Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon players won't be subjected to the same harshness upon death as Souls fans have been having to endure for the past decade plus. As FromSoftware's first major non-Soulslike title in a decade, Armored Core 6 will look to be a breath of fresh air for the lauded studio and will potentially draw many new fans of the studio's recent work to the Armored Core franchise for the first time.
FromSoftware popularized the rampantly successful Souls genre which has gone on to inspire many other studios and redefine action combat in modern gaming. The original Demon's Souls set the tone in 2009. Then, with the backing of Bandai Namco, Dark Souls brought that brutal dark fantasy third-person challenge to the mainstream in 2011. Ever since then FromSoftware has enjoyed immense praise, expanding upon its brutal formula with other highly successful titles such as Bloodborne, Sekiro, and most recently the juggernaut that is Elden Ring. With Armored Core 6 fans of FromSoftware can look to catch a bit of a break from the studio's usual merciless difficulty.
The Armored Core franchise has always been fundamentally different from FromSoftware's Souls games. Thus, it seems the studio isn't keen on completely changing the Armored Core DNA in favor of a more Souls-style blueprint. While death as a mechanic is an unforgiving staple of any Souls title, Armored Core 6 will feature forgiving checkpoints and will even allow players to tweak their stats and balances in a loadout screen after dying to bosses, picking the mission back up where they left off.
Checkpoints are the complete antithesis of Souls games. Despite Elden Ring featuring Stakes of Marika in the open world which let players respawn closer to a boss rather than all the way back at their last Site of Grace, many of the linear story-intensive sections of the game offered no such helping hand. Making that long trek back to the boss room time and time again after dying is a classic part of the Souls experience. Since FromSoftware doesn't seem to be changing the identity of Armored Core 6, such a punishing experience will be omitted in favor of checkpoints and copious opportunities to tweak one's mech along the way.
With the famous bonfire mechanic and having to trek back to one's site of death to reclaim dropped currency out the window, Armored Core 6 seems to be more forgiving to players upon death than its dark fantasy Souls cousins. While this may be true when it comes to dying and respawning, the actual combat of the mech title will surely not be any walk in the park. It will be interesting to see what Armored Core 6's reputation will be in terms of difficulty and whether its friendliness compared to Souls titles will draw in even more new fans.
Armored Core 6: Fire of Rubicon is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on August 25.
Source: Kotaku
