Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion Brings Mecha Action To A New World

I had an ongoing regret regarding the original Daemon X Machina from Marvelous: I never played it. I knew it was a game about mech suits, I knew there was action, and I knew there was some degree of customization—and that was it. Marvelous is putting in extra effort in not just putting the word out about this new sequel, Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion, but also in making sure people will want to stick around with this new sequel.

Like any good mecha game, Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion places you into the middle of a war between two factions. The Axiom army fuses humans with an energy source named Femto, turning them into "Outers": humans with enhanced abilities and the potential for evolution. Axiom uses Outers as a private army, protecting orbital elevators and space stations. Meanwhile, the impoverished citizens planetside scrabble for what few resources they can to protect themselves from the elements—and the mutated Immortals. The Reclaimers lead the fight against Axiom, fighting for the freedom of all. You begin the game defecting from Axiom and stealing an Arsenal (a suit of powered armor) while you're at it.

Right from the get-go, there's a lot of customization you can mess around with: you can play around with your character's gender, height, skin tone, eye shape, and so on. Faces were pre-set, as far as I could tell, but it was easy enough to make something I was happy with. Similarly, your Arsenals give you tons of options for customization—not just from mixing and matching components (legs, both arms, chests, and helmets) but also for part colors and decals. It's also possible to design your own decals from stickers collected throughout the game. There are also varying "classes" of Arsenal equipment (light, medium, and heavy armor), with heavier armor trading versatility and dexterity for greater protection and stats.

There are also tons of weapons to collect: two different kinds of swords, lances, machine guns, pistols, chainguns, bazookas, shoulder-mounted support weapons like missile pods, shields, pile bunkers, knives—not to mention laser weaponry. There is a lot of play behind all of this, and you can even equip auxiliary weapons that you can swap to at a moment's notice. You can build your Arsenal however you want. And the more you use a certain kind of weapon, the greater your Mastery becomes, granting extra stat bonuses.

Once you land planetside and ally yourself with the Reclaimers, you can begin the game in earnest. There's a lot to do—especially lots and lots of quests ranging from fighting packs of monsters to reclaiming territory. There's also a massive post-apocalyptic wasteland to traverse—and it feels so good to explore. Running around in your Arsenal feels great, especially when you take to the skies and fly around. You can also Dash and Boost, which takes Femto that you'll need for your special attacks (more on those later) and your laser weaponry. The good news is you can regain Femto over time, or on the spot, by destroying Femto crystals on the field. For greater ease of movement, it's better to take a truck—or hitch a ride on a mutated horse you find in the overworld.

Combat feels good, especially with all of the variety offered by your different weapons. Between Immortals and roving bands of Axiom soldiers, you'll have plenty to fight and loot—more so when you find beacon points to reclaim or Axiom bases you can loot. You might also find large Immortals to fight on the overworld; these require care, but are also plenty of fun to fight, thanks to your ability to peel their armored parts off. Fighting larger Immortals also grants you Genes, which you can use to unlock skills for your Outer. These can range from special attacks to enhancements, all of which can be equipped to certain weapon types. The downside to these genetic skills: they mutate your Outer's appearance (which you'll have to invest money into repairing). In our time playing, unlocking the Helm Splitter ability mutated our Outer's eyes. But our Outer already had slitted pupils, so whatever change we were supposed to see was lost.

Even while you're playing alone, you still might find large enemies on the map. In our time playing, I found a four-legged spider-tank roaming around. I was feeling cocky and tried my hand at fighting it—and promptly got schooled (twice). While I was admittedly underequipped for this fight, the camera wasn't helping: locking onto an enemy (or a large metallic leg) doesn't make the camera track the targets. So when the giant gun-tank you've locked onto jumps into the stratosphere, it's hard to judge where it'll land (especially if you're trying to avoid getting pancaked). Consider fighting these large enemies in groups.

While Titanic Scion allows for online play, we weren't able to experiment with playing online. There's a variety of options for "Dynamic Entries" (splashy effects that trigger when you drop in on another player's instance), which opens the door to a lot of dramatic last-minute saves. But in the meantime, it's also possible for players to asynchronously work together to open and upgrade beacons on the overworld, improving their healing rates in exchange for some Scrap. You can also use Scrap to improve your facilities at the Reclaimer base, granting you access to better equipment or the like. Or you can just foot the bill for the base to adopt a cat (or dog!).

There are a couple of pain points in Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion: the camera needs a bit of work, roving bands of monsters can either be too easy to fight or an unstoppable guntank, and the amount of loot might feel overwhelming at times. During our play, we'd occasionally see a graphical glitch that turned the ground into a weird disco-tile pattern. (There is currently a Day 1 patch being worked on to address some of these issues.) But Titanic Scion still offers a ton to people looking for a great open-world action-RPG, especially if you need more mecha in your life.

Marvelous will release Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion on September 5 for Nintendo Switch and Steam platforms.