Aside from the obvious joke of this being "Armored Core at home", Daemon X Machina really sucks at its core. There's two massive problems with the game. One, it has one of the wordiest, most cliche and uninteresting plots in anime writing history, trying to balance a cast of like 25 characters with no interesting traits that are dumped on you in the first hour. It's a mess.
Secondly? This mech shooter is terrible when you're fighting actual enemy mechs. As they fly around unpredictably, blinking and dashing in every direction, you just spray and pray with slow projectiles until you win. I never felt good at the game, but I never lost at it until the ridiculous final boss. It's less two robots fighting and more trying to shoot mosquitos with nerf guns. It's rarely fun unless the AI decides to randomly stay on the ground, and 75% of the missions are just fighting one of the many characters who have annoyingly large health bars.
The 5 minute missions often feel like 15 because they're so tedious, which is a massive problem in a game with a bunch of them. It's a tedious slog that feels nigh impossible to truly master, because dodging enemy attacks feels like its not even intended until you get the blink power at the very end.
I did love the skill trees that slowly mutate your sexy anime babe into a cyborg abomination by the end game. It's incredibly weird, but I was actually excited to grind up cash for borderline useless upgrades because I wanted to see my character get limbs hacked off. The upgrades were 90% useless Borderlands shit like powering up your character outside of the mech by 5%, a thing that is literally never a good idea.
Daemon X Machina is a plain old bad game that feels outdated in spite of its striking art style and animations. It feels cheap, the combat is junk, the camera is bad, and power creep ruins any progression. I would call it the Mighty No 9 of mech shooters, but at least Mighty No 9 was like, a little bit fun for what it was. And frankly, this was fun for a little bit as well, chipping away 2 missions before work in 15 minutes. It's just not worth anything more than free to Armored Core fans.
Secondly? This mech shooter is terrible when you're fighting actual enemy mechs. As they fly around unpredictably, blinking and dashing in every direction, you just spray and pray with slow projectiles until you win. I never felt good at the game, but I never lost at it until the ridiculous final boss. It's less two robots fighting and more trying to shoot mosquitos with nerf guns. It's rarely fun unless the AI decides to randomly stay on the ground, and 75% of the missions are just fighting one of the many characters who have annoyingly large health bars.
The 5 minute missions often feel like 15 because they're so tedious, which is a massive problem in a game with a bunch of them. It's a tedious slog that feels nigh impossible to truly master, because dodging enemy attacks feels like its not even intended until you get the blink power at the very end.
I did love the skill trees that slowly mutate your sexy anime babe into a cyborg abomination by the end game. It's incredibly weird, but I was actually excited to grind up cash for borderline useless upgrades because I wanted to see my character get limbs hacked off. The upgrades were 90% useless Borderlands shit like powering up your character outside of the mech by 5%, a thing that is literally never a good idea.
Daemon X Machina is a plain old bad game that feels outdated in spite of its striking art style and animations. It feels cheap, the combat is junk, the camera is bad, and power creep ruins any progression. I would call it the Mighty No 9 of mech shooters, but at least Mighty No 9 was like, a little bit fun for what it was. And frankly, this was fun for a little bit as well, chipping away 2 missions before work in 15 minutes. It's just not worth anything more than free to Armored Core fans.