I loved the mech combat in "Armored Core 6" when I reviewed it last year, and like 2019's "Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice," it was a strong enough single-player action game to win our best action game of the year award. However, it was a bit disappointing that we couldn't play "Armored Core" in co-op, as we fought through most of From Software's "Dark Souls" series and "The Elden Ring". If only there was a modder who could make such a thing possible: ...... Perhaps if there was a mod who had experience in making "Elden Ring" into a proper back-and-forth cooperative game: ......?

Yes, dreams do come true: modder LukeYui, who teased cooperative play for "Armored Core 6" back in November, released an alpha version of the mod on Sunday, allowing up to six people to play together in a single match. The mod also allows for classic soul-style PvP invasions, where up to two ACs may invade to slow you down while you complete missions with your co-op crew.

This invasion mechanic is a perfect fit for Armored Core. This is because, at various points in the game's campaign, powerful ACs will suddenly arrive to make the missions more difficult than expected, to say nothing of extremely minor spoilers. I can't help but imagine that the matches against other players will be even tougher than these surprise boss fights, and if you don't like Souls' invasion mechanic, you can even play this co-op mod without it by modifying one of the mod files, as Nexusmods' LukeYui elaborates:

PvP can be disabled by changing "allow_evil_guest = 1" to "allow_evil_guest = 0" in the "ac6_coop_settings" file. This option is only important for session hosts.

Other details can be found on the mod page:

Installing the mod is as simple as unzipping the files in the Steam installation folder of Armored Core 6. It adds a new "Squad" menu in the garage and a "Break in Mission" menu option during an invasion. However, to use an existing save file, the following must be done before launching the mod's dedicated executable:

I installed the mod and tried it out with associate editor Tyler Colp, who used Steam's friend list to invite someone to join the Invite them to the party, launch a campaign mission or select a previously completed mission from the replay menu and it works as is. I encountered a bug once where the mission objective would not advance, but a quick restart of the mission worked fine the second time.

As soon as I started the first mission, it was immediately invaded. After disabling PvP for a few minutes of video recording, I took on AC6's first big boss in co-op. Here's how the mission went.