To get a taste of what the action entails, check out the Daemon X Machina's first mission in the video below: But there’s a fairly huge problem at the heart of all this: none of this hard work really matters. So yes, Daemon X Machina is a successful recreation of Armored Core’s, er, core, rekindling the mechanic-like thrill of piecing together a war machine that feels truly yours. You can easily build around weapon loadouts, whether that’s an all-melee, hyper-fast samurai machine, or a rocket-spewing steel beast that might as well be a turret. Another might allow for high speed boosts at the cost of a stamina bar that depletes just as fast. One set might improve speed on the ground but have you flying with the speed of a drunk bumblebee.
Despite the incredibly granular approach to equipment stats, you can immediately feel the difference between loadouts. Most importantly for a mech game, Daemon X Machina deftly manages the interplay between your customisation choices and the act of playing. It’s a horribly rare joy to be able to simultaneously fire a machine gun, a bazooka, and a grenade launcher while waiting to charge up a railgun so powerful you have to plant yourself in the ground to even let it rip - it feels as good, and as silly, as you’d hope it would. Weaponry is stupidly plentiful, allowing you to take six weapons of many and varied types into battle, using four of them at any one time.
#Daemon x machina joy con pro#
It’s genuinely a little uncanny how natural it felt to play after years away from similar games (although I’d recommend a Pro Controller over fiddly Joy-Con button stabbing). Once you finally decide that your mech - or Arsenal, as it’s called here - is ready for combat, you’ll find that Daemon X Machina handles just right too, its walking tanks managing to communicate both physical heft and the freedom of high-speed flight. Those looking for a throwback will feel right at home from the get-go. This is a decidedly old-school proposition: where customisation will likely take as long as those missions where lists of stats run over multiple pages where you’ll agonise over paint jobs and decals for no reason other than personal satisfaction (helped by the fact that your mech is displayed with perfect selfie lighting in the hub hangar at all times). Like Armored Core, Daemon X Machina has a 1-2 rhythm, constantly bouncing between short, destructive missions and quiet moments where you’ll make use of the funds and equipment you’ve earned to improve for the next one. But at its worst, those good looks feel less like a costume and more like a mask for a game that isn’t quite as well thought-out as it appears.
#Daemon x machina joy con update#
At its best, Daemon X Machina is an exercise in rose-tinted nostalgia, a gorgeous update to a much-missed genre.
But they’re draped like a costume over the body of a game that pays homage to the golden age of Japanese mech shooters, particularly early Armored Core (whose producer, Kenichiro Tsukuda, has moved to publisher Marvelous and helms this project). The living manga designs, technicolour-skied maps, glorious cartoon explosions, and endlessly stylish animations are beautiful, made more impressive because they’re contained on the relatively underpowered Switch.
To my mind, there is one indisputable fact about Daemon X Machina - it looks fantastic.
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