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When it comes to giant robots stomping through cities, no video game franchise is better than Armored Core. Still, these complicated mech games aren’t the first thing fans think of when FromSoftware comes to mind. With Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon coming out, they should be. There’s a lot to digest with more than a dozen titles in the franchise. Though many of them are worth playing, there are many reasons you don’t need to play the earlier games first, regardless of which edition you get. Here are some of the biggest.
The FromSoftware Legacy
Miyazaki’s company has earned its reputation for quality, complexity, and scale in gaming. King’s Field, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring are just a few of the games he and FromSoftware are known for. To know if you don’t need to play the previous AC games, it helps to know what kind of games they are. If there’s a FromSoftware theme, it’s that their games are difficult, complicated and encourage extensive customization. In Elden Ring for example, you must choose the weapons, Ashes, and Flask combination that will best help you triumph in battle.
Armored Core follows suit. These giant robot games aren’t as simple as strapping a multi-ton cannon onto the back of a Core and going to work. Heat builds up, energy dissipates, and armor tears away. Balancing these elements, along with weight, agility, DPS, and numerous other factors, requires careful planning. It’s fair to say that many fights in Fires of Rubicon will be won or lost before the battle starts. As the road from Dark Souls to Elden Ring demonstrates, FromSoftware is gradually perfecting the balance of its vision. Older AC games are fun but aren’t always balanced in satisfying ways. Everything we’ve seen from Fires of Rubicon suggests it will be the franchise’s best in that area.
You Don’t Need To Play Old AC Titles To Know the Story
FromSoftware is fond of rebooting the Armored Core franchise, leaving its story a bit murky. Players can follow coherent plot threads through a few games, but inevitably the story will reset and leave players to learn it all anew. That’s not necessarily bad. Comic books demonstrate the revitalizing power of reboots. Armored Core embraces it. Playing previous Armored Core games would familiarize the player with the kind of world they’re getting into, but it’s unnecessary. Even if Fires of Rubicon draws from past games, you don’t need to play all the past titles to get into it. The stories love to blend political and military shenanigans, betrayals, double-dealings, and sci-fi troupes. That’s enough to know before jumping in.
Making Your Mech
Building and piloting your mech doesn’t feel great in some AC titles, making it hard to recommend them. For players that devour Fires of Rubicon and want more, however, the previous titles will still be waiting. Armored Core 3, For Answer, and Last Raven offer some of the best gameplay and story so far, but Fires of Rubicon looks set to outdo them. Recommending the previous games feels like recommending Dark Souls 2 after the release of Elden Ring. The old games aren’t bad, but the stylish combat and quality of the newest title make it the ideal starting point.
You don’t need to play the earlier games first to enjoy Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon. If you want, consider them dessert.
