Armored Core 6 feels brilliant in the hands, but also strangely undecided

Armored Core 6: Fires of RubiconDeveloper: FromSoftwarePublisher: Bandai NamcoAvailability: 25th August 2023 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

The original Armored Core was the game that taught me to fight in the air. Even as I struggle to remember what I had for breakfast this morning, I still have vivid memories of boosting around its squalid industrial plains and catacombs, dipping carefully into my AC’s replenishing energy reserve, while combing the cathode-ray TV murk for the hiss and flash of incoming projectiles. I loved jetpack duels and accessorised my mechs to suit, favouring springy reverse-jointed legs, compact laser pistols and featherweight torso components with just the faintest dusting of armour.

26 years later, Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon sends me hurtling out of a cargo catapult and skipping over the surface of a desolate, mountainous planet, its sky filled with vast, suspended mining facilities, its valleys with trashed cities and pleasantly brittle forests. I never could have imagined this kind of spectacle, playing the PS1 game, but the game beneath is broadly the same balance of intricate customisation and hectic robo combat. It’s shaping up to be a stonking heavy metal escapade, though I do have reservations about a few of the components.

In Fires of Rubicon you play an amnesiac pilot with the codename 621, who works for a mysterious, gravel-voiced man named Walter. Your stated story objective is to rediscover your past and rebuild your reputation, but what you’re really here to do, natch, is bolt together the fanciest, deadliest and/or silliest battlebot you can muster, picking from a gorgeous selection of legs, torsos, arms, heads, weapons and internal systems that dramatically affect how your AC performs.

Play is broken into missions in separately loading levels, which range from putting a single rival AC through its paces to battling around and up the inside of an enormous artificial wall, protected by gatling turrets and countless smaller mechs. Missions earn you cash while gradually adding parts to the store on your garage screen, and after two or three hours, there’s a tasty range of build possibilities on offer, many with their own tutorial missions. You might rock up to one mission as an overdressed howitzer on caterpillar treads, then switch to a balletic grasshopper with a sword and shield. The key limitations are the carrying capacity of your legs and your generator, which supplies energy for weapon usage and jet-boosting.