Awesome Mech Game, But a Shallow Story

• Legpart are limited to humanoid legs, there are no spider leg-part, no tank-leg, no hover-leg.
• You cannot change the energy color of your Arsenal (or ACs as in armored core)
• There is only ONE savegame, the inability to change nickname makes this worse.

• Make the exploration tileset to be more diverse.
• Make the storyline more interesting, impactful and heavy, with totally unpredictable plot twists.
• Restore the missing features from the original AC series.
• Go Open-world?

Beautiful Game With Sloppy Mechanics And A Lacklustre Story

STORY

GAMEPLAY

• Clean up the Free Missions which are your bog-standard optional missions.
• Get better equipment from exploration and co-op missions (both can be done solo or online with 3 other players). Explorations are semi-randomized dungeon runs that task you with exploring, collecting gear, and beating a Strai (or more) at the end. These get rather boring with the repetitive assets and loop.
• Do Co-op missions. They are akin to MMO raid bosses; you will have to fight some very difficult enemies in order to receive randomized modifications, gear blueprints and more.
• Not play Online, which is dead for casual play. Joining the dedicated Discord is necessary for matches.

VISUALS

AUDIO

PERFORMANCE

OVERALL

7/10
WORTH A LOOK- Get on Sale if Possible

• OverviewDxM is a fast-paced mecha-simulator, with a decent level of progression and customization, anime-ish visual design and a rather bizarre story. It’s mostly single-player oriented, but it has some multiplayer modes, as well. Two biggest problems that this game has, that are worth mentioning right away, are a)it was originally designed for Switch, which makes the combat and overall balance feel rather weird and laughably easy at times when played on PC b) the post launch support is pretty much non-existent.
• Story
I will be honest with you - even after beating the game I hardly understand what the hell is going on in the game’s universe. As in, it is super confusing and obscure, with “sudden” plot twists frequently coming at you with no rhyme or reason, in an overly epic anime-ish fashion. All I can say without giving you heavy spoilers is that the story is set on another planet (you’ll learn which one after beating the campaign). Being under a constant threat of a planetary-wide cataclysm due to a mysterious energy called [strike]McGuffin[/strike] Femto, several huge corporations have to simultaneously cooperate and compete for control over the situation and planet resources. What makes this whole thing even worse are numerous AI’s named Immortals that are taking control over different combat drones, making the planet’s surface filled with hostiles. So the only ones who are ready to stand up to them are several groups of mercenaries that operate local combat mechs - the Arsenals. Naturally, you get to play as a seemingly ordinary Rookie among those pilots, building up a reputation for yourself and getting your hands on superior Arsenal’s gear and weaponry. And as it usually goes, nothing is as simple as it seems at first glance.
• Gameplay
I’m happy to say that this is where DxM shines. It’s not perfect by any means, but it is incredibly satisfying. You spend most of your time piloting your Arsenal, although you can also leave it and control your Operator directly. The latter is mostly just a nice-to-have feature since you are incredibly limited in what you can do with your boots on the ground. Fighting in an Arsenal, on the other hand, feels incredibly satisfying - it’s fast paced combat that can happen both in mid-air and on foot; with you engaging into fighter-like dogfights or duels in melee. The regular missions mostly consist of you shooting either rogue AIs or hostile Arsenal pilots, with some minor additional assignments, like defending/searching/escorting/hacking something of value. The boss fights are, naturally, just arenas set for you and some giant robot that you get to fight. There are two major elements of progression - acquiring new gear for your Arsenal and obtaining new implants for your Operator, which serve as this game’s equivalent of skill-tree. During both single-player and coop-multiplayer missions you can obtain loot that are either weapons or parts for your Arsenal. The latter consists of 5 parts - head, torso, right arm, left arm and legs. Each of them not only affect your Arsenal visually, but also have their own stats, allowing you to both go for some specific set of mixing and matching the parts all you want. The number of different parts and weapons is pleasantly huge, which gives you quite a nice level of customization. You can focus on maneuverability or armor, ranged combat or melee, full-auto or semi-auto weapons and etc. And speaking of weapons, while there is a decent variety, one thing that I cannot overlook is that the balancing could definitely use some work. Another drawback that I have to mention is the grind. Loot drop is incredibly random, and what makes things worse is that each piece of gear/weaponry can have up to 3 slots for mods, with the latter also having 5 levels of rarity, so getting the best gear can require you putting hundreds of hours into the game. Finally, the last sad part about DxM is the lack of any decent endgame. The PvP mode is basically just one mode - duels, which is ruined by the lack of any proper anti-cheat protection. As for single-player/coop experience - you only get to replay the boss fights or “exploration missions,” which are simplistic, procedurally-generated dungeon runs that you can play solo or with your friends. And these are what you’ll have to play once you’re done with the campaign, because that will be the only valid way of getting decent gear in the end.
• Graphics
DxM features a pretty stylized, anime-like visual design. The textures and visual effects make you feel like you’re in some sort of comic book. Surprisingly enough, it does the trick just right. The Arsenal models look pretty cool; the landscape and backgrounds are pretty decent; the models of your opponents (bosses, in particular) also look nice; you’re greeted with a decent character editor when you start a new game, and overall, I would say that this visual style only helped the game out. It would’ve definitely been great to see it in a more serious, photo-realistic style, but given the fact that this game was originally designed for Switch, I’m not surprised with this choice. It’s also worth mentioning that it’s pretty well-optimized. One feature that left me rather disappointed (but I suppose it’s more of a personal preference) is that as you progress through the campaign, the numerous implants that you give your character make them look incredibly generic and cover their face entirely. In other words, there isn’t much point in bothering to customize your character in the very beginning, for they will stop looking the way you want them to, anyway.
• Sound
Well, with the visual design being heavily inspired by animes, it’s only expected that the sound design matches it. The sound effects are okay; there’s really nothing I can say more about them. The soundtrack is solid and fitting, but quite limited - by the second part of the campaign you’ll most likely get a bit tired of hearing the same tracks over and over. The English voice acting is pretty decent, as well - the actors managed to give their characters enough personality for you to actually care what happens to them. The only problem is our mute protagonist, but… Let’s just say that as you progress through the game, you’ll learn certain truths about your character that will make you lose any connection that you had to them and understand why the devs didn’t even bother to give them any personality.

Conclusion

Rookie, you are coming with us, aren’t you?