I was as surprised as anyone when a sequel was announced for Daemon X Machina. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s a game that scratched the big Mecha itch. Now Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion is back in open world RPG form, and I’ve played it to see if it works.

When you start the game there’s a lot of text to set up the premise of Titanic Scion, and it’s quickly apparent it’s not a direct follow up from the first game.

Outers, beings who have apparently become more than human, have lived up in ‘Paradise’, a location out in space, while the Humans were left on a ravaged planet below. While the human “reclaimers” try to survive on a hostile planet, the Axiom keeps the humans down, whether from space or on the ground.

Your adventure begins as your custom built Outer character is awoken, then promptly rescued by a rebelling Outer. While you both fight your way to freedom, you wind up plummeting to Earth, with the goal of wanting to rescue your friend. You are quickly recruited by the Reclaimers and work towards finding out what happened to your rescuer, while helping your new friends to fight the deadly Immortal creatures stalking the land, and the Axiom. Without being able to say much about the story or wanting to spoil it, it does help understand the initial sudden introduction into the world. The story is unlikely to have too many surprises, especially if you’re familiar with the genre. Some of the characters are needlessly frustrating, and sometimes the story will take a swerve through omission of important information. Despite all that, it’s still a fun ride. There’s plenty of action, cool designs and even if predictable, the story beats are well trodden for a reason.

Outside of the story the first few hours the game spits out information at you, but the mechanics aren’t always well explained. Generally you can work it out, however it can feel daunting when there are some decisions that can be costly to undo. If you’re mainly sticking to the story, there’s also a lot of mechanics that you might just not have to engage with either.

In Titanic Scion the Mech Suits or Arsenals are no longer the hulking mechs you might be more familiar with in the original game, they’re more like a fancy suit of armour. They need to be humanoid enough to ride in combat jeeps or on Immortal horses. As a result it does lose some of the visual style the original did well. Now there are opportunities to revisit some bulkier built mechs the people crave, but not for a while and are more limited than the original game. But it never means that the Arsenal’s still aren’t cool, you still control the weapon (or shield) in each hand/arm, carry secondary weapons for more variety in combat, and a shoulder weapon for some additional heavy damage attacks.

As I mentioned earlier, Titanic Scion is within an open world, or at least multiple maps with very big open areas. They definitely feel bigger when it takes a while to travel around them, especially while these maps are spacious on the ground, they also contain plenty of verticality. As an Arsenal capable of easily flying around, combat takes place on the ground and in the sky, although flying around always feels better than being grounded.

Flying around dashing at enemies with a laser sword frequently makes for some more impactful, more damaging close quarters combat. The aerial combat admittedly still feels tricky to wrangle, even locked onto an enemy it can still be hard to follow them. I get that more nimble enemies should be hard to hit, but when you’re trying to keep track of them in a 3D space as you’re flying after them it sounds as hard. Besides all that, it’s still a big highlight of the game. When you’re tackling some of the lesser seen tough enemies it reminds you why you’re many hours into a mech game.

The original Daemon X Machina had your character enhancing themself like a cyborg. In Titanic Scion it’s now mutation. After a run in with an Immortal, you become able to alter your genetic structure through the Fusion process. As you continue to fuse different genes you’ll begin to change your character's form. Sometimes it’s just body markings, other times it can be extra growths and deformities. You won’t know until you confirm Fusion to find out what you’ll get. My experience with the game is the more fusion you do, the more silly you look, with random rock growths just slapped on.

Looting is an important mechanic in Titanic Scion. Most of your Arsenal armour and weaponry is found salvaged from fallen enemies and crates. When you loot a corpse you can be presented with multiple items, and you can select only one item to keep. It does make for some tough choices, although it does get easier when armour and weapons are often below your current specs. It can become a decision of if you want the credits now or have to sell off some useless equipment later. With the Fusion mechanic you can also obtain genes from defeated Immortals. You can only hold so many at once, leaving you to either pop back to base to upgrade yourself, or do some Gene inventory management. It’s a decent way to help upgrade your character regardless of weapons or armour. Outside of the stat boosts you also unlock some flashy useful special attacks, although I often forgot I had them.

With the increased scope in an open world, It's not unusual for RPG games to come with some side activities, such as a Coliseum to duel your way to the top of the ladder. Titanic Scion has one too, Arsenal VS Arsenal in a 1 on 1 match. The idea is that you’re meant to choose the right load out to take on your opponent. Initially you can just thump the other Arsenal with brute force. Along with a Coliseum it shouldn’t be a surprise that there is also a Card game called Overbullet. Throughout the world you can find cards, as well as buying them from merchants if you can afford them. The card game itself is a race to win five rounds of who can end the round with the highest attack and defense points from each card. While there is the point counting element, there’s also secondary abilities, which can be activated when the right conditions are met. It’s an alright side thing to do if you like wringing every drop of content and precious second out of the game.

While there’s plenty to enjoy about the game, there’s some bits and pieces that over the many hours that drag the game down. My main one was the Fast Travel system. Zipping around the world requires you to unlock the terminals to access Fast Travel. It works fine enough, although it is worth exploring a bit earlier on to save having to travel too far out from your few fast travel points. The annoying part is that while there is a slightly too long load time to fast travel to wherever you choose, you also remain locked in the Fast Travel room while it does another behind the scenes load. I don’t know if the thinking was that people would notice how long the loading times are if they didn’t split them into two, but they’ve managed to make it stand out even more by trapping you in the room until it unlocks.

Most of my issues with the game aren’t uncommon issues when it comes to open world games like this. For all the big open spaces, there isn’t much to do in them unless you want to put in the extra time resource gathering. The open areas often lead to slightly too long stretches of flying around the map to the next objective. You’re never too far from a fight if you really want it, and while there is a variety of immortal creatures and Axiom enemies, you see a lot of similar beasts and soldiers across the majority. Sometimes you get to stumble across a large rare enemy to tackle, which can pose an extra challenge depending how out of your depth you are. Outside of unique or big boss battles the combat gets repetitive fast, which is a shame when there’s some pretty neat creature and Arsenal designs.

Returning to the loot mechanics, while most battles against multiple enemies will leave at least one corpse to salvage, there’s also no shortage of containers left around to loot too. Looting ultimately feels really unrewarding when the majority of the salvage is well below what is needed to make those stats go up. For over half of the story it felt like I would go well over an hour at times before getting weapons or armour that would even provide the slightest boost. There are enough different weapon types or variations on firearms, blades and melee, and different armour types to help for specific circumstances, but for way too long into the game not much of it matters. While it takes some of the fun out of the combat if you just charge in with a sword into every fight with the occasional shoulder rocket, you can get much further than you should with that strategy. Now non-story missions do give you enough opportunity to try different weapon types and armour types too, although there’s little incentive once you’ve completed the mission.

There is an online component to the game, but given it is pre-launch I haven’t really had the opportunity to spend time with some co-op missions. I wouldn’t be in a rush to jump into them either, but it’s good to know it’s an option. When the online is running in the background there is a nice little feature where other players can use their mobile bases to show up in your instance of the world. Really it just saves you using your resources while adding a little bit of connectedness.

With the Switch 2 we are still in the early days of seeing just what it can do, and for Titanic Scion it holds up well enough. Surprisingly the file size is still quite small for a Switch 2 title, not that it’s a bad thing at all to be efficient. The frame rate can get bumpy, but given how much the battle moves around and trying to follow with the camera it never felt like it would be a big improvement. The world and character/creature designs can look pretty cool, there is often some texture load-in that is unavoidable. It is the kind of issue that I imagine is not unique to the Switch 2 version. If you’re coming to the Switch 2 for the highest visual fidelity of the multi-platform games then I don’t know what to tell you.

Daemon X Machina: Titanic Scion still brings the epic mech/robot armour action, for many many hours if you want to complete every mission. It falls victim to some of the traditional issues with open world games, but still manages to be fun enough through the story. If you’re on the fence about forking out for the game, the demo will give you a good taste.