Armored Core 6 preview: Mech battler borrows from Souls games in the best way

It’s hard to think back to a developer that’s enjoyed a meteoric rise as From Software has. From Demon’s Souls all the way to last year’s Game of the Year Elden Ring, the studio has stuck to its core design tenets to craft an entirely new subgenre - the Soulsborne.

And yet, 2023 brings something that brings one of the studio’s earliest franchises back into the light. Armored Core 6 isn’t a Soulsborne title, but it remains resolute in its commitment to many similar design principles from the games that made the studio one of the most revered in today’s gaming landscape.

The result, as far as we can glean from a behind-closed-doors hands-off demo, has the potential to reignite the mech-action genre.

Metal Soul

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One of the most impressive elements of Elden Ring was in how it ensured every possible playstyle felt viable - from flinging meteor spells, to roleplaying a Samurai, there was no “right” way to play.

Armored Core 6 smartly leans into this, and in our look at an early build of the game, we saw the ability to tackle skirmishes with standard-fare enemies by scanning ahead to get the drop on them, firing volleys of rockets from a distance, or getting in close with the Assault boost to close the gap.

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That boost certainly looks a lot zippier to use than the now-iconic Dark Souls dodge, and you’ll need it, too - not just in combat, but to traverse Armored Core 6’s large maps.

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In our demo we saw some kind of industrial complex of overlapping bridges and builds, all brimming with detail. One wrong step, however, would lead to a steep drop. Still, the improved movement options definitely afford plenty of potential for wild action sequences - there’s even a “vertical catapult” to send your mech careening to little new heights to deal death and destruction.

Not everything is there to help you, though. Armored Core 6 will feature both more open areas and more confined ones, with the latter leaning on the Souls shtick of keeping enemies just out of sight.

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In the demo we saw, that means an enemy jumped down from above to get the drop on the player. You can turn the tables, however, by scanning the area to locate threats before rounding the corner and unleashing enough firepower to blow up the moon.

All Gun(dams) Blazing

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So, what of that firepower then? We saw a primary weapon with rapid-fire, an impressive display of missiles, and melee combat, as well as a defensive shield which could be crucial in those smaller combat areas where space is at a premium.

Naturally, we’re yet to go hands-on, but as we watched the demo mech glide gracefully around the mission, it’s clear combat will offer the kind of feedback you’d expect from a 2023 game only launching on current generation consoles and PC.

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Rockets zip through the air, sparks fly as metal meets metal, and the dash manoeuvre lends a sense of speed to proceedings with motion blur.

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We saw the mech in our demo move through smaller enemies with relative ease, before being destroyed by a larger, more challenging foe. It’s here that we saw the customisation menu, with players able to duck out from a defeat, retool their mech, and get back into the action from the last checkpoint.

Building your walking (or rolling) death machine in Armored Core games of the past has often felt obfuscated by a mass of menus and stats, and while much of that remains, it’s nicely laid out here - at least in the build we saw.

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The system looks flexible, too, with our demo mech pilot swapping out parts to counter specific threats. The move to a more manoeuvrable pair of legs, dropping explosives from the ceiling and utilising a “stagger” mechanic that stuns an enemy to prepare for multiple critical hits, saw the machine destroyed at the second time of asking.

That focus on build creativity could be where Armored Core 6 finds its legs (no pun intended), and feels like FromSoft going full circle. Smartly leaning into a more accessible build system to mix up play styles might be what keeps its community coming back months after launch.

Hard Core

The mission finishes with a huge boss battle, with a machine of a truly staggering size. We didn’t get to see whether the pilot managed to defeat it, but

“Giving a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment [after finishing a battle] is what makes Armored Core 6 unique,” the game’s Lead Producer, Yasunori Ogura explained.

That makes it likely that players can expect a sizeable learning curve and high difficulty level, something Soulsborne fans will get a kick out of - but we’ll know more when we go hands-on for ourselves.

Final Thoughts

Armored Core 6 feels like it takes just the right amount from the likes of Elden Ring, and mixes it in with its own heritage to make something flashy, explosive, and full of creative opportunities.

In a world sadly bereft of mech action games, this hands-off demo crystallised this writer’s belief that if anything can rebuild the genre, it's Armored Core 6.

Armored Core 6 launches on August 25, 2023.