![]() It’s a grim, fascinating way to transform skill trees into something more interesting, and I’d love to see other games run with the idea.Ĭut A Long Story ShortThe moon of Daemon X Machina’s world has fractured and crashed into humanity’s home, splintering society. You can see how much of a difference that makes in the screenshot comparison below. Want a laser sword? Better amputate that arm and get one with a weapon installed. Gaining better lock-on stats is a case of ripping out your old eyes and installing glowing green replacements. You can jump out of your Arsenal to fight on foot at almost any time, and your character can be upgraded to be a bit more useful when you do - but those upgrades are physical things. Body SwapOne of Daemon X Machina’s smartest original ideas lies in player-character progression. ![]() ![]() This could have been fun enough - I’m a fan of mindless destruction in almost any virtual form - if it wasn’t for the story getting in the way. The upshot is that any work you put into making your perfect Arsenal feels basically cosmetic - unless you truly screw up, you’ll almost never need to think about your loadout, or apply any kind of thinking about how to tackle a situation beyond “blow up anything marked in orange or red”. But there are so few peppered among your grindingly humdrum mercenary day job that they feel more like respite than reward. “To its credit, boss fights against colossal enemies - from a spider-like ‘Gunfort’ to a possessed piece of mining equipment - are almost all fantastic, offering a much-needed dose of pattern learning, action game reflexes, and spectacle. The absence of a PvP mode at launch seems like a misstep - pitting your Arsenal against actual inventive humans would at least mitigate that single-player disappointment a little. Incidentally, at time of writing, I haven’t been able to play in multiplayer (both online and local wireless are supported), but Daemon X Machina only features co-op options. Opposing Arsenals with their own specialised loadouts should be the main attraction, but enemy AI is poor enough as to make most encounters a game of violent cat-and-mouse, essentially forcing you chase a slowly depleting health bar around the map. Standard enemies - tanks, drones, and the like - are little more than cannon fodder, just UI dust to be explosively swept away. Missions almost never deviate from “destroy X things” or “stop thing from being destroyed” structures. The story places you as a mercenary just doing their job, taking missions as they come - I just wish it didn’t feel so much like a job to play. Progress just an hour or two into the campaign and you’ll have experienced most of what it has to offer over its 15 hour length. Play Machine-LikeWhile the developer has clearly put a great deal of thought into the framework of Daemon X Machina, the same can’t be said for the meat of the game itself. To get a taste of what the action entails, check out the Daemon X Machina's first mission in the video below: But there’s a fairly huge problem at the heart of all this: none of this hard work really matters. So yes, Daemon X Machina is a successful recreation of Armored Core’s, er, core, rekindling the mechanic-like thrill of piecing together a war machine that feels truly yours. You can easily build around weapon loadouts, whether that’s an all-melee, hyper-fast samurai machine, or a rocket-spewing steel beast that might as well be a turret. Another might allow for high speed boosts at the cost of a stamina bar that depletes just as fast. One set might improve speed on the ground but have you flying with the speed of a drunk bumblebee. ![]() Despite the incredibly granular approach to equipment stats, you can immediately feel the difference between loadouts. Most importantly for a mech game, Daemon X Machina deftly manages the interplay between your customisation choices and the act of playing. It’s a horribly rare joy to be able to simultaneously fire a machine gun, a bazooka, and a grenade launcher while waiting to charge up a railgun so powerful you have to plant yourself in the ground to even let it rip - it feels as good, and as silly, as you’d hope it would. Weaponry is stupidly plentiful, allowing you to take six weapons of many and varied types into battle, using four of them at any one time. ![]() It’s genuinely a little uncanny how natural it felt to play after years away from similar games (although I’d recommend a Pro Controller over fiddly Joy-Con button stabbing). 61 Images Once you finally decide that your mech - or Arsenal, as it’s called here - is ready for combat, you’ll find that Daemon X Machina handles just right too, its walking tanks managing to communicate both physical heft and the freedom of high-speed flight. ![]()
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