Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon previews arrived earlier this week, and as expected, the majority of press are trying their darnedest to compare the mech shooter with FromSoftware’s more popular efforts. With Elden Ring taking over the world last year and Dark Souls being a long-standing gaming institution, it’s no surprise that one of the developer’s hidden gems is taking on a bunch of unnecessary baggage. It doesn’t necessarily deserve these expectations placed upon it.
We all know that Dark Souls is what helped put FromSoftware on the map. While the studio has been developing games for decades, many of these have been moderate successes and only a few ever made a splash outside of Japan. Armored Core is no exception.
It has long been a cult favourite among lovers of customizable mechs and bleak settings defined by post-apocalyptic industrial war machines. The moment-to-moment gameplay is all about building massive robots and embarking on short missions where effectiveness is always of paramount importance.
Now, that reputation is changing thanks to influences far outside its control. This is no surprise, but I hope curious newcomers jumping into it for the first time are still willing to give it a chance when it becomes obvious there are no bonfires nor blood echoes awaiting them. FromSoftware also seems to be aware of this crossover, but it isn’t diluting its creative vision for the uninitiated. This is an Armored Core game through and through, and I adore that about it.
Soulsborne games are all about glacial movement and mediated combat. Each and every action proves invaluable to one’s own survival. Fail to take into account the cadence of an animation or memorise the attack patterns of a difficult boss, and you’re going to meet death. For over a decade now this formula has been iterated upon and experimented with by FromSoftware, attracting millions of new followers who have likely never touched Armored Core before.
With no Soulsborne sequel in sight and Elden Ring’s expansion still shrouded in mystery, those very same people are going to look at Fires of Rubicon with envious eyes. The overall experience is so different, though. It’s keen to express the breakneck speed of a mech hurtling through sprawling environments both natural and urban, offering the player a nauseating amount of freedom when it comes to customising their mechs and ensuring their firepower is suited perfectly to each new situation.
Gone are the interconnected open worlds of Drangleic and Yarnham, replaced with immaculately paced missions taking place across locales which at times are meant to feel claustrophobic, albeit with enough room for a giant robot to skate across snowy mountains before laying waste to its enemies in a firestorm of rockets and machine gun fire. Fires of Rubicon clearly has a much larger budget and strong emphasis on scale and circumstance, but I don’t think it’s going to radically reinvent itself.
While the gameplay will be a radical departure from the Soulsborne catalogue, it appears that Fires of Rubicon does implement a number of larger scale boss fights that fans might find familiar. Towering health bars and unforgiving encounters with larger than life machines will likely pose significant challenges, but won’t subvert the mission-based structure Armored Core has relied on for decades. FromSoftware is seemingly using the huge success of all its Soulsborne hits to give this underappreciated series a chance to bask in the spotlight. This long awaited headline act is so well deserved, I just hope its potential isn’t ruined by hordes of players expecting something from Armored Core that it has never intended to deliver.
Give it a chance, but please jump in with an open mind and a willingness to experiment with a potentially dense and brutally unforgiving mech shooter that doesn’t always bother to fully explain its mechanics or the world it takes place in. Chances are this ambiguous identity will strike a chord with Soulsborne fans, even if the finished product is no way near as obtuse or grandiose as the likes of Elden Ring or Bloodborne. Here’s hoping a new audience falls in love with Armored Core for everything it does so well, instead of clinging onto the misguided idea it should have sought to be something else entirely.