Daemon Ex Machina Switch
Developer Marvelous Publisher Nintendo Format Switch Release Out now
This is the best mecha game we’ve played in years, but only because no one really makes them any more. And to play it is to understand why they don’t. Daemon X Machina seeks to update the timeworn formula of Armored Core and its ilk, but doesn’t go anywhere near far enough. Rarely has a new game felt so old, the gleaming finish of its robot cast left dulled and cobwebbed by genre clichés and botched attempts at innovation.
Fundamentally, at least, there’s a certain amount to like. Your Arsenal mech is pleasingly nimble both on the ground and in the air, and when combat works as intended it’s hefty, thrilling and dramatic, punchy guns with generous lock-on properties setting off silly explosions across large-scale battlefields. If combat against the rank and file can quickly grow wearying, facing off against a giant boss or a squad of rival Arsenals shows the game at its best. When you down enemy mecha, you can loot their corpses for new gear – but can only take a single piece, forced into a rapid decision by the battle that still rages around you.
Sadly, that loot system, while full of potential, is miserably implemented. New gear isn’t exciting enough, offering minuscule increases, typically offset by nerfs to other entries on your Arsenal’s intimidatingly large stat sheet. There’s plenty to customise, at least: weapons for your left and right arms, another one shouldermounted, a support item and skill trees for both your Arsenal and pilot – though the latter involves physical modifications which quickly make a mockery of the time you spent in the character creation screen.
The problems don’t end there, either. Mission design is bland and repetitive, made even more so by the rewards on offer for replaying certain battles. The sense of a game padded out to double the length is worsened by the story, if you can call it that, which achieves the almost commendable feat of being incomprehensible within the first five minutes – and only builds from there. Missions are book-ended by torturously overlong IM-style text chat between the various players; all can be skipped, mercifully, and chances are all will be.
Co-op livens things up a little, as co-op always does, but this is hardly Monster Hunter in mechs, despite the obvious potential that concept holds. There is simply too much compromise on show: of satisfying combat undermined by dull mission design, of loot that isn’t meaningful enough, of a story that is overlong and impenetrable. Early on, we wondered why they don’t make games like this more often. Within a few short hours, we were grateful they don’t.