Let’s get things straight: MAGLAM LORD is not a masterpiece. No surprise so far: the title of Felistellaa team known almost exclusively for work on the series “Summon Nights“, Certainly does not aspire to such peaks. Can we still consider it a pleasant product? Unfortunately, the answer is less obvious than expected, and to know it we invite you to continue our discussion. LORD MAGLAM was released on February 4, 2022 on Nintendo Switch And PlayStation 4, unfortunately only in digital delivery. In addition to the Standard Edition will also be released a Limited Edition exclusive to Funstock of which I am pre-orders already available. Within this edition we will find a copy of the game for the chosen platform and a 52-page artbook, all enclosed in a collector’s box.
- Title: Maglam Lord
- Platform: PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
- Version analyzed: Nintendo Switch
- Kind: visual novel, JRPG
- Players: 1
- Publisher: PQube
- Developer: FELISTELLA
- Language: English (lyrics), Japanese (dubbing)
- Exit date: February 4, 2022
- Availability: digital delivery
- DLC: Nobody
- Note: available in limited edition on the Funstock website
We reviewed MAGLAM LORD with a Nintendo Switch code given to us free of charge by PQube.
Children of Chaos
What is it really LORD MAGLAM? A visual novel? A JRPG? A dating sim? A bit of all these things unfortunately for him … Able to attract a fair amount of attention thanks to its aesthetics, basically, you guessed it, LORD MAGLAM offers a hybrid gaming experience, halfway between Japanese-style role-playing and visual novel. The first stages of the adventure, as per tradition, are rather guided, forcing the player to pay attention to the numerous tutorials that introduce the various game mechanics and modes. The strongly ‘split’ nature of the title is immediately evidentwhich too categorically divides narrative interludes from romance and missions in style dungeon crawlingwhere the goal is almost always the recovery of a certain resource or the killing of a boss or a certain number of enemies.
This clear-cut split is also expressed by theinelegant swing between styles, some of which are very pleasant (the models of the cutscenes, halfway between 2D and 3D, are beautifully drawn and animated), others far too anonymous. In fact, a quick glance is enough to understand the qualitative gap between the narrative phases, purely from the visual novel, and the exploratory ones, leading us to think that perhaps the development team wanted to take the longest step, believing that a successful narrative component does not was enough to give the audience a satisfying experience.
Demons and Gods
And in this sense we feel like breaking a lance in favor of LORD MAGLAM and Felistella, why the plot of the game, in its simplicity and lightness, still offers a certain involvement. The war between demons and gods has been raging since time immemorial. The Demon Lord Killizerksworn enemy of the gods for his ability to wield Maglampowerful weapons capable of wounding even gods – normally bestowed only on humans – is now cornered, even hunted by his fellows.
To ours Bladelord, whose sex we can freely decide, is about to be inflicted on a lethal attack, when a mysterious ally (who will accompany us, as a mascot, throughout the adventure) intervenes in our defense. Surviving a blow of such power will not be an easy task: Killizerk will fall into a deep sleep, at the end of which, once awakened, he will find around him a profoundly different world, in which peace reigns supreme, and wars between gods and demons have apparently been erased from history.
What does it mean for a Demon Lord to live in times of peace, in a world that has forgotten the flames of the chaos of war that are so dear to him? Clarifying it will be our task, making a series of choices that, rather than lead to different narrative implications, will slowly define the psyche of a more complex character than expected, with an all in all interesting vision of chaos and order.
It is precisely in the characterization of the characters that the game is particularly focused: all the members of the party, although attributable to some typical archetypes of anime narrative, are in fact well characterized and distinct from each other. The protagonist and his gang, made up of idols, heroes, and real living weapons, will therefore have to survive in a new reality, protected by the mysterious local government “The Administration“, Which has qualified them as” endangered species “, the last examples of ancient breeds now destined for extinction.
…Unless!
This is where dating mechanics come into play: the bizarre Love Guru GG he will introduce Killizerk to the joys of love, offering him the possibility of generating a lineage and, in the absence of “souls to devour”, to feed in a more metaphorical way. The game is quite flexible from this point of viewleaving the player, regardless of the sex selected for the protagonist, the ability to choose your partner from almost all party members.
To deepen the various reports and unlock new events, some of which we will reward with artwork tender and self-confident, it will be necessary first of all to invite our love interest to a series of appointments, taking care to select the right location. Some dialogue choices, always well signaled by the game through specific icons, will bring us closer to one or the other character, as well as the consumption of special objects by those directly involved. However, it is on the battlefield that the greatest steps will be taken towards the fulfillment of our dream of love, transforming our Killizerk into Maglam and making us brandish by our love, thus amplifying our understanding.
Hate and love
Unfortunately, as will be seen below for the other game systems, thehe mechanics of romance is too separate from the rest (at least until the last stages of the adventure, the ending of which will be influenced by the choice of our partner), as well as little more than sketchy, with no particularly memorable interaction. It is clear that the developers preferred to highlight the lighter and more amused side, delegating to the main story the task of deepening the characterization, however quite successful, of the characters, but it’s really a shame that one of the game’s most distinctive elements has been treated superficially.
The real Achilles heel of the production is however represented by the purely playful phases. Before entering into the merits, we would like to acknowledge a LORD MAGLAM a certain pleasantness, which is found above all in the role progression. Carrying out the missions, both main and secondary, will allow us to obtain new resources for the forging of Maglam weapons, present in a decidedly appreciable number, triggering a loop rather classic for the genre but not unpleasant for that. The experience, alas, changes dramatically in the RPG gameplay stages, of which you save very little. The maps (especially of the first areas) are bare and repetitive, the types of enemies to be faced (at least differentiated in the move-sets and weaknesses) are very few, and the fights cannot entertain.
The horizontal scrolling action combat system, reminiscent of the former Tales of, offers a fair amount of complexity on the card, including combos, special attacks, and filling a bar to summon the Demon Lord himself. But yet, the simplicity of the clashes, combined with numerous technical stumbles (at least in the Switch version), prevents the combat system from expressing its potentialreducing battles with common enemies to a mere exercise of button-mashingin which the frame rate drops and the input delay of the commands give back the unpleasant feeling of not exercising real control over the character used.
To whom we recommend LORD MAGLAM?
In light of its many flaws, it is difficult to recommend MAGLAM LORD to a transversal audience of players. Even JRPG enthusiasts have certainly more deserving products to devote their time to. Despite everything, we don’t feel like advising against buying LORD MAGLAM a priori, if only to those who are willing to overcome their technical and playful defects to enjoy a pleasant story, lasting about 15 hours (destined to increase dramatically if you dedicate yourself to all the secondary missions), staged by well-made characters, animated and dubbed – in Japanese – with absolute mastery.
- A pleasant and funny story
- Excellent dubbing
- Woody and bite-free gameplay
- Graphically backward
- Disappointing performance on Switch
LORD MAGLAM
A split stock that works in half
Plagued by a fluctuating technical sector and a rigid and ineffective gameplay, LORD MAGLAM it fails to guarantee the complete and satisfying experience that the developers quite evidently wanted to offer. It is when it abandons its pretensions as JRPG, transforming itself into a pure visual novel, that the game offers its best moments, making us forget the frustrating exploratory phases thanks to delicious interludes full of character and veiled humor. So our advice, if you decide to try your hand at this title anyway, is to focus on what the game has good, resist the lure of the grinding and run like crazy, avoiding direct confrontation with enemies whenever you can. Probably the longevity of the game will suffer, but the disposition that you will gain will allow you to enjoy the story and fall in love with its funny protagonists.
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