Continue to review Armored Core 6 Fires of Rubicon after New Game Plus

In his review of Armored Core 6 representing IGN, Mithcell Saltzman wrote that the game has a 15 hours long campaign. I thought he was taking a piss at first since I saw credits after 37 hours. In all fairness, the man did review Elden Ring for that site as well, so maybe he is just too good at this From Software action game thing to point out average play time. Then it only took me about 14 hours to see credits for the second time and 9 for the third time, minus the prologue the game skipped and some cut scenes I skipped, so I guess Mr. Salzman was on the money.

The way Fires of Rubicon unlocks its NG+ is straight forward enough: after one sees credits roll in this game and hears one of two NPCs expressing their hope for the player character’s choice of the future, the game simply loads up the hangar interface between missions with progress “rolled back” to Chapter 1 Mission 1. Well, all the weapons and Armored Core parts are present one unlocked are present, so are the all the missions one played through once before on Mission Replay selection. I guess the idea is that one plays a much better armed and more experienced stowaway to Rubicon 3 in NG+.

And much better armed should one be. The game presents branching points as early as in Chapter 1 Mission 3 in NG+ during one titled “Attack the Dam Complex”. The mission has a shot of being crowned the king of milk runs (Internet has another idea, though.) even for those with less powerful arsenal during their first rodeo: there are 2 allies, the targets are nailed to the ground and opposite side mostly has MT, a type of mech Armored Cores can play One-punch Man with. I mean one can start the mission unarmed and one-shot kill those little guys with fists.

This is when the plot thickened in NG+. The opposite side known as Rubicon Liberation Front (RLF for short) offered to double the pay if player can take out their “allies”. Should player take this offer, this is when that later game arsenal comes in handy since the player now has to face probably the most formidable enemy type this game has to offer: other Armored Cores.

One’s own worst enemy

Armored Core 6’s difficulty spikes are even listed as cons in the Gamespot review. Balteus and Sea Spider are 2 brought up on this forum, reportedly nerfed by the 1.02 patch. However, the mere size of those becomes disadvantage against player’s much more powerful late game arsenal. I am going to stick to my gun about how under armed player is in the first 2 chapters, since online PVP mode the game calls NEST would not unlock until one finished the second chapter. No point in having one’s severely outgunned ass chewed on the internet, heh?

Enforcer, aka that “transformer” those filth cops hid in the basement by chapter 4 while they were defeated in chapter 3, marked the end of big boy season in Armored Core. An enemy Armored Core with Moon Light Sword and Chapter 4 end boss Ibis would usher in the time of peer pressure. Ibis is technically not an Armored Core, but it can self-repair like one.

Enemy Armored Cores and this Ibis are around the same size as player, which makes them hard to hit at a distance. Armored Cores all have 3 repair kit as well so just as one thinks they are done the enemy would have another chunk of armor. They can move better than player, which allow they to hit player while player might not even have them in sight to fight back. They are better armed and armored so player must switch up builds to catch up.

The bots behind those Armored Core can behave reasonably according to arenas. As one late game boss in my third succeeding playthrough showed, they would move to the far side of the relatively big arena after all their repair kits used up. The true final boss would do the opposite, keeps pouncing on the player with the last half of their life bar, even the mastermind behind them would yell “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

“Destroy Tester AC” is another early game milk run, actually listed as Chapter 1 Mission 3 B as to "Attack the Dam Complex" listed as Chapter 1 Mission 3 A. Player is tasked to take out an enemy Armored Core. It’s a mission with only an enemy and that enemy has paper thin armor even against a player’s outgunned ass of the first playthrough. And it’s misleading since no enemy Armored Core goes down that easily after the “real” game began.

Garden variety?

Armored Core 6 has variety, in enemy types though not so much in mission type since “all you need is kill” covers the latter. Well, what one kills for besides the payment can be different stories.

The first all-new mission in NG+ is doing escort for RLF’s effort to save prisoners of war. Thankfully, the only escort mission in the whole game. The key to win is of course the ability to kill fast. The RLF craft would stop at 4 points on a map, the player’s task is basically going there ahead and clear the area. And which area is harder to clear out than the one before, with firepower upgrades and eventually an enemy Armored Core to take out.

There is an achievement/trophy called “Stargazer”, partially based on the song played over the real end credits, that is about unlocking all the missions for the Mission Replay selection. For those who want games to remind one of the previous choices one made, Mission Replay in Armored Core 6 is a not as streamlined way to do so. Mission Replay has all the mission names but no chapter numbers, so there is a lot of scrolling down to do if one wants to make sure that they are going to take another path.

Red vs. Blue vs. Green

3-way choice is a cliché for both video game and science fiction before the media form even began to have decent narrative. Mass Effect 3 ending fiasco back in 2012 certainly put a spotlight on that trope and colored the whole thing red, blue and green. Yours truly had traced this back to the early 1980s when Isaac Asimov caved in and wrote Foundation’s Edge. That book won him a second Hugo rocket for best novel and had a similar 3-way choice by its end. Funny how Fires of Rubicon’s 3 endings can be more or less colored red, blue and green as well.

By the end of Foundation’s Edge and its interstellar road trip, the protagonist was offered 3 options. Option one, give reign to Foundation’s fleet, which morphed from a beacon of hope into the most powerful military in the known galaxy, so one would just aid a warlord with this. Option two, defect to Second Foundation, who is a sworn enemy and secret cabal, so it would not feel right to say the least. Enters option three, which is giving in to a third unknown faction in hope of a united galaxy. Those are basically Destroy, Control and Syn of Mass Effect 3 and the three endings of Armored Core 6 are not too far.

Yours truly went for the blue one called “Liberator of Rubicon” first, since it’s the path of listening to the voice inside one’s head. Coral is resource people kill for in the world of Fires of Rubicon and turns out it’s an energy life form, quite old hat for science fiction. Ayre is a wave represented as a female voice addressing the player character by their callsign, Raven. She calls herself a Rubiconian and against the plot of someone who wants to burn her planet. So as much as this ending seems like “Go nuts” on the surface, its “Do not commit a war crime” goal is nothing but sanity itself.

Okay, here is the war crime ending. Turns out, Handler Walter, the man who brought player character to Rubicon 3, was planning to burn it all since the very beginning. Though maybe the “Fires of Raven” ended up bigger than any anticipation, since not just the planet Rubicon but the whole solar system is roasted to the point of unhabitable. To end the endless conflict surrounding Coral might seem noble enough, but it’s genocidal nonetheless.

I need to pause and talk about the final bosses for those endings respectively first. Those 2 bosses’ parts will be unlocked in NG+ after their defeats. Before liberating Rubicon, Handler Walter would get behind an Armored Core and make his last stand. His mech is surprisingly paper thin that the fight turns out to be a milk run. In the other ending, Ayre would get into a mech called Alba to stop the player from burning her people and planet. Alba is a harder nut to crack, it took me three tries.

The specs of those 2 seems to consistent no matter who is in the cockpit. Walter’s mech is quite useless since it can never bear the weight of heavy firepower I went for in NG+ while Alba can take hits and pack serious heat. Guess that voice in one’s head is picky.

Back to the ending, finally there is the green but not that green ending with that Latin saying meaning “Dice have been cast”. The mercenary support AI All Mind turns out to be up some shit of their own, something called Coral Release Project. Ayre in the player’s voice does agree with the project but not want to be absorbed by All Mind. So, the final battle here is for one’s free will.

This “true” ending does have its exclusive anime usual suspects. All Mind first posed as a lady merc named Kate Markson, voiced by Lynn, a regular cast member of Mobile Suit Gundam Witch from Mercury. All Mind themselves is voiced by Megumi Han. Young Megumi is an anime usual suspect of her own right, but her mother is more famed since Han Senior was in 1979’s original Gundam at a recuring capacity. Han Junior is also the Japanese voice of Ellie in the Last of Us series, dubbing over both Ashley Johnson and Bella Ramsey. Guess she is pretty good at this “up to no good” type.

The fight before the true end is hard though not outgunned by Balteus hard. It does have the nasty habit of having a cut scene in the middle but no checkpointing. All Mind has the ability to put dead merc’s er mind into mechs, so they put one especially antagonistic towards the player into 2 different mechs and offers additional helps. The wise thing to do is focus fire on the one big life bar of the boss. The second phase of this fight might be when the 1.02 patch helped me out, since the help is two floating Sea Spiders.

After the player’s victory, Coral spread from Rubicon and found bodies in Armored Cores. They became a new people, and maybe on a warpath since the last line of this game is “Combat mode, initiated” said by Ayre. It’s the same line uttered by player Armored Core’s computer whenever control is turned over to player at the start of missions. Maybe in the unnumbered continuation to Armored Core 6, this lot can be seen invading Earth, trading in one more complicated trope for a simpler one.

Let the last cinders burn

60 hours of playing and thoughts summed up in more than 3000 words later, Armored Core 6 Fires of Rubicon and yours truly are finally relieving each other. I’ve spent most of my spare time playing and thinking about this game for the last 2 weeks. Thanks to its checkpointing, I finally see credits roll in a From Software joint and sadly its appeal seems more niche than those dark fantasy epic. Hopefully my effort can feed this particular fire.