like past AC games did but still somehow manages to be just as clunky. The camera suffers from all the same fidgety problems AC5 and Verdict Day did, as in it keeps wanting to move to an over the shoulder view but jumps from shoulder to shoulder, and sometimes stays centered, at the twitch of the left stick.
Something that helps with this is the souls style lock on button (slap it on R3), which will then hard glue the camera to the enemy and will then allow you to more easily just orbit around them to dodge attacks and what have you. That will typically alleviate the finnicky shoulder switching camera issue. If you don't use the lock on your AC will instead automatically target enemies closer to where your aim reticle is, so long as they are in locking range, but also means that overlapping targets can cause your AC to attack the wrong target sometimes, hence the lock on feature is there to help single out what you need to be smacking.
So all said, you're going to feel those difficulty spikes with these bosses. One of the issues the AC games have tended to have (post PS1 era) is that they have always more or less required you go in blind, scout out a mission's enemies, and then come back with the right loadout for the job -- essentially being forced to play the way they want you to play rather than just carrying your build through w/e content and it being more a matter of skill. With the ability to swap out your AC parts at checkpoints, the resupply drops being a thing now, repair kits, and checkpoints in general, these issues are alleviated a good deal, but I still hate having to change my build because of artificial difficulty or fox-holing game design because of lazy studio approaches.
One of the end game bosses is straight up Zone of the Enders extreme difficulty style of frantic bullet hell and anime melee battles, and you're certainly not piloting Jehuty by any standard of measurement. It's about as shell shocking and absurd as in Elden Ring, when fighting Hoarah Loux, and suddenly it turns into a WWE match and Hoarahmania runs wild on you. Tongue will straight bust out the side of your face when you see it.