Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

[Julius]

Just completed NG++ and got the third ending, and all I can say is: wooooooooooow. 

Love the approach they took to the other endings in this. Obviously it's down to the game being mission-based, but when the paths diverge on subsequent playthroughs, they REALLY diverge, and that means a whole host of new missions and so much more context. 

That final boss fight had me grinning from ear to ear  beat it first time, too!

All that remains for my Plat is to get the rest of the collectibles (through replaying the NG and NG+ missions for Chapter 5), and then it will be a case of getting S-Ranks, and that'll be that. 

I'll make a longer post with more cohesive thoughts on, and videos of, my time with NG+ and NG++ once it's all wrapped up, but yeah...hell of a game! 

[Julius]

Me and my friends weren't in the mood for BG3 tonight, so all ended up doing our own things. One of my friends ended up on AC VI and the next mission he had to do ended in Balteus, so him not knowing this, I asked if I could watch him via Share Screen. He hasn't played a From game before this, and while very different from their other offerings, I think the customisation and mechs is exactly why he was willing to pick it up after my recommendation. 

Took him a while, long enough for me to redownload the game and beat it with my NG+/NG++-clearing build, and then again with the build I used the first time around, both on my first attempt. As he was having trouble and another friend was watching I had them watch me beat the fight - no pressure, right? - and I beat it first time again, and shared a bunch of tips with them, and showcased how aggressive and in-your-face fighting just seemed to work out better. 

He then did it on his next attempt, so I'm pretty proud of him 

So, just bumping this to give the game some more love. I ended up getting the Plat a few months back after around 54 hours with the game, and while I think there are better quality games which have released this year, I think it's my personal GOTY. 

The fact that I'm thinking of going through it again after just seeing and replaying the same missions a few times tonight is testament to that, I loved it! 

Edited November 10, 2023 by Julius

[Julius]

Vaati has uploaded his first video on the lore of AC VI, and it's a doozy! 

Man, I love this game  

Must...resist...the urge...to play again...

[Hero-of-Time]

I was hoping to pick this up in the Black Friday sales but sadly there doesn't seem to be any retailer that has discounted it. Same goes for Lies of P.

[Julius]

24 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I was hoping to pick this up in the Black Friday sales but sadly there doesn't seem to be any retailer that has discounted it.

Yeah, so far I think the lowest I've seen it at so far is £40 for the PS4 version, and that's how it was before the sales started to kick off  fingers crossed it drops somewhere in the coming week for you! Would be super interested to hear your thoughts on it 

The Black Friday sales stretching out to more than a week before the actual day really makes it hard to get a read on the best deals this time of year, guess the corpos know what they're doing there though 

26 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Same goes for Lies of P.

Man, the reviews and pre-launch impressions for Lies of P have me really curious, but I'm trying to resist by burying the thought of playing Lies of P behind wanting to play Bloodborne again and forcing myself to play anything else to get my mind off doing just that. That being said, I did re-install Bloodborne on Friday, so I'm not sure how well that's working out for me 

[Hero-of-Time]

6 hours ago, Julius said:

Man, the reviews and pre-launch impressions for Lies of P have me really curious, but I'm trying to resist by burying the thought of playing Lies of P behind wanting to play Bloodborne again and forcing myself to play anything else to get my mind off doing just that. That being said, I did re-install Bloodborne on Friday, so I'm not sure how well that's working out for me 

There's a stupid amount of praise for the game. Been catching up on various threads on here and see @RedShell also loved it.

I could do with another Soulslike game. I recently played Wo Long and really enjoyed it but it lacked the dark and depressing feel that the Souls games bring to the table. Lies of P looks to capture that perfectly.

[RedShell]

21 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

There's a stupid amount of praise for the game. Been catching up on various threads on here and see @RedShell also loved it.

I could do with another Soulslike game. I recently played Wo Long and really enjoyed it but it lacked the dark and depressing feel that the Souls games bring to the table. Lies of P looks to capture that perfectly.

I did indeed love it, game is an absolute no-brainer for anyone that enjoys the Souls formula.

BTW, you just reminded me that I need to try and get back to Wo Long at some point! Not played it in a few months, but was pretty far into it I think.

[Hero-of-Time]

3 minutes ago, RedShell said:

I did indeed love it, game is an absolute no-brainer for anyone that enjoys the Souls formula.

BTW, you just reminded me that I need to try and get back to Wo Long at some point! Not played it in a few months, but was pretty far into it I think.

I appreciate Team Ninja's approach to the genre. If Nioh was their attempt at a Souls game then Wo Long was certainly them having a stab at making something like Sekiro. 

[Hero-of-Time]

I see Smyths have knocked the price down to £29.99, which is what I was looking to pay. I may check the store that's on the way back from work and pick up a copy.

[Julius]

14 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I see Smyths have knocked the price down to £29.99, which is what I was looking to pay. I may check the store that's on the way back from work and pick up a copy.

[Julius]

Booted this up again tonight as my friend has slowly been chipping away at it and unlocked Nest, the online PvP mode. 

Wiped the floor with him with my Tristan MK-I build for well over an hour, but eventually he figured out that a tanky build might work best (I'd mentioned before about the tanky builds being broke, the Songbirds and to fly up when using them, etc.), and yeah...it was no longer as intense or as fun for either of us  the only way to combat it, really, was with a tanky build of my own, so we were just there like a bunch of little kids bashing these big ol' goofy mechs against each other  the high HP, high defense stats and being able to fit the hardest hitting weapons to it really makes the game play so differently, in a way I personally didn't enjoy (not because I started losing, but more because there was very little skill involved when we both landed on the same tanky build). 

While I absolutely loved my time playing through Armored Core VI with a very speedy build, it simply doesn't translate to PvP well, where tanky builds - like in the main game, I guess, seeing some of the meta builds after I beat the game - reign supreme. By all means, the adage "play how you want to play" applies perfectly here, and I think it will help my friend to push through the game some more and hopefully face a bit more of a challenge with some of the bosses, which would be cool. 

I just think that with the next game they should really try to balance things a bit more. The trade-off feels like it should be that the faster build is equal in that though it has less health it can dodge the attacks easier and more consistently, but the area of effect of some of the shoulder weapons are insane and just make it a bit of a no-go, so it doesn't work out that way, and so you end up unable to keep up and have way less health while doing so. I beat him a couple of times in the end and had some close run-ins but it wasn't anywhere near as fun as the more skilful battles we had early on with both of using lighter mechs 

Anyways, our different approaches to the controller is also very funny, as I can his button-mashing while I'm calmly going through the motions on my end  I think I'm going to give an anti-tank build some thought and testing, though, so if nothing else, this seems a brilliant excuse to return to the game here and there 

Edited December 2, 2023 by Julius

[Julius]

VaatiVidya is release a 5½ - no, that is not a typo: FIVE AND A HALF - hour long lore video for Fires of Rubicon later this week:

Quote

The full, 5.5hr lore video for Armored Core will finally be released this week!

As someone who LOVED ACVI...GIVE IT TO MEEEEEEEEEEE 

[Julius]

The game has officially sold over 3 millions units – making it the best-selling game in the series! 

This comes following Rusty's and Pater's Japanese VAs reporting that the game had sold 2.8 million units, which they'd heard via From, in October of last year. 

Great stuff. I really, really loved this game, and given its mission-based structure and the fact that past numbered AC titles have typically been followed up relatively quickly by a non-numbered title in the same "generation" (that's AC generation, not console generation), I think there's a decent chance that we could see another game in the series next year. Bonus points for sure if it follows past trends in the same AC generation of games and you can save transfer some stuff over to the new game! 

[Julius]

Where I'm at with combat in The Witcher 3:

[Hero-of-Time]

Did you buy another copy or something?

[Julius]

1 hour ago, Hero-of-Time said:

Did you buy another copy or something?

Did you ever get around to starting this up H-o-T? 

 

Anyways, to explain how I got here – I finally got to a point in The Witcher 3 I've never got to before: the game started to feel like it was getting good. It took, like, 13 hours for that to finally happen, and I absolutely understand why I and others have dropped the game after several attempts at getting into it, but still. 

There are good things and bad things about those 13 hours - which I'm sure I'll get into at some point - BUT, what really stood out, was that the combat in that game sucks ass. In fact, the combat in The Witcher 3 sucks ass so much that it genuinely had me craving a game with any semblance of combat which was good fun. Hence, a second copy of Fires of Rubicon arriving at my door this morning  I thought there was a decent chance I'd buy a second copy of Armored Core VI this year, but I didn't think it'd be so soon. 

So, with lessons learned from Persona 3 Reload last year about when to put a game down and when to go with the wants of my gaming gut, I've put The Witcher 3 down for a bit to tear into some good ol' mech combat and revisit ACVI. 

And I'm having a blast – I mean, that shouldn't be too surprising considering it was nearly my 2023 GOTY, but still! Last time I went with the pilot name Galileo (because, ya know, guy who discovered a bunch of planets, seemed fitting) and naming my ACs after the Knights of the Round Table; this time around, I've gone with the pilot name Ozymandias, and am thus naming my ACs after ancient and/or fabled cities which might have been the works we'd be looking on and supposedly despairing over. 

Currently I'm on the v3 build of my Jericho AC...

...where I'm using the reverse joint legs to allow for a greater weight limit while also keeping some of the speed of my favourite builds from my last playthrough, especially in dodging, allowing me to bypass some of the weak points of my Tristan build on the last page by having much more capable munitions on board. I didn't use the reverse joints much, if at all, on my last playthrough, so it's been fun to try a new type of build, and I think I might try the tank treads at some point - which I also never tried last time out - too. And yeah, I've just unlocked the Songbirds, so the game is about to become real breezy for this build. 

I'm about 3 hours in and I've just completed Chapter 1 and downed for the first time against a boss in Balteus, which, eh, is fine, it was only the once, and it was Balteus. I thought I'd hit Up on the D-pad to repair but forgot that when you're stunned that it doesn't register (even to apply the repair a bit delayed once you're no longer stunned) and so got taken out after thinking I was supposed to be healing. Whoops! Also finished the Arena up to and including E rank so far, as well as all the Training missions. 

Not quite sure how far I intend on going with this playthrough. Is it just NG? NG+? NG++? Am I going for the Plat again? I genuinely have no clue.

I'm not even sure I get straight back to The Witcher 3 after this, whatever the case, purely because one of my mates is very far ahead and I'm in no real rush to get through it, whereas another has dropped off TW3 to finally play Yakuza 0 and is loving it, so Infinite Wealth had been very much on my mind (also spotted @Happenstance playing 0 too!). My group kind of agreed as a collective it was a good idea to get through The Witcher 3 together, and it has helped two of us to push on and see it through to a point where it starts to finally click, but we've also agreed in retrospect that agreeing to play a game as undemanding and long as that in January of all months might not have been the best idea. 

Whatever I choose to do with this and what I play next, so long as I'm having good fun with it, I'm on the right track 

Edited Saturday at 11:06 PM by Julius

[Hero-of-Time]

9 hours ago, Julius said:

Did you ever get around to starting this up H-o-T? 

Nope. The Launch Edition is still sat sealed on the shelf. Maybe it can be part of my 2026 Gaming Pledge.

[Julius]

Boy oh boy am I having a blast revisiting this. 

Today I completed Chapters 2 and 3, and progressed into the Arena up to and including giving all of the A-ranks an ass-whooping.

It's been really fun revisiting these levels and blasting my way through just to be like "oh wait, wasn't there a hidden combat log/dialogue or combat option/part/piece of lore over there?" and just beaming from how much this game clearly drilled itself into me the first time around just some 16 months ago. 

I'm now up to v6 of Jericho:

Now, I love the more typical Souls games I've played: Demon's Souls, Dark Souls, and Elden Ring. Dark fantasy is cool as hell, but I think something I've touched on before is how I never felt I was playing those games how I felt I *wanted* to play those games. I always felt like I was playing the game on the game's terms, and it wasn't until much later in the game, once I'd fleshed out a particular build or play style through levelling and honing my skill, where I felt really comfortable going around and showing those worlds who was boss. 

Then I played Bloodborne, which felt *exactly* how I wanted to be playing the Souls games. The gothic horror ~and other weirdness~ vibe is unparalleled. There's a focus on speed, dodging, parrying with a gun, blood-spurting viscerals: while it still really feels like it takes a while to be showing that world who's boss in the story sense, it felt to me like that point came much earlier on in Bloodborne compared to the above games, and through some skill and confidence early on, it felt like you were exacting vengeance on the world. Be it skill or play style or the way you'd built your character, very early on I felt a sense of earned empowerment in Bloodborne. 

While Armored Core VI isn't as challenging as Bloodborne or Souls games, it still manages to find the balance of providing a feeling of earned empowerment rather than a true and proper power fantasy, which I love it for. It is much more forgiving in helping you find your builds than other From games, as you can sell parts back to the store at cost; the Training and Arena programs both do a great job of inspiring confidence from an early point in the game; and, what's more, despite an obvious narrative throughline of "what the hell is going on with this sci-fi story? Who are these people? What is this world? There's something that feels unmistakably...off", there's a sense of being a part of some greater story while also getting to regularly see the impact you have on it, whether it be through choosing one particular mission over another when branching paths arise, the way you interact with other characters (who are all brilliantly voiced, by the way) and make occasional dialogue choices, or, again, the simple freedom of building your AC how you see fit with little repercussions outside of the construction limits the game places on you. This is a game which feels customisable in so many different ways from the get-go, and is incredibly moreish to boot.

Again, going back to that feeling earned empowerment: you earned this cash; you chose these parts; you made this mech; you chose this mission; this victory is *yours*. 

Simply brilliant. Oh, and I never really talked about it the first time through, but there are so many visuals in this game which will just leave you going "well, damn":

This game just radiates cool; it's by far the coolest I've ever felt playing a game. 

It's a second playthrough, so I know what's coming, and yet I'm just as excited to dig back into it every session as I was the first time around. There's an awkward boss that I know is coming up that I'm mentally steeling myself for, but honestly, I can't wait. Bring it. 

This genuinely might be my favourite game of the gen so far. 

Edited Sunday at 11:18 PM by Julius

[Julius]

Chapters 4 and 5 rounded off, meaning that credits have rolled after 11 hours and my NG run is complete. I chose to go with the The Fires of Raven ending, for reasons which will probably become apparent at a later point. 

For my own future reference and for others who might be going for the Plat/all endings in the future: there's a lot of conflicting info online about how to get one ending or another. Only the final branching mission you choose - in Chapter 5 - determines your ending on NG and NG+; it's NG++ where you'll need to do certain missions throughout the course of the run in order to see the third and final ending. 

Anyways, back to it – started off this session absolutely crushing the S-rank Arena fighters with some quick times:

I obviously don't want to talk too much about the ending, but man, I love it so much. The penultimate mission on this route is probably my favourite - and by far the most hype! - in the entire game, just the premise of the mission and how empowered this mission in particular makes you feel by stripping away certain limits...it's just an absolutely joyous, toy-bashing, mech anime action hype fest. 

Interestingly, the boss I was a bit worried about going into this session - and a second boss I totally forgot I'd be brushing up against - I had no problems facing and beat first time. Think that really speaks again to how much I've downloaded some of these missions and boss fights, because muscle memory and automatic reactions were kicking in where my mind couldn't keep up and calculate my next moves – which felt anime as hell. 

The final boss though? Gave me a bit of a go-around, which I'll be honest surprised me, and was the most I died to any of the bosses on this particular playthrough. Funnily enough, it took the first death or two for me to remember what my original strat that I figured out back in 2023 was to take them down, and leaning back on that and just remembering the limits of my own weapons (ran out of ammo for my right-hand munitions deep into the second go which meant I had to rely on kicks and my heavy weapons, which was far from ideal!) I managed to readjust, even if it was still pretty tight when all was said and done. Terminal Armour came in super handy – I ALWAYS forgot to add a Core Expansion for use in my entire first playthrough of the game with almost all of my ACs, and it came in clutch a couple of times here and there. 

Anyways, back to this game just looking great, and being another great case for From having the best vistas in gaming:

Elsewhere, no further tweaks were needed for Jericho and it performed admirably in his v6 form up to the end of the game. Besides perhaps changing its right-hand weapon out for a more effective gun? I'm pretty sure I could take on the entirety of NG+ and NG++ with this build. 

The S-ranks? I'm not 100%. 

And speaking of missions: man, just the mission variety in this is excellent. Some missions are a couple of minutes long, others probably veering close to 15-20, but it means the game can maintain a sense of momentum and pace that so many of other From's modern games aren't allowed to enforce simply because of the way they're presented (connected worlds). I think it genuinely furthers the case for From being one of the best out there simply because it gives a greater sense of variety to their catalogue. I haven't even talked about the AC fights this time around, which are basically like coming up against other Hunters in Bloodborne: by far my favourite fights in the game (including the AC boss fights of course), and yes, probably above the more typical bosses you get here. 

Something I've had fun doing with other From games is keeping track of my death count against bosses, and I think this is an interesting case where I'm replaying a From game for the first time. Some of these bosses (ahem, pre-patch) took me 20+ attempts, and even on NG+ and NG++ runs I found myself dying here and there to them. This time around? Probably the smoothest things have gone for me playing through ACVI, bar maybe the final fight. What constitutes a boss fight in this game is pretty hazy at the best of times, as you come up against ACs and even some bosses before a mission ends, so I focused mainly on counting deaths again bosses which rounded off chapters or important story beats; most of these I've gone with the boss names as they're presented in the game, but for any character names I've gone out of my way to identify them by their mech parts, so no actual story spoilers to be found here! I'm just tucking it away in a spoiler tag to keep it tidy 

Death Counter vs Bosses: NG

Spoiler

1. AH-12: HC Helicopter 

- 0 deaths/first time (18.01.25)

2. HA-T-102 Juggernaut

- 0 deaths/first time (18.01.25)

3. AA P07 Balteus

- 1 death/second time (18.01.25)

4. EC-0804 Smart Cleaner

- 2 deaths/third time (19.01.25)

5. IA-13: SEA SPIDER

- 0 deaths/first time (19.01.25)

6. IA-02: Ice Worm

- 0 deaths/first time (19.01.25)

7. AA P03 Enforcer

- 0 deaths/first time (20.01.25)

8. IB-01: CEL 240

- 0 deaths/FIRST TIME! WHOOP! (20.01.25)

9. EL-P-00 ALBA

- 0 deaths/first time (20.01.25)

10. IB-07: SOL 644

- 4 deaths/fifth time (20.01.25)

On my next run, I'll probably focus on only counting new bosses for the death counter, unless there's a particular boss I want to set the record straight about. 

Wait, next run? 

On 1/18/2025 at 10:29 PM, Julius said:

Not quite sure how far I intend on going with this playthrough. Is it just NG? NG+? NG++? Am I going for the Plat again? I genuinely have no clue.

I mean...I have to, right? Someone's got to liberate the place 

Edited 2 hours ago by Julius