Branching Paths: Daemon X Machina Titanic Scion has a card game and four other big changes for the mech sequel
Running alongside the Summer Games Fest Game Days was IGN Live, a more general audience-tailored event full of demos, stage shows, and more. Tucked away in one of the demo rooms were a handful of PCs set up with Marvelous’ upcoming Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion. While it could be debated as to whether or no this game could be considered an RPG, we do have a feature that discusses the first game a bit, and I think it’s a safe bet that there is some crossover between folks that like RPGs and those that like games where you customize your own sweet robot.
After spending almost two hours with the game, Scion is a far bigger and more impressive game than its predecessor. Here are five significant changes that surprised and impressed us during our time with it, and that players should be aware of.
Large open zones
Where the original Daemon X Machina game felt more like a spiritual successor to the Armored Core series, where you would accept a mission and then launch into its level, Titanic Scion has adopted a similar approach to Monster Hunter World. This time around, after selecting a mission, you are able to deploy to a massive, multi-region environment that not only contains your mission objective but various other points of interest, roaming giant enemies, and other surprises to discover.
In the demo, only one biome was included, the Desert, and only one portion of it was available to explore, but even just that was far too large to explore in the time we had. To help get around, you will discover different fast travel points that you can jump between but what was especially helpful were setup points that you can build supply bases at to restock up on ammo and swap out gear on your arsenal! This means you can focus on exploring and not have to return to your base.
This switch to large explorable zones felt like the biggest change over the original game, and I adore this new approach. Flying around and taking out enemies or large roving bosses was a blast and I can’t wait to see what other biomes the full game will launch with.
Weapon Masteries
Titanic Scion gives players access to a bunch of weapons to pick from to outfit their arsenal, including 10 different firearms, eight melee weapons, shields, and gun arms. What’s new here is that each weapon type also has an associated Mastery Level, which you can level up to boost its individual parameters and unlock special weapon skills. We will have to wait and see what the maximum level is and what specific sorts of bonuses you will get, but this looks to be a neat addition to reward folks for sticking with a certain weapon!
Increased Arsenal Customization (Transmog, hiding armor parts, more)
One of the biggest draws to games like Daemon X Machina is how it lets players build their own badass mechs that look straight out of their favorite animes, and Titanic Scion offers even more ways to let players make their dream robot. This time around, you will be able to transmog the parts of your mech, allowing you to make parts of your Arsenal look like one set of gear while retaining the stats of another. While the original game allowed you to change the look of your Arsenal, it was more of an all-or-nothing affair, whereas this time around, you can change the appearance of each piece individually, including turning them off altogether.
Instead of piloting a large mech similar to, say, a Gundam or an Armored Core, the scale this time around is a slightly scaled-up version of an Iron Man suit or Javelin from BioWare’s Anthem. With this more human-sized scale, you can outright hide pieces of your Arsenal, so your avatar shows instead. The only exception to this is the feet parts, where instead it looks like you are on stilts, with everything below your character’s knees, being slotted into the Arsenal.
A Card game
Move over, Triple Triad, and get out of the way, Gwent, there is a new card game minigame in town - Overbullet. So, outside of this existing, I know very little about how the game works, as the representative on site was tight-lipped on it even existing…Even though I picked up and found a couple of cards in the base.
According to the card screen, there will be 164 cards that players can find. The two cards I found - No.045 Grim Reaper AT and No. 117 Ekrixi (Vambrace) - look to be representations of pieces of Arsenal gear. At a quick glance, we can figure out a little information about the game:
- There will be different suits of cards
- The game will take place on a field, and not simply cards played from the hand against one another (like War or UNO, for example)
- Cards can have attack values or defense values. Not sure about having both
This reveal came as quite a surprise, as nothing about its inclusion had been revealed previously, and as a longtime Magic: The Gathering player along with other TCGs, I’m excited to see more about this game and hopefully get confirmation about online play against your friends!
A Mouse Cursor (and a ton of other PC improvements)
It’s been a minute since I booted up my PC copy of the first game, and as I spent most of my time playing the Switch version, I had completely forgotten how lacking the PC port of the game was. Including the fact that it didn’t even have a mouse cursor for you to interact with the menus. Well, I can reveal that the PC version of Titanic Scion does in fact have a mouse cursor, in addition to a far greater number of settings for players to tinker around with. Just as an example, in the original game’s PC port, there were only six gameplay settings that could be tweaked; in Titanic Scion, that number explodes to almost 50. Scion also includes specific settings menus for cutscenes, accessibility, and online, none of which were present in the original. Honestly, the PC settings alone warrant their own article.
Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion is due out on September 5, 2025 and will release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2, and Steam.