Alea Iacta Est

 And there we have it: the third ending to Armored Core VI complete, along with the "Stargazer" achievement, which signifies that I've truly completed every mission in the game.

Spoilers ahead:

Ironically, this third ending actually allows you to skip the hardest boss in the game. During the mission to reach the Coral Convergence, which then sees us face off against CEL (we need a good nickname for this boss,) ALLMIND contacts you shortly after defeating the two easier ACs in the first part of the mission, and sends you the location of V.II. Snail, who you can then go and eliminate. The fight isn't trivial, especially because G.5 Iquazu shows up mid-fight to try to take revenge on you for the many times you've beaten him at this point (in this playthrough, I want to say this is the third time we fight him?)

What follows - the mission "MIA" is kind of horrifying even if it's easy: ALLMIND takes over the many automated mechs in the area and wipes out the remaining Arquebus forces - even when you encounter G.4 Red (voiced by Robbie Daymond, who I'm familiar with from Critical Role,) the lone Balam-affiliated survivor here, he briefly fights alongside you before going crazy and attacking you.

The subsequent mission is one of the more frustrating types - similar to the alternative one you do for Carla in Chapter 2 where you have a limited amount of time to destroy a few different hacking probes, here you need to disable Overseer's controls on the Xylem in a labyrinthine area within five minutes - where the challenge is less fighting things and more trying to figure out where the hell you are (there were two hidden parts I found there, and I sort of hope that's all of them so I never have to run that mission again). The final part of that is actually one in which you have to fly around a server room and hack things before a meter fills up, dodging powerful laser weapons, which is honestly not nearly as hard.

Finally, with the Xylem stopped, you can head out and confront ALLMIND, which clearly has very little respect for individual humanity, and wants to, as its name implies, merge all consciousness, both Coral and Human, into a single hive mind.

This actually winds up being its downfall: after it absorbed the mind of Iquazu into itself, the petty, jealous, douchenozzle of an AC pilot diverts all the power trying to implement this grand plan into taking vengeance on us, overriding ALLMIND's primary personality.

There is something here reminscent of Slave Knight Gael from Dark Souls III. Like in that game, the story that plays out is this epic clash between great lords, but in the long scope of time, someone just like us - a nobody from the dregs of humanity - becomes one of the arbiters of fate. Just as the Unkindled Ash and Slave Knight Gael clash atop the dust of the world, our ultimate foe is the fragmentary remnants of a man who allowed jealousy and contempt to define him.

The final battle took me three attempts - indeed, I don't think any of the possible final bosses took me more than that, meaning I think this game is probably easier than the Souls-borne games - but ultimately, perhaps shocking no one, I got my final victory with my standard loadout of weapons - Zimmermans and Songbirds.

The ending of the Alea Iacta Est route (Latin for "The Die is Cast," which Julius Caesar is quoted as saying when he crossed the river Rubicon, defying his orders from the Senate and thus committing to his coup d'état over the Roman Republic) sees us awaken on what appears to be a different planet along with many other ACs, and we can see the red Coral glow across the stars. It seems that humanity and Coral have been united and spread across space, but what that will entail is up to your interpretation (though Ayre's announcement that you are entering combat mode is not terribly optimistic).

One notable takeaway here, though, is that this is the one ending in which we have no reason to believe Rusty has been killed. In the Fires of Raven, we're forced to take our "buddy" out when he tries to stop the Xylem single-handedly, and in Liberator of Rubicon, his com goes abruptly dead during our fight with Snail, presumably taken out by the re-educated Walter. But with ALLMIND taking out Walter and Carla, Rusty might actually be ok. And doesn't that make this the best ending, as a result?

I've now bought out everything in the Parts Shop, and so I'm kind of at the stage with this game where I have nothing really left to do by clean-up. I want to finish the Log Hunt, but I might be getting to the point where I can mothball the game and wait to see if DLC comes out.

I've certainly enjoyed it - I had feared that its constructed environments and overall aesthetic would have left it feeling too cold and soulless, but I'll admit that I've gotten to care a fair amount about its characters and its world through the voice acting and the drips of lore. I don't know that it's up there with Elden Ring or Bloodborne, both of which are among my favorite video games of all time, but once again, FromSoft shows that they can make extremely satisfying gameplay.