Armored Core 6 - Review After 100% 

Unsurprisingly, with my unfamiliarity with the series really, the target lock problem seems to be mostly a PC port issue where moving the camera/mouse breaks the target lock. That doesn't really change my criticism, that's still poorly implemented design imo, but does confirm my speculation that it was intentional.

I wish more games had NG+ similar to this one where you get more content or unique decisions. I know it’s a risk to implement but it’s so rewarding for the player

Just a quick correction for 17:40 - the quick boost has no i-frames at all. It will only avoid damage if it takes you out of the danger zone entirely. A tricky thing if you're used to dodging through attacks from Elden Ring!

If you want auto-lock to track enemy movements you should NOT move the right analog stick while it’s engaged; the game will assume you want to aim manually and break the auto-lock

If you saw the earlier AC entries, you'd see that the challenge was a lot of the time about correctly tracking enemies in your firing rectangle. So yes, enemies moving behind you and making themselves hard to lock onto is very much a feature. Making lock-on track perfectly would perhaps make fast AC builds lose their edge in combat.

I loved how NG++ was the most fun playthrough. It felt like a completely new story while already being invested from the start and having the lore knowledge to put everything together. Gameplay wise it’s already my goty but the story shouldn’t be underestimated.

This game is top tier , i very much enjoyed other games like re4 remake , baldur's gate 3 and starfield but AC6 is my favorite game of the year so far

One thing I really have to give to Fromsoft is how well the story is told and how effective the more emotional story beats are considering how little time/few lines of dialog we actually have for the characters. Like, there were moments when X or Y happens and it elicited pretty intense reactions from me (and pretty much all of my friends), and that's honestly impressive. Rusty and Carla (as well as Walter and Chatty) are some of my favourite characters in this game, but if you count the amount of lines they have/screentime they get, it's PRETTY minimal, all things considered.

The hard lock does track bosses fine but if you move the camera even a little bit while it is active that will break the lock on. This is more of an issue on KB/M then controller since it is easy to accidently move your mouse which will brake your hard lock.

It's time, I appreciate the grind!

Really enjoyed your Review! Probably going to be my Game of the Year with how good the Gameplay is and how much i enjoyed the Story especially after multiple Runs. Theres something i really like about Stories that dont give u everything instantly. Finding Logs, Sketches and other Stuff while piecing together the Story while playing was alot of fun. I hope they are going to do a Expansion like they did with all the other AC Games. Thanks again for checking it out and making a good, comprehensive Review!

I was really hoping you were gonna do one of these. I love the in-depth nature of your coverage.

target assist lock on never breaks! if it breaks it means you are touching mouse (moving it even a little) / touching camera control stick. doesn’t matter what boss does, camera will catch up

Glad to see you actually made a full review in the end. It's a great game.

Pretty sure there are no s on the quick boost

I still haven't played through it yet, but i stopped by to say that you are a madman for putting out this review when you said you probably wouldn't do this game. I'll come back to the review after I do my playthrough. 🤘

My first Armored Core game too, as well as the first mech game I've played since Mechwarrior 2 (yea I'm old). Love it! I'm fascinated by the story, really like the atmosphere, can't get enough of the gameplay and feel that the focused, narrow approach is really fresh after all the great and not so great open-world live services I've played in the last few years.

This is the first game where I actually WANTED to go through NG+/++ due to the changes and the extra unlockables.

Thanks for this thorough review. It has definitely helped me decide if i wanted to purchase now or wait for sale

I'm like you, as this is my first Armored Core game. But also, this is my first Fromsoft game ever. I've been having so much fun, feeling myself get a little better as the game goes on. I'm starting my NG+ run now and I'm so excited. I loved the challenge of every boss, honestly only Balteus gave me trouble early on cause your early builds get outclassed later on. I tried the wombo combo of Laser Lance and Pile Bunker on cel 240 and every boss after and it was super engaging. Plus, the fact I used a Flightstick rebound to keyboard controls was really fun too. My favorite thing by far has been the customization and decals, I feel like the depth you can accomplish is amazing and people have been creating some incredible decals to share with everyone.

The lock on is is very useful when you specialize in melee build. Toggling them on and off takes a skill too.

Thank you for another awesome review!

Welcome on board, Raven. There's not that many of of us, tho if AC6 hits 3mil copies, we might see AC7 within 5 years using the same engine.

Amazing game... On my 4th playthrough trying to get S-grades for the platinum. I highly recommend this game

Thanks again for covering this game!

I really appreciate you taking the time to 100% it before giving your thoughts. Very fair review, subscribed!

Great Review!! Thank you very Much 😎

Great review man. NG+2 now and really really enjoying the game

This game, more than any other new release, should remind players that gameplay and fun trump anything else related to modern day gaming. Ive enjoyed all the bigger releases this year, but no other game hits the spot like this one. This takes me back to a simpler time in my life, and i really love it. Thanks for sharing your experiences with this Mort.

Great review as always! 👍

It's nice seeing another entry in this franchise after so many years. I got started with the OG trilogy on the PSX way back in the day, great stuff.

if you use controller... hard lock on and then let go of right stick and ive been able to follow and track enemies as they move 180 even in the ibis and ayre fights. the hardlock is really set it and dont touch the camera stick. toom me till near the end to realize that moving the camera while hardlocked breaks the hard lock tracking meaning you have to let the game track for you

Considering picking this up to break in between my sessions with BG3 :)

Target lock is only funky like that on mnk. It registers any mouse movement as you trying to select another enemy. If you use a controller and target lock without touching the right stick at all it'll follow enemies perfectly regardless of their move speed. Though it's still not ideal as target lock significantly reduces your accuracy. Also there are no I frames on the quick boost.

This has become one of my favorite games of all time. As someone who is a dad and has ADHD its hard to stick to the same game much less get time to play. I sit down for a bit before bed most nights and sometimes I'll just replay my favorite missions. NG+ is really cool so far as new things are popping up. I adore this game. MechWarrior 2 Mercenaries got me into mechs at an early age and AC6 is keeping the cinders ablaze in my mid 30's. What an amazing game! Now im just hoping for more! DLC or a sequel, ill take all of it!

I also 100% the game and I am glad you gave the game a proper chance. All the point you raised were valid and true. Even after doing 100% I am sure gonna boot this game time to time just for the fun missions and combats. It's a game from heaven for mech nerds like me.

Mort regarding the target lock. When you have it on let go of the right stick and you will always stick perfectly on your target. Took me to NG++ to realize 😅. Unsure how it works on m+kb though.

lol I thought you were gonna leave this one, I certainly won't torture myself with that all S challenge😂 Anyway amazing job as always! (PS: I got stuck for a while on that second boss as well)

This is a must play for any fast paced combat fans that dont shy from a challenge!

I like and agree throughout the difficulty portion, mostly final remarks, its more/often adapting builds.

Aw yeah I'm really glad this game won you over for the 100% review. Thanks for the awesome review Mortem

I'm glad to see this franchise back, and being generally received well.

Out of any game I've played this year this one was such a breath of fresh air for me, I had never experienced a mecha game before especially fromthis series, so to finally have an opportunity to play it in my lifetime is amazing, I'm not far in the game right now but I can at least say I made it further then most at the beginning, aka I beat the tutorial boss on my second try when I started to adapt to the control scheme

Nice, this is my GOTY so far, amazing game

It is the first game where I adjusted the camera speed. Because I had a specific build with expensive ammo and the battle went long, I did have a success that ended with negative credits. So it is possible. One issue is if you respec your arena points and remove something like Pulse armor, any mech you had with pulse armor can no longer be loaded, even to remove pulse armor and correct.

“What do you call the fires of rubicon!?” “Theyre Coral Carl! CORAL!”

Ahh, AC6 - my current game of the year. About the lock-on, using it is not as good as manually targeting and it will give you accuracy penalties, sure with the right arms and fire control systems it's not the largest penalty but it can give you severe accuracy penalties if your mech isn't built to use it (The stat is called Target Tracking). I didn't have issues with losing targets when locked on but I mostly used as light a mech as I could while still retaining reasonable firepower (and a reasonable lock on accuracy). There's also Recoil Control that means something if using rapid fire weapons and Melee Specialization if punching.

Finally a reviewer who actually plays through the entire game before coming to an opinion on it instead of playing up to half way and complaining about stuff that gets addressed later

Im so glad you actually leaned into this game and really played it and finished 100% of it. I remember when Mort Was like "I dont like mech games, but it's Fromsoft mech game, So I will give it a try" seeing this 100% review means you were probably pleasantly surprised ...AC6 is one of my fave games of 2023 and that's really saying something because this was a HUGE year for games with some massive titles dropping some of their best work yet

I like the part where corpo team up, reminiscent of Lost Planet 2 final chapter boss fight.

I love this game. I was looking forward to BG3 for 5 years, and for the most part, it delivered. But AC6 just has me in a vice grip, Ng+ and ++ are excellent

Hell yeah. Highly customizable giant robots that I get to blow stuff up with, and it's a game that released without any notable bugs? Easy cop. I genuinely want to buy this game at full price just to support the devs on this one. We don't get bug free games on launch hardly at all anymore, especially not higher quality games like this, and as consumers we gotta speak with our wallets.

This man never fails to deliver

Just started playing AC 6, and I'm loving every second 🔥💯

Excellent video

AC6 is, in my opinion, the perfect escalation of difficulty. It slowly cranks up the difficulty over all three playthroughs and never had that spike that so many games have. Yes, there are "filter" bosses but 9/10, they're a build problem not a skill problem. And you don't even realize how much better you've gotten at the game until you start a new playthrough and suddenly you're killing the chopper without getting hit.

Mecha Mecha! Good show sir

"The tutorial comes after the first boss" is the kind of trolling fromsoft has been doing since forever, and I'm kind of surprised that a decade and even a rise to riches hasn't knocked that instinct out of them. I personally love it, but the studio clearly doesn't care that it will turn some players away.

Cool review, I might pick this up for the deck. Starfield launches and the fps is fine, but is just a tad too finicky with the gamepad controls either feeling like the sensitivity is broken or thinking I’m using WASD and just not responding at all.

Armored Core 6 has been my favorite action game in a long, long time. Probably since the first Devil May Cry on PS2. Maybe Zone of the Enders. I’ve played other Armored Core games, but this one felt more accessible and way more fun. I hope From gives us more Armored Core.

I never lost hardlock against a boss. I heard hardlock is very brittle if you are using a mouse and keyboard, because if you basically touch your mouse, it counts as disabling hardlock since you manually moved you camera.

I really love that this game locks multiplayer behind the story. I think thats a dope direction.

Best review channel on RU-vid.

dope game

I’d be down to watch some Armored Core lore overviews if you make them!

Maybe they should add an option of breaking lock only by pressing the corresponding key, that would allow some camera movement without disabling lock on, the only benefit of breaking lock-on with mouse or RS is to boost away from the enemy when needed

I love that this game is very inspired by Dune. A very strong GOTY contender for me!

Another great video. Keep it up. If I may. What screen are you playing on?

I found increasing the camera speed helped with lock ones.

Perfect review.

Another thing to mention about lock on is that being fully locked on actually decreases your accuracy. This isnt as big on an issue for close range builds which try to be sub 200m from a target but beyond that the penalty is very heavy

I loved this game so much! Got the platinum and then started a new game 😅

you the man morty

I love Armored Core. Been playing since the PS2 version

For those having issues with the sea spider, use the quad legs and hover above it for as much of the fight as possible. Makes the fight much more manageable.

This game is amazing on steam deck! Had it on ps5 and returned it because it was far more fun on the deck.

I'm impressed you got an S rank on every mission since they don't tend to be clear on what criteria makes an S rank i gave up on trying to 100% it.

Changing the game to fullscreen windowed mode as well as turning HDR off fixed the grayscale issue for me. Good job on the S ranks though, its all I'm missing atm and not sure if I'm getting it any time soon.

Really don't understand how you have the time to 100 all these games but I really enjoy the in depth review

Going to do another livestream anytime soon?? We love the livestreams for 100%

More Armored Core tips for newcomers: - Some missles are classified as "pincers", because they pause / have an arc trayectory before hitting so you can use them for pressure tactics. The idea is that you get in range of your other weapon, trigger the pincers, charge in and slash or shoot as the pincers hit in order for them to track the pressured enemies. I used them for a while and they are definitely viable with practice. - Weapons show their "Ideal" and "Effective" ranges in the extended Stat section: Ideal is minimal chance to ricochet; the further from it you go, the chance to ricochet increases. Ricochet Hits can still be valuable though, while they inflict a minimum amount of damage and stagger they also briefly pause your target's stagger bar from draining. - In the shop, press Square to show a brief video of how a weapon fires. This will show all firing modes on any weapon. Good fast way to get an idea how long something takes to charge or how a missile will fly before you purchase it. You can change the name of your AC on the AC Data screen. By default it is named "Loader 4".

God I've enjoyed this game, pro tip, making different choices in new game plus is the only way to progress to the new missions

I do appreciate you done this review..non biased.. while the whole time it sounds like it's obviously you didn't like the game..but still pointed out the positives.. if that makes sense

2:08 any landing you can walk away from... onward to 300k. All glory to the algorithm.

Your at 100 percent. Im still at the sea spider…. Got pretty close last night

Thanks!

The hard lock on does not break UNLESS you move your mouse/joystick first. I noticed this on accident, and it is a very weird mechanic

bro, I gotta use that line "you either rise to the occasion, or you can't" - it sounds better than "git gud scrub.'

The hard lock breaking must be a mouse and keyboard thing cause on PS5 I had no issues. But using a soft lock has it's advantages as well so using both is suggested for most.

How are the missiles in the game? I always loved making massive missile builds in the ps2 armored core games.

its a great game. always been a fan of AC, but i can easily recommend to friends now...Fromsoft needs to learn to do tutorials better, they getting there. (must be their oly weak point). Having played all AC games since the beginning I can assure you ..they come a long way. Better gameplay. better controls. better missions and better story than any previous games. A game dev that actually builds upon their basics thats what fromsoft does, im really excited for their future games..they just keep getting better. Great thing the Devs love brought this franchise back from the past. Mortismal makes the only Reviews i can Trust lately. Hope your channel Hits 1 million subs, you deserve it.

I fucking loved AC6. It was brilliant. Adrenaline at 300% . Combat, music, story, I loved everything. My GOTY

FCS stands for Fire Control System which is a actual system used in irl war ships

My only real problem with this one is that it really does stagger out weapon types this time in a way that earlier AC entries didn't. It's done for a learning curve of sorts, giving you enemies that do take a lot more damage from the stuff just unlocked, and trying not to overload you...but I want my chainguns dang-nabit. The fact that it takes until past the tenth mission to unlock one, and several missions later before you can pop on four and become a mobile turret is annoying to me. But I do get it, that's not an easy playstyle, though easier than most others thanks to that stagger meter. I have yet to have any trouble with an AC with this build as the moment I hit them, they immediately stagger with all four guns going at once.

I think Fromsoft intended for the target lock to drop on certain boss moves. Like everything else (except for a few cheese tactics that will probably get nerfed very soon) it is meant as a tool rather than a default thing you do. They even put a disadvantage to your accuracy in place while you are locked on the reinforce this idea. Just a shame that fromsoft doesn't communicate these things at all.

Legit my favorite game of 2023 so far. Haven’t played Baulder’s Gate 3 yet tho…

Bosses moving fast dont brake the hard lock on, but hard lock on is very easily broken by mouse movement, so to keep target hard locked on bind shooting to keyboard switch to mouse less playstyle vs bosses or hold your mouse in the air to avoid mouse movement which will break lock on

I'd play the hell out of this if it was turn based but I appreciate you giving us a peek nonetheless. Looks cool and I'm a FROM fan so I hope it did well.

My ac was composed of a high inpact sirect damage gun and a lance, made my NG+ faster

Finally a game that feels like a game