The story is told sparingly, dotted across brief conversations over the radio and lore entries tucked away in a few collectibles and menu descriptions. Its simple, but full of texture and nuance. The corporations want to pay you to help them mine another planet to extinction. A faction of Rubiconians believe the Coral has a deep connection to humanity that goes beyond fuel and want you to aid them in their fight for freedom. Everyone is at the mercy of forces larger than themselves, but the mechs leave open the possibility that even one person can rewrite their fate, and the planets.

I was perpetually intrigued despite it always keeping me at arms length. Distrust and alienation are a feature in Armored Core VI, not a bug, and it does a superb job of conveying the seductive but eerie appeal of traipsing across desolate cities and arctic tundras just so you can light up whatever you find with a dozen high-impact bazooka shells. On the ground, Armored Core VI can occasionally look awkward in its toy model proportions, but when it takes to the skies it offers some breathtaking sci-fi backdrops and evocative environments. Exploring their intricate visual details thanks to the games robust verticality helps bridge the gaps in its otherwise sparse script.

Armored Core VI nails a certain synth-infused post-apocalyptic vibe, but its the combat and especially the boss fights that make it feel high-stakes and ripe with drama. In one early mission I take out a massive walking cannon shaped like a grasshopper in the desert. In another I survey for Coral deposits near an old mine shaft. Sooner or later I arrive at a boss fight that stops me in my tracks. First its a bulldozer shaped like a tractor trailer. Next its another mech inside spherical armor that fires so many homing missiles it feels like Im back in an ancient 8-bit bullet hell shoot em up. But Armored Core VI is not nearly so two-dimensional. Its more like Mega Man X fused with Star Fox.

I can dash in any direction, fly 1,000 feet up in the air, and fire more weapons than I have fingers to pull the triggers for. Half the battle is just remembering every option available to me at every second and deploying all of them in the most damaging and economical patterns possible. The other half is learning how seemingly minor tradeoffs in my loadout can drastically change the outcome of an encounter. Small increases to AP, your Armored Cores health, can have a big impact on survivability, while moderate increases in boost speed and energy recovering can make dodging even the most unrelenting assault of laser blasts and mechanical arms feel feasible.

One key feature Armored Core VI does borrow from Elden Ring and the other Soulsborne games (director Masaru Yamamura was a lead designer on Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice) is a stagger system. Rack up enough impact damage quickly and your enemy will be briefly stunned, leaving it open to easy attacks and extra damage. Managing this meter, as well as your own version of it, can make or break fights, adding even more wrinkles to how you tinker with your mech and where you focus your situational awareness during combat.

Starting out in Armored Core VI is a lot like fumbling around in a dark, messy tool shed searching for the right size wrench. You flip the light switch on but the bulb flickers and burns out. You stub your toe on something jagged, heavy, and cold on the floor. You repeatedly run your hands over the workbench and walls hoping to catch the feel of something smooth and metallic thats just the right size and weight to maybe be the very specific thing you need in this exact moment to move forward with the task at hand.

Then you find the tool youre looking for. And then another, and another. You replace the light bulb and as you rummage through old boxes and paint cans, you begin to sort everything into its right place. Several hours and a dozen tangential errands later, youre ready to fix the faucet that broke, the tire thats flat, or one of the hundred other annoyances standing between you and your best life. More importantly, the tool shed itself is more organized, and with it your understanding of one small sliver of the obstacles and opportunities facing your corner of the universe.

If Armored Core VI was all just slamming your head against difficult boss battles, it would feel frustrating and oppressive, and get old real quick. Instead, the natural ebb and flow of the game lets you explore ghostly urban hellscapes, dunk on rank-and-file enemies, and earn extra credits in-between the tougher encounters to let off steam and build up your arsenal. An Arena mode lets you compete against every other mercenary in the game, rising up the leaderboard of notoriety and unlocking chips that can be used to acquire new customization options and stat upgrades for your machine. The game is extremely generous, except in a handful of moments when its pushing you to work hard, grow, and apply what youve learned to overcome odds that always seem impossible until you manage to surpass them with ease. These moments are quietly shocking and incredibly fulfilling.

A boss fight at the end of chapter one {the game has five) saw me facing off against the autonomous PCA craft AAP07 Balteus (everything is a mashup of alphanumeric designations and nouns that sound cool). It kicked my ass for several hours. Across multiple days, in fact. I kept trying to stick to my guns and beat the fight using a conventional build with some otherwise good weapons that catered toward the enemys weaknesses. Even once I had figured out the first phase of the fight, the second one, which brings out huge flamethrower swords, kept tripping me up.

Finally, I relented and went for a super light build. It immediately paid spanidends. I managed to stay airborne higher and longer, avoiding attacks with ease and consistently getting the boss down to just a sliver of health until finally Id defeated it. The fight trained me in very specific ways to overcome the Balteus, but being open to experimentation, trial and error, and a willingness to backslide on my existing progress in pursuit of new information and strategies was what ultimately unlocked the path forward. The sheer number of variables to tinker with in each encounter, on the fly, including my own understanding of the skirmish and how to respond to it, is what makes Armored Core VI so great, and why its clear it needed to come back.

The name Armored Core is meant to distinguish the vehicles I pilot from lowly tanks, helicopters, and MTs. Unlike these fixed pieces of machinery, the core is a central chamber thats readymade to drop into any configuration you can think of, infinitely adaptable and ever evolving. Playing Armored Core VI frequently feels like reenacting your favorite anime robot sequence while looking and sounding like one of the scrappy mech suits from Aliens or The Matrix, hissing and screeching with every exploded piston and thruster boost.

The central fantasy of every FromSoftware game is pretty much the samethat through close observation and relentless practice you too can bootstrap your way to greatness, slay the dragon, save the kingdom, or solve the puzzle to unlock the mysteries of the universe. In many of the Soulsborne games this means mastering the violent gauntlet ahead of you. In Armored Core VI it means changing yourself until that death march becomes a cakewalk instead. Its a game about having faith in yourself, even when no one else does, and becoming an ass-kicking mech pilot in the process, not because it will save the world, but because its cool as shit.