Daemon X Machina (2019)

Playtime: 31 minutes (3 missions)

Played: 2025

Intro

This is a third-person shooter/shmup in which you pilot a big flying robot, sit through endless menu's, shoot enemies for 5 minutes and repeat the loop.

The Good

n/a

The Bad

• Endless menu's that are keyboard operated and have you guessing how to proceed.
• Awful story and even worse dialogues. I literally turned off voice sound.
• You constantly have to hammer Tab to skip each subsequent cutscene.
• Extremely dated graphics and awful use of visual effects outside gameplay.
• Poor feedback with puny sounds
• Sleeping-inducing gameplay. I almost Alt+F4ed during the third mission. Zzzz.
• Super-short missions so you have to sit through all those menu's again.
• Vague terms that aren't explained.

Conclusion

I would rather replay Fury³, Terminal Velocity or some other 30 year old shooter than suffer through this dreadful trash.

There is a lot happening in Daemon X Machina, but the unfortunate characteristic of this game is that very little matters.

• There's the post-apocalyptic setting, but it's vaguely defined without any mythology behind it.
• There are lots of cutscenes involving lots of characters talking in cringy anime-style dialogue, but the narrative doesn't seem to go anywhere.
• You can customize your giant robot by swapping out body parts that change stats, but it's unclear what you're supposed to be optimizing for.
• There are a large number of missions, but they all feel derived from the same template.
• Combat does not evolve in any meaningful way. You start with enemies that die quickly, then graduate to various levels of bullet sponges.
• You can play in your human form (as an 'Outer'), but I can't see a single advantage in taking this approach. The game will instead force you to do this for certain missions.

I'm not even getting into the technical problems here: the pointlessly large number of weapons/parts, the ineffective lock-on system in combat, the weird skill-tree system, and more.

At the end of all this, you have a game that feels confused and aimless. 'Play as a giant robot and fight other giant robots' is a fun premise, but once the shallow appeal of it wears out, you're left with a mostly empty game.

I played through the single-player campaign and made it to Rank C. I plan to abandon the game at this point and move on. It was fun while it lasted.

Well this was a disappointment

I wasn't really expecting that much, I was drawn in by the stylish presentation in terms of the main menu and UI, and I like the concept of mech action fulfillment. I even felt like it had similar systems to EDF 4.1.

Boy could I not be more wrong, it's actually so mechanically dull and formulaic that every single mission actually became more irritating in how it drops the ball. It's kinesthetically bare, with actions that don't feel powerful to hit and enemy attacks that feel like chunks to your own tankish armor. The enemy design is so boring and easy to work with that it's almost devoid of any challenge. That extends to the boss design too, with some weak point areas that are a sleepfest to just exploit. Even the "dogfights", where I was hoping would at least be the most interesting part, turned out to be the least interesting. The AI for their combat is straight up trash, easy to take down, and I felt not a single bit of compelling fun with the encounters against them.

The story and characters are forgettable too, featuring stand-in one note trope personalities, and it's so overbearingly anime in all the worst ways that statement could imply. The narrative is poorly paced and not so interesting to behold, turning out to be as simple as it let on at the start.

I don't want to play any more of it, it's just boring. (4/10)

I played the demo they released recently and I quite enjoyed my time with it. The mechanics aren't really explained in much depth, but I feel that's an intentional design choice to force the player to experiment with the weapons and abilities on offer. The controls take a little getting used to, but once you've got the hang of it, the experience becomes a lot more fun. It's incredibly satisfying to target a large group of tanks and annihilate them all in one swift missile strike. The boost is another particularly gratifying mechanic, especially when your mech is drifting along the ground at rapid speed. The aerial combat is less engaging and sometimes a little disorienting, but at times, especially high tension fights against near equally speedy and powerful mechs, it adds to the panic as you desperately try to catch your bearings and throw yourself back into the clash. The dialogue between the characters is a step above the usual anime nonsense, and the different mechs you fight with actually manage to have varying conflicting personalities, leading to fun encounters between the characters. It isn't particularly impressive, but it's just engaging enough that it prevents the exposition before missions from being mind-numblingly dull, which is appreciated.

It's a bit janky and lacks polish, but Daemon x Machina is full of potential. In its current state, it's a lot of fun, and I reckon with a bit more dev time, it could be excellent.

Tried out the Prototype Missions today. It’s not terrible but nothing that really blows me away. Combat is fine but sometimes awkward. It might benefit from a different button layout or maybe just a bit of getting used to. Visuals in handheld mode are pretty poor but look decent in docked mode, which is expected I suppose.

The English dub is atrocious, but you can switch it to original Japanese. The downside to doing that that is the way the game handles subtitles. It’s very hard to read the subtitles during combat and the game essentially had a non-stop stream of dialogue. Other Arsenal pilots are constantly talking to (they almost never stop) which divides your attention. As a result the dub is probably a better choice if you can put up with painfully wooden voice acting.

The dialogue is also relatively generic mecha anime type stuff, something that isn’t going to do anything for a general audience but will likely appeal to fans of the genre. As such, I think this game might scratch an itch for someone specifically looking for a Japanese mecha game for Switch, but I don’t think this one is for me.