Armored Core VI: YOU DIED in a giant robot

“the souls games in particular were clearly designed to encourage communal-arcade-notebook info sharing”

100%, that’s how I’ve always seen it.

Whoa, beat Sea Spider on the 3rd try thanks to circa's tip about using quad legs (and the heaviest weapons I could find, two bazookas, a grenade launcher, and a big missile launcher).

Nice! That guy has like a billion hit points and some nasty ground moves, so staying in the air with heavy artillery really does seem like the best way to do it. It’s tempting to unload when he’s staggered, but I found prioritizing getting your boost meter charged during that window to be the way to go. Gotta stay airborne.

I'm impressed that by all accounts this game runs pretty great out of the box. What do you expect, or hope, From to offer in the way of inevitable patches and tweaks?

I saw some twitter thread about how running the PS4 version on PS5 has a better frame rate etc, but everything seems just fine with the PS5 version.

Really what I (and a lot of people apparently) want is better & easier matchmaking for pvp. I tried the online arena for the first time yesterday and it felt very old school PC -- people create rooms with their own parameters (time, map, number of people in the room, whether winner or loser rotates, etc) and you try to get into them and get into a match. At first I ended up in a room with 10 people and was spectating while other people played, with no option to exit or leave the room during combat. It's not that big of a deal, but it would be nice to have an option to just hop into a random 1v1 without all the hullabaloo.

(I actually won my first match, was about to win the second one when they quit, resulting in a draw, then got absolutely shredded by someone with an endgame build who also knew what they were doing).

Other than that, idk? I do wonder if they're going to nerf some of the bosses that people have been complaining about, but I kind of hope they don't.

Btw that quad build I made for Sea Spider came in handy to pull out for the end of the 'Steal the Survey Data' mission, with all those reinforcement mechs you need to fight. I've started replaying more missions so that I don't have to sell parts, it's better to keep multiple builds ready to go if I want to switch to them from a checkpoint.

finally beat balteus, double pulse guns/double laser cannons, as lightweight as possible. took a long time!!!!!

BLIFIL on psn hit me up

Hell yeah. How lightweight were you able to go with those cannons -- biped legs?

all nachtreiser everything except for legs which were melander c3. needed the big heavy generator for the lasers.

i tried a tank configuration but the extra HP didn't make up for having to eat the flamethrower sword every time

lol apparently someone just beat the game with no weapons, just punches.

Same guy who beat all the Souls games with a broken straight sword, lol

Okay so I finally got to play this tonight after a few days away. Managed to beat the helicopter after 8 or 9 goes, but it felt like luck more than anything else.

Then I spent WAY too long customising my mech to make it look cool. So much fun, even if the decal system is fiddly and annoying as anything.

Still got to get the hang of a few controls. There's a lot to learn, and often I feel like I need more fingers than it requires

I beat this and will roll through NG+1.

Had a lot of fun, but I have to say… wtf is up with the balancing in this? Once you find the right build (or 3) it’s a cakewalk. I beat a lot of these end-game bosses on the first try. 2-3 attempts at most.

Balteus seems to be the actual boss of the game as far as difficulty is concerned and he’s at the end of Ch 1.

I haven't had a lot of time to play so I'm still on chapter 3, near the end I think. The arena version of Carla was nearly as hard as Balteus, I had to break out the tank. What main build did you settle on?

Zimmerman shotguns and Songbird shoulder grenade launchers are just unbeatable. I’d switch out the shotguns for Gatling guns depending on the situation. Forget the name, but once I found the heavy duty reverse joint legs I stuck with them for most of it. The wheelchair tank legs also good. The needle shoulder cannons you get for worm boss also handy for other bosses. Flame throwers come in handy occasionally for small levels with swarms of small guys.

Can coast with that.

Had a lot of fun, but I have to say… wtf is up with the balancing in this? Once you find the right build (or 3) it’s a cakewalk. I beat a lot of these end-game bosses on the first try. 2-3 attempts at most. Balteus seems to be the actual boss of the game as far as difficulty is concerned and he’s at the end of Ch 1.

This is all more or less the distillation of the just-posted (non gag) Dunkey review.

I thought that was overstating things a bit, most missions are a slice of pie but I've gotten some decent challenge from some of the AC mini-bosses, especially when they throw more than one at a time at you. And it's still fun when it's easy.

My current favorite build is the chicken legs, dual laser handguns, and a Songbird + 10 missile launcher on the back. Still haven't gotten the hang of melee - it's a lot to switch weapons and properly boost within range all during the two seconds your opponent is staggered.

I kinda don’t like that Dunkey dude, but he’s partially right in that review.

NG+ is even easier because enemies aren’t buffed and you have a full kit at your disposal + all your knowledge gained. They mix up some missions which is fun, but nothing that will make you sweat.

I hope they release a good grip of DLC (in true AC fashion, before it was d/l’able) because the core combat is really good and I feel like you could do so much more with it.

Apparently NG++ has a ton of new missions, which is kinda crazy? But I guess that's their Lake of Ash in this game.

I've been playing with a rapid fire build, dual machine guns + gatling guns where you keep alternating between them and never have to stop firing. It's not great against human opponents, but it just melts ACs in the arena and in missions.

After being on the receiving end of flamethrowers and realizing how annoying it is not to be able to see anything, I made an annoying pvp build with double flamethrowers and double vertical plasma missiles, lol. Some people are flummoxed by it and melt down, but it's useless against some builds. Part of the problem is that I can barely see what they're doing through the flames, so it's harder to dodge some melee/bazooka/etc attacks.

I finished playthrough #1, now ripping through ng+. There was a particularly epic fight against redacted late game boss, where I ran out of ammo for the first time and ended up punching it to death, with my cannon falling off after firing the final shot, crazy.

Nice. I played about 2/3 of NG+ and then Baldur's Gate came out so I haven't played in a while. Will probably go back.

New patch just dropped and it looks like they nerfed Balteus and 2 other roadblock bosses. Buffed a few weapons too.

Ohhh, I did just steamroll Balteus in ng+ before going to work and I thought it was just because of my endgame build. Oh well, I'm kinda glad I beat it pre-patch (similar to pre-nerf Radahn).

Can someone explain how the scan thing works? I recently did the level with the undercover mechs that seem to hide themselves inside walls. I'm scanning, but it's not really clear what the scanner really is meant to be showing.

You mean the one with the stealth mechs that are invisible at range and can seemingly teleport in the first part of the stage? That's a bit of a weird one-off, it tells you to use your scanner to find them initially, but I don't think it works in the boss fight when they're clinging high up on the walls.

I found the scanner to generally be of limited utility, it's best in the enclosed hallway/tunnel levels to see if an enemy mech is around the corner, or hiding on the ceiling before you drop down somewhere. Not sure if it actually highlights the chests where you find parts, but I don't think it ever helped me find one.

Oh I think scanning might also highlight any mission targets, ie when you have to destroy some inanimate object? Not entirely sure if it's necessary or not.

xp, yeah that's it. the scanner didn't seem to help at all. It was mega confusing. The only way to spot them was to just haphazardly shoot in the rough direction the lazers were firing from until I got a lock

Haha yeah, I would go to the wall they were shooting from and try to jump up directly below them like an excited dog (I think I eventually switched to quad legs on my first playthrough to get up there more easily). Definitely died a lot, it was fun to blow through it in ng+.

If Balteus has been nerfed I hate to think of what he was like before that.

It's great that I can respec between checkpoints, but it's sort of a shame that going back to the shop means starting the mission again and having to do the same bullshit every time I want to experiment with a different build. Maybe that's too much of an ask though.

Anyway, I can somehow get him down to a slither of health but somehow die right at the end. Happened a half dozen times yesterday with a lightweight build I was using. So so close!

Well I finished ng++ and I think I can put this game aside now. Glad I played through all the endings and appreciated the new missions/variations that get peppered in along the way, but my sore hands will be happy to move on to something with less frantic button pressing (partly my own fault for sticking with the laser handguns and not something with rapid fire).

I have been enjoying this game but in small doses. The levels are alot easier than the bosses.
I got up to Balteus and hit a bit of a wall. I looked up a guide that suggested a very light mecha, and I was frequently getting it down to the last 10% but he'd come and wreck me in the Nth minute.

I've seen a more tanky, heavy build suggested, but I guess the frustrating bit about re-speccing is that this is fine mid-mission, but not if you want to go to the shop. I also doubt this big tank build would be any good for the level preceding Balteus, so it's a given I'd have to sell all my current stuff, then buy everything for the tank build plus a build to get through the level.

How do you all feel about the build system? Do you find it easy to get your head around? I don't find the different parts easy to distinguish from each other and they all have quite cumbersome names, so it's kind of difficult for me to experiment. Instead it seems I'm reliant on online guides to tell me how to build my mecha.

Then again, it's early days for me. I've a lot to learn

Very soon you'll have enough money that you won't have to sell parts to make new builds, and can keep different saved mechs that you can easily switch to at a boss checkpoint (you could replay earlier missions to get that together if you want, the 'Destroy the Tester AC' one is popular for being very short with a decent payout).

I end up liking the build system. I don't even really look at the names, just the blue lines and numbers. Basically I go for a combo of legs + weapons that I want, and everything else is just to support that (with maybe more attention to the generator, especially if I'm using energy weapons). Again it got easier once I had a bunch of saved builds that I could tweak slightly at a boss checkpoint, rather than making builds from scratch.

Strictly anecdotal, but I feel that a couple of years after release people are still excitedly talking about "Elden Ring," but a couple of months after release far fewer people are talking about "Armored Core."

The reasons are:

Baldur's Gate 3 came out the week after and I think that just ate into everyone's play time
A much more linear storyline means less to discuss. Unlike Elden Ring.

I haven't really played much - I got to the second boss and then started BG3. I fully intend to get back into it.

It's a far shorter and more contained game that Elden Ring, and I haven't felt compelled to keep playing the multiplayer after finishing it (3x). It was still very memorable though.

I did end up really liking the story elements, there are some straightforward elements but there's certainly a lot left to the imagination about the various characters, and the AC reddit was still chewing on it last time I looked.

Yeah, I suspect I'll get to it at some point. But even setting aside "Baldur's Gate," there has been a steady stream of stuff that seems to have gotten, or will get, more attention. "Lies of P" or "Lords of the Fallen" for From nerds, "Spider-man 2" or "Alan Wake 2" for tech-chasing single player nerds, "RE4" remake and "Tears of the Kingdom" for franchise nerds, etc. There will always be distractions. Just arm-chairing, but I suspect it may be a combination of limited appeals: a long-dormant cult franchise, the still relatively niche appeal of From, factoring in how this game apparently deviates from formula, the reportedly now fixed frustrating early boss checks, and so on.

Yeah, funny because the front end of this year didn't seem especially fruitful for games and I ended up mostly going back to things like Dark Souls 1 and Sekiro. Then suddenly it's all go!

It's finally discounted (down to $40) but ... I just can't do it. Looks too frenetic, doesn't look fun, and I still have "Returnal" to play when I feel like self/controller punishment.

i played the first chapter and it was good (although really really hard at times, even by from standards) but what put me off continuing in favour of other games (bg3 actually came out weeks earlier on pc though) was that having to redesign my mech constantly to adapt to each level was such a hassle, it's just so complicated and difficult to assess what was an effective upgrade or not.

i'll get back to it eventually

That's what I find most frustrating, or unappealing. The last thing I want to do is constantly swap out 5 million different builds, depending on the battle. To each their own. Hell, there are people that really seem enthused about Balders Gate's character creator, but I couldn't give a shit about that stuff. I've tried watching a couple walkthroughs, and the first episode is almost always entirely creating a character.

UFO otm. I wish it were easier for me to tell one head set from another but it really is like trying to find the exact right replacement screw for secondhand flatpack furniture sometimes

I find From games tough enough without needing to juggle stats and builds.

I really wouldn't worry too much about the details. The main thing is picking legs and weapons (and maybe an appropriate FCS), and then just fill in the rest whatever will let you hit the weight/energy requirements.

I quickly hit a point where I had a few saved build templates that I liked, and I would just switch between those for the rest of the game. With occasional upgrades when I would get access to new weapons or wanted to try a different approach on a boss.

I thought I would find it stressful because I like to forget about stats in Souls games as quickly as possible, and avoid complicated builds. But honestly I found it much more relaxing than being locked into a build. It's fun to try things without having to start a new character and play the whole game over.