Daemon x Machina: Titanic Scion arrives at an interesting time in these early months after the release of Switch 2. There haven’t been many AAA-styled heavy-hitters to push this system so far, certainly not in terms of action games, at least. And so, Titanic Scion feels like it should give us a reasonable idea of how the console is positioned to handle this type of experience.
And it’s a rough first pass. The console’s just out, and this is a big old game with a whole lot going on, so it follows, rather unsurprisingly, that some issues are present, and concessions have had to be made to get it running on Nintendo’s machine. It turns out the Switch 2 really isn’t a pocket PS5 after all! But we knew that, you and I. It just stings a little when your new console can’t play the new thing as nice as some other, not-quite-as-new consoles.
Does it hurt the experience that it doesn’t match the 60fps found on other machines? Yes, it does a bit. I’ve been switching between this and the PS5 demo the past few days and it’s absolutely better playing at 60fps, because of course it is. However, the main takeaway I have from playing that demo is actually that, besides the drop in frames, there’s a surprising amount of parity across the board with regard to tech issues and jankiness.
This has been useful, because Titanic Scion, as flashy as it is in its combat and its robot models, and as sweet as its vistas can look as you jet-blast across enemy-strewn deserts and through crumbling city-scapes, doesn’t half have a bunch of low-res textures crammed in there. It’s a bit janky to look at, on all systems. So it’s not your Switch 2’s fault on that front.
But let’s rewind a little – let’s cool the old thruster jets, as they say, and talk about what this game, with its ludicrous moniker, is actually all about. What does it want? For the uninitiated, let me break it down thusly: Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion is a semi-open world game that sees you blast around large locations in a customisable mech suit. It’s like Armored Core, especially the most recent one, in how it gives you basic story plot points and loads of side missions of the “go fight” or “go get that thing” variety, then boots you out the door to get busy kicking the life out of stuff.
Everything here is, essentially, about the mechs. It’s about finding weapons, upgrading, unlocking new skills — which is interesting in this one, so I’ll get back to that — and making your big robot-self more powerful. You can play it in co-op online (which I couldn’t for this review), and compared to the first game, everything here is bigger, more open, and more interesting. Heck, even the story, which is still fairly threadbare, is better. Which isn’t saying much, mind, but progress is progress, comrades.
So, here you are, big robot person, brave and strong. And right at the start of the game you find yourself fighting back on behalf of humanity, a brave merc putting it all on the line against the Sovereign Axiom Empire (the traditional bad guys of the piece), whilst also having matters complicated somewhat by the arrival of…well…aliens who want to kill you.
Now, there is more to the story, but not much, so it’s best you experience the rest of that for yourself without my spoiling. I should also point out that, whilst the narrative is no great shakes (and the English voice dub is a disaster, so get the Japanese on immediately), there are some very slick and stylish cutscenes holding it together, not to mention all of the fantastically cool mechs and sexy futuristic character designs there are to salivate over. It also does a good line in OTT pantomime villains who talk waaaay too much before I get to beat the crap out of them with a laser sword and a giant hammer. Which is something I always appreciate.
There’s no real need to dwell on the narrative aspects here because, really, it’s all about the robots. And in this regard, Daemon X Machina is a decent enough time. It can’t match the likes of FromSoftware’s Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon (now there’s a game I want to see on this console), because, quite frankly, not many action games can, but it finds a place for itself, regardless.
Where Titanic Scion excels is in presenting solid mech scraps that are quick and easy to get into, and this time around it presents them in open-world areas that are improved over its predecessor. This makes for a tighter core gameplay loop overall, as the exploration involved, whilst still fairly simple (you can scan areas to highlight most items), does provide enough hidden secrets, bases to run amok in and, most importantly, sweet loot to find, that the game doesn’t feel like it’s exclusively about making the attack stats go up. Oh, and you also get to ride around in cars, on horses, and on a motorbike that transforms into a gun. Every little helps.
Now, I mentioned unlocking new skills earlier, and one of the big shifts in this sequel is that they’ve attempted, as I spoke about in my preview, to make things a bit more Monster Hunter this time out. You can chip DNA strands off bad guys, you see, and the bigger and stronger the baddie, the better the DNA will be. Once you’ve got some of these genetic markers, you can then get busy fusing different strands in order to unlock abilities – at the cost of some fairly hideous mutations to the look of your custom-built avatar. Hey, that’s the price of being able to do a turbo kick into a mech enemy’s head, mate.
This makes for a situation where you actively want to get into big fights, where usually you might avoid them (especially when you are me), and overall it’s a smart addition that melds well with the undeniable depth that’s already there in terms of customisation and weapon setups.
With left and right main weapon slots, two side slots, a shoulder and auxiliary slot for weapons, and varying sizes and styles of mech to get to grips with, there’s plenty of scope for differing playstyles here at a basic level, and while the first few missions disappoint with lacklustre weapons, give it a few hours and you’ll be rocking huge guns called stuff like ‘Revenant’ that can one-shot those annoying floating testicle things that had been the bane of my existence for a little while.
With plenty of scope to mix and match, the devs then bring suitably cool weapons to the party, and you can come at the battles presented in a surprising number of ways as a result. I’ve had a spell rocking a shield and laser sword, mostly because it looks cool to do that when you’re a robot, but I also really enjoy dual-wielding machine guns to bother enemies as I circle them, wait for them to get a little tired and then blammo with my long-ranged sniper rifle.
The weapon slots on offer make it a breeze to switch between setups of this nature on-the-fly in battle, and even the CQC — with its hammers and shanks and even grabbing and throwing enemies — holds up, whether you’re getting in for punches and timing your dodges to keep the pressure on, or hanging back and hiding and doing all the things that I like to do.
With a decent spread of enemy types and solid combat, this is better than its predecessor already, so if you enjoyed that one, you know you’re in for a good time here. However, there are issues. Plenty of them, in fact.
In terms of performance, even when making peace with the fact that you’re looking at 30fps here, I can’t help but feel as though I’m experiencing input lag of sorts. It feels mushy and messy at times. On the PS5 version, there’s the same feeling; it doesn’t feel quite as tight as it should, especially in its dodging, and I think the drop in frame rate on Switch 2 exacerbates this to the point that sometimes I could lose a scrap for reasons other than my own skill failings. Which is not okay.
It makes for a messy feel to the combat — the core of the entire thing — and whilst it’s still very playable, and I’ve completed the roughly 80 hours of tasks it took me to see the end with little real problem, it’s disappointing that it’s not much slicker. There’s also some slowdown as you pass into new areas. Again, this is also noticeable on the PS5, so it’s not specifically a Switch 2 thing. Indeed, beyond the frame rate, there’s nothing here that I’d worry was the fault of the Switch 2, overly. It’s just a game with a lot of rough edges that needs a few patches.
And so, overall, whilst a bit clunky and messy in places, Daemon X Machina is still a reasonably decent time for folk who enjoy customising mechs with a side-helping of perfectly serviceable exploration for good measure, and especially in handheld, where the low-res textures aren’t quite so blown up as they are on a big TV. However, the issues with stuttering, mushy controls, and general weakness of the story are hard to ignore, and go quite some way in knocking the experience down.
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