Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion runs into the same core problems as its predecessor despite its reinvention

Six years ago, I played through the original release of Daemon X Machina on the Switch. I appreciated its attempt to revive Armored Core before Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon was released four years later. Daemon X Machina was not a perfect game, but it didn’t need to be. It formed a solid foundation that recaptured the feel of Armored Core with some new mechanics here and there. I hoped to see a follow-up, and that time has come.

Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion is also a game that isn’t perfect. In some ways, this sequel almost runs into the same problems as its predecessor on a core, fundamental level. Although it’s much more polished visually and technically, Titanic Scion is so different from the first Daemon X Machina that both titles could be easily mistaken as two games from separate series entirely, if you didn’t know their titles beforehand.

Instead of building upon the Armored Core-esque sculpture that Daemon X Machina built, Titanic Scion decided to reinvent itself with Iron Man-ish powered armored suits instead. There are still giant Armored Core robots from time to time, but their presence has noticeably nosedived.

This isn’t an admonishment of Titanic Scion’s direction; I personally appreciate when creators deliberately veer into something entirely new and challenge expectations. For the developers at Marvelous First Studio, I imagine that Daemon X Machina found itself at a crossroads after Armored Core VI was revealed. Should the next Daemon X Machina directly compete with Armored Core, or should the next Daemon X Machina try something new and find its own identity?

Ultimately, I think Marvelous First Studio landed on a sweet spot that takes Titanic Scion away from the shadow of Armored Core into something it could call its own - at the cost of having to build yet another foundation once more.

Titanic Scion’s design departure doesn’t just encompass the switch from giant robots to power suits. It now has several wide-open zones where all missions take place, instead of stages. Character interactions are now all done with their in-engine game models. Thanks to the relatively smaller-sized powered suits, they can more easily express their body language and easily take off their helmets if they need to show their faces. Previously, conversations were expressed through static dialogue boxes, so this represents a significant step up from how its predecessor presented character chatter. 

I was also pleasantly surprised that Titanic Scion is fully voice-acted. This means that idle, irrelevant NPC dialogues are voiced, and even every response that your custom-made protagonist can give is voiced verbatim to the response that you selected. While I wouldn’t consider any of the Daemon X Machina entries a full-blown RPG strictly in the amount of dialogue there is, it is still an incredible feat nonetheless.

Although these presentation improvements do enhance how the narrative unfolds, I still found the core story merely serviceable at best. It takes place far after the events of the first Daemon X Machina, and is largely self-contained from the events of the past. Titanic Scion revolves around the ongoing struggle between the Sovereign Axiom and the Reclaimers; your protagonist escapes from the Axiom at the start of the game and shortly finds themselves as part of the Reclaimers resistance group.

There’s a lot of history between the members of the Reclaimers and the Axiom, along with your own character. The protagonist feels like their own person and isn’t merely an empty shell; they actively participate in the story frequently. I won’t spoil any plot revelations, but I think it fell a bit flat for me after all was said and done.

Part of my lukewarm response to the narrative stems from its predictable nature, though the primary suspect is the clumsy way that big plot moments are depicted. There are many times, especially in the second half of the game, when expository plot revelations come out of nowhere in a scene. There was often little-to-no foreshadowing or lead-up to these occurrences; it led to a handful of moments that were trying to be emotional, yet often missed their intended mark because there was no established reason to really care.

A good chunk of these fumbles happen when the central elite antagonist squad, the Axiom’s Neun, starts becoming more involved. Titanic Scion does attempt to add depth to these characters, and in some instances tries to humanize them, but it just doesn’t construct the connective tissue to establish any sort of emotional weight to them beforehand. The Neun members’ character designs themselves are incredible, at least. Each has a boss fight associated with them, and the variety in their fighting styles shines in those encounters.

Your Arsenal in Titanic Scion now refers to that powered armor that your character dons, rather than the mech in the previous Daemon X Machina. Constructing and prepping your Arsenal loadout is still done very similarly, though. Each part of an Arsenal’s armor set, consisting of the helm, cuirass, left/right vambraces, and greaves, add up to a collective numerical pool of Memory. Equipping weapons consumes Memory, and going over the allotted Memory cap will place severe mobility penalties on your Arsenal.

Every piece of armor falls under three weight classes - light, medium, and heavy. Lighter weights have lower defense values, but are more limber and move around quicker; vice versa, heavier weights supply more defense at the cost of mobility. Plus, lighter equipment provides less Memory than heavier equipment, as well. People can freely mix and match armor sets, so there’s no rigidity in how they want to suit up; there is a transmog option to alter the appearance of an Arsenal without sacrificing its stats.

Up to four primary weapons can be equipped, though only two of them can be held at any given time. Additionally, a shoulder weapon and auxiliary item can be wielded alongside all the other weapons. Shoulder weapons can take the form of artillery cannons, laser railguns, and such, while auxiliary items are tools such as different types of grenades, healing kits, and more. Primary weapons, shoulder weapons, and auxiliary items all consume Memory, so players may have to forego equipping every slot to not go over their Memory cap. Bigger, more destructive tools, like rocket launchers, consume more Memory than assault rifles or handguns - though if you have enough Memory, you can certainly dual-wield rocket launchers.

Both weapons and armor pieces can also come with attachment slots. As you loot bodies around the battlefield or browse shops, you can acquire attachments that provide effects like lower Memory consumption, increasing HP cap, damage bonuses, less Femto boost consumption, and so on. An upgrade to the home base eventually allows for adding attachment slots at a monetary and material cost.

Aside from customizing an Arsenal’s loadout, there’s a wealth of options for tweaking their aesthetic appearance, too. Every part of an Arsenal can be individually colored and decorated with decals; there are also hidden decals throughout the zones that unlock even more of them. There’s a custom decal creator for individuals who are creative enough to manipulate parts of other decals to illustrate the right design they’re going for. 

There are ten equipment loadout slots provided to save the loadouts and appearances of Arsenals. My one outstanding gripe with it is that it won’t auto-swap attachments when switching between two saved Arsenals that have the same attachments equipped; I have to manually swap those attachments over. 

How moment-to-moment combat ends up largely depends on the weapons you’ve got with you. After experimenting with several ranged and melee weapons, I ended up growing fond of the dual gauntlet life. My Arsenal became a boxer, and largely focused on keeping foes locked down in their hitstun animation until their stagger bar filled up. Once an enemy’s stagger is full, people can have their Arsenal grab an enemy and either hit them for big damage or throw them at other nearby targets. Combat feels generally faster and snappier than the first Daemon X Machina; the smaller-sized Arsenals in Titanic Scion can zip around quicker. 

Active and passive skills come into play with the Fusion system. Several color-coded genes can be looted from corpses and can be brought back to the Lab to fuse into your character. Distinct gene combinations unlock skills; an in-game visual glossary tells you exactly which genes you need to fuse to obtain a skill. Continually fusing genes will drastically alter the appearance of your character, though you can pay a hefty fee to “reset” their body. Activating skills generally consumes Femto, which is the same resource consumed to boost around. Femto naturally restores on its own over time, though consumables and several structures in zones help replenish it too.

There are other miscellaneous noteworthy things. Continually using a weapon type raises their mastery level, which raises relevant stats that improve its damage and performance. The ice cream shop from the original returns to provide different timed buffs depending on what scoops of ice cream you buy. People can remake their protagonist from scratch, even their body type, shortly after unlocking the home base early in the game. 

For card fiends, there’s an in-game card game called Overbullet that’s decently fun; you can purchase new cards from vendors and find them out in the world. There’s an entire side mission tournament chain for it. Titanic Scion retains the Armored Core-esque Arena feature, where you can ascend the rankings in 1-vs-1 duels with a light story associated with it.

Aside from the boosters on Arsenals to fly around, other transportation methods include a jeep that operates a lot like the Mako in the first Mass Effect, a bike that can transform into a massive gun that spews laser beams, and horses that are as menacingly big as Raoh’s horse Kokuoh from Fist of the North Star. Each of them has a side mission where it has you race against another NPC. While the different modes of transport are all amusing in their own ways, the Arsenal boosters were always faster to get from point A to point B.

The giant robot Arsenals from the first game do eventually make a return at some point in Titanic Scion. Their utilization is fairly limited, though, since they operate on a timer. Additionally, their customization options are severely stripped down, and you can’t swap out their parts.  The meter that dictates when you can summon one again fills up pretty slowly.

All these features function as interesting components contributing toward a larger base foundation, but individually, many of them either feel underbaked or tacked on. Alternative modes of transportation are certainly cool to mess around with, though their only substantial relevance comes in the occasional side mission races every so often. Collecting genes to unlock active and passive skills is tedious, since you have to continually hunt down specific mobs that have a chance to drop the genes you’re looking for to unlock specific skills - while making sure you have enough slots to carry them. There’s an abundance of little annoyances that add up when you take a step back and evaluate the overall experience.

Titanic Scion doesn’t escape the downfall of its switch to wide open zones that can be considered vast enough to make it an “open world” game, too. Much of these spaces feel empty for the most part; there are a few gigantic roaming bosses in specific parts of them, and the occasional fighting between Reclaimers and Axiom soldiers that happens here and there. Exploration just feels lifeless and uninteresting. Pick a fast travel point nearest to the destination marker, and zoom right to it.

A few “exciting” activities in Titanic Scion’s exploration include going to a mining node and engaging with a monotonous minigame that has to be done correctly to acquire maximum resources. Sometimes there are packages you have to carry to a specific place without using your thrusters to fly or they’ll explode. Several treasure chests litter the open world, filled with useless loot. There are also supply checkpoints that can be either unlocked or upgraded with resources; their upgrade progress is shared online with a handful of people, a la Death Stranding style.

I don’t know how well this next anecdote will be reflected on the final release of Titanic Scion, but I figured it was worth sharing. Prior to release, I received word that my PC review copy would get the day 1 patch update at some point. My performance had a few stutters here and there, as it was loading new environmental assets. It wasn’t bad enough to interfere with normal gameplay. Partway through my playthrough, I eventually received the day 1 patch, and it severely dampened my experience with Titanic Scion. Before the patch, my loading times on the fast travel elevators roughly took ~2-5 seconds to load in areas; the day 1 patch drastically exacerbated those loading times to an average of ~40-50 seconds. While it ironed out a good chunk of the stutters, I don’t think the trade-off with the increase in loading times was worth it at all.

I’m left weirdly mixed on Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion. The revamp in its entire aesthetic and gameplay loop is a nice, refreshing experience that helps carve out its own identity, instead of continuing to live in the shadow of Armored Core. I like the snappiness of its combat flow, and I enjoyed the tactical layer in building my Arsenals. There are a lot of miscellaneous systems that feel like they bloat the game, though; it feels unfocused at times, and the narrative doesn’t do much to hold any of it together. An unfortunate consequence of Titanic Scion’s reinvention is running into the same problem as its predecessor for me, in which I’m left wondering if the next installment of Daemon X Machina will refine this new foundation into something greater.