The gameplay has evolved in positive ways, customization is a high point with a variety of options, the maps are large and beautiful. It's unfortunate that so many missions aren't even worth the time they take to load into because their design is either stuck in 97' or they waste time telling an uninteresting and rushed through story as you go around scanning wreckage targets.
You will customize the parts of your mech by selecting different parts for the weapons, leg, core, head, booster, targeting computer, and armor setting type before going out on fairly short missions that have you fighting against other enemy ACs and the much weaker mass produced models of mechs, stationary defenses, and drones that will go up against you. Arena battles against AI units from the game and online player vs player modes are also available. Enemies and your own AC can take a certain amount of impact damage before they are staggered opening them up to taking massive amounts of burst damage, making use of your quick boosts to avoid too many heavy or consecutive hits is important as is trying to keep a heavy attack, melee, or charging kick on hand for when you do manage to stun your enemy.
The enjoyment you get from Armored Core VI is going to be largely dependent on how much you like to edit your mech and try out the different styles of play available to you. You have access to a wide variety of weapons that you can equip on your left and right arms and shoulders and you can unlock the ability to store arm parts on your shoulders while rapidly switching between them as the stored parts reload and cooldown. Each type of leg part can change up the way you play quite a bit with the the normal set acting as a balanced type, the low weight supporting reverse joint legs giving you a lot of height when you jump without using up energy and being fast, quad legs allowing you to hover in midair for very little energy and to fire heavy weapons without stopping, tank treads limit your boost speed and can make it a bit more difficult to control your movement but gives high health and defense, the highest weight limits, and absorb recoil like the quad legs do. As you play through the game the first time, and in its new game+ and new game++ you will continue to unlock new parts as you do different mission paths for the first time and trying out those weapons and builds can be a lot of fun, which is good because many of the missions are terribly designed and are even worse when you have to replay them.
The biggest issue with the game is the wasted use of so many large and beautiful maps and a focus on an extremely uninteresting story that because it's From Software has no shortage of Youtuber's posting amazing hidden plot threads that the game blatantly spells out for you immediately after they happen. So many of the early missions feel like they are just their to get you up to speed and used to the gameplay, with almost nothing to actually threaten you during the mission. This would be great, if they changed those missions up when you start hitting the new game+ playthroughs but most of them don't change and many some that do don't change in a way that makes them any more mechanically interesting. There are missions where you just walk up to some targets to extract data from wrecks with almost no enemies, missions where you fall down a hole to shoot the core of a stationary device. The first time you play a mission where you take down a giant weaponized mining machine can be fun because it looks so cool as you destroy the back leg an watch it collapse after you climb it and blow up the core but, especially after one or two more playthroughs, you realize all you really did was walk up to something and shoot a few stationary targets while hiding behind a wall from to avoid its defenses a couple times.
What the game needs is some DLC maps and missions that completely ignore the pointless main story that often makes a slog of the main campaign. There's a fun change up late game mission in space where you shoot down an enemy fleet of battleships while making use of endless energy boosts. Make a whole mission or three out of that but with multiple sides in a massive battle with enemy pilots and wider enemy variety and some allies and give people their Gundam fantasy, a large number of the shared AC builds are already almost perfect Gundam unit recreations. Do an Ace Combat 6 style mission, drop a player on one side of a massive battlefield between different forces where you can go help out different units, maybe make a minor story of the battle with a chain of missions where choices or actions can effect one or two future missions. Have a mode where you can choose one of the maps and set the enemy placement and play co-op (since team based multiplayer is already a thing). Instead we get so many fight some pitiful enemies before destroying stationary helicopters, walk around a foggy city trying to find an object to scan as a couple drones occasionally annoy you, fall down a hole, try to locate drive cores in a maze like room with a time limit, a mission with multiple factions fighting somehow turns into blow up two ACs that were fighting some weak enemies then go fly to a boss fight. There are good missions in the game but there are also so many missions that aren't worth the time it takes to load into them and it wouldn't take much to make them much more interesting because everything else the game needs for them to work is there.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1710124544542097479
You will customize the parts of your mech by selecting different parts for the weapons, leg, core, head, booster, targeting computer, and armor setting type before going out on fairly short missions that have you fighting against other enemy ACs and the much weaker mass produced models of mechs, stationary defenses, and drones that will go up against you. Arena battles against AI units from the game and online player vs player modes are also available. Enemies and your own AC can take a certain amount of impact damage before they are staggered opening them up to taking massive amounts of burst damage, making use of your quick boosts to avoid too many heavy or consecutive hits is important as is trying to keep a heavy attack, melee, or charging kick on hand for when you do manage to stun your enemy.
The enjoyment you get from Armored Core VI is going to be largely dependent on how much you like to edit your mech and try out the different styles of play available to you. You have access to a wide variety of weapons that you can equip on your left and right arms and shoulders and you can unlock the ability to store arm parts on your shoulders while rapidly switching between them as the stored parts reload and cooldown. Each type of leg part can change up the way you play quite a bit with the the normal set acting as a balanced type, the low weight supporting reverse joint legs giving you a lot of height when you jump without using up energy and being fast, quad legs allowing you to hover in midair for very little energy and to fire heavy weapons without stopping, tank treads limit your boost speed and can make it a bit more difficult to control your movement but gives high health and defense, the highest weight limits, and absorb recoil like the quad legs do. As you play through the game the first time, and in its new game+ and new game++ you will continue to unlock new parts as you do different mission paths for the first time and trying out those weapons and builds can be a lot of fun, which is good because many of the missions are terribly designed and are even worse when you have to replay them.
The biggest issue with the game is the wasted use of so many large and beautiful maps and a focus on an extremely uninteresting story that because it's From Software has no shortage of Youtuber's posting amazing hidden plot threads that the game blatantly spells out for you immediately after they happen. So many of the early missions feel like they are just their to get you up to speed and used to the gameplay, with almost nothing to actually threaten you during the mission. This would be great, if they changed those missions up when you start hitting the new game+ playthroughs but most of them don't change and many some that do don't change in a way that makes them any more mechanically interesting. There are missions where you just walk up to some targets to extract data from wrecks with almost no enemies, missions where you fall down a hole to shoot the core of a stationary device. The first time you play a mission where you take down a giant weaponized mining machine can be fun because it looks so cool as you destroy the back leg an watch it collapse after you climb it and blow up the core but, especially after one or two more playthroughs, you realize all you really did was walk up to something and shoot a few stationary targets while hiding behind a wall from to avoid its defenses a couple times.
What the game needs is some DLC maps and missions that completely ignore the pointless main story that often makes a slog of the main campaign. There's a fun change up late game mission in space where you shoot down an enemy fleet of battleships while making use of endless energy boosts. Make a whole mission or three out of that but with multiple sides in a massive battle with enemy pilots and wider enemy variety and some allies and give people their Gundam fantasy, a large number of the shared AC builds are already almost perfect Gundam unit recreations. Do an Ace Combat 6 style mission, drop a player on one side of a massive battlefield between different forces where you can go help out different units, maybe make a minor story of the battle with a chain of missions where choices or actions can effect one or two future missions. Have a mode where you can choose one of the maps and set the enemy placement and play co-op (since team based multiplayer is already a thing). Instead we get so many fight some pitiful enemies before destroying stationary helicopters, walk around a foggy city trying to find an object to scan as a couple drones occasionally annoy you, fall down a hole, try to locate drive cores in a maze like room with a time limit, a mission with multiple factions fighting somehow turns into blow up two ACs that were fighting some weak enemies then go fly to a boss fight. There are good missions in the game but there are also so many missions that aren't worth the time it takes to load into them and it wouldn't take much to make them much more interesting because everything else the game needs for them to work is there.
Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1710124544542097479