Here’s the scene. It’s 2018. Marvelous announced its new IP, a Switch-exclusive game called Daemon X Machina. At the helm of the project are ex-FromSoftware developers that previously involved in Armored Core, which is at this point of time has lie dormant.
Released in 2019, the game turned out to be a spiritual successor to Armored Core. With the sensibilities of Armored Core’s second and third generations of games, a focus on large cast of characters with a human face and body attached to them, and other interesting ideas that wasn’t really explored to its full potential.
But as the heir apparent to the mecha action game in spirit, Daemon X Machina is good enough to scratch that itch.
And fast forward to 2023, Armored Core VI was released.
Now in a world where there is recent Armored Core game release, where does Daemon X Machina go from here? The obvious one is to just double down and do another mecha-action game.
But Marvelous First Studio has gone bold.
They pivoted. Evolving away from its roots.
Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion is the developer taking the lessons learned from the original game, but now that they have the pressure of assuming the spiritual successor role, has decided to soft rebooted itself, focused on those underdeveloped new ideas they had and evolve away from a mecha-action game and becomes something that they are in a league of their own.
The demo for Titanic Scion indicates Daemon X Machina is evolving into an open-world looter-based action-RPG with epic boss fights, co-op multiplayer and a promising narrative. But not without some rough edges.
Off To A Rocky Start
And those rough edges can be spotted as early as the game starts. The pacing is fast, but the way the game has you move like five steps before taking controls away to fade into a cutscene and then fade back in to a fight while also bombard you with tutorial prompts, and also pit you against unbeatable (by design) enemies is… just a lot to take in. Especially when you’re also wrestling with the controls, which has its own quirks that needs to be learn get used to.
The flow of the starting sequence is jerky and the vibes are not quite there, it isn’t allowed to breathe due to the incessant need to cut to a short cutscene over and over.
But it’s nice that this time around, your customisable player character is fully voiced, isn’t a full blank slate, and has a personality of their own outside of the occasional dialogue choices you get to pick.
The player character is a bit aloof and standoff-ish when they found themselves crash landed on Earth, there is some lore about how the people on Earth and in space have a strained relationship between them, with terms you’d remember from Daemon X Machina. Outers. Immortals. Reclaimers. All of that lore is still here. But the narrative isn’t a direct continuation of the first game, so new players are just as confused as the veterans when you hop into this demo. It’s fine.
We Dig (Tinier) Giant Robots
The demo eventually reaches a point where it introduces Titanic Scion’s new core gameplay loop. You still hang around in a hub to buy and craft new parts as well as customise your Arsenal. But the Arsenal has.. shrunk. They’re not giant robots scale anymore, they’re more exosuits. Big exosuits, mind, it’s still imposing like a Power Armour from Fallout or Warhammer 40,000 can be, size-wise relative to a normal human. The scale change here is as staggering between Armored Core IV’s big sleek machines to Armored Core V’s tinier, bulkier moving bricks.
Though despite the scale change, at least one part line look rather familiar, the Flamberge line of parts are here from the original Daemon X Machina, with some tweaks to fit the exosuit-scale form, but more or less still carry the same design elements. The wide shoulders, the regal headpiece, it’s recognisable from its mecha-sized counterpart.
The way you control the Arsenal is more or less the same, too. Similar customisation slots. Familiar weapon types. The odd and barely useful Femto mode changes are still here but incorporated in a more complicated way that’s intriguing, more than just select a mode to use this resource bar on. If you play Daemon X Machina, you’ll quickly find yourself at home with the moment-to-moment controls and customisation of the now smaller Arsenal.
My one complaint is that some of the weapon parts don’t physically attach to the Arsenal. The Thunderbird missile pod is supposed to attach at the back of the Arsenal but when using the Flamberge as the cuirass (core/body), it just… floats there. That’s not cool. How are you supposed to turn these Arsenals into marketable plastic model kits if all these weapons supposedly attached and displayed on their person are bounded by the magic of video games?
(Update 15/10/25: On September 12, 2025, it was announced that there will be a collaboration between 30 Minutes Missions and Daemon X Machina Titanic Scion. 30MM is plastic model kit label under Bandai Namco which features modularity across the various 30 Minutes label of kits. Interestingly, this is also the same model kit label which had produced the model kits based on Armored Core VI: Fires Of Rubicon. It’s still not clear whether the the Daemon X Machina model kits will be based on the exo-suit Arsenal or the mecha counterparts. But based on the point made here, it’ll probably be the latter, unless the some exo-suit-scale weapons are supposed to float and attached to a transparent action base, which is lame.)
A Whole New Open World
But what will take some getting used to is that you now explore an open world. Rather than have each mission an instance you load in and out of, like Armored Core still does today, Daemon X Machina has embraced the modern AAA game design of letting you roam free and explore a big desolate world with scatterings of points of interest to find. Missions are still selected at the hub, but now you can just accept multiple of them and then head out the open world to clear all of them at once and turn them in, RPG style.
It’s jarring at first, but it makes sense the more I play it. Daemon X Machina always has a loot system where the same parts can spawn with variances in stats, so there’s a reason to keep killing enemies and loot them. And it’s not a mindless looter game in that for every dead carcass or wreck you can scavenge loot from, you’re allowed only to take one of multiple choices, so you will be staring at numbers quite a lot here. It was an odd choice to be implemented in Daemon X Machina as missions mostly demand you to go whatever needs doing quick. But having it here in Titanic Scion, it all makes perfect sense. It does mean you can easily lose yourself fighting against jobbers hoping for some good loot drops, some of the Arsenal parts and weapons are available first as random loot drops before the shop has them in stock.
An Evolutionary Next Step
The demo also gives a glimpse of the fusion system, where you can unlock skills and passive at the cost of your humanity. Gone are the useless skill tree from the original game, but the spirit leaves on. Instead of having to modify and replace body parts with robotic ones, Titanic Scion will see you evolve into different kind of aliens, should you continue to spend points in this aspect. There’s an option to reset everything, and it’s appropriately expensive.
Whether the fusion system provides utterly game-changing abilities that make you ponder if it’s worth turning your cute, hot and/or handsome player character into a non-human entity remains to be seen. But it’s a promising first step seen in the demo.
Between the loot-based game loop and the new fusion system, Titanic Scion really is leveraging on some of its undercooked ideas into something that will define the series moving forward. Plus, epic boss fights where the enemy is unquestionably large and tanky are here again. Hopefully these fights get more elaborate and not just bullet sponges, because that one boss really felt that way.
Still Lacks That Polish
While I walk away happy from playing the Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion positively happy with the experience, I should point out how it’s not the most polished experience.
The game stutters and just freezes as it struggles to load the next region of the open world you just stumbled into. The lock-on camera struggles to frame the action sometimes and loves to zoom out really, really far. The controls are not as intuitive as it first seemed, from how you need to double tap the boost button to stop floating to how all four equippable weapons can be equipped in either hands at any time. The latter sounds like a nice feature, but if you’re too Armored Core-pilled like me who is used to the simplicity of swapping two weapons that are locked to either side of the mech, getting used to cycling through more weapons (or use the shortcut) takes a lot of my memory capacity. It’s something I reckon that I’ll get used to as I continue to play of this.
But I’ve heard folks struggling to wrap their head around how to move around in the Arsenal, which is worrying signs.
Closing Thoughts
A part of me is sad that Daemon X Machina, the heir apparent to the Armored Core throne, has decided to leave the kingdom now that the long-dormant monarch has awaken to take their rightful place.
But another part of me is excited to see where the series venture off now that it has let go of its burden. Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion has the opportunity to be an open-world action-RPG that’s unlike any other. They are in a league of their own.
Whether it will find an audience, whether that be open-minded mecha action fans willing to go along on this unexpected turn or new players who’s now interested with anime-esque people donning sci-fi exosuits, remains to be seen. As a fan of Daemon X Machina and the series it was inspired of, I’ll be there at launch. But those who are not, give the demo a fair shake and see if you can handle the controls.
Played on base PS5.