Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion's explosive anime mech battles are surprisingly improved by an open world with nothing in it but odd jobs and vibes

The last thing I expected out of a mech game was to be reminded of World of Warcraft, but Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion is just as interested in letting you lazily explore its open world as it is slicing enemies apart with energy swords.

If you ignore the Iron Man-style mech suit, Titanic Scion is an MMO with dozens of tasks to do around its oversized levels. It was technically even possible for other players to join me in the preview build I played, but I wasn't lucky enough to find a buddy in the several hours I spent with it. I did, however, find outposts created by other players, one of which was right next to an NPC who asks you to equip a certain item for a mission. Thanks for saving me some time, stranger!

The planet Titanic Scion takes place on is rather empty compared to your typical open world game. There aren't collectibles hidden around every corner or enemy camps to clear out. For the most part, it's full of robot monsters and rogue mechs who carry around valuable loot for upgrading your suit. But spending time doing monotonous work amplifies all the moments where the game shifts into high gear.

Filler episode

The opening escape sequence almost misrepresents the vibe of the game. You're broken out of captivity by a man who shares the same biological affinity for piloting mechs real good. An earlier text crawl explains that a mysterious energy gave newborns innate special abilities and normal humans are so disgusted by this they don't even consider them humans. After a violent standoff against a deadly enemy mech, your friend buys you time to escape and you make a vow to return when you're stronger.

But as in most videogames you've got a lot of work to do first, and that includes finishing a list of deliveries and bounties like any blue-collar mech pilot. The intro is all chugging electric guitars and acrobatic anime battles and then you're let loose to casually fly from gig to gig as you slowly gear yourself up.

There are story missions that pit you against other mech pilots in spectacular one-on-one battles, but most of Titanic Scion is suiting up for a casual session of consistent, honest labor. I escorted a man trying to recover an item deep in enemy territory, I helped cool off a revenge-hungry teen who was going to get himself hurt otherwise, and I fought a lanky beast in a cave.

By themselves these tasks are largely forgettable and not exactly the kind of explosive mech battles you might expect from how intense the intro is. And yet, the slow pace actually works to help contrast how exaggerated the other half of the game is. Titanic Scion is overflowing with mech customization, stats, and meters to balance while in combat and it gives you plenty of time to get a feel for all of it while you're puttering around the open world.

While I was out there, I found weapon types I probably would've skipped if they were dumped on me during a heated story mission. A corpse from a fallen player had a shotgun on it that I installed onto one of my arms on a whim, and I liked it so much for blasting apart slow enemies I never swapped to anything else.

Well-trained

Whenever I was looking for a real challenge, I warped back to the hangar and continued the main story. That's where Titanic Scion starts to veer closer to what you'd expect from mech games like Armored Core. I wrestled with a gigantic bull-like beast, dodging out of its charges and laser beams, and tearing off its horns to lop chunks off of its health bar. If I hadn't spent the last few hours checking off side missions, I might not've been as prepared to take on a fight that punishes you pretty hard for mishandling your mech.

There's a Monster Hunter-like rhythm to combat where you need to balance a stamina bar while swinging at bosses and dashing away from their attacks. The bull monster was much bigger than my mech so I also had to maintain enough fuel to boost toward the weak spot on its head. Draining either resource stalls your entire suit out and leaves you vulnerable, so getting greedy is the worst thing you can do.

While it's possible to just blast through the story missions, I enjoyed tackling them after kitting my mech out with armor and weapons I found in the open world. I'm sure early missions don't really require a high level of mastery, but conquering the big fights give you a satisfying payoff for the work you put in beforehand.

Freelancing

Titanic Scion is bursting with systems you can comb through to customize your mech in exactly the way you want. Your mobility, health, and damage output are all informed by the gear you've installed. I went with a leaner build that let me zoom around faster with significantly less health as a tradeoff. There were some encounters that might've gone smoother if I had a more balanced loadout. Given that you can save your setups as presets, I expect adapting to different fights will come into play more later on.

Mech fans will be feasting on the amount of customization available—both cosmetic and systemic. And it's nice to see that the game encourages you to experiment by giving you plenty of time to familiarize yourself with how all the numbers actually affect what it's like to control the mech. Every time I returned to base to complete a mission, I tweaked the paint job on my suit and refined my gear a little more to my liking. Even by the end of playing what is a relatively small amount of Daemon X Machina, my mech already felt like my own.

Titanic Scion doesn't seem like it's trying to rewrite the idea of a loud, action-filled mech game—those crunchy guitars still reappear every time you're in combat—but it does seem interested in having plenty of quiet moments too. Like all the time I spent walking around The Barrens as a teen playing WoW, it was fun to poke around Titanic Scion's big canyons and caves at my own leisure. Put the revenge plot on hold for a bit, I've got ore to mine and deliveries to make.

Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion releases on September 5 on Steam.