Glad you like them!

Then comes Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon, announced December 8th 2022 at the Game Awards, over nine years since anything Armored Core, which blew away the expectations of the fanbase of both the franchise's fandom and the FromSoft fans themselves. It would release 25th August 2023, only roughly exactly 2 weeks before Verdict Day's 10th Anniversary, and sold the best of any game in the series, at 2.8 million copies as of October 2023 according to Wikipedia. Not only was the story well done, as usual, the gameplay was fresh and agile, giving us what might perhaps be the second best ACs in terms of controls and capabilities, only behind the NEXTs, with being able to fire shoulder weapons without having to switch from hand weapons to them. The movement felt real and clunky yet agile and floaty, riding that perfect fine point between too anime and too realistic, a perfect place that avoids making the ACs clunky like all the games beforehand, but doesn't make them so floaty to the point that mechanics are the only thing keeping us from flying all the time. The missions are fun, the boss fights are properly challenging, and the customisation is top dollar. The content you can find in NG+ and NG++ to get all 3 endings gives wonderful challenge, and almost every single time the game's difficulty feels more like it stems from proper customisation than high difficulty and timing. So unlike your usual FromSoft game where you typically have to "get gud" and time your dodge rolls, how you set up your mecha and utilise what you use IS the difference between victory and defeat, rather than possibly being it. And customisation is critical. When the game was approaching launch date, people were concerned with heavyweight tank builds being king meta, but for the most part, you can generally use any good well designed build, and it'll be fine. The super hefty assault boost boosters can be used with double shotguns and a melee for high stagger and dodging, despite them not being so decent for most gameplay. Some weapons that seem worthless end up becoming high quality in the right builds, such as certain energy weapons benefitting from a VE generator's high Energy Firearm Spec. Super fast mobile lightweight builds can benefit from oddball parts assuming they fit well. It's almost impossible to accidentally make a bad build, and in my experience not only as beating the game in less than a week whilst being my first and only FromSoftware game ever, it felt rewarding and just exactly the right amount of challenge for a newcomer to the series, and most certainly also for veterans coming back from a near exactly decade long wait.

I even improved my AC building simply on my own, making builds with parts I first discarded as not great for how I wanted to play originally, and making surprisingly fun and even viable builds. The lightweight Schneider biped legs I consider not great to how I usually make builds, but with a certain lightweight build, they ended up being super viable for the exact kind of build I went for. A high explosive build I had made had a critical flaw of not having great upward movement abilities for being a big explosive user, making landing hits harder, so my fix was to equip it with the heavyweight reverse joint legs known as the "Spring Chicken", which could hold the high load limit but most importantly, it could naturally jump high without needing to boost, meaning I had more energy to work with for dashing where needed and get more use out of the explosives. Of course, this came with the consequence of receiving more staggers, but the build was a heavyweight already, and it still was highly capable. Testing is very fun, and I still was happy with how it came out, so even if the testing ended up getting worse, with a first try victory before switching to the reverse legs, and 3 losses before a victory after, it still felt better than before, as it felt like it was working as it intended more than it used to, with one of those losses being attributed to having a bad stagger resulting in thousands of damage, and another just me dropping the ball and not landing good hits so I lost by attrition. I even have experience using a build that crushed the 3rd path final boss harder than a build that used the meta Zimmerman shotguns that was using gatling guns and a machine gun that I later found out was bad, and did it so well that it beat it and got an S rank with ease, whilst having an easier time. Simultaneously, this build in single attempts against the other final bosses, those being the good and bad ending paths, got the AC destroyed. So the takeaway people should have from this is, what could be an amazing build that destroys one enemy, might be worth nothing versus another, and so, you must experiment and see what works best against each enemy. For those who wish to get into Armored Core and feel pensive or cautious because of FromSoft's reputation for making difficult games, don't be. Armored Core is challenging, but it is fair. It rewards patience and planning, experimenting with builds to see what works. While your build is what dictates if you succeed or not, skill is also important. Both play hand in hand, and this leads to some god tier builds being bad in some people's hands, whilst intentionally bad builds become secretly impressive in others. My final build that defeated the 3rd final boss on my first try was a double zimmerman build with vertical missiles and a pile bunker Ashmead melee, whilst running the Shade Eye head, Tian Qiang heavy core, Spring Chicken Legs, and Basho Arms for melee damage boost, with a missile focused FCS, heavy NGI boosters and the San Tai heavyweight Dafeng generator. Any veterans can easily see that by now, that build is atrocious as hell. The Basho arms have poor arm load limits, and not so great firearms, and for what I was going for could easily have been swapped out for the VP-D arms that have much better firearm spec and only slightly less melee spec. The heavyweiht reverse joints aren't so great, and the San Tai, being the fifth heaviest generator in the game, ends up ranking in the super low end of EN Output to balance out it having some of the best general performance stats in the game. The Talbot FCS would have worked better, and switching for more reliable forward missiles would have been a better play. This goes to show that even someone who's not so great at games, like myself, going into a FromSoftware title for the very first time, can still eek out a win against a highly challenging boss with a subpar build. So my recommendation to those watching this; if you got the interest to, and wish to get involved, join in the fun. Learn how to play, learn how your mechs work, build an AC to how 'you' want to play. Experiment with other playstyles and builds, test them out, see how they gel with you. Find something you didn't expect to be good and turned out to work well? Use it, see how it goes. Just because a lightweight AC like Steel Haze can run circles around your heavyweight tank doesn't mean you should play their game. Enemy loves dashing about and breaking locks; run full missiles to ignore accuracy and swarm them with missiles, and should they get staggered from having super low stability on easily stagger-able parts for mobility, slam them with a fast hard hitting attack like a shotgun or melee. Got a heavyweight staggering you all the time that just won't stop? Either make a super fast agile AC that loves jumping with reverse joint or high jump height legs to avoid their explosions, as you whittle down their health and build up their stagger with some good close range gear, making sure to avoid attacks. Or just outstagger them with a super heavyweight that plays their game even harder with giant explosive weaponry, that works too. A true Armored Core player is one who is persistent, able to see failure less as a defeat, and instead as "back to the drawing board", to see what works best. Armored Core is about experimentation, finding what builds work. Some old builds might be super powerful, but cost lots in ammo and repair bills because the firepower is pricy and it isn't great for avoiding damage. Finding the right build for the right job is exactly the point of Armored Core. Where Dark Souls can get you down by slamming you to death for being just too slow, Armored Core can have victory be from correct cover use, using boosts to instead reduce how many missiles hit you rather than all of them, and remembering to jump to avoid big explosions so you can avoid damage altogether. It rewards players primarily with good skill, good reactions, and the proper patience and thinking to make a build that, not destroys everything, but rather just works for the job. The games will teach you that making something for one specific purpose has its place. Endurance for long missions, super fast firepower for quick fights, versatility for dealing with basic MTs and later some ACs, survivability for high damage coming your way. Make your own path, and you will come out on top. Any of you who wish to join in, while you may not be Ravens, we will still accept you with open arms if you prove yourself as having what it takes to become the pilot of your very own unique Armored Core. Get out there and show what you're made of.

This is so great

Thank you for the suggestion! I'll look into it.