Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

• Genre: Action
• Time Played: 38 Hours
• Too Short/Long: Too long, because you have to replay many missions at least 3 times to see everything, but just right... maybe too short if you were just fine with one ending and missing a good deal of content.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I'm super happy with this. I am of course super happy to see From Software making a mech game again, but it's also probably the best Armored Core.
• Why I played: I've always been an Armored Core fan and constantly lament to anyone who brings up Souls games to me that I missed the days when From Software made mech games. When they announced Armored Core 6 was coming after a decade of no mech games(when previously they would sometimes put out multiple a year). I was excited to say the least.
• Recommend to others: I don't think I have to. Due to From Software's newly found popularity as a developer(as in, since they stopped making Armored Core games), I think more people are playing this one than any prior. That said, it's still, at it's core, the same game. I like it a lot, but I don't think it's going to sway anyone who doesn't like mecha games, or didn't like an old Armored Core.

Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon is possibly the best Armored Core game, but it's still an Armored Core game, and they were never perfect before. The level design was possibly the best it's been in the series, but there is a certain lack of scale that makes sense in any sense of grounded reality. Everything is clearly to scale to the mechs, which means you never really have that "larger than life" feeling you generally want when piloting a mech. Sure, you can see some small details, like staircases, ladders, and cars(only very large military vehicles mind you), but every ladder leads to a platform no smaller than 4 football fields.

There is also the difficulty, the beginning of the game, or rather, most of the first playthrough is very rough, and unless you replay a bunch of missions, you probably don't have the cash to experiment with tons of a different builds yet, to better fit the situation. Some of it could maybe be attributed to me not grasping every detail and mechanic quite yet, but between the parts available to you, the parts you can afford, and your ability to switch them out as necessary, I feel things are just a little too tough in the early game. My second and third playthroughs felt appropriately difficult. I'm not talking about the content I already played, but the new missions and objectives, which have increased difficulty, but better fit your current scale of equipment availability. So many intense and chaotic victories won by the skin of my teeth, and that felt good.

I would say my second and third playthroughs total less retries than any single boss on my first playthrough. So playthroughs, that's another thing. I would say you get almost twice the total content by replaying it three times to get all the endings and other decision missions or path exclusive missions. But this also means that there are like 20+ missions that need to be replayed each time, and that's just too much to have to replay. If I wasn't enjoying the game so much, I would have missed out on quite a bit.

Otherwise, I loved the game. I hope it does well enough that From Software continues making Armored Core again, maybe even does some other weirdo mech games again.