After the amazing Nintendo Direct that dropped a butt load of great titles for us fans to look forward to, I went and tired the Daemon X Machina demo that was released that very day. I wanted to wait a day or so to let my experience sink in before writing this blog. Well, I’m ready to share my thoughts and opinion.
I had fun playing the game. Daemon X Machina was one of the many games I was anticipating this year for the Switch so I was happy that the gameplay held up for me. Since I played Daemon X Machina in handheld mode only, I can’t speak much on how the game might perform on docked mode but I will say that it ran really well on handheld.
The demo allowed us to get a taste of the character creation and gave us four missions to try out in order to get a good feel of what this game will offer come full release and quite frankly, I enjoyed all of it. Missions weren’t too hard and they weren’t too easy either. Most of the time, if I had wrecked my mech and was forced to continue the mission on foot, it’s because I was reckless and didn’t utilize the resource that were scattered across the map or loot the mechs I had previously destroyed. Speaking of which, that my favorite part about the game. I never realized how satisfying it was to destroy a mech and then loot its parts. From the weapons to their body parts, if you can see it, you can most likely salvage it. This really encourages looting and paying attention while on the battlefield.
The controls were fine for the most part, I had no problem moving around and performing maneuver in the air. It took a minute to get used to the controls but after the second mission, I had things well under control. I did struggle with aiming for a bit while playing. I was fine against normal enemies, but when it came to fighting against pilots, that’s a whole other story. They move way too fast for me to aim at to the point that I was shooting at after shadows. A lock-on system that you can trigger by yourself would be extremely appreciated here. Yeah, there’s auto lock-on but that’s only for the missiles. However, like any game, it took while to get used to it, so I’d imagine the same applies here.
We also got a taste of the story for the game, which for the most part was kinda interesting. I will admit that when I started the game, the first two characters that were introduced to me, made me want to skip the cut scene and just dive into the battlefield. It wasn’t until the second or third mission that I started caring for the story, mostly because of new pilots that were introduced. There weren’t too many cutscenes, with most of the story being told by text. It’s not bad but I’d like to see more in the final game.
The graphics weren’t all too bad either, mostly because the art style in this games was a pleasure to look at. I liked how the colors of each map really popped at you as you take you fight on the ground or in the air.
Overall, this is game well worth keeping on your radar, I can see myself customizing my mech for hours. Hopefully, they’ll have things like online raids and dynamic events with rare body parts and weapons to keep you coming back and playing with friends and others online.
