YMMV / Daemon X Machina

• Awesome Music: Already from the announcement trailer, people noted the quality of the soundtrack, a maelstrom of orchestral and electronic pieces a la Zone of the Enders and industrial metal similar to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Doom (2016) curated by Namco Sound Team producers Junichi Nakatsuru and Rio Hamamoto, who were also responsible for some of the soundtracks of the later Ace Combat games, particularly in Assault Horizon. Check it out here.
• Breather Boss:
  • Dreadnought is a caterpillar-like digger Immortal which spends most of the fight on the ground while you fly around it and shoot its exposed weak points. Only sometimes it jumps of the ground to hit you and its Wave-Motion Gun can not only be easily dodged but also drains its stamina, giving you a window to deal a large amount of damage. It also applies to its multiplayer-only variants (including the Omega variant).
  • The Optional Boss Aviator, which is unlocked after beating the game, can be defeated in about ten seconds with the right weapon loadout.
• Cliché Storm: Many reviewers criticized the very anime plot and the archetypes of the characters, ranging from big brother obsessed Gyaru Girl and Elegant Gothic Lolita moe (complete with Noblewoman's Laugh) pilots working for The Ojou along with their honor-obsessed Aloof Big Brother and his Battle Butler, an Ace Pilot and his Hot-Blooded rival, a Rei Ayanami Expy, two Stock Shonen Heroes trying to find their parents' murderer, a hip-hop and graffiti obsessed ethnic joke character, a Genki Girl eternally pepping up her teammates, three different stoic military men coolly commanding the player, and so on and so forth. Over the course of the game, you gain no less than three different Stock Shōnen Rival characters.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: When the timer runs out in PvP mode, remaining VP determines the winner instead of damage dealt. This would be fine (and reminiscent of many fighting games) if it weren't for the Devotion shoulder part, which can heal you on demand. For some time after the game's release, almost everyone would equip Devotion so that they could heal themselves at the last second and snag victory even if they were losing badly beforehand. Eventually, the part was straight up banned from PvP.
• Critical Dissonance: The game holds an average on Metacritic of 68 for the Switch version and 71 for the PC version, with critics generally lambasting the game's forgettable storyline and framerate issues on the Switch version. This however didn't stop fans from absolutely loving the frantic gameplay, beautiful art style and mecha design, and awesome soundtrack. In fact, the PC version holds an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam.
• Demonic Spiders: Any Arsenal equipped with a bazooka. If you don't have enough knockback resistance, they will stunlock you.
• Fan Nickname: Some people have taken to calling Daemon X Machina "Anime Armored Core" for self-explained reasons, given who was producing the game.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • From the moment of the game's announcement, it's been met with enthusiasm by fans of Xenoblade Chronicles X, another Nintendo-published game featuring Mini-Mecha and character customization.
  • By proxy with the above, those who looked forward to this game simultaneously looked forward to Astral Chain, another sci-fi anime-styled game well-received by those looking for a tide-over until the next Xenoblade Chronicles X release.
  • It has also widely been received positively by the Armored Core fandom, who sometimes referred to the game as "Armored Core 6" before the announcement of the actual Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon.
  • Even most veteran players of Freedom Wars start to get the vibe from it, almost viewing Daemon X Machina (along with Astral Chain) as the Spiritual Successor for Freedom Wars in some way.
  • With No More Heroes III as Dr. Juvenile sends in an Arsenal Rollout Model to save Travis and take down Damon Riccitello's Thunder Break Mecha, accompanied with the Immortal boss theme, Arms of Immortal. "Suda51 is a mad genius" comments stormed the music video for that too, as seen here.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The HPW-AB-L/R14 Gun Arm-BZ. They're literal bazookas attached to your arms, and they can pack some serious damage. They fire explosive damage on top of splash damage, so anything it hits will also hit anything around the center of impact. Furthermore, since they're Armor equipment pieces, the Final Boss can't steal them from you, neutralizing one of its most frustrating abilities. That said, they eat up a lot of memory and, if you run out of ammo, you can't switch to your pylon weapons because the cannons are also your arms. That aside, if you can keep track of your ammo count and equip some durable Armor pieces, then you'll more than likely be taking down any rogue AI, Immortal and Outer that gets in your way, all the way to the endgame. Its Machine Gun version, while doing less damage per bullet can drain an arsenals hp almost instantly but drains it's ammo quickly, and the assault rifle version is Boring, but Practical incarnate since its damage, range and rate of fire are well balanced and you'll usually have enough bullets to tear through any targets in a mission, making it a better choice in most cases.
  • Deadly Drive, made from the Secret Factory provided you took down enough Nightmares. It's a shoulder-mount Laser Cannon but, rather than hitting things from afar, it's more alike to a shotgun which hit its target continuously as long as you have ammo and Femto, while each hit does decent damage, and you can still move around evading enemy fire. Any Colossal Immortals can be taken down in minutes as the lasers torch through their hitpoints bit by bit, even when not aiming at their weakpoints; needless to say, this weapon is extremely useful even against the Final Boss. The 1.1.2 update ended up slightly nerfing it by increasing its Femto drain rate, but its power is still considerable, and the extra drain can be easily mitigated with the right parts.
  • Anfang Ärger, a sword which can be found in Exploration Mode. It has high base damage and, because of how the damage scales on melee weapons, it can go even higher on certain distances, potentially taking away 2/3 of health with damage buffs and if you use two of them at once. The best part is that its very easy to find in statues or Alpha and Beta Strais.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • By having Red Dog in your party, you're more likely to find armor parts and weapons with attachment slots. This for some reason also extends to auxiliary weapons which normally don't spawn with slots and can't be equipped with them either. At least you gain some extra credits by selling them as each slot increases the item's value.
  • In exploration missions you can find special slot expanding attachments for boss items, which maxes out the amount of possible slots. These slot expanders can be used on any compatible armor part and weapon simply by changing filtering options while selecting an attachment for the item you're customizing. This severely cuts on grinding for the item you really want for your Arsenal.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: Particularly during the first half. A lot of the characters, plot points, and plot twists get thrown at the player with little introduction or build up, making it hard to become invested in the story or anyone in it. Additionally, a lot of information gets fed to the player during missions when they have to focus on the game over the NPC dialogue.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: When the game first starts, it's rather hard to make sense of the plot as you're only given bits and pieces of information about the world and is mostly focused on introducing you to the various factions of the Reclaimers. Most players and reviewers agree that the game is rather slow and uninteresting during this period. Upon reaching C-Rank, however, the plot starts to become more prominent, and you're pitted against other Reclaimer mercenaries almost regularly.
• That One Level: While this game isn't very difficult, there are some missions that can get your blood to boil:
  • The C-Rank mission, "Guard the Freight Train", is often regarded as one of the hardest story mission in the game. It's an Escort Mission where you protect the train from Immortals. About a minute into mission, you're being attacked by the Panzer Crown trio with their objective being the destruction of said train. This doesn't help the situation considering your computer-controlled allies are too slow to engage both enemies. Using the Mirage ability will keep one of the girls busy while you defend the train from other enemies.
  • "Investigate Illicit Cargo" of the same rank is a similar mission to above, with the difference that you don't have to defend the train. However, this time you're teaming up with Heaven and Bishop. The former is mostly geared towards close-combat but can fend off enemies on her own, but Bishop is only armed with a shield and a stun gun, and he's mostly busy with scanning the train. And guess what? You're fighting against Panzer Cown again. This time in a 2v3 fight.
  • "Investigate Orbital's Territory" tasks you with defending the valuable facility, which turns out to be a moon gravity control facility... which has malfunctioned and triggered the Moonfall event. Your task is to shoot down incoming debris together with Notes and Gargantua. The latter is especially ill-equipped for this mission as neither the shotgun or mace has enough range or speed to deal with falling rocks and you have to defend all the towers from destruction. In reality, you just have to defend one of them.
  • The first B-Rank Offer Mission "Destroy the Illegal Facility" tasks you with destroying a base where a new type of weapon is being developed. This can be a wake up call for some, especially when the Western VII goons suddenly became super spongy to your attacks and the cannons can vaporize your Arsenal should you get in their line of sight.
  • The D-Rank Free Mission "Guard the Escape Vehicle" is one of the earliest escort missions and it tasks you with defending three cars. Sounds easy, right? First of all, these cars have no armor whatsoever which means a slight touch from your Arsenal or any of the ground-based Immortals will make them go boom. Should you get too unlucky, you can get them all destroyed just by dashing through them or getting them steamrolled by a Slay Dog enemy.
• That One Sidequest: Some of the "mystery goals" can be this with a slight touch of Guide Dang It!.
  • The D-Rank Free Mission "Colossal Immortal Test Data Collection" tasks you with destroying Immortals while you're piloting the Colossal Rebellion. One side objective requires you to destroy all enemies within 240 seconds which doesn't sound too difficult, just slash or plant with your sword and call it a day. But you're also paired with Johnny G who doesn't do anything. Should one of those switch target to him, you'll risk them getting out of range of your melee attacks, forcing you to reset the mission until you get it done.
  • The B-Rank Free Mission "Repel the A.I.s Invading the Neutral Zone" is another mission where you destroy Immortals. The side objectives includes dealing finishing blow to 50 and 60 enemy A.I.s. You're often paired with partners for this mission, especially Crimson Lord, who will destroy them faster than you. Keep in mind that kills done by partners do not count to your side objectives.
  • Collecting every equipment for a title can be a hassle. You may think that just collecting weapons without paying attention to letters is good enough but you have to collect all letter variants, including the "M" variants from Exploration Missions. Fortunately, you don't have to farm Zeruchroar or Eclipse Ω for their weapons or have a special edition version for the "C" variants.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Solomon, he was teased after one of the missions, made an impressive appearance as a story mission boss... and then never gets mentioned ever again. No backstory, no plot relevance, nothing.

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