Feelsgoodman.

[Grim]

This game was worth the wait. It's not as pretty as FromSoft's other games have been, but it's epic in its own right.

Armored Core has a newly-released installment in 2023, it's garnering 10/10 reviews left and right, and is drawing near 100K viewers on Twitch. I'm fully aware that it's mostly due to the developer's pedigree and that soon things will calm down to more realistic levels, but for now I'm just basking in the joy of having our series be in the spotlight, with its best foot forward.

Feels good, man.

Got the "aww" ending for my first time around.

[Lord_Leperman]

Yeah, personally the best AC game I've played.

Our Discord channel is super active because of this, and it's crazy I'm having so much fun with AC6.

On my end, I haven't finished one play through yet because I want to take things slow and wake up with more Armored Core everyday. XD

[NiX]

First impressions:

Positive:
- The presentation is definitely better than any AC before.
- Movement feels nice.
- Assault boost is a nice step up from overboost and glideboost.
- The new blade-tracking is interesting so far.
- I see bits of gameplay mechanics from every generation.

Negative(?):
- The boost button and quick-turn kinda feel useless so far.
- OS tuning is grindy BS. This could've been implemented like optional parts.
- Haven't played PvP yet, but I'm still anticipating mouse to be imba over pad.
- I don't have enough time to play.

[Deemer]

I dont know how I feel about it overall yet. There is a lot I really like, and a lot I hate. No matter what though, its drastically better that the last few games. This one actually feels like a real Armored Core game, something I havnt felt in a very long time

[Grim]

I have my own gripes too, mainly: LW builds seem to be... useless? The advent of QB with gen 4 really changed the game from boost control through hopping to shorter, but more agile QBs. Boost speed also doesn't seem to matter, it's all QB. A side effect of this is that heavier, beefier designs with higher AP and much better defense can keep up with lighter ACs in terms of close range movement if properly specced, but they're also inherently able to deal more damage because they can carry more weapons. Goat was kicking everybody's ass in the lobby yesterday with his kicker stunlock build.

You're unable to go real long range because no weapons like that exist in the game yet (to my knowledge). So everything is kind of in the mid and close ranges for the moment.

It's still early days though, so there's a lot of time to flesh out the meta.

EDIT: Wouldn't this be a nice use for the manual aiming OS upgrade? If we had snipers/weapons with high shot velocity in here now, manual aim would fit in great with them (QB spamming aside). Then we could have even more build diversity.

[Hamstah_Fwend]

Agreeing that it's probably the best incarnation of AC by far. Game looks and feels nice all-around, which is extra amazing for me as someone playing it on PS4.

As for nitpicks, mine are:

• It sucks that going into PS4's "trim clip" screen disconnects AC6 from NEST, and you need to quit to the title screen to reconnect.
  
• It'd be nice if there were some savefile profile thingie showing hours played, % unlocked, etc.
  
• Why the heck am I not allowed to bind Access or Shift to the same button as Boost?
  
• The "left/right option" buttons seem irrelevant. Dialogue choices are rare enough that this could've easily been an overlap with existing buttons, instead of having them be mapped on the button layout.
  
• Why are some basic functions from previous games, locked behind OS tuning points?
  

Currently progressing NG+, we'll see if my thoughts change by the time I've cleared NG++.