Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion on Nintendo Switch 2 had the potential to be a really good, ambitious follow-up to the original 2019 project. Sadly, performance issues severely hamper the experience, making it difficult to recommend over more stable ports available on other consoles (PS5 and Xbox Series) as well as PC.
Titanic Scion takes the franchise in a whole different direction. Unlike the first game, the sequel focuses more on exploration. While not entirely open-world, it features a vast, open-ended area filled with enemies, resources to mine, and neat little secrets. The general gameplay loop will see you go out and do missions to improve your mech, called Arsenal in Titanic Scion, which is more of a suit of armor around your playable character than a steel giant like in Armored Core.
Customization is where Titanic Scion absolutely shines. By going to your base’s hangar, you can tinker with virtually any aspect of your Arsenal. You can equip up to six weapons, which you can then easily cycle during combat. You can pick from dozens of choices, making buildcrafting incredibly fun and engaging.
You’ve got melee weapons like laser or regular blades, shields that you can parry with, lances that can be tossed, or knives. You’ve also got machine guns, assault rifles, snipers, laser rifles, long bows, bazookas, and many more tools at your disposal. Two weapon slots are reserved for shoulder weapons, which are a bit more stationary (you can’t hot swap these during combat) and provide an added layer of strategy to your loadout. For example, you can equip a canon that’ll give you extra firepower, or unit recovery equipment to help you keep your Arsenal topped up healthwise. Want honing missiles? No problem. A jamming grenade launcher to suppress enemies? You got it.
The more you use a certain type of weapon, the better you’ll get with it, unlocking weapon mastery. Each level grants an additional bonus. For instance, regularly using shotguns will buff your reload time and tighten the spread angle. So, while variety is nice to shake your gameplay up, you’ll be constantly rewarded for rocking a single loadout. Luckily, if you want to experiment, Titanic Scion features a few loadout slots to help you manage what will surely become a hefty inventory.
Your Arsenal’s armor also plays a big role in finding the right loadout. You can customize pieces such as your helmet, torso, arms, and legs. Stats like weight will impact mobility at the cost of having better health. Nimbler armor pieces might boost your aerial speed, but basic defense, total health, and others may suffer. Not everything is a simple incremental upgrade, which I highly appreciate. There’s also a mod system to make those favorite pieces of gear stand out even more.
You can even customize your pilot, and not just aesthetically. By collecting Factors from specific enemies, you’ll be able to mutate your character, allowing you to unlock skills. The system is very intricate and can be a little confusing at times, but once you get the hang of it, adding skills is a great way to freshen up the initially monotonous combat. Depending on your playstyle, you might want to prioritize certain types of Factors. I immediately got upgrades to make my blades shred through hordes of enemies, unlocking a skill early on that allowed my Arsenal to power up my laser blade until it became a massive scythe that mowed down every enemy in its vicinity.
Sadly, combat is hit or miss at times, particularly because the performance issues really make things frustrating. Titanic Scion tries to target 30FPS on Switch 2 (comfortably doing 60FPS on PS5) and fails spectacularly. Engaging a swarm of enemies should be a moment that fills me with excitement as I seek out to try a new loadout or farm upgrade materials, but I dread it so much that I opt to constantly skip battles in the open world. The game is not visually cutting edge, and we’ve seen what the Switch 2 is capable of with the right optimization (it runs Cyberpunk 2077 at a rock-solid 30FPS, and every early report states that Final Fantasy VII Remake also plays like a dream), so seeing this type of subpar quality is simply inexcusable.
Even beyond that, while the skills add a nice variety to it, combat just didn’t click for me in ways I would’ve wanted. The stamina system feels a little restrictive, and the lock-on system is not entirely reliable half the time, often making me target a different enemy than the one I had intended. There’s a semblance of strategy, as you can target specific body parts to maximize your damage, especially big bosses. But in all honesty, I just mashed my way through most encounters without putting much thought into the type of weapons in my loadout.
Titanic Scion does feature a multiplayer component with crossplay enabled. It was a solid distraction; there are plenty of options to set up a lobby. You can just roam around mindlessly or tackle missions. It adds an extra layer of replayability to the whole package, but frankly, it didn’t do much for me.
Overall, I had some good moments with Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion, and I truly believe that Switch 2 users could have a potential hidden gem in their hands. While the foundation is solid, the performance issues and the fact that this is a full $70 should make people wary. The game’s one solid patch away from being a perfectly fun experience, and I hope it comes sooner rather than later.
