The perfect example of a modest game that manages to punch above its weight class.
Since mainstream entries in the mech genre are so few and far between nowadays, it is not difficult for someone who does not actively seek the genre out to forget the more peculiar traits of these games. The weighty jumps of the machine and their wind-up. The way the lock-on functionality works, and how its effectiveness is governed by (at least) three different stats. The meters, and the number of verbs at one’s disposal—enough for them to not fit neatly into a regular controller. Learning to overcome the friction is part of the appeal of these games, but having too much of it can make the entire experience crumble by ruining the intended game feel.
Luckily, the movement in Daemon X Machina is airtight, even in the most chaotic and frantic combat situations. The experience of piloting your arsenal can be fine-tuned to the finest minutiae, and even rising or lowering a stat by a few points makes a noticeable difference in performance, directly impacting either your movement, combat capabilities, or raw damage output. Unlike the paper-thin attempt at a story, acquiring new parts and customization options never feels superfluous, as expressing yourself through your arsenal becomes the game’s main goal.
This means that, similarly to other titles such as Monster Hunter, Daemon X Machina is fundamentally about a person who loves their job so much they spend their payment in becoming more efficient at it, and nothing else. The game asks the player to come up with a build tailor-made for the given combat scenario, although regrettably it only dares to really push them hard in one direction: ‘can you do it again, but faster?’. Repetition and grinding are baked into the core loop, but, as satisfying it might be to set the arena ablaze with your unit—and it is incredibly satisfying—, the game does not do enough in terms of variety for most mission justifications to stay in your mind, drowned under the noise of exploding machinery. Including more varied scenarios and side-objectives would help in pushing players out of the comfort zone of their winning build without disrupting the design goal of ‘blow stuff up and look cool while doing it’ too much, and it’s the one area of the game that feels somewhat lacking.
So, variety-wise, the stand-outs are few, but they exist. Colossal Immortal (read: ‘big robot’) missions lean on spectacle effectively and are diverse enough among themselves for different players to have different favorites. Some non-standards missions such as infiltrating a facility on foot or escaping with a stolen, wind-fast arsenal are among the most memorable sequences the main game has to offer. The secondary cast acts as the element of novelty in you average mission, as skirmishes against other mercenaries abound and are rife with banter and exposition. Although narratively the game does not really coalesce into anything of note, these characters are well-defined and entertaining enough for their company to be appreciated.
But the flying. The flying feels good.
Since mainstream entries in the mech genre are so few and far between nowadays, it is not difficult for someone who does not actively seek the genre out to forget the more peculiar traits of these games. The weighty jumps of the machine and their wind-up. The way the lock-on functionality works, and how its effectiveness is governed by (at least) three different stats. The meters, and the number of verbs at one’s disposal—enough for them to not fit neatly into a regular controller. Learning to overcome the friction is part of the appeal of these games, but having too much of it can make the entire experience crumble by ruining the intended game feel.
Luckily, the movement in Daemon X Machina is airtight, even in the most chaotic and frantic combat situations. The experience of piloting your arsenal can be fine-tuned to the finest minutiae, and even rising or lowering a stat by a few points makes a noticeable difference in performance, directly impacting either your movement, combat capabilities, or raw damage output. Unlike the paper-thin attempt at a story, acquiring new parts and customization options never feels superfluous, as expressing yourself through your arsenal becomes the game’s main goal.
This means that, similarly to other titles such as Monster Hunter, Daemon X Machina is fundamentally about a person who loves their job so much they spend their payment in becoming more efficient at it, and nothing else. The game asks the player to come up with a build tailor-made for the given combat scenario, although regrettably it only dares to really push them hard in one direction: ‘can you do it again, but faster?’. Repetition and grinding are baked into the core loop, but, as satisfying it might be to set the arena ablaze with your unit—and it is incredibly satisfying—, the game does not do enough in terms of variety for most mission justifications to stay in your mind, drowned under the noise of exploding machinery. Including more varied scenarios and side-objectives would help in pushing players out of the comfort zone of their winning build without disrupting the design goal of ‘blow stuff up and look cool while doing it’ too much, and it’s the one area of the game that feels somewhat lacking.
So, variety-wise, the stand-outs are few, but they exist. Colossal Immortal (read: ‘big robot’) missions lean on spectacle effectively and are diverse enough among themselves for different players to have different favorites. Some non-standards missions such as infiltrating a facility on foot or escaping with a stolen, wind-fast arsenal are among the most memorable sequences the main game has to offer. The secondary cast acts as the element of novelty in you average mission, as skirmishes against other mercenaries abound and are rife with banter and exposition. Although narratively the game does not really coalesce into anything of note, these characters are well-defined and entertaining enough for their company to be appreciated.
But the flying. The flying feels good.