Armored Core VI Only Trails Elden Ring In This Impressive FromSoftware Stat
We say that the "Souls-Borne" games are more popular, and that's still true as a franchise, but Armored Core VI has been a surprising success for the company. The day after its launch, it hit an all-time peak of 156,171 simultaneous players, at least according to SteamDB. That is bigger than any FromSoftware PC release to date, except for mega-hit Game of the Year winner Elden Ring.
At its peak, that put Armored Core VI as the sixth-most-played game on Steam at that time, behind mainstays like Dota 2 and CS:GO as well as recent blowout success Baldur's Gate 3. It was ahead of popular titles like GTA V, Rust, and Path of Exile, though. Suffice to say that the game has been a big success on Steam, which is great news for fans of mech games like your author.
You might think such a popular game would have overwhelmingly positive reviews, but that hasn't quite been the case so far. Steam reviews for Armored Core VI currently sit at 81.5% positive, while the Metacritic score is an 87. Sites like Eurogamer, Windows Central, and Siliconera gave the game 100-out-of-100 perfect scores, but many reviews on Steam complain of the game's extreme difficulty, with some players even refunding the game or breaking controllers in frustration.
That's fair enough—the game is brutally hard—but to some degree, we expect that players are not taking advantage of the game's structure. You see, unlike an RPG where your character's build is usually fairly "set" and then evolves over the game by building on the existing structure, in a mech game, you can completely reconfigure your assembly at any time. Armored Core VI even allows you to do so at mission checkpoints.
Historically, Armored Core has always been a series about crafting the perfect mech to merc any mission based on what that mission's requirements are, and AC6 is no different. If you aren't adapting your build based on the enemies and challenges of each mission, frankly speaking, you're kinda doing it wrong. That's not to say that players can't overcome the game's challenges with relatively-unsuited builds, though—it's an action game, after all, and player skill is ultimately the end-all. In other words: either tweak your build, or just "git gud."
The slow-mo cinematic zooms when you trash a boss are oh-so-gratifying.
If you're a newer fan of FromSoftware titles like Dark Souls and Elden Ring and you aren't sure if you should pick up Armored Core VI, we can tell you that it's absolutely worth every penny. Despite being a relatively low-tech game—it's designed to run at 60 FPS on the last-gen PlayStation 4—the title is gorgeous on PC with lavish particle effects and support for 120 FPS gameplay. You can snag the title to see what all the fuss is about over on Steam for just $60, unlike many recent AAA releases selling for more and more coin.
