Never underestimate the insatiable appetite gamers have for giant robot battles. That appetite has propelled Armored Core 6 to the top spot on Steam’s global sales charts more than a decade after the last numbered entry in the series was released, knocking Baldur’s Gate 3 off the top spot.
In a summer filled with huge releases, few could have predicted that Armored Core 6 would be able to find such a large audience. The phenomenal success of last year’s Elden Ring certainly didn’t hurt. Speaking to GameIndustry.biz, Bandai Namco Europe CEO Arnaud Muller explained that Elden Ring has given FromSoftware a “guarantee of quality” among fans.
The negative reviews on Steam are hilarious. Most of them have 0.5 hours on record and are complaining that they can’t beat the first boss. Which means they most likely spent no more than 10 minutes trying.
It’s not like their complaints are entirely without merit though. I expected difficulty with a From Software game but usually there is an on-ramp to the difficulty.
In AC6 that’s completely missing. You’re given four trivial fights with almost no tutorialization before being put against a boss that expects you to know about the (yet unexplained) stagger bar and also expects you to use your sword against the helicopter which is somewhat unintuitive, especially since you’ve only been told to use the sword once and it was against enemies with a shield which reinforces the idea that sword beats shield, and the helicopter has no shield.
Honestly, welcome to Armored Core. A brutal first mission is a staple of the series.
Fair enough. This is indeed my first Armored Core experience and I expected an uphill struggle coming in on iteration 6 of the series, but clearly I wasn’t prepared for this :P
I’ll get there eventually. Just need to keep ramming my head against it until something clicks
Depending on how you approach Dark Souls (there are many ways to approach it, it literally begins with a character creation screen that fails to explain your options), sometimes it does not have a difficulty curve - and people who get that experience generally stop playing all FromSoft games.
Sure, but in Dark Souls there’s still significantly better design at work.
Some differences in Dark Souls:
- tutorial messages before the first major encounter explaining the controls
- the difficulty scale between the entry level monsters and the boss is much smaller
- the player can customize their build at least a little bit by selecting their starting loadout
- the first boss is often difficult, but even if the player fails they can still progress the game since they’re expected to lose.
AC6 on the other hand lacks all of that. It gives you no tutorialization. You’re told to use a sword against shielded enemies and then you’re suppose to somehow infer that the helicopter is also weak to swords. You’re meant to build up a stagger bar to open a window for big damage, but they haven’t even mentioned the stagger bars existence at this point in the game. You’re stuck in a single mech loadout with no way to customize.
Imagine if you had to fully kill the asylum demon the first time you encounter it. You’ve got no plunge damage, no gear, no grasp of the controls, you’re just forced to walk out of the jail door and beat the boss before you can engage with any other elements of the game. That’s much closer to AC6’s presentation
On ramp to difficulty
Laughs in Asylum Demon
It didn’t die to 15 seconds of me standing still shooting it in the armor! This is elitist bullshit!!!
Tbf a lot of people give up on all souls games after they can’t beat the first boss, I’ve known people that can’t even get to the first boss
DS3 literally starts with a boss that is quite challenging if you’re not used to DS already. Just “here is a sword, here is how to swing it, here is a bear of a man with an oozing snake hand - kill him”. A lot of players bounced off him.
Fromsoft isn’t in the business of making easy games, it’s just different variations of challenging. For people that like that it’s great. For a lot of people that very understandably is a turn off.
Gundyr on purpose acts as an early check for the player if they would enjoy the rest of the game or not. If you can’t beat him and don’t like the trial-and-error learning process required to do so, then you most likely wouldn’t enjoy or get much further in the game anyway.
I’ve beaten several games that I’d generally consider hard by their endings, but I honestly think FromSoft is just really bad at doing difficulty curves and player teaching - they just defend it all through the theme of being “difficulty edgelords” that don’t follow mainstream design.
Yea there’s nothing wrong with making a game that’s not for everyone. Not everything needs to be easy, those that crave a challenge obviously love from soft for the pain. I’ve played a few of the games and won’t say I’m an uber fan of them like some but I enjoyed them. I’m looking forward to ac6 but will have to wait til I’m tired of bg3 and that will be a bit
Oooh, I gotta read those discussion threads, the ones for Baldur’s Gate 3 were delightfully spicy and filled to the brim with gamers who wanted the game to cater to their exact power fantasies.
Check this one out that I found https://i.imgur.com/9fvEX1k.png
starfield
Lol I say. Lmao
No need to shit on the other games in there, that person’s a complete dumbass all on their own if they seriously didn’t look into the basic premise of the game before buying it.
Their implication that starfield will be playable in the near future is just an additional layer to their raw onion opinion. I’m not disparaging starfield for nearly certainly coming out broken, I’m laughing at the review’s low info takes.
Gotcha, thanks for the context.
The first boss was kind of a PITA because it kept saying I need to get off the ground to avoid the explosions, so I’d launch into the air and just get smashed by direct hits. I finally beat it by landing up on top of the fucker and using the laser sword.
That’s me. I uninstalled it after the first boss fight. But I tried for Solid 2 hours 🥲
Close the gap with assault boost and use the left arm sword ability to break poise then use missiles and bullets send maybe more sword if it charges in time
whole fight can be won in like a minute, was a very fast paced boss fight
After the last several games topping the charts and being wildly successful, I can’t help but think of that EA article saying that story driven single player games are dead.
I can’t wait to see publisher’s emulating the success of no microtransactions and quality over live service garbage.
Who cares “thanks to Elden Ring” or not, as an Armored Core fan, I’m just happy for more Armored Core and for many players to give it a chance for the first time.
Because every from soft game is a dark souls game, obviously
/S
Been a long-time souls fan, but AC was before my time so I never got into it. Picked AC6 up last night and am having a blast so far!
“Guarantee of quality”… every time I read something like that now I have to think about the state that Cyberpunk was released in…
Has FromSoft ever released a bad game? Legitimate question.
Ninja Blade is hilariously terrible, watch some gameplay on YouTube for a good time.
Michigan report from hell meets god of war. What an absolute game. Truly a piece of media.
The first time they do will be the first one they release.
…my point is it doesn’t really matter, don’t preorder because you run the risk of supporting that first one. You can support good games after it’s clear that they’re good.
Seems like their PC ports are usually pretty rough on launch, but I’ve been playing since Demon’s Souls and they haven’t released a game I don’t like.
Absolutely, most if not all studios have released at least one stinker.
Dark souls 2 was their cyberpunk 2077.
People were expecting better graphics, level design, and boss design on release.
Unpopular opinion obviously but I loved ds2, except for the poison spitting goddam statues and the level that was so dark you couldn’t even see the goddam poison spitting statue before it spit goddam poison at you in the dark.
DS2 is also a fantastic example why just because something is by a certain studio doesn’t necessarily mean much as it was made almost entirely by the B-team while the core developers were busy making Bloodborne. So while it is by FromSoft, the people working on it were mostly the ones responsible for the A.C.E series IIRC.
The same thing is what happened with Mass Effect: Andromeda as the OG trilogy team was busy making up the mess called Anthem.
Ah yes, cynicism ad nauseam
I’m just glad armored core is FINALLY selling as many copies as the franchise deserves. Armored core is far too good to stay a cult classic, and I’m beyond excited about potential remasters.
I have played a few AC games (2, 3 and 4 maybe?) on PS2 and loved it. I’m so glad I get to enjoy an AC again!
Got to admit, I’m not a patient game on either Baldur’s Gate 3 or Armored Core 6.
I’ve had ac6 on the top of my steam wishlist all year but BG3 full releasing right before it means I won’t be picking it up for at least a few months. Maybe if there is a Christmas sale I’ll pick it up but I doubt I’ll be done with bg3 by then
I still am, I have previous similar games to finish first.
I hope it’s going to make the mech game market better. Maybe a new Battletech game?
Handler: “Alright, then. Time to get to work, 621.”
Me, a furry: “What did he call me, UwU?”
I’ve only done 3 missions so far. The emblem creator is fucking dope. I’ve spent more time making this emblem than playing the game lol
