Armored Core VI Announced, but will it have Patches?!

[R.R. Bigman]

I tried to use Fyonn’s AC Data, but it didn’t work. Thankfully, I was able to prevail with the gear I already had by trying many, many times and learning to stay the hell away from the boss in the second half when it’s using the flame attack that melts my AP.

For someone who’s play style is to just get up in everybody’s face and unload, what are the “fun” weapons and parts to use?

 

[Klatrymadon]

Ashmead pilebunker all the way (you've just unlocked this in the shop IIRC), plus as many bazookas as you can fit elsewhere, perhaps substituting one for a gatling gun if you're having trouble drawing a bead on someone (wear them down with that then unleash the payload). The Zimmerman shotguns and Songbirds missiles are devastating at almost any range. Charge rifles are good for insta-staggers against many enemies, but loads of weapons have had buffs in the patch, and you can pretty much afford to go with whatever looks/feels cool in most situations, and rebuild when you get really stuck (I don't think I had to have a big rethink at all after Chapter 1, tbh). I've switched from mostly explosive weapons in NG to mostly laser stuff in NG+, and everything feels viable.

But definitely get the Ashmead! It's a stagger-monster, and you want to be absolutely shameless about just shutting everyone down. Look for high 'Impact' ratings on your weapons whenever you're having trouble with a boss or another AC. Fuck 'em.

Edit: I went with Tian Qiang parts for most of the game, on the assumption that I'd need to be able to take it if I wanted to dish it out, but getting in people's faces is surprisingly safe if you're tooled up. The game wants you to overwhelm them. And while you can certainly get things wrong, I think the game de-emphasises the importance of careful generator, booster and FCS choices. If you don't feel totally hamstrung, you're alright.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Dual shotguns are the "meta" build for a reason, too. Especially once you unlock the Zimmerman shotguns; I haven't tried it with the earlier ones. But dual Zimmies are incredibly powerful and I find them pretty fun too; I'm having trouble breaking away from them in later playthroughs because they're just so reliable. the "Songbirds" shoulder grenade launchers are also extremely powerful and reliable; Dual Zimms and dual Songbirds carry me through pretty much any particularly challenging mission. Maybe it's just what I'm used to, but a lot of other things I try using just don't feel as strong.

The pilebunker is a ton of fun too; I haven't used melee in a long time, but when I did, landing charged pilebunker shots was supremely satisfying. But the starting pulse blade is reliable through the whole game too.

I played heavy (or at least mid-heavy) with a tetrapod build and lots of AP in my parts; I run with about 14,000 AP give or take. Tetrapod's hover comes in handy for the two bosses in chapter 2, particularly. I also like the lighter/smaller tank treads which you unlock a bit later; when I need extra speed, especially against certain bosses, I reach for the wheelie treads. I also tend to play medium-close range, for my shotguns and songbirds to land more reliably against moving targets.

Also, general tip for anyone/everyone: I dunno if you've done this already, but change your R-stick camera control speed up to the maximum at 10. Comes in handy against a lot of the more mobile enemies.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

Ooh, the options seem to really open up once you reach Chapter 2. I have always enjoyed using shotguns in any game that has them, so those are going on my robot as soon as I can afford them. A lot of other cool stuff to look forward to, it would appear.

I was watching a video on the Chapter 1 boss today, just to see what I could have done better. Turns out, almost everything.

 

[Paul le Fou]

It's OK. I barely squeaked by the boss via luck my first time through. By my second time around, he was a chump. You'll keep learning as you go forward, tweak your build, find things that work for you, get more and more used to the controls and fight designs.

 

[Fyonn]

Yeah, so long as you're willing to keep trying through the difficulty spikes (of which there are only a few), Armored Core 6 is very good at teaching you to play it.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I’m halfway or so through Chapter 3, and two of the available missions have a “Decision” indicator. Does this game branching paths and different endings?

Gameplay-wise, I’ve had to give up on the Pile Bunker. It packs a wonderful wallop, only I can’t get the range and timing down, so I end up whiffing four out of five times. I also watched Woolie from the late Super Best Friends play Chapter 1, and we both learned that the hard lock only works if you don’t press the right stick again after locking on to an enemy. Does the game itself ever tell you this?

 

[Torzelbaum]

I also watched Woolie from the late Super Best Friends play Chapter 1, and we both learned that the hard lock only works if you don’t press the right stick again after locking on to an enemy. Does the game itself ever tell you this?

I haven't played AC6 but I have been watching Fyonn's LP of it and it is my understanding that the game does sort of drop the ball on that.

Bonus video thanks to a recent conversation: Hey. How the heck does the lock-on in Armored Core 6 actually work?

 

[R.R. Bigman]

It’s games like Armored Core 6 that make me miss manuals.

 

[Fyonn]

I believe the game does tell you how the Aim Assist works, but too early for it to be coherent to you. Same thing with how early the game tells you that Assault Boosting reduces the impact of enemy attacks and increases the impact of your own small arms fire. To me, the confusion over Aim Assist mode is caused by:

1. People go "oh, clicking the right stick is the Dark Souls lock-on button, this is a lock-on that I press when I want to lock onto an enemy." It isn't a lock-on, and you also don't activate it per-enemy. It's an aiming mode that toggles on or off when you click the right stick and does not terminate when an enemy is destroyed.
2. It's called Aim Assist, which is also not descriptive of what it actually does - maybe "Target Tracking" would be better.
3. The UI elements for it are practically invisible.

The presentation of Aim Assist is probably the worst part of the game. Either you accidentally figure it out on your own (probably while stuck on a boss fight) or someone tells you.

I’m halfway or so through Chapter 3, and two of the available missions have a “Decision” indicator. Does this game branching paths and different endings?

Yes to both. For New Game, the only choice that matters is the only set of options in Chapter 5.

There's an additional ending in NG++ if you've seen both the standard endings and have completed every Arena battle. For that ending, you need to accept the offer made via encrypted communications during the NG+ variation of the Chapter 1 mission Attack the Dam Complex and do all the decision point missions that were not available the first two times. Paraphrasing how Peklo put it earlier, just pick the options that are new to you each time through.

For the record, this isn't Dark Souls, nothing changes about enemy stats during NG+ loops. While new missions can be harder thanks to harder encounter design, the game is much, much faster in NG+ and NG++ since you'll be shredding through old missions with endgame parts and the pile of OS Tune upgrades you'll accumulate. If NG takes like 15-20 hours, NG+ and NG++ are both about 5-8 hours.

EDIT: Removed some ending advice

 

[Regulus]

It might be more "tonally coherent", but IMO you should just go with what feels right to you the first time through. I think the choices they force on you have more impact if they're your choices.

The game still gives you plenty of context to choose the other route even on your first run.

 

[Fyonn]

Yeah, that's fair. I've cut the advice out of the post.

 

[madhair60]

can someone please explain the aim assist because I honestly thought it was a click to lock on and it has been giving me more grief than anything in the game.

 

[Klatrymadon]

Fyonn's video above goes over the nuances nicely. As they say, it's not exactly a 'hard lock' toggle, though it will certainly keep you facing the target it's currently tracking once it's on them, and if you're facing an enemy directly when you click R3 it can definitely seem like a Souls lock. But it's better to think of it as an alternate tracking mode that tries to keep the camera facing the right way at the cost of some firing accuracy. It can be activated when there's nothing to target and will persist after you've destroyed an enemy, so it behaves quite differently from the usual locking mechanics. I think once you're in the habit of turning it on and off according to the situation you'll get on alright with it. I tend to use it for larger targets like ACs and mop up all the grunts with the standard 'free'/auto-lock. (For the latter, it's a good idea to get the Quick Turn OS upgrade early on and to get comfortable doing 90- and 180-degree turns with it. This'll vastly reduce the amount of time you need to spend in Aim Assist mode, at least!)

 

[keele864]

Welp, got to the chapter four boss and am definitely going to be using one of the cheese builds I've heard about. I came within an inch of beating the first form, but a whole second health bar? Not sure I can handle that honestly. Or, rather, that I want to spend hour upon hour trying it.

 

[Paul le Fou]

Ah yes, Mecha-Malenia. The stun needles with their fast projectile speed work well against it. I do well with my Zimms too, but you need the right FCS to keep up with the speed. Always be ready to capitalize on the few moments when it stops to stand still. Hmm, other tips... I usually stay close because of my weapon loadout, so when it goes high for a bombardment I can get underneath/behind it. Someone else can probably give more salient info. I've also seen that dashing backwards at an angle is good for avoiding most of its attacks, so maybe that's worth experimenting with?

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I just got past that the Chapter 4 boss. It was dreadful. I had to become the tankiest tank I could, and the winning strategy was to use a Gatling gun to build stagger and try to do as much damage as possible with the biggest rockets in the stagger window. Took two hours!

Is this almost over? My clenched body parts can’t take much more of this.

 

[Fyonn]

I just got past that the Chapter 4 boss. It was dreadful. I had to become the tankiest tank I could, and the winning strategy was to use a Gatling gun to build stagger and try to do as much damage as possible with the biggest rockets in the stagger window. Took two hours!

Is this almost over? My clenched body parts can’t take much more of this.

If you're only going for one ending, you've got like 5 missions left.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I might go for the other playthrough if you could share some super strong builds for NG+?

 

[R.R. Bigman]

The time for NG+ has arrived! I completed all of Chapter 5 and the remaining Arena fights tonight.

I ended up fighting against Ayre, who was very fast and red. I felt sad having to kill one of your only pals, though the reason I got this ending in the first place was so I didn’t have to kill Carla.

I think I can figure out how the alternate path goes…

 

[Paul le Fou]

Congrats! You should try NG+ for a bit, you might be surprised at how quickly you blow through it. There's some new alternate stuff to do on the first run too which adds a bit (though it's NG++ where they really add a bunch more stuff)

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I did my second run through the game. Both ending paths are really good! AC6 doesn’t seem to have gotten hit with the FromSoft second half/last third quality drop that the Dark Souls games and Elden Ring suffer from.

I changed up my play style with a lighter craft using dual heavy pistols, Huxley bullet orbit and an Earshot to deal heavy stagger damage. It works for quite well for most missions.

It is a lot to ask of the audience to expect three entire playthroughs to see the whole picture of the story. Mario Wonder comes out in five days!

 

[Oathbreaker]

The third run has the most changes so it will at least still feel like new things are happening. The mission structure I feel helps a lot with generally avoiding the kind of late game decline Souls games have had because Armored Core has always been pretty blissfully free of that problem afaik.

The Earshot was a godsend for me when I first tried it out, definitely a fantastic choice there, and Huxley got buffed recently so what was already good is now even better. I thought about trying a similar dual pistol build but I really wanted the melee lance and missile launchers on both shoulders so opted for just a single Duckett, and it still performs veeery well.

I haven't had as much chance to play the last week but I haven't stopped wanting to just keep playing this game it's so good. Daemon X Machina is NOT scratching the itch well enough.

 

[Paul le Fou]

I actually fell off partway through my third run and don't think I'll be going back to finish it off; I only saw a little bit of the Kate Markson stuff before I got tired. I was really liking it and then suddenly I was like "I really don't want to do these missions again," even knowing there was a lot of new stuff right around the corner. Shrug!

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I finished NG++, and the game proper. The slog of the third trip took a lot of the wind out of my sails, and I felt the few ALLMIND missions before the big swerve at the end of Chapter 4 were some of the weakest in the game. The last few missions in the last route feel…wrong. Gunning down survivors in a tunnel of fire, obediently destroying terminals while Walter and Carla are casually killed on the comms. The final boss being Igauzu’s digital ghost and some cyber pinecones. It is jarring.

Game is fun. Didn’t need to be three playthroughs to see all the stuff, though.

 

[Fyonn]

I finished NG++, and the game proper. The slog of the third trip took a lot of the wind out of my sails, and I felt the few ALLMIND missions before the big swerve at the end of Chapter 4 were some of the weakest in the game. The last few missions in the last route feel…wrong. Gunning down survivors in a tunnel of fire, obediently destroying terminals while Walter and Carla are casually killed on the comms. The final boss being Igauzu’s digital ghost and some cyber pinecones. It is jarring.

Game is fun. Didn’t need to be three playthroughs to see all the stuff, though.

I think those last few missions in NG++ are there to drive home how terrifying an entity you've involved yourself with. Walter and Carla dying off screen is there to show just how powerful Allmind is as an enemy.

Iguazu is a pretty wild swerve, though! I don't think it quite lands, but in retrospect, I see they were trying to position him as a direct mirror of 621. He's even got the same generation augmentations. I'm playing up encounters with him in the LP in hopes it will help that bit land better.

He's also a pretty close analog to a trope that has appeared a few times in Gundam seasons: the only semi-competent rival who keeps failing upward like Char Aznable did, but with none of the merit being obscured by his opponent being the protagonist.

 

[Oathbreaker]

I thought the Allmind missions were fantastic overall, I just wish they followed up a couple threads more instead of relying on it just Being Obvious in hindsight for the sake of not having too many entirely new missions, like how the Kate persona just kinda goes nowhere, or how Carla never follows up about the machines that attack you and Iguazu. Like with Dolmayan ambushing you and Allmind requesting you merc their last collaborator you get a couple different views on things; not being willing to risk the worst scenario, or insisting on settling for the status quo. In particular I read the tunnel mission differently, as it being you continuing your escape from Arquebus's crap and Allmind is just cleaning out the corpos like the Liberation Front likely would in their ending (though due to the location and circumstances in a much more existentially horrifying way to really sell how dangerous Allmind is). The only person I'd say is a survivor in that is G6 Red who you can initially save, but he turns on you too out of sheer paranoia over the G13 callsign they put on you themselves and the hellish situation they're witnessing. Pending the missions you've chosen to do, Pater's behavior showing up at the end is just the final step of him shedding his dorky sympathetic persona and going full corporate goon now that he's getting a bit drunk on his corporate ascent and shiny new mech through absolutely no merit of his own. The entire mission to me felt fully like defending yourself until you reach safety. Allmind is certainly being terrifying and using you for its own ends just like Walter and Carla, but is the only entity other than Ayre and Rusty that at this point has directly supported 621 the person rather than their mission (and Rusty just tried to stab you in the back for fear of what you might do just because you're so skilled) which in my eyes is exactly why 621 goes off-mission to deal with Snail at its suggestion before shit really pops off. Even Carla's rescue in the prior paths are just part of The Mission for her and Walter.

And then having Allmind start to show the same flaws in judgement you can clearly see in the Arena matches compared to the actual in-mission fights makes it all make sense. Allmind is genuinely trying to do something it believes will benefit Mercenaries, but doesn't know how to judge people and creates a mess in the process, such as assimilating Iguazu backfiring, and turning on 621 for the same reasons Rusty did also backfiring. There's some sinister-sounding weirdness with what appears to be Allmind's own intent to join the Coral Flow itself based on some of its dialogue (and I'd argue cutscene imagery as the real boss joins the fight) but the game doesn't have anything before or after the final fight explaining what the hell it really means.

I also have some less popular ideas about the final ending. Suffice to say I read it wayyyyy more positively than most people sound like they do.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

The simple fact that there is no route where “Chatty” Stick
gets to survive is a tragedy. The fact that I got invested enough in a story where you never see a single character in person is impressive on it’s own, I suppose.

I liked this game. I wish there were more varied mission types, and way fewer AC duels as the majority of bosses (save those for the arena). From seems to still have trouble making fights with giant or non-humanoid enemies that don’t rely on a gimmick. TheIce Worm battle has an amazing setup, but you barely really do anything other than shoot a weak spot four times.

 

[Oathbreaker]

I just realized the preorder bonus is just Iguazu cosplay and oh my god that's HILAROUS.

I am also just hopelessly in love with this game, I ended up making a separate install on my ps4 to play a fresh file without worrying about my first one. I've been having just as good a time coming at the game with all the experience and none of the equipment as I had the first time around. Balteus in particular was especially funny because somehow the ~50% health phase change didn't happen until it only had about 5% health left because of weird stagger timing preventing it I guess.

There's also been a fun little thing happening where I apparently didn't absorb any of the info from half the data logs so lore stuff I didn't realize before is finally sinking in. As far as From Software games and their habit of tucking very important lore away somewhere goes they made the whole situation around Rubicon super intriguing.

I also decided to do my best to cobble together a knockoff White Glint from For Answer. You can get closer than I expected but not quite as close as I wanted. Couldn't get used to a full auto weapon in one hand and a semi-auto in the other though so I stuck with a melee weapon in the end.

 

[Kirin]

Love how the rendering on that shot really makes it look like a model kit...