Armored Core 6 Fires of Rubicon review: A mechanized masterpiece

As my AC, Walter’s Hound, nimbly flies around the colossal Juggernaut, I finally stagger the behemoth and launch everything I have: two missile salvos, a machine gun magazine, and a slash of my pulse sword—but it’s not enough. The beast lumbers for a moment, like a giant awoken by a fly, and charges at me with the surprising speed of a raging bull. This is going to be a long fight.

A perfectly-assembled story

In the Soulsborne games, you start small and gradually rise to power. FromSoftware masterfully captures that same feeling of growth in Armored Core 6. Its sci-fi mecha action RPG learns all the right lessons from the studio’s dark-fantasy pedigree but still establishes a unique identity. Augmented human C4-621, one of Handler Walter’s hounds, crash lands on Rubicon 3 and first has to salvage an identity before they can even consider upgrading their Armored Core. 

621 is an independent mercenary on Rubicon 3 searching for Coral, a substance that allows for the transfer of information and acts as an energy source. Just think of it as Spice from Dune—everyone wants it, but only Rubicon has it. Corporations violently extract it from the planet—a brutality the rebellious Liberation Front risks their lives to oppose. The atmosphere on Rubicon is, like any FromSoftware game, tragically desolate yet still hauntingly beautiful. The sheer scale of the environment is breathtaking. Gargantuan structures tower miles above, making even ACs feel small.

AC6 is a lot more narrative-heavy than other FromSoftware titles, but the team’s stellar writing shines. It’s witty, bittersweet, and brilliantly delivered by the voice actors. As you choose what missions to accept, you’ll learn if you’re a mere corporate puppet or if you’ll forge your destiny. There’s a remarkably anti-capitalist story in Armored Core 6, beautifully brought to life by the vibrant cast of characters you meet as you progress through the campaign. I never expected to feel for the disembodied voices in their metal frames, but feel I did. As 621 goes from unknown freelancer to hand-picked mercenary, their allegiances get tested, and it’s up to you to choose where they lie and decide their fate and that of Rubicon. 

Built to kill

The core (pun intended) loop in Armored Core 6 is “kill, buy, build, kill better.” Missions, called sorties, usually take no longer than 10 to 15 minutes to complete. This might sound offputting for fans of the Souls series’ vast, interconnected worlds, but these short missions match the tempo of the game perfectly, encouraging hyper-specialized builds. With a properly assembled AC, I could tear through missions in minutes, leaving nothing but scrap and sparks in my wake. But once I got walled by a boss, it was back to the drawing board. 

Rather than perfecting one min-maxed build like in Elden Ring or Bloodborne, you must adapt to survive and thrive, so stockpiling a varied inventory of parts is essential. This is made incredibly easy due to the buying and selling prices of all weapons, frames, and components being the same and because you can replay any mission whenever you like for the same cash reward it was originally worth. You can also chase S ranks, which is hard but adds a ton of replay value.

I messed up and saved all my cash for a rainy day. If you die, you can restart from a checkpoint and reassemble, which is much more forgiving than other FromSoftware titles. However, to buy new parts, it’s back to the hangar. This, and the fact that assembling, buying, and selling are all separate menus you can’t swap between directly, meant my time in the hangar felt a bit finicky at times, but this wasn’t a big enough issue to curb my enjoyment of the theorycrafting. You’ve got to balance weight, agility, energy load, firepower, and more. Tinkering and perfecting an assembly makes for a huge payoff when your enemies lie at your two feet (or four, or tank tracks, if that’s the build for you).

Combat is weighty, and the fights themselves are reward enough. Although the haptic feedback in the controller really immersed me in the rumble of my AC’s generator, the lack of adaptive triggers feels like a missed opportunity for the PS5’s DualSense. Fortunately, the spectacles are stunning, with sparks fizzing and explosions shaking the screen. The shriek of alarms as an enemy readied a devastating attack, and the impact of steel on steel as the ACs clash created a thrilling cacophony as I tried to rip through my opponent’s defenses.

Like Sekiro, foes have a posture you can whittle down to put them into a staggered state. Do so, and subsequent attacks will inflict massive critical damage. This means you can’t just launch attacks as soon as they’re ready, or you’ll stagger an opponent and get caught with your pants down, waiting for your missiles to reload and miss out on a big hit. It takes brains and brawns to win.

Balancing high-impact and high-damage weapons alongside your own survivability is the key to mastering the challenging boss battles. At first, some of these feel downright unfair, but it’s all about assembling the right build. Once you figure out what makes a boss tick, it’s just a matter of time before you overcome them, and that struggle made the high I felt when I finally did exhilarating. I cheered out loud when beating some of the tougher foes. 

Will the cinders fade or burn bright?

Until Armored Core 6, I’d never finished a game for review and immediately continued playing. The ending I got left me fully satiated, but the gameplay loop is so rewarding and engaging that even after spending 25 hours with it over just four evenings, I was still desperate to dive back in for more.

By now, we all expect FromSoftware titles to include a new game plus mode, but Armored Core 6’s subverted my expectations in a way that had me smiling like a kid at Christmas. The sheer confidence on display from FromSoftware is admirable. At no point does the game suggest you should keep playing after the credits roll; it just knows you will, and the payoff is huge. It’s practically a second game and like nothing we’ve seen from FromSoftware’s modern catalog to date. Thanks to the consistently high quality, these extra hours don’t feel gluttonous, forced, or bloated. They’re delicious, highly explosive cherries on top of an already rich sundae. 

Armored Core 6 is yet another masterpiece by FromSoftware. The developer has learned all the right lessons from its previous games and distilled that knowledge into this one, yet confidently offered something vastly different from its usual grimdark fantasy fare. Armored Core 6 stands proudly on its own two feet and shows the FromSoftware formula works in a condensed package. Under the cold, steel shells of the ACs lie warm hearts, quickened in the heat of battle, and every beat spent with them is remarkable.

Score: 5/5

Disclaimer: A review copy of Armored Core 6 was provided by Bandai Namco.