This review contains spoilers, click expand to view.
So to be completely fair, and give the game the benefit of the doubt, I'm gonna be completely presumptuous that these missions are not finished, or that there will be changes/improvements to be made. With that in mind, please read on.
When Daemon X Machina first aired at E3 I was a bit cautious looking at the preview. The game reminded me of Anthem, a game where you customize a suit, get in said suit, and take on missions to further progress the story, and unlock cooler gear to go on more missions and get even cooler gear. Now that Anthem has been released and is getting less than stellar reviews, it made me nervous of what I was gonna play, as the two games looked hand in hand with another. I can safely say right now that Machina seems to be the better of the two, although that isn't saying much (right now anyways.)
Not going with a live service model, Daemon X Machina has you as a pilot, called an outer, donning a suit of armor called an "arsenal" to help rid the world of an AI trying to destroy your planet, after the moon fell into the world and unleashed... something, onto the Earth, turning human AI against their creators.
You are equipped with an array of guns, swords, shields, traps, and turrets to help take down the mechanical menace, and help make the world a better place (even though the moon fell on it and somehow everything is going to be ok in the end?)
From what can be gathered so far, there's going to be differently ranked missions depending on difficulty, as well as a reputation, meaning if you do well you'll get rewarded better, and maybe different missions, to if you do worst you'll end up getting paid less, although this was not elaborated on that far into the demo.
The gameplay is competent, simple, and straightforward, with an array of missions that stem from defending a target, escorting, killing enemies, to killing enormous bosses. There's a decent amount of variety, although a few maps already begin to feel too similar. The broken buildings are cool, and being able to smash through them and change the battlefield is also a nice touch, but it gets repetetive, fast (and there's only 4 missions available)
One major issue is the flying. You can fly up, and depending on which way you're looking, you can fly in that direction... sorta. You can either go straight up, strafe, go back, forwards and side to side, but when it comes to just going down, it's a hassle. You have to steer your attention away from whatever you're doing and look down, just so you don't fly too high and the game forces you down by wrestling the control away from you for a few seconds.
That's actually an even bigger issue, the map limitations. Most of the time it's fine, but with the "immortal colossus" boss, it was extremely aggravating just staying in the map. Maybe it was just my game hating me, but the boss always stayed really close to the edge, and has a knock back attack that covers him in a sphere. This sphere pushes you straight out, and it always managed to push me out of the boundaries, where the AI would direct me right back to the boss, unable to fight back so I was nothing but a bullet sponge thrust right back into the battlegrounds, just to take more damage since I was a foot away from the boss's enormous leg.
The combat is fun though, to say the least. Being able to fly around and dash in a way that's reminiscent of Starlink makes the game feel more familiar, although you're not able to do a huge amount of tricks, which blows. Although being able to guerrilla style the game by swapping out weapons and taking the gear off fallen arsenals always feels rewarding, even if the gear isn't very good (where the game even tells you most of it won't be)
Back in the hangar you can swap out different mods of your current "outer" to gain cybernetic enhancements that will enhance both you, and your arsenal (while also making you a badass cyclops) and change out equipment on the arsenal to make it more durable, agile, deadlier, and prettier. The color customization in this game is excellent, making all limbs individually customizable, catering to the artistic and creative.
The voice acting is servicable, although some characters are far weaker than others, and some characters are written in the absolute worst ways possible, already boasting predictability, as well as being flat out pretentious and annoying in the worst cases. It's like listening to a poet who's brain dead but doesn't feel like admitting it try and talk like Shakespeare at one point.
All in all, the game is fun, it's a little rough to control at first, but with some practice, it feels almost intuitive, even if the game really doesn't do anything new or entirely "fresh" This of course as stated before is a demo, so it's exciting to see what the full game will be like when it comes out. For now, it's worth an honest look (also it's a free demo, the only investment is your time)… Expand
