Daemon X Machina Demo
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How are you all enjoying the demo so far? Personally I didn't realize you could even customize your character, so that was pretty cool.
Feels like Armored Core with a more arcadey feel. There's been a few framedrops, but it's still in development so that's fine.
Wish there were a few more hairstyles, and I also want to try out the multiplayer. Otherwise, fun as hell so far.
What about you guys? What's your experience been like?
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Alright, went ahead and played through all 4 missions.
First of all, I do love the customization. Customizing mechs has just always been one of my favorite things in gaming and I really do like what they have on offer here. I'm sure the full game will have far more parts and weapons and such. You can paint everything individually, each part has multiple parts that can be painted different colors, there's all sorts of decals you can eventually get to further customize. Different parts have different stats and trade offs and whatnot, it's all pretty awesome and the designs are great.
Especially with the gorgeous visual style they went with, I really, really like the cel shading they opted for and it really really pops.
Gameplay itself is fairly solid. A lot of it is the kind of stuff you expect from these sorts of instanced mech games. From "clear out all the enemies" to "defend this structure" and of course "kill the giant boss". These were all in decently small (as in they are definitely small, but have a nice amount of space to them) environments, but judging from trailers and other footage not all missions and such will be quite like this. Combat is a bit wonky, probably just mostly from not being used to it yet and the game obviously not being quite finished. I didn't get a melee weapon until the third mission and didn't have it equipped until the fourth, which was against a gigantic mech that I figured it wasn't going to be very useful against.
I can't tell when I'm like auto-firing versus manually at times, I know there's a lock on just from being closer to enemies but I think that's just for your shoulder mounted missiles and such, but there were times it felt like I was just shooting without realizing it. There's also a lot going on with the minimap and not having everything memorized yet it was hard to find certain things I was looking for at times, it reminds me of Hyrule Warriors a bit in that regard.
Fighting the big boss was fun though. You basically attack certain weakpoints, some of which you have to destroy armored sections to access, in order to finally take it down. He was a bit twitchy though and there was some weird collision stuff, he pushed me out of the combat zone many times which led to me having to slowly be dragged back into the area. Sure that will be fixed in the final game at least.
I think a lot of my current issues are things that just come from being new to it and as I play more and get better and just understand it more they won't be such a problem.
Some other things I liked, being able to genetically modify your character to enhance your or your arsenal's abilities. These also can cause physical changes to your body, from glowing eyes to robotic limbs, it's a cool touch. That said, while I do appreciate them having you need to consider just what you want your build to be like when choosing upgrades, having certain level 2 or 3 ones inaccessible based on what you picked as your level 1 or level 2 upgrade (you can only get 1 from each level) did kinda rub me the wrong way a bit. Especially because, while you can respec, not only do you not get your money back in order to change what upgrades you take, you actually have to pay quite a bit to do so. You just REALLY need to be sure what you want as far as upgrades go. And of course just not knowing how important different things actually are, hard to make those decisions. Kinda hoping the data from the demo doesn't carry over into the full game just based off of that.
It was also mentioned in one of the dialogues that you can try and negotiate for more pay for a mission, but doing it too much can hurt your reputation. That's a pretty neat feature, like to see more of what that entails.
You also get penalized on your reward if you take too much damage (I think only if your mech is disabled, you can still fight on foot if it is, and maybe if your allies are as well).
Didn't get a whole lot of story, some interesting little bits here and there and hints at there being something bigger going on.
So yeah, game remains one of my most hyped for the year, it does still need some polish and I definitely need to git gud, but I can see it being one of the Switch's real standout exclusives.
Also loved the little line from one of the characters about how certain things shouldn't be digitized and preference to physical versions, that definitely felt like a jab at the trend of games going digital only.
Oh yeah, it definitely shows its AC roots and I am loving that about it.
Oh and being able to loot fallen arsenals is a really nifty, you even get your choice of what you take (you can only take one though). Some things you can have immediately in the battle (at least if I read it right), while others (like armor) get sent back to base.
Movement does feel pretty good for the most part, your boosters work really well and cooldown isn't too too bad. Still getting used to the flight, but I think it'll work great once you are.
I like that you can pick stuff up and use it as makeshift weapons, but I thought there would be a bit more buildings exploding than I saw. I thought they said there was, maybe just not in the demo or?
Drones and such obviously aren't too hard to tell from your teammates, though they can be hard to spot at times in general, but definitely agreed on the enemy arsenals. As is you just kinda gotta pay attention to names and if they are currently shooting at you. I also couldn't really tell if there was a way to see how much HP anything had left, maybe their name got redder or something cause I thought it looked like it was, but not sure. Would kinda like to know if I should keep attacking if I'm close to downing them or if I should back off and heal because it's gonna be a long fight.
