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[3DS] Kinki no Magna

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    [3DS] Kinki no Magna

    Kinki no Magna, or Forbidden Magna, is a JRPG from Marvelous, and just like most recent entries in the genre, it tries something different with the battle system, here done as turn-based "strategy" missions, where you control a party of four against a theoretically endless number of enemies.

    The game starts off asking to name your character, if you want, and rather long and slow-paced story segments introduce you to your digital self, his (two) friends before having him meet Charlotte, a pink haired elf (or fairy, as the game calls her and her kind) trapped in a crystal. After that the story seems to check all stereotypes a JRPG story apparently needs to have, like a mysterious rival (that turns friendly), an higher villain, the hero's dark and forgotten past, and six other elves/fairies that will start to live in the hero's house/hotel.
    Characters aren't particularly novel: there's the childhood female friend that worries about the hero, she probably has feelings for him but he doesn't realise this; the other male childhood friend whose only purpose is to put newly acquire elves/fairies in maid clothes (even when unconscious); the cold and detached girl; the cheerful one; the loli; the dark-skinned tomboy...and so on.

    During missions, you take direct control of up to four party members, one of them is always your character, and have them fight enemies. There are three kinds of enemies: the cannon fodder, that dies in one hit and is used up to build combos; the leaders, able to spawn cannon fodder and have a limited range of abilities (healing, poison, turn skip); the spawn points, immobile things that spawn leaders every once in a while. Normally, mission objectives are about killing all spawn points or a specific leader; secondary objectives usually ask to kill all leaders or spawn points, whichever is not mentioned in the main objective. Clearing a secondary task will grant a special item at the end of the mission.
    Turns are decided based on a unit's speed, with spawn points always acting last. During a turn a unit can move freely within her movement area, in a way similar to Nippon Ichi's Phantom Brave, and perform one action chosen among item, skills, attack, or guard; a turn can be ended without taking any action, allowing the unit to build up APs. Skills, except for tension skills, require multiple APs, and range from more powerful attacks (either in attack power or reach) to status buffs.
    All actions, including items, have an area of effect, so some of your party members can attack in close-range arcs, straight lines, or long-range circular areas, once again similar to Phantom Brave (or Grandia). Most characters attack one, striking every enemy in the affected area, but some behave differently: Elfriede wields a minigun, and attacks in a thin 60 degrees arc, firing a minimum of three times; if more than three enemies are affected she'll attack everyone, but if only one enemy is present, it'll be attacked thrice; she's also one of the few characters able to widen the attack area by using items (in her case, different bullet types).
    Cannon fodder enemies struck by an attack will scatter around, based on the shape of the attack area; if more enemies are hit, they'll be damaged as well, and the combo counter will go up; if more than 10 enemies are hit, the attacker gets a free turn. Killing enemies builds up a tension meter, which can be used to deliver special attacks.
    Every unit on the field, except for the hero, is also linked to an element.

    The system is sound, in theory. Until you defeat leaders and spawn points you have a constant source of XP, money, and enemies to build combos up, but it also means that battles are extremely drawn out, and the best way to face them is to methodically kill everything between you and the main target, building up APs and tension to quickly defeat the local boss. Unless attacked by a leader, enemies only do minimal damage, so recovery items are seldom used; your character soon gets the ability to boost and heal allies in a large area, and his role boils down to support; to tell the truth, his tension special is incredibly powerful, but the lack of any meaningful normal attack and always acting as the in your party, limit his usefulness and leave offense to the other three party members.
    As with many games, the strategy element in Kinki no Magna is limited to place a character to hit as many enemies as possible, and the game really grinds to a halt when multiple big leaders (like dragons) are present, as each take three or four turns from all your characters to be killed. Item usefulness is very limited, and so far I've using poison and AP potions to speed up things.
    Slow progression seems to be Kinki no Magna's main problem, as both story and missions progress at an incredibly slow pace, something that was quickly picked up by everyone: the first patch will allow to skip events and to select how much health enemies have; it will also have a gallery, which is probably the most strange omission from a game of this kind.

    Anyway, as the game is from the same developers as Rune Factory, there's also a crafting system in place: select two items, get a third, maybe mix the obtained item with a fourth to get something better, and so on. Of course I'm kinda oblivious to what these items exactly do, but you can also craft skills and buffs to equip to your party; items equipped in this way consume an inventory slot and a certain amount of memory.
    And with seven girls living with the protagonist, there's no way the game wouldn't have a romance system, called ETR. At certain junctions of the story, you can select a girl and increase the relationship level, which will also give her one new tension skill. The first two events are forced on the player (you can just select the girl that goes first), and the third is only between two of the four girls available. Shortly after two more girls join the party, so I guess that the fourth will be "free".

    While not a terrible game, Kinki no Magna is nothing more than average: the slow flow of the game is the biggest problem, which hopefully will be corrected in the upcoming patch. However, battles soon lose any kind of strategy, and the only difference between leaders is how much health they have. It doesn't help that the game often throws you in multi-mission gauntlets with no save points in the middle, and I've found myself suspending the game as soon as the next 30-minutes long battle is about to begin, because it's kinda hard to sit through story and battles for very long time.

    On the bright side, Kinki no Magna knows how to look good. The 3D effect is mostly used to separate portraits from the playing field, but even that has incredibly subtle 3D layers...and the game has the best use of depth effect I've seen so far in movies and static pictures: once again, it's subtle, but very well applied and not limited to single elements on different planes. Graphics are very nice, a bit pixellated, with overly cute on-map avatars. Portraits during dialogues have few animations, and the only thing I can really object to, is how in-game portraits look different from official art.
    Voices are kept to a minimum, usually one word or two at the beginning of a dialogue.

    #2
    I've finished the game some time ago and finally got around to write a closing post.

    The patch introduced the much needed event fast-forward (no complete skip available) and a difficulty selection for battles; battles set at easy flow so much better than in the vanilla game, although you still have to deal with boring 4 VS 1s once leaders can no longer spawn enemies or perform special actions. However, battles don't go beyond aiming the largest number of enemies possible until everything's dead. When your character gets buffing and healing skills, most items will be left unused, lowering the usefulness of the crafting system. The crafting system is not completely useless, as you can obtain character skills, although how useful those can be is questionnable.
    The ETR system, that manages how close you are with a girl, is also very limited: with the complete party you never have full choice freedom, at most only three girls are available. Game-wise, it's useful to see at least one event for each girl, but not being able to chosse who you want during the few times the game lets you, is almost irritating.

    Bottom line is that Kinki no Magna doesn't go beyond average. The story isn't something completely new, or told in a peculiar way, the battle system quickly loses its charm, and romance is almost forced on you.

    And of course, video:

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      #3
      Just a quick update, Xseed officially announced the game for the US market under the name of "Lord of Magna".

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