Review: Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion (PS5) – Rough Open World Design Distracts from Tight Mecha Action

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Titanic Scion starts off quite abruptly, offering little guidance on controls and gameplay mechanics upon starting. Once you create your personalized character, you’re immediately plunged into a frenetic action scenario with minimal instruction.

You stumble clumsily through endless, monotonous sci-fi hallways, with dialogue on the radio that lacks clarity, making the entire experience feel disorganized and chaotic. The frequent low-quality cutscenes only add to the confusion.

However, once the game commences, you gradually discover that this follow-up to the 2019 exclusive for the Switch console, Daemon X Machina, is essentially a mission-driven, open-world game filled with grinding mechanics, and it’s held together by a somewhat unconventional narrative.

The story often seems disjointed, jumping from one science fiction cliché to another. While it’s not poorly written, with some intriguing ideas and hints of post-apocalyptic themes, the poor film quality and underdeveloped characters make it challenging to fully engage with the narrative.

After escaping from an astral research station, your character – a seasoned mech suit operator – finds themselves crash-landing on a weathered world. Here they form alliances with a motley crew of adventurers. Although their objective is to return to the orbiting colony, they’ll need to amass substantial weaponry in order to confront the ruthless rulers dominating this planet.

begins an unending series of tasks that will find you exploring primarily desolate landscapes for supplies and improved components for your mech. Fundamentally, Titanic Scion is essentially a role-playing game focused on loot collection, where you’re consistently upgrading your Arsenal – a highly customizable mech suit akin to Iron Man’s.

The diverse range of possibilities for customizing your Arsenal is truly remarkable. You’ll find a multitude of components to explore, each with its unique stats and additional benefits; these components influence factors such as protective armor ratings and movement speed, while weapons significantly shape your playstyle. At any given moment, you can carry up to four weapon types equipped.

The game encourages exploration, and it’s likely that you won’t find your preferred strategy until you’ve spent quite a bit of time playing it after its launch.

After mentioning that, constant loot drops can make the experience feel lengthy. Once you’ve found a preferred gameplay style or something similar, sifting through all the loot for minor stat improvements becomes quite tedious.

Additionally, the process of disposing or selling unused components can be quite frustrating due to complicated menus and intricate sorting methods.

Beyond those restrictive menus, the Titanic Scion offers a remarkably open-ended gameplay experience. As hinted earlier, the expansive open-world settings invite exploration. However, if you’re not engaged in a quest, you won’t find much of interest off the usual routes.

Having a flight-capable Arsenal adds an appealing vertical dimension to the game, but exploring the wilderness can be problematic because parts of the map seem excessively expansive and barren. This often involves traveling long distances for minimal rewards such as a treasure chest or an enemy defeated in just a few seconds.

Discussing the fighting style in Titanic Scion, it’s quite simple and straightforward. It involves basic melee attacks, shooting with guns, and strategically timed dodges. In the initial stages, the simplicity might make it seem less engaging, but as you progress and unlock advanced weapons and skills, battles become more dynamic.

As a devoted fan, I can’t help but marvel at the thrilling boss battles this game offers. The swift and responsive targeting and movement controls make engaging in intimate, Arsenal-versus-Arsenal duels an exhilarating experience, often reminiscent of the pulse-pounding clashes found in Armored Core.

Similarly, the numerous methods to customize your Arsenal make it seem like there’s a hidden layer of complexity in the combat system. It’s clear that dedicated players will appreciate the chance to experiment with various weapon pairings, discovering attack strategies that deal maximum damage or immobilize opponents effectively.

However, it’s in these areas where Titanic Scion encounters its main challenges. To unearth its intriguing core content, you’ll find yourself spending a significant amount of gameplay navigating through tedious elements of its design, such as redundant mission patterns, an excess of largely inconsequential loot, and environments that lack the depth to maintain player engagement.

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2025-09-04 18:13