The Miracle of Magic: Sorcery Jokers Review

Platform(s): PC
Player(s): 1

Have you ever wondered what life would be like if magic was a normal part of our lives? Sorcery Jokers takes place in a world where exactly this has happened.

Ah yes, the doting father.

Magic has its own laws.

The story takes place a few years after magic was first ‘discovered’, where it’s been intertwined with our lives and technologies. The tale begins following the adventure of Haruto Mutsumi, a boy who is currently attending a magic school where he along with other students are learning to harness their powers. Imagine a school like Hogwarts, but in a world where magic isn’t hidden from the public. Due to the way that laws develop, people are required to wear a special ring on the wrist that notifies the government of unlawful use of magic in order to minimize magical crimes. Naturally, a sect of people who use hacked rings end up popping up called Outcasts. It’s these two factions that the visual novel really revolves around.

Though she means no harm...

...Ageha's perverted remarks are quite silly.

Along the way, you will meet various characters such as the quirky but pure Asahi Rikudou or the questionably perverted Ageha. What makes Sorcery Jokers stand out a little from other visual novels is the structure of how the story is presented. To begin with, there are two protagonists: Haruto and Senri. They both represent very different characters with Haruto having an annoyingly pure moral compass and Senri being quite cold and selfish.

Senri on the case!

As the story progresses, you learn that there are two villains. The first is a person named the Collector who seems to be getting rid of magic users and taking their rings along with the Hood who is a vigilante killing Outcasts who are doing wrong. Like any good visual novel, you’ll quickly realize that things are not as they seem. By the time you hit the halfway point of Sorcery Jokers things will change drastically and your entire perception of everything what’s going on will be flipped on its head. Throughout the three major acts of the story, you’ll be surprised with multiple twists that will force you to rethink your approach of understanding the story. The best part is that none of it is far-fetched, and makes sense when you think back to events that transpired before.

Fiona converting 'rekt' to a positive acronym is telling of her personality.

One of the biggest selling points of this is its motley cast of characters. Each of them feels like they fit a stereotypical archetype, but their growth throughout the story is well-written. They start off as annoying representations of very specific archetypes and eventually grow into people with more dynamic personalities. By the time you reach the conclusion, it’s unlikely there are any of the main characters you will not appreciate, even the ones that are villains. The writing is really well done, with ample usage of vibrant language.

Her level of annoyance knows no bounds.

Despite this attention and care that is put into the character development, I feel like the prologue act is painfully slow. I said that there are three major arcs to the story, but there are also prologue and epilogue acts. The epilogue is satisfying on its own, but the prologue took me almost 8 hours to get through and felt a bit dull. The characters spend most of the time running around in circles accomplishing nothing. Don’t get me wrong, the amount of characterization that is gleaned as a result is nice, but largely unnecessary and makes the visual novel feel like a drag at times. In some ways, it may not have been possible to do it any other way though. At least it doesn’t always stay like that, since the rest is really well-done and flows well for the most part. The only real issue I have is that some of the fight scenes feel a little long-winded due to too much verbiage. The sequences themselves are still great, but I don’t think they needed quite as much description as they ended up getting.

No visual novel is complete without a suggestive scene that's ultimately harmless.

A quick side-note I want to mention is the romance. Due to the visual novels I’ve been reading lately, I’ve been quickly regretting downloading the adult patches. I always figure that I’ll miss some characterization since there will surely be some dialogue in the NSFW romance scenes, but almost always they feel shoehorned in. Thankfully, Sorcery Jokers is nothing like that. Nothing feels forced and all the romance develops naturally. None of it has any real bearing on the story, but it does help add some nice characterization rather than being NSFW scenes for the sake of being NSFW scenes. You won’t lose out on anything particularly important if you stick with the all ages version if you’re opposed to dealing with descriptive NSFW scenes, but if you are the type that wants to see all development then you’ll have to stomach it. On the bright side, none of the scenes are particularly extreme. The writers worked hard to have the romances develop in a natural way rather than rushing it for the sake of fan service. This may seem like a minor point to some, but I found this to be a huge plus point in a genre that usually doesn’t take that kind of care at dealing with romance. To top it off, for those of you who do want some more…intense…scenes, they are provided for you upon completing the visual novel. You can get the patch here.

Akeno loves adding to the mystery at hand.

Back to talking about the story, the thing about Sorcery Jokers is that you don’t read it through the perspective of a single character. Heck, you don’t even read it through the eyes of the two protagonists. Rather, you read it through the eyes of all the main characters. The entire visual novel is linear in the sense that you have no control over the story in any way. There are no dialogue options, no mini-games, and no sort of interaction at all. This is a visual novel in its purest and most basic form. In order to help alleviate some of the monotony for those who are used to a little more interactivity out of their experiences, we are given a little freedom on how exactly we approach the story. As you complete events in a character’s route, you sometimes unlock a couple options of what to read next. In the end you have to read everything to move on, but this option ends up giving the reader a nice sense of control.

A look at the route selection screen.

Giving the freedom to read in the order you want at times is nice, but the real value is in you being able to revisit any event you’ve read at any time. This is important because each event has a date and time stamp to let you know exactly when it happened. If you want to try to piece clues together as to what’s going on as you progress rather than just moving ahead, being able to revisit old chapters gives you that freedom. This doesn’t seem like a huge feature, since there are definitely other visual novels that do this, but oftentimes ‘chapter select’ isn’t an option until you finish. Being able to do it as you are reading is a nice touch. Still, in the end there is no gameplay of any sort, so don’t expect that out of this.

Easily my favorite character in the game.

A defining feature of Sorcery Jokers is its beautiful and stunning art. Everything is drawn brilliantly, there are animations when appropriate and the visuals are controlled in very clever ways to help make the story more immersive. On top of that, the voice acting is really solid and the sound effects help pull you into what’s going on. There are no English voices, but the Japanese ones are nice nonetheless. I’m usually a supporter of English dubs, but I’m not sure I’d be able to deal with hearing Haruto say ‘that’s not playing fair’ or Senri saying ‘this left no impression on me’ a thousand times. I thought the music felt a little generic, but at least it never detracted from the experience. The translation is also well-done, showing the well-written narration that helps make sure you can paint a really good picture in your mind of what’s going on. I can’t say I have a ton of experience with visual novels, but I have enough that I can definitely put this in the higher tier of the ones I’ve read when it comes to aesthetics and presentation.

Haruto's best friend commenting on his disgustingly perfect morale compass.

There’s so much attention to detail that even the character portraits on the title screen aren’t revealed until you’ve actually met that character in the story. The title screen will also change to reflect the point in the story you’re in. Along with that, there’s also a nice little option to fully control the sound level of every character. So say you like hearing one character’s voice over another, then you can choose to quiet (or mute) one while maxing out another. It may be a feature in other visual novels, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it and thought it was a nice and considerate touch to cater to as many reader’s needs as possible.

Better watch out for those butt monsters!

It took me about 40 hours to get through the entire visual novel, making the $39.99 price tag worth it. Despite the fact that the beginning of the story drags a bit, the story is very well-written, the characters well-developed and the twists were appropriately surprising. Sorcery Jokers is one of the best visual novels I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and I highly encourage you to get it if you’re looking for a fun mystery to read through. You can purchase it from Steam or directly from MangaGamer. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

- Teepu

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Story: A-
Graphics: A+
Sound: A-
Value: A

OVERALL: A-

Pros:
+ Clever use of visual effects makes story more engaging.
+ Fantastic story and characters.
+ Gorgeous art.

Cons:
- A slow start might turn away some.
- No interaction in any way shape or form.

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Disclaimer: This visual novel was provided to us by the publisher for the purpose of this review.

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