Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon

(About one 37 hours long single playthrough to get the “Liberator of Rubicon” ending on Steam Deck with Japanese text and voice-over. I just got to play a “nut job” who listened to a voice in their head when that voice was provided by this game’s top billing anime usual suspect at her most stoic yet soothing…)

“Clunky” said Jeff Grestmann to Drew Scanlon when the latter inquired about From Software’s King’s Field on a Bombcast episode shortly before Bloodborne’s launch I believe. It would also be the word I use to describe Armored Core VI Fires of Rubicon but I would also add “It’s a feature not a bug”. After all, piloting a hulking war machine has its clunks.

Fires of Rubicon is From’s return to their mech battling and building series after a full decade of only Souls. It’s the first time the series has an installment on PC thus the first time I played an Armored Core game, so hopefully my new comer’s view helps.

Scorched sky over forever wars

The planet known as Rubicon III now only sees war-torn ruins. People once built walls to separate its cursed earth from its cursed cites. But after a disaster called Fire of Ibis made the whole planet so scorched that even its atmosphere is partially and consistently burning, it all became one cursed battleground. Yet all come for one thing, Coral, the resource corporations and self-assigned cops did, do and will kill for. Enters C4-621, a mercenary piloting Armored Core, who would bear many names and cast the dice on the next step for Rubicon.

Fires of Rubicon can be seen as a reboot for the series or one set in the series’ far, far future, with left-over propre nouns like Floating City and callsign Raven laying around. After all that post-apocalypse landscape with endless corporate warfare on Earth, this one is about how the stars are better without us. By the way of exporting post-apocalypse landscape with endless corporate warfare to an extraterrestrial planet of course.

Yeah, one will meet aliens here, or hear from them is more accurate description. In fact, one can only hear from non-person characters here, since there is no portrait for any of them. While many might lament on the lack of say “Kojima cutscenes”, I would embrace it. The mission brief is well brief and quite stylishly presented. More importantly they do not get in the way of the real serious business here, mech battling and mech building.

As a video game, Fires of Rubicon is pretty good in terms of both “video” and “game”. The graphic is not “cutting edge”, but it got strong art direction, to provide views of desert, snow covered plain plus mountains and giant industrial structure that would make hulking mechs look like ants. The gameplay on the other hand would only be good to you if you are willing to meet it halfway. Even with a linear level-based structure, this is a game promising “See that ‘mountain’? You can boost as long as the juice allow you there”. And those ‘mountains’ usually have something that kill one faster than one can react. But then again, with different designs, I did look forward to meet my killers, before I retried my way towards killing them.

Of course, a famous Roman got name dropped in a game with Rubicon in its title. No, not the one inspired Kaizer in German and Tsar in Russia, it’s the slightly less famous one attached to a minor boss encounter…

Build to victories

Interestingly, my new comer view on Armored Core is that Vanquish is an extremely dumbed down version of it. The obvious feature Platinum’s shooter took from From’s mech series is the cooldown on melee weapons, including a mech’s bare hands. That and having 4 weapons, except that Armored Core defines its weapons more broadly while Vanquish only counts guns.

The control should be clear enough for people who had played any polygonal third person action game, with the usual twin-stick set-up and down face button for “jump” or ascent for starters. But the 3 other face buttons might feel different, up one for interaction, left one for boost dodge and right one for rather slow “sprint on”.

Shoulder buttons, bumpers and triggers alike, are assigned to weapons. The two bumpers or the two shoulders on an Armored Core can either unique shoulder weapons or spare for the hand. The default set-up is as followed: right hand/trigger with a gun; left hand/trigger with a sword; right shoulder/bumper with missiles; left should/bumper with a shield. Of course, once far enough into the game one can mix them up to one’s heart contend within limits. Limits like melee weapons can only be assigned to left hand and shield only to left shoulder.

The titular Armored Core is a type of mech pretty high on the in-game food chain. It can kill most of the war machines with a couple of shots, which includes the cops’ big ass warships (Those self-appointed “Admiration” motherfuckers’ death squads are more formidable, not to mention a “transformer” they left in “the basement” after their defeat). But, bosses and other Armored Cores can prove to be challenging, especially the latter since they got 3 repair kits like the player machine and their mobility can be their armor.

The game does have its fair share of bite-sized milk runs including but not limited to the one played on a pre-launch stage event and surprisingly the final boss before the ending I got. But brick walls are in as well and those are usually boss fights. Those are brick walls for 2 reasons, either one has not mastered the “hammer” they take to the wall or one simply takes the wrong “hammer”.

In fact, if one does not kit out accordingly, then one walks into the wrong goddamn room every time one sorties. Weapon selection on its own is not all about the damage those can do, range, fire rate and ammo capacity matter as well. On top of that, there are weight bearing and energy output to consider when it comes to swapping mech parts. This game thankfully does not have that Souls’ “making player character death matter in the story” bullshit and just have good old checkpoints. And when one is killed, one has the Assembly option to try out a different build that might fare better.

I can say that I would not have seen credits roll in this game if one of the harder encounter did not glitch. It’s a two-on-two Armored Core fight and the wingman is pretty useless. Then one retry, one of my foes seemingly clipped into a wall so I can bomb his ass into pieces no sweat then move on to his friend with my wingman still in play. Consider how many times I died because I dodged into a corner, overheated and no juice to back out quickly enough, it’s just fair that I can kill an enemy similarly trapped.

Not likely my final words on this game

I started writing this one before I saw credits roll in the game, continued after the end and as I am putting the finishing touch a couple of missions into New Game Plus. Between fast-paced mech battling and calculating but not that calculating mech building, I am quite hooked on this one. I am keen to see this toy box extended in NG+. Anyway, try the training and Arena program if you got stock, this is a game you might not put down for a while.