Daemon X Machina Titanic Scion Is Giving Me Anthem Vibes In A Good Way

Think mechs and you'll probably imagine something at least the size of a building, or not far from the 65-foot Unicorn Gundam displayed in Odaiba, Japan. Daemon x Machina's mechs, referred to as Arsenals, aren't quite as large, but you still could only pilot them by climbing into a cockpit. For the sequel, Daemon x Machina: Titanic Scion, the Arsenals have undergone a more significant change--Arsenals are no longer mechs, but mech suits. It's an important distinction, because you get the sense that your movements are 1:1 when you're boosting along the ground or swinging your blade. Playing the opening hours of Titanic Scion, the game I'm surprised to have as a reference point is Anthem.

It might not make for a flattering comparison, but then you are playing as a custom avatar who can fly around in a powerful and customizable mech suit in an open world with the ability to take on missions with other players online. But unlike BioWare's doomed game, this doesn't feel like a misguided attempt at a live-service loot-grinding game. If anything, Titanic Scion feels like a genuine step up from its predecessor that was developed originally within the constraints of the Nintendo Switch, which managed to retain a striking visual style of red and metallic palettes that screams both anime and metal, but still felt constricted by the hardware.

Titanic Scion begins with an exposition-laden opening crawl, which also highlights in red some terms you'll be encountering more over the course of the story, though the one that's probably best to familiarize yourself with is "outers." These are beings who have transcended humanity and as such are also treated as outcasts, leaving them ripe for exploitation. That also happens to be the protagonist that you get to create, with the flexibility to mix hair styles, body types, and voices. Your hero wakes up in some kind of facility in outer space called the Garden and is set to be turned into a "centurion" before suddenly being thrust in media res into an escape mission.