What's the deal with ARMORED CORE VI: FIRES OF RUBICON?

armored Core 6 fires of Rubicon is the Dark Souls of games compared to Dark Souls it takes place in a desolate future where the military industrial complex went what if really cool big robots you will spend missions firing the entire GDP of a small nation into the GDP of another different smaller nation and you can do this because your core is armored your Battlefield is Rubicon free a ground breaking resource was discovered here called Coral it revolutionized human technology and was very valuable just like chloro fluro carbons however disaster struck and the coral engulfed the entire planet in Flames destroying everything this became known as the fires of Ibis oh so that's why they called it that now years later corporations have returned to the planet and fight Wars over the coral that is left you are sent here as an unnamed mercenary for unknown Reasons by your Handler Walter in order to facilitate a safe landing from space you are strapped into an explosive drop pod and smashed through a wreckage in the ground off Target but within permissible range after traversing through the giant wreck you come across some bipedal robots they are guarding this uninhabited pile of garbage in the off CH that a giant robot bursts through the ceiling it's the perfect opportunity for a tutorial because they are really bad at killing things you then get the privilege of strapping yourself into a giant catapult and shooting yourself into the Horizon your employer then tells you that you play League of Legends we'll make a killing plenty for a Merc with a fried brain like you to buy their life back what a nice guy it turns out falling from the sky is an illegal means of immigration to Rubicon so you got to find a dead guy to identity theft there are a lot of dudes to kill in the city ahead of you but you need a su dried dead guy for it to work none of the dead guys have cool names though monkey Gordo is too silly G7 hakra is a mouthful and Thomas Kirk literally just sounds like some guy fortunately there is one more sundried dead guy to find conveniently located in the middle of a crater in a giant Arena this guy's name is so cool that the dialogue gets cut off by a giant helicopter before you hear it this first boss fight has gotten a lot of attention over being a filter a lot of people really struggled with it I didn't think it was that hard at all and I'm not saying that's a brag or anything you just have to use your full tool kit which conveniently includes this sword honestly I was expecting the conversation to be more about how using your sword in the first boss makes this game the Elden ring of Dark Souls or something your reward for beating the boss is seeing that the identity you have stolen has a cool name Raven I was expecting something like molting Crow going off the rest of the names it's after this crowning where the true armored Core 6 fires of Rubicon Begins the first thing I imagine most people did upon completing the first mission was to immediately open up the customization menu and put in their color scheme you know what I mean by their color scheme right everybody has a color scheme programmed into their DNA that they use whenever they have to customize a car or a giant robot in a video game for me my scheme is black and orange I'm pretty sure it's because when I was a kid I would look at ugly 480p images of concept cars in Google image searches and sometimes you would get one that was black and orange and I would think wo that's cool however you can do a lot more than just use your designated color scheme it has a fairly robust emblem editor and you can even make your Mach look like it's gone bushwacking but the real meat of the customization lies in the parts there are many different parts parts and they affect a large amount of stats in different ways the legs are probably the most noticeable for example you have your basic legs which are like our legs in real life except they have inbuilt helies radical then you can get reverse jointed legs these allow you to have a higher initial jump which is really useful for dodging attacks but most of them have a lower load limit than the other legs which means that you may be unable to equip specific heavy weapons there are the Treads these are basically the F-150 of armored Core 6 custom built for massive Max that have no desire to see if there are any pedestrians in front of them they aren't very agile but you can mount heavier weapons to them the last type are the tetrapod legs the main advantage of this type is that you can activate a hover mode this allows you to negate The Recoil of heavy weapons there is a large variety of weapons you can use in the sense that there are many choices and all of them are massive this game has a stagger mechanic like in Securo so naturally some of the weapons synergize quite well together the shoulder weapons are usually focused on building up the Stagger meter on enemies while your main weapons excel at the murder part however it isn't limited to this and you can use any kind of combination you want for the majority of my time with the game I just used two Min guns and two homing missile launchers I know that's like the white bread of Mex but the mini guns just felt so good to use the sound design was topnotch there is also the Forbidden combo the combat of armored Core 6 is fairly diverse your load out strongly affects how you approach each encounter but so does the behavior of each enemy when you fight other armored cores they have access to all of the parts that you do which means that sometimes they can just straight up counter your entire build but you can also do the same to them this idea of countering enemies for your load out also applies to the boss fights and the normal enemies for example a large roadblock that a lot of people seem to struggle with is the boss Bas I died to him on my first attempt using a dual wielding pistol build I was struggling to break his shield because my weapons just weren't that effective against it while contemplating my many failures I remembered that I had unlocked an anti-shield weapon just before I started this Mission so I equipped that weapon along with the sword to help deal some more damage when Boles is staggered and I tried the fight again I managed to beat it on that try and this is why the customization works so well it actually makes a genuine difference you can sell any of your parts for the same price you purchase them so you will never be in a position where it is impossible for you to experiment the vast majority of situations in the game can be approached like this if you have heard that the this game is difficult and that has turned you away from trying it I would urge you to reconsider and approach it with an open mind because if you pay attention to the fights and really consider how your weapons affect the enemy the game is fairly easy the mission design is really strong many of the levels are actually really big and you are free to explore them quite a few of them have hidden fights against stronger enemies secret parts and even secret logs that provide you with more story information for example in this Foundry level if you go behind the furnace you can find a small optional area with a part to pick up but then if you decide to go inside the furnace like an unattended toddler you will actually come across another part as well as a fully voice acted enemy lying in Ambush because he thinks he owes you money this is such an incredibly well-hidden detail that so many people will miss Beyond these small details the levels are also really cool with the many different massive set pieces which create very unique and memorable experiences the narrative also features heavily in a lot of them this game has a massive cast of memorable characters you will constantly be working with and against all of them so you get some really neat and surprising insights into their characterization there is this mission where all the factions team up to take on a massive iceworm it ends up being Marvel but if it was good because all these separate characters suddenly Collide and it's fun seeing all the interactions play out the game also has a lot of conditional dialogue for example if you fight two armored cores at the same time you will get different dialogue depending on who you take out first which keeps replays narratively engaging the game also features a new game plus mode that remixes some of the missions while also adding a lot of new ones these additions actually significantly impact the story of the game so I'll talk about them later in the video they provide some fun surprises and twists that make repeat playthroughs almost mandatory armored Core 6 has a fairly involved and engaging story but initially it might not seem that way your first few jobs are typical mercenary Fair corporations asking you to destroy things for money which might just seem like your normal job in real life however this time you get to do it in a giant robot instead of a cubicle after these first few missions you get a dedicated bullying Mission you see a small child is currently learning how to Pilot an armored Core they got it for Christmas so you need to destroy them the entire mission is just you unloading lead into them while they freak out about their impending death that they cannot do a single thing to stop ordinarily I would file this under prepare to cry I like your cut G I just I just wanted to call something but deploying a million dooll Mech to destroy a child is just too funny the next mission is where the game picks up you are ordered to attack a dam with the squad of professionals the local resistance are stopping the corporation from surveying for Coral so naturally you have to destroy their lifeline and send innocent civilians into a spiral of starvation and dehydration it's okay though because the other mercenaries on your squad are colorful and cooky characters G1 Michigan is the commander of the mission and he is a real hard military type who constantly roasts his subordinates why don't you start a sewing club together and stit that damn mouth of your shot G5 Iguazu is just a loser he thinks he is tough and develops a rivalry with you because he has intense feelings of inferiority and maybe a crush G4 vter is basically completely unremarkable he is literally just some guy you get attacked by an honorable Liber ation front Warrior but you can just fly over his head straight to the woman and children no the a ter you wretched Fortress once you ruin thousands of lives your mission is complete somehow Iguazu got your phone number and leaves a thirsty voicemail you got lucky MC you were the only warm body have fun the next job is the big set piece one they used in the marketing basically The Liberation Front weaponized the massive mining platform your mission if you choose to accept it is to travel through a sand storm and destroy the mining platform in a way that looks cool if you destroy it in a corny way then you don't get paid you have to shoot a bunch of generators around its body while a giant eyeball shoots lasers at you this is a normal thing that happens in real life union busting jobs and just like the pinkertons you can Implement their tactics of just shooting guys to solve this problem once you you destroy the eyeball the mining platform just decides to blow up I'm not joking that's literally what happens after this your Handler Walter attends a networking function for software developers and manages to get you a place in operation War climber basically there is a wall and you need to climb it a squad called The Vespers will be working alongside you the team you worked with in the Dare Mission have already tried and failed to climb it you can even find the destroyed Mech of VTA in the mission which is a cool [Music] detail The Liberation Front has set up a heavy defensive line at this point in the game you might not have many upgrades so you actually have to be somewhat careful and hide behind cover however you are able to completely obliterate them because you enjoy ruining the lives of innocent civilians once you enter the wall some guy called Rusty contacts you he seems friendly but Walter says say he is probably a loser Walter is definitely jealous eventually you find an elevator which takes you to the top of the wall so instead of climbing the wall you basically do the equivalent of hopping on a bus in a marathon at the top of the wall you team up with your new best friend Rusty to fight a giant robot unfortunately Rusty needs to leave partway through because he thinks he left his oven on Walter naturally gives a catty comment he gone so much for a deco defeating this robot puts our name as a mercenary on the map next you get the opportunity to do a job for The Liberation Front yeah the guys you just massacred want to work with you now that's the benefit of being a mercenary with no beliefs Beyond killing a factory that has been supplying them with Weaponry has gone silent and they want you to investigate it the mission starts off quiet too quiet out of nowhere a massive blue laser comes flying at you this is a new stealth enemy type they can cloak and you can only lock onto them when you are close most of them tend to use long range sniper lasers it's unknown who or what they are working for Walter thinks you will get answers at a water reservoir somewhere deeper in the facility I have no idea what his line of thinking was on that one but it turns out he was right the facility had managed to tap into an underground Coral vein you fight a climactic battle here and then the mission just ends you don't get any answers here for now arbus's rival balum hires you to investigate The Liberation Front Rex Left Behind from operation War climber they want to analyze the data in order to learn about Rusty this mission is fairly boring but there is a cool surprise in a ditch you get ambushed by a Survivor Z she recognizes you as the guy who destroyed all of her friends so naturally you destroy her one of the data logs you can find in this Mission shows how The Liberation Front sees her as a a little sister the log ends saying that they are glad that she isn't here and Will Survive yeah so am I one of the other logs shows that a Liberation Front Warrior recognized Rusty Walter finds this interesting because he is Rusty's primary op and he wants to smoke in the most important log you can find in this mission is one from a Liberation Front soldier who immediately ejected from their Mech as soon as the mission began this is called quiet quitting the concluding mission of the first chapter involves you attacking a watch point it's a personal mission from Walter he's using you to do it so he gets mates rates watch points monitor the dormant Coral veins it's controlled by the PCA which stands for planetary closure Administration their job is to stop the corporations from taking advantage of the Dead Planet Walter takes out the communications so they can't call for backup while you eliminate all Witnesses however there is a strong armag core protecting the watch Point piloted by some guy called Sula who is familiar with Walter he has destroyed Walter's previous wage slaves sua talks a big game but eventually Falls in battle because he could not handle the power of strafing and missile spam once you get into the watch point and destroy it something crazy happens the red drink known as Coral bursts out and causes a massive explosion it is so intense that it worsens your pre-existing brain damage but on the up side it gives you a free girlfriend that is a talking Red Dot her name is a and she coaches you through the fight with bolteus there isn't much to say about bolteus it's a really easy fight the coral explosion causes a storm and according to data sent to Walter from his girlfriend that goes to another school it points to a place in the central icefield which indicates that beneath the icefield may lay a large amount of coral he also says your girlfriend is fake and that you have brain damage Walter is wrong about this because our fake girlfriend tells us to put ourselves into a giant Cannon and shoot ourselves to another continent instead of taking the train to the ice field that does not sound like a symptom of brain damage to me like most public transport the Giant Cannon has crackheads fortunately these are the happy go-lucky type of crackhead sure they do try to dismember you using a chainsaw but it's in a friendly way their leader is called Cinder Cara but the cinder is in quotes like punished venom snake she is a survivor of the fires of Ibis which is why she is called Cinder earlier in the story you got to hear her and Walter having steamy phone relations which might play into how she forces you to fight through her Legion of crackheads eventually she realizes that you are too strong and decides to let you through to the cannon yeah never mind she actually has a giant furnace robot with super heated Grinders this boss is interesting because it has two weak points the furnace on the front which leaves you vulnerable to attacks if you try to hit it and the hole on the top which requires you to expend your flight time to reach so there is this fun interplay where you are constantly getting stuck in the death zone in front of it because you keep running out of flight energy you can play around it though by using a vertical rocket launcher which is actually pretty cool once you defeat it Carla surrenders for real this time as if she didn't just send a giant death robot after her last surrender now that we have networked with her she gives us a job apparently she wants us to kill some people before she will take us to the Giant Cannon this is probably one of the more insane missions in the game it's a really simple Mission but you are literally just flying through and machine gunning a gang of drug addicts what did from software mean by this after you go all Richard Nixon on them Carla finally agrees to take you to the cannon however it turns out the PCA has giant de laser satellites around here for some reason cool it's good that it's a short trip to the cannon though which is conveniently out of range of the satellites of course you get jumped by a giant Coral fueled spider robot created by the long dead Institute that just so happens to be hanging out near the Giant Cannon we need so far this has been entirely accurate to the public transport experience you can bust out the morine and just agitate the spider until it explodes finally freeing up the cannon so you can become an armored bullet once you arrive at the central ice field you will find that the corporations have been busy completely destroying it in order to find the coral naturally this provokes the PCA and they arrive with a massive arader in tow one of the missions you get here requires you to eliminate a member of the veser squad on behalf of the liberation ation front it's basically a stealth Mission which might sound fun maybe it's like a metal gear solid but instead you actually pilot the mech but here's the kicker if you get seen it's an instant fail you could try to sneak around the enemies hide behind buildings and wait in silence only to lose all your progress when you get seen however over the course of making this video I have replayed this game quite a few times and worked out an impenetrable strategy for this level all you do is hug the left side of the map and use your really loud Weaponry to destroy the enemies before they see you now this is what I call tactical Espionage action the target of this Mission will try to surrender however you can just keep pouring lead into his mouth it's at this point in the game you get your first decision Mission you can choose to help balum destroy some PCA squads or help The Liberation Front destroy a big tank Mech owned by the PCA this choice has zero consequences throughout the game so it's pretty much asking you if you would rather find 10 members of an LASD gang or one standard issue LAPD SWAT tank the next mission is a bit more consequential Walter tasks you to go to xylm a floating city created by the now disbanded Research Institute his girlfriend from another school thinks that there could be useful information here the city is shrouded in a deep fog which stops you from communicating with Walter however you can still talk to your fake girlfriend wait isn't this basically Silent Hill it's got the fog the isolation and the fake girlfriend all that's missing is 10-hour long video essays that recount the obvious symbolism and a Wiki moderator that links everything to circumcision for some reason throughout the city are a bunch of autonomous drones Left Behind from previous American drone strikes they are the only threat you face until your fake girlfriend starts flirting with you you know it's been a long time since we've been on a mission together without Walter the control device isn't going anywhere take your time long before they make this complicated I'm afraid it's too late for that you get to fight the helicopter from the start of the game again only this time you have the power of friendship and heavyweight boxing on your side yeah if you wondered what happens when you use up a small nation's GDP firing your weapons this is it you just detach them and have to fight using your fists it's actually quite effective Walter manages to network you into another job with The Vespers he does this by leaning really heavily on dog analogies very well I'll consider that mut of yours part of the effort one more thing show my Hound some respect Gen 4 is as good a pedigree as any other Walter is just playing nintendog with our lives for this Mission you have to destroy destroy a bunch of PCA warships while Rusty blacks out their Communications conveniently they come back online once you destroy all the warships after you destroy the reinforcements you and Rusty get to team up and fight some random cops they suck because they are really bad at the game with their defeat the PCA has been rendered pretty much irrelevant when it comes to the fight over Rubicon however a new fighter enters The Fray a giant ice worm this is actually esoteric real life police brutality law if you ever wondered why some officers can get away with crimes in real life it's because they signed a demonic blood contract with the giant ice worm and as a result people are reluctant to prosecute them in case it summons the giant ice worm that's Cannon it's in the law and it just so happens that is what occurs in armored Core 6 however just like in real life tragedy causes people to come together the appearance of the Giant ice worm makes the corporations realize that they will all need to work together to stop it Carla naturally has a giant rail gun that would be perfect for hunting the giant iceworm however one of her ex-employees who has become a brain fried crackhead stole it slow slow quick quick slow so naturally you kindly ask him to return it you also get two unrelated but interesting Missions at this point one is from Air she basically wants to brainwash you using Pro Coral propaganda which is conveniently located in the tunnel you sent to Hell in a previous Mission there are data logs here left by a professor Nagi as well as some religious writings from a guy literally called thumb it is here we can find out the origin of coral augmentation some guy called assistant number one created it and as we find out later he has an interesting relationship to Walter the other mission requires you to defend a Spaceport from the PCA however when you get there they have already been destroyed by another armored Core it turns out this is the guy you stole the Raven name from Raven and his operator have some deep conversation about making choices or whatever but Walter recognizes this for the pseudo intellectual waste of time that it is so instead of thinking long and hard about your place in this bureaucratic Web of Lies you blow up Captain Planet and immediately get back to destroying Rubicon it's probably one of the cooler missions in the game the title of Raven has been used throughout the franchise to refer to various mercenaries however not every armored Core game takes place within the same unified narrative so this mission is kind of like the previous stories in the franchise passing on the torch to this new world while also highlighting your place in the narrative as this destructive force of nature that will eventually bring about an ultimate change through the choice that you make now it's finally time to destroy the guardian Spirit of police brutality the giant icewm you get to given a stun needle launcher for free to use in this fight but don't make the mistake I did in my first playthrough and cheap out you should buy a second one and equip it as well for this Mission all of the colorful and kooky characters that you have come to love over the course of your ultraviolent Planet destroying Rampage unite against their common enemy the giant iceworm it's really fun hearing their interactions it's basically Marvel but if it was good so you'd think this would be one of the best missions in the game but it has one glaring floor somehow fighting a giant ice worm is really boring you have to hit it once with the stun needle launcher this will then trigger Rusty to shoot it with the massive rail gun allowing you to damage it then you repeat this a few times the problem is it's actually kind of hard to hit you just kind of have to sit there and wait for it to appear in front of you so you can get a clear shot and if you miss your one shot you have to wait for your launcher to recharge which is why you should bring two because it makes the mission go way faster once you destroy it the giant ice worm explodes and sends a bunch of coral into the air it is at this point air reveals that she is actually part of the coral just as she is about to confess her undying love for you Walter steps in Raven you're the only one who go get your rest 621 now that the ice worm is gone the corporations go straight back to devouring each other this is very good for our business a massive facility has been discovered under the central ice field and this is the source of the coral your Journey to the Center of the Earth takes place over multiple missions the first one involves you taking an elevator down to the Center of the Earth but it quickly gets stopped because the automated defense system detects that you are a League of Legends player and moves to eradicate the problem because the elevator is broken the entire Mission becomes a reverse of the ladder from Metal Gear Solid you just have to fall down this giant pit slowly while a giant death laser shoots at you from the bottom it's honestly very exciting because you get to sit there and watch your Mech fall very slowly and then sit there and wait in cover while the giant death laser finishes firing over and over again it really makes you feel like an armored Core the second mission is a tried and true killing Mission you just kill guys balum guys to be specific Iguazu chickened out of heading deeper into the watch point so you get to fight him it's kind of sad because you are just so much better than him you are just straight up bullying him after flushing his head in a toilet you will see why he chickened out it turns out the facility has some serious automated defenses is left behind by the research institute but that giant robot pales in comparison to what comes next the door to the next area is locked and in order to unlock it you need to enter a from software troll room it's filled with these electric bug mechs that stun you and you need to use a jump pad to progress but you can't because they just keep stunning you of course you could be cautious and shoot them from a distance but that's kind of like skydiving with a parachute it ruins the fun once you open the door you come face to face with the giant robot from earlier there isn't much to say about this boss fight it's just a robot it's not human of course we could get into a debate about what constitutes a human being or what constitutes sentients but that doesn't really matter because we just kill things for recreation like a small child stepping on ants if from software played an hourong cutscene before this fight detailing the robots various day life showing their friends and family all the people that would mourn the robot's death it would make the fight more enjoyable because we would know that we were increasing the total misery in the universe however the robot does not have any friends or family so in a roundabout way it's sad not because the robot died but because we missed out on an opportunity to inflict more harm and as a result we mourn the idealized version of this robot and its non-existent friends and family and in a way become the robot's only true friend anyway for the next mission you get to blow up a reactor which is cool this finally opens the way to the source of the coral however before we can uncover the mysteries of the coral we get another set of decision missions in which we choose which former allies we want to betray you can either help arabus destroy Michigan the guy not the state or help The Liberation Front Ambush some of the arabus Vesper squad on my first playthrough I chose to help The Liberation Front because you get to work with the faction's leader this mission is basically a standard issue killing mission where you just kill some guys like you usually do the other one is far more interesting but I'll explain why later after this you can finally enter the tunnel before the mysterious source of the coral and get ambushed by Rusty before you get there turns out arabus sent him to destroy you in the hope that you'll take each other out the music for this fight is really cool it's risk of rainc cor you pretty much just fly around each other in circles unloading everything you have into each other it reminds me of another legendary battle eventually you managed to defeat him this would ordinarily be prepared to cry but he says it's not over yet so it's not over yet he then throws a flashbang into a nearby infant's crib which blinds you as he escapes none of this matters though because we finally get to uncover the secret behind the coral it turns out under the ground is a massive city that was owned by the now defunct Research Institute Walter then tells us in a really roundabout way that he was involved with the research institute and that he hopes to undo their mistakes of course we don't find out his exact position until significantly later in the game arabus wants the coral for themselves so they tell us to get lost fortunately we can just ignore them because killing is our business and business is good after you destroy a few of their loyal soldiers you will come across bone wheels from Dark Souls yes from softw manag to put them into a Mech game in a large flooded crater at the center of the city you will fight an advanced Coral weapon it's a difficult fight but the robot was originally designed to prevent disasters like the fires of Ibis and it failed to do that so all you got to do is remind it of its failures causing it to get depressed and and blow up after this a tries to wax poetic about the nature of coral but her subtitle gets cut off by a giant stun spear shot by none other than arbus's snail who sends you to a CIA black site arabus Takes Over The Institute City and prepares to harvest their technology and weaponry meanwhile we are bleeding out in the black sight Walter sends us a message where he admits to being his girlfriend from another school and tells us to break out so we can light the planet on fire this is the final time we will see him beforehand he somehow managed to plant a gigantic armored Core in our cell so that's good the problem is that it's really old and rusted and we have to use it to escape from a sewer which draws some interesting parallels to a character from Elden ring who also was imprisoned in a CIA sewer black site does this mean that we are the dung eater think about it the dung eater was a merchant of death so are we he was imprisoned in a sewer jail so were we he ate dung so do we it adds up we are the dung Eater of Rubicon so naturally we are given a dung tea Mech that can barely climb out of a pit fortunately for us Cinder Cara shows up Walter and her were part of an organization called overseer they exist to keep the Coral in check and burn it before it gets out of control and to this end we need to take control of the Sleepy small town of Silent Hill which is actually a gigantic colony spaceship it's at this point you get the most important choice in the game you can either help Carla burn all the coral before arabus can Harvest it or you can help your fake girlfriend get up to some Mischief for my first playthrough I chose to help Carla in memory of my best friend first name Handler last name Walter arabus is attacking Silent Hill because they really like money they even sent the Top Gun of the veser squad Freud during the mission you will find him fighting chatty stick ky's best friend that is actually just a machine learning model why does everyone in this game have a relationship with a fake human being anyway he gets nuked from orbit by Freud and this makes Kyla sad sister he was literally just a statistical analysis of a database get over it Freud decides to abandon his mission because he enjoys fighting you so much he can't handle your romantic energy and it destroys him I want after this you just need to destroy arbus's entire fleet this is a really cool Mission you get given Infinite Energy because your Mech Taps into the coral flowing through the air so you just fly between these massive warships and blow them up this is Peak playing with your action figures as a child and so naturally you grab your second favorite action figure and make it fight your coolest Rusty is mad because he doesn't want you or the corporations deciding the fate of Rubicon sounds like a fence s to [Music] me suddenly Silent Hill gets hit by a giant space laser fired by none other than your fake girlfriend she is literally Coral so if you burn the coral you also burn her that sounds tragic but remember that she is literally just floating red particles that could potentially Doom the entire universe if left unchecked NE so we might as well bust out the vacuum she takes over a coral weapon and fights you on a giant satellite air drops some hot bars and laments your divorce but like everything in this game you destroy her anyway while you have this touching Heart to Heart moment Carla drink drives the entirety of Silent Hill into arbus's Coral plant which destroys the coral and also the entire planet of Rubicon oh now it makes sense why Rusty tried to stop us because we ended up genociding the entire planet of Rubicon my bad hey at least we became famous and got a book deal now this is the really cool part about armored Core 6 the game doesn't end there it has a new game plus mode that actually significantly changes up the game the obvious benefit is that you can go back and play the missions you got locked out of on your first playthrough but New Game Plus also adds in New Missions and new choices as well as changing up existing missions in surprising ways the first instance of this is during the mission where you attack the dam with the balum squad about halfway through it a random Discord furry DMS you that he will pay you to betray them which is cool but outside of that you have to wait until chapter 3 to get into the new stuff but on the way you can choose the opposite choice in some of the decisions you came across in your first playthrough for example at the end of that really fun and engaging stealth Mission you can choose to spare windburn if if you do this you will get attacked by The Liberation Front Roku Monson he's basically this Samurai guy heavily into honor P the son who counts profets coins slipping through cold fingers no pulse be your blame strik yeah okay this guy watches too much kurasawa the funny thing is the guy you spared get sent to a CIA black site anyway because he Dishonored The Vespers so maybe ru Monson was right about this whole honor thing the First new game plus exclusive mission is added as an alternative to the mission where you send a tunnel to Hell The Liberation Front wants you to destroy some of the pca's mechs so the corporations can't Salvage them this mission is really straightforward and nothing special it might leave a negative impression of the new game plus changes but that isn't the case and all gets revealed eventually one of the decision missions I didn't do in my first playthrough is called destroy the special force craft basically you just go to a snowy field and destroy this tank it's fairly strong and difficult to damage but it does have one weak point which is just a small mech dangling off the bottom this is literally a testicle tank and like a fight from Becky you have to hammer the life out of those truck nuts the next new game plus exclusive mission is pretty funny it is called defend the dam complex and you are sent to fight these two mercenaries who are part of a mysterious ious organization they are called chartruse and King it can be a tough fight if you take too long because after some time passes you get jumped by the guy you stole the identity of Raven if you recall the original Raven fight mission was also a surprise you are sent to defend a space port so in order to surprise you again from software just straight up created an entirely new Mission it's worth mentioning that chartreuse and King are part of a activist organization called branch and this Mission implies that Raven is also part of Branch because why else would they show up unless maybe they just like looking at dams maybe they have spent hours of their life watching those City skylines videos where some guy floods an entire city with poo Water by destroying a dam and they wanted to see what a dam looked like in real life it's hard to tell this is just one of those unsolvable Mysteries that you sometimes stumble across in from software games towards the end of the game there was a decision where you could choose to attack G1 Michigan or Ambush some members of the vaser squad I am glad that I chose to attack the veser squad on my first playthrough because the G1 Michigan mission is insane it's pretty much that Doom W you have to shoot your way through a massive hord of enemies while the whole time Michigan is telling his soldiers how badass you are this Mission ordinarily would not be too difficult but there are just so many enemies and Michigan only shows up after you have fought through most of them which means your ammo is going to be really low and you will run out I ended up losing and had to retry it with a different setup I exclusively used a missile launcher that can lock onto heaps of different enemies at once this was more ammo efficient and conserved my minigun ammo for the Michigan fight but even then I still ended up running out of ammo after I had defeated him it was a pretty unique challenge if you choose to help carer in your first playthrough you don't really get to understand Rusty's motivations but they are revealed during his fight in New Game Plus because the leader of the Liberation Front Middle flat well is his backup so it's pretty clear he is working with them rather than the corporations and that comes into play if you choose to eliminate Carla in order to betray your best friend and First Love Handler Walter you need to take control of Silent Hill to stop Carla from drink driving on the way you run into snail of the Vesper Squad this is the gun that black sighted you and Walter if you read his Arena entry you can see that he has constantly improved his augmentation even if it came at the expense of other people so he freaks out when he can't beat you a fourth generation augmented human eventually you reach the control tower and have to fight Carla and her machine learning algorithm at the same time you have to be careful with how you engage them because they can overwhelm you quite easily I went for chatty first and tried my best to avoid Carla it worked out once you destroy her only friend Carla gets really angry for some reason I wasn't enjoying her negative Vibes so I checked them in a last ditch effort Carla prevents us from overriding the controls of Silent Hill ensuring that she can drink drive from the grave forcing us to destroy Silent Hill Air ends up recruiting the citizens of Rubicon to fight by our side which includes Rusty and The Liberation Front you can even see them fighting down on the surface the soundtrack for the mission is pretty cool too just like the mission where you destroy all the ships this is the dedicated Power Trip Mission you pretty much just fly through the interior of Silent Hill instantly destroying all of the generators along with Carla's remaining forces while you listen to radio Transmissions of ruboni talking about how cool you are of course this all comes to an end when you have to fight another giant grinder robot somehow this thing got on board Silent Hill Rusty helps you fight it and in classic Rusty fashion he leaves us after the fight is concluded you get a small section where you fly through the ship alone until you come to what is probably the nightmare of many players balus the squeak Quil it's even worse this time because it's piloted by snail and that guy is such a loser he goes full anime villain monologue no your crime is that you tried to kill me kill arus I'll Crush you I am arus mate who are you even talking to at least we get an amazing scream from him unfortunately something managed to take down our second rate best friend Rusty all we have left to do is to take out the engines of Silent Hill this causes it to plummet back down to the surface saving the day however we meet the man who killed Rusty our primary best friend first name Handler last name Walter this is the end result of arbus's CIA black sight program Walter has been brainwashed to kill us and has taken control of a coral powered armored Core you can tell he is off his rocker because he actually manages to see our fake girlfriend this whole sequence is prepared to cry but it gets really sad when you destroy him he attempts to use the last of of his life to kill you however he manages to override his brainwashing because he realizes that you actually got a girlfriend and with that Silent Hill plummets back to the planet you saved the day and got the fake girlfriend but at the cost of a book deal and the destruction of an entire planet but wait there's more armored Core 6 has a new game plus mode for your new game plus mode but this time it's more mysterious all mind which appears to be some kind of AI that manages the systems you use as a mercenary features a lot more prominently of course you still get the opportunity to get up to your usual bloodthirsty Shenanigans for me this involved choosing to betray Iguazu and vter in the damn Mission it makes a lot more sense to do this in your third playthrough because believe it or not famed loser Iguazu is actually a major player in the new story line but that that only comes into play after you completely embarrass him a few more times remember that cool mission where you climb up the big mining platform and destroy it well the first new mission is the opposite of that you just kind of bum around on the ground and defend it of course you turn up to work late and it gets completely dismantled in front of you it just so happens that some mysterious Coral weapons showed up and destroyed it you also have to fight a bunch of bone Wheels in this open area you have no where to hide they will bone your will the crazy thing is that the Liberation Front apologizes to you even though you did nothing to stop the mining platform from falling this is evidence that 621 is really attractive because only hot people can get apologize too for their failure your third playthrough is heavier with the New Missions as quite soon after you get another two of them one of which involves rescuing some prisoners for The Liberation Front what's interesting about this mission is is the people you save the first is zi you probably don't remember them they were one of the many innocent ruboni we slaughtered in our quest for money however you will definitely remember the third one it's the guy that is literally called thumb you can tell he has lost enthusiasm for The Liberation front's cause so I assume they rescued him for the novelty of knowing a guy called thumb the other Mission involves you ambushing the guys who ambushed you in the previous playr some mysterious mercenary called Kate markson asks you to hide in a tunnel and jump scare them this mission is the first real hint you get that something weird is going on Walter cannot find any information on Kate and you end up fighting PCA Special Forces alongside her but what's even weirder is that Kate knows about the pca's future Invasion plans which in the original playthrough caught even the corporations off guard the next major change is in the next mission where you attack the watch point when you fight Sula he has some American snipers to back him up that's it crazy I know the next change exclusive to the third playthrough has some very interesting implications the mission where KLA sends you to Massacre a group of the impoverished is replaced with a mission where you have to stop said group from hacking her this mission is pretty boring but it has three very interesting parts the first is that the secret room with the student lone guy is replaced with a room full of exploding robots compelling the second is that you can find a very important data log which confirms Walter and Carla's positions within the research institute basically Walter was the Shinji of armed core and Carla was the misato of course the main difference being that Walter would not have any Hospital incidents the third interesting part is that you get to bully Iguazu again however this time you both get attacked by a mysterious enemy Force before immediately getting back to beating the life out of him fortunately that Jewel with the really corny guy is followed up by your most anticipated fight during your first exploration of Silent Hill when you reach the tower and reestablish contact with the Walter all mind jumps in and warns you that you have been followed however you weren't followed by that helicopter you were followed by a guy literally called thumb forced and Ash we stand as one all mind wants us to take him out because he is the leader of the Liberation Front and also because th can see fake girlfriends just like we can however he can do it because he took a lot of drugs when he was younger we can do it because our brain damaged brain suffered brain damage during a brain damaging explosion there is probably a difference maybe on his destroyed AC air finds some fan fiction he wrote about reaching Coral release with his own fake girlfriend needless to say maybe you shouldn't look through a dead guy's computer after this Mission all mind contacts you again they state that you are a candidate for something called the release project which is probably some weird bang thing they want you to destroy the coral supply of the corporations so you basically just fly around their base and shoot down a bunch of helicopters it actually gets quite hectic they throw a lot of helicopters at you and you will most likely keep running out of energy just trying to stay in the air this Mission prompts air to look into Kate markson who was working alongside you a thinks that Kate may also be a candidate for the release project as we can infer later this might not be entirely correct the next major difference in your third playthrough is the fight with Iguazu this time he chickened out of exploring the deaths so hard he literally isn't here instead we have to fight an ass assassin he hired called cold Co first of all why is a grown man going by Cold call isn't that corny second of all this is the same guy that was hunting the student loone guy you can find in Carla's Foundry a data log here proves it don't from software games just have the deepest student alone law this time when you get to choose between taking out Michigan or The Vespers you get given a new third choice to take out a Vesper called o'keef he was working with all mind as a spy within the corporations but decided to cut loose from them so you get to be all mind's hatchet man and take out your fellow human on behalf of an AI this is the point during the playthrough where maybe you realize that you might be the bad guy because after you fight Rusty and reach the underground city it really kicks off this time all mind intercepts your Communications and directs you to fight snail before he can Ambush you and take you to a CIA black sight so naturally you enter the CIA black site but this time on your own terms and fight snail as you destroy his smug sense of self- superiority Iguazu shows up and throws the Tantrum like usual and it becomes apparent that maybe ol mind also sent him here as a result you are competing with him to become all M's best brain damaged puppet Victory isn't necessarily a good thing here because it causes all mind to fake your death and you sort of become come there off the book slave you have to fight back through the watch Point destroying your fellow humans while all mind's AI Mech back you up you basically become this demonic Tech bro no human can stand in your way not even some crying guy as a reward for our faithful service all mind puts us into a coma and shoots us into space only waking us up when they need us to kill some things specifically the things piloting silent kill throughout this Mission you get to overhear Walter and Carla fighting all mind and even coming to the realization that you betrayed them now don't worry you don't actually need to feel guilty about this because they get killed off screen what a relief for a moment there I thought I would need to deal with the consequences of my actions after this you get the opportunity to reach Coral release with all mind whatever that means it's worth mentioning that throughout all the playthrough as you complete missions new enemies get added to a separate Arena mode for you to fight the purpose of this evolves as you go on as all mind harvests the data of your fighting to perfect its own models and it begins to make sense as to why all mind was doing this because they want to destroy you however there is a slight flaw in their plan for some reason they decided to merge with Iguazu seriously the big final boss of the entire game is Iguazu wasu oh yeah the deserter who pissed his pants and ran this might seem ridiculous but it makes a lot of sense think about it we are the ultimate winner we destroy everything in our path Iguazu is the ultimate loser he gets destroyed by everything in his path it's the ideological battle between the idea of killing lots of guys and the idea of not killing lots of guys Iguazu spends the entire game wanting to be as strong as us but he lacks the ability to truly let go of his Humanity for him killing is purely a transaction he does it for money we kill because there is something alive in front of us nothing more nothing less Iguazu does manage to accomplish this towards the end of the fight your fake girlfriend joins you in another Mech but eventually she gets taken out while Iguazu manages to destroy his own fake girlfriend and assume complete control of his core that is armored as a result Iguazu is not even human anymore and his lifespan is limited so it becomes this pure battle between two dudes who truly kill guys you can't help but respect Iguazu he became just like you but it wasn't enough with his defeat you and air are free to trigger the coral release which spreads the coral throughout the entire universe I assume this causes a symbiosis between the coral and all life forms so you basically gave everyone their your own fake girlfriend or boyfriend you are truly the ultimate wingman now there are still some Mysteries left like who was Kate marxen she was probably just all mind in Disguise or someone that did not make all mind's Final Cut like you and Iguazu did I assume Iguazu fighting you multiple times throughout the third playthrough and hiring cold cool to assassinate you was on behalf of all mind to test you even further because Iguazu is so bad at his job I doubt he had enough money to hire cold Co by himself all M's main objective was most likely to hijack the symbiosis process so they could control all of humanity this was honestly a complete waste of their time because they already had People Like Us Kate o'keef and Iguazu under their control without doing anything at no point during the course of the third playthrough did they ever explain their plans to us and yet we still followed along you want to know why all mind had the most important resources in existence money and a reason to shoot Guys these have fueled human history since time in Memorial should you buy armored Core 6 probably if you want to it's a fun game and I think you will enjoy it you know what else I think you will enjoy subscribing to my channel it would look great on your resume

Channel: Dark Tark

Views: 122,604

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Id: JEO98Q7L-wg

Length: 56min 53sec (3413 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2023