Daemon X Machina

Genre: Third-Person Action

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Wireless, Online)

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

.

Review:

Daemon X Machina is a Third-Person Action game involving customization and combat with mechs in a post-apocalyptic future where a chunk of the moon has broken off and struck Earth, somehow causing AI around the world to revolt and start targeting humanity. This game was originally released in 2019 as a Nintendo Switch exclusive, but has since been ported to PC in 2020.

Daemon X Machina famously had an open beta test that garnered a less-than-enthusiastic response, followed by a whole slew of changes designed to improve upon the flaws beta testers complained about. It’s actually pretty remarkable how much work was done in such a small amount of time to improve the experience of this game, and playing the “prototype” demo and comparing it to the final product definitely shows in a multitude of little tweaks and fixes.

In terms of presentation, this game has a really fantastic, unique anime-styled look that seems to use a sort of subtle cel shading to make everything have a slightly stylistic look to them. It’s hard to describe, and at times it looks odd (such as the way shading appears on human faces), but it’s certainly unique and memorable. Plus, the character designs here are really good, and the game’s color palette really pops. On the negative side of things, there is some pretty noticeable aliasing going on here in the visuals.

As for the rest of the presentation, the game’s plot and characters are, as with the visuals, clearly anime-influenced, although in this case I’m not quite as enamored with them. The character archetypes here are broad to the point of being silly, and the dialogue is pretty awkward and poorly-localized in places. However, the real problem here is the way the game tosses players into a world filled with bizarre characters, factions, place names, and terminology, and doesn’t do a very good job explaining it in a way that flows naturally.

Plus, the game can’t seem to decide whether it wants to highlight its story, or if it’s an afterthought, and this makes this story clash with the gameplay in numerous ways. Often before or after a mission, you’ll get conversations between characters, and while sometimes these happen in the hangar with characters animated and reacting naturally to one another, more often than not this plot will be delivered via talking heads in a way that feels unnatural and eats up time when you’d rather be getting to the action. Then, once you’re in the action, the characters continue to chatter, distracting you from that action while making it difficult to follow what’s being said. I kept finding myself thinking that if they wanted to focus on story here, they should put more effort into it. Otherwise, it would have been better if they skipped it outright.

The gameplay here is a bit of a mixed bag as well. On the bright side, moving around in your mech feels fantastic, thanks in part to those improvements I spoke about earlier. You get a good sense of speed and weight, both on the ground and in the air, and it doesn’t take long to adjust to the controls. However, the way this game does its “lock-on” feels like a half-measure that fails to work especially well on either side of the spectrum. On the one hand, when targets are within range, you’ll automatically target them, which is kinda’ nice but also feels like it eliminates the skill of aiming from combat. On the other hand, some of the faster mech enemies will zip all around you, in and out of your auto-target range, and since the camera doesn’t move with targets you’ll often find them to be a pain to track. And while this game does offer optional gyroscopic motion control, this hardly seems necessary to target slow-moving enemies, and isn’t really helpful in tracking faster ones.

Then of course there’s the other main complaint here, and that is how repetitive combat can be, with these more durable and mostly entertaining mech enemies interspersed with a multitude of cannon fodder enemies like tanks and drones that rarely pose any sort of threat. Every once in a while you’ll fight a larger boss enemy, and these can be fun, but expect to have to down a lot of these tanks and drones on your way to these more interesting fights.

Of course, in any decent mech game, combat is only half the fun, with the other half being the amount of customization you can make to your machine, and that’s certainly also the case here, although it takes a while before you get much in the way of any meaningful options. Eventually, this part of the game takes on a joy of its own, but it’s frustrating just how long it is before you feel like you have some real choices to make when outfitting your giant walking death machine.

In the end, I like Daemon X Machina. The presentation is striking, and the core mechanics of movement during combat and outfitting your mech all work very well… but each of these elements has a major flaw that makes it less enjoyable, such as an incomprehensible story that gets in the way of the fun action, repetitive combat and a mediocre lock-on ability, and customization that takes too long to open up to players. The result is a good game that feels like it could have been a much better one, perhaps if it got another beta test before seeing release. For mech fans, this is still a game well worth getting, and fans of Action games in general may still find it enjoyable, but its flaws make it hard to recommend outright.

tl;dr – Daemon X Machina is a third-person mech Action game with a striking anime look that controls well and has some good customization elements, but it’s brought down somewhat by its incomprehensible story crowding in on the action, a lock-on feature that could do with improvement, and a slow buildup of its customization features. In the end, this is still a good game, but its flaws stand in the way of it being a much better one.

Grade: C+

.

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Daemon X Machina

Genre: Third-Person Action

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Wireless, Online)

.

Review:

Daemon X Machina never really found the success its creators were surely hoping for, but it apparently did well enough to justify a sequel, and so it seemed fitting to look at how the original game fares on Nintendo Switch 2.

Sadly, I detect no noticeable improvements to resolution or framerate, and this is particularly disappointing given how much this game could have used a resolution boost. No, it looks like this is yet another case where the only improvements to be found are in the loading times.

At the very least, in that respect, Daemon X Machina fares quite well on Nintendo Switch 2. On the original Nintendo Switch, it took 35 seconds to get to the title screen while button-mashing through logos, another 14 seconds to load into a game save, and then another 29 seconds to load a mission once you’ve selected it. On Nintendo Switch 2, those times are cut down to 18, 7, and 18, roughly half of what they are on Nintendo Switch.

It’s not as good as one might hope for a game that was at one time seen as a major exclusive for Nintendo Switch, but it’s still an improvement. Just don’t expect anything different here beyond faster loading times.

tl;dr – Daemon X Machina is a third-person mech Action game with a striking anime look that controls well and has some good customization elements, but it’s brought down somewhat by its incomprehensible story crowding in on the action, a lock-on feature that could do with improvement, and a slow buildup of its customization features. In the end, this is still a good game, but its flaws stand in the way of it being a much better one.

Grade: C+

.

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}