 Platform: Steam Players: 1 Are you ready to test your action platforming skills in an action-packed, fast-paced tower ascension game? Do you prefer said games to have anime stylings and JRPG elements? Well, if you answered yes to these questions then perhaps MAGICALxSPIRAL the latest game by Broken Desk, published by Sekai Project, available right now on Steam. Before you rush out and buy it though, let's take a more in-depth look at this game...  Here you go people, it all starts here! When I first saw previews of MAGICALxSPIRAL I thought it would be an action RPG in the vein of the first Ys games; I was sadly mistaken. It definitely is an action game with RPG elements, but it differs in just about every other way imaginable. In MAGICALxSPIRAL you play as Medianne Phirtia, a young girl from a place called Midgard (which is a place we know oddly little about) who decides to see if the legends are true about the Phantasm Tower leading to the kingdom of Celestria. This was another element that I thought tied it to Ys, much like that game the legendary "other" place was found in the sky and could only be reached via scaling a tower full of monsters. When Medianne enters the tower she immediately meets Salamander, a spirit who commands the element of fire and who informs her of a sort of magic exam that must be passed in order to reach Celestria. Partner in tow, she now has magic at her disposal and begins her quest to scale the Phantasm Tower.
Okay, let's take a look at the gameplay here for a bit; we'll start with controls. This game is only available on PC via Steam at the time of this writing (it will most likely stay this way) and it pretty much requires a controller. If you're a PC gamer though, I'm sure you have a spare USB controller lying around or have other means of hooking up a console one. Speaking of controllers, I am not sure if this game had some sort of life on a PlayStation console, but the controller layout mimics a Dual Shock controller, the picture shown on the control mapping screen even resembles one. If you do not have a controller then you can try playing with a keyboard as well, but I wouldn't recommend it. The controls themselves are a little weird and hard to explain. All your buttons are there, jump, attack, two buttons for magic attacks, and two buttons to cycle between spirits (for different elemental spells). The problem lies with the fact that the controls aren't exactly good. Okay, it's not that they're unresponsive or laggy, it's just that I never felt that I could maneuver the way I wanted to most of the time. There is also a slight delay in some of the inputs which is bad in a game as fast-paced as this one is. Also since the camera is usually pulled in kind of close and the action scrolls in a spherical way (hard as hell trying to explain what I mean there), enemies and obstacles sometimes seem to pop out of nowhere and since the controls aren't exactly tight, you end up taking unnecessary damage and sometimes fall down. That's right, fall down. Since this game has you constantly going up a steady spiral if you fall you might find yourself either a few levels down, or sometimes even all the way back at the beginning of the level. Thankfully the latter is somewhat rare. One more minor gripe on the controls. There is a special attack that can be used when you max the synchronization with your spirit (more on this in a bit) that is performed by pressing the two spell buttons together. Seeing as there are some unused buttons, I feel that this could have been assigned to a separate input. Now onto gameplay proper.  A typical scene from the exterior levels. I've mentioned magic a lot so far so let me go a bit more in-depth into this game's magic system. There are your standard four elements of fire, earth, wind, and water, and each of them is commanded by a particular spirit. These spirits give you command over several magic spells belonging to their element. These can vary as well either being offensive or defensive. Two spells can be mapped to two different controller buttons so you always have at least two spells at your disposal and you can cycle between whichever spirits you have acquired at will. Spells of course use MP, which varies from spell to spell, and your MP is recovered automatically as you move without using magic. There are some enemies that can only be defeated using certain types of magic and some boss monsters are weak towards one or the other. Once again this is rather typical of the RPG genre, but its inclusion here does offer some degree of depth. MAGICALxSPIRAL also features a synchronization system in that the more times you use the magic of a particular spirit a meter fills and when it hits 100% you can perform a devastating screen-filling attack. Note that I said "using" magic and not defeating enemies with it. I am not sure if it's a bug or not, but the meter can be filled by simply spamming magic attacks on an empty screen and since MP refills automatically after time it is easy to fill up synchronization with each of the spirits before particularly difficult parts, like boss battles. This of course can unbalance the game a bit, but it by no means the only problem this game has.
There is very little in the way of progression in this game. Each level gets somewhat more difficult than the one before, but it's nothing really worth noting if you have decent platforming experience. The game follows a very linear cycle, you start out in an intermission area where you can talk to the spirit(s) present, buy items, and save your game. I said buy "items", but this is also where you increase your stats. You buy levels in each stat and ability for a set cost of coins. Coins are received throughout the main game by either defeating enemies or doing particularly well in each level. You can replay already beaten levels to farm more coins if needed. Honestly though, I realized very early on that you pretty much won't need to buy any healing items (especially the useless MP restoring ones) and you can get by in the game mainly with just your rod, adding yet more ways in which this game is unbalanced. Following these intermission screens, you then progress through a level where you climb the exterior of the tower followed by a level where you enter the tower and continue upwards within the interior. Oddly enough, most of these interior sections are displayed as caves... This is followed by a boss battle (usually a spirit) and the whole process repeats itself until you complete the game. It's not completely unenjoyable, but the game is over before you know it and you realize that a lot of the elements, like newer, more powerful spells, are pretty much unnecessary. You unlock stuff after beating the game once, including a new character named Sobel (not a spoiler since he is in all the promotional materials) who then goes through mostly the same levels you've just completed, though he tackles out of order thereby making some of them cheaply difficult. I feel like I've roasted this game a bit, so let me back up and speak of some of the good things.
Pretty much the only thing I can praise about this game is its art and music, so let's take a look at those for a bit. Simply put, the art in this game is pretty awesome. While the designs are anything but original, they are very well done and the main characters of Medianne and Sobel look great as do the few CG scenes present. Conversely the main in-game graphics aren't as good, but they aren't terrible either even if the character models are a bit stiff. There are very few monster designs in this game and a lot of what is here are palette swaps. There is actually very little in terms of animations within the game itself, but the effects that fill the screen for spells are pretty nice. The opening movie looks great too and gets you excited to play the game, even if the rest of the package doesn't follow this strong beginning. One of the reasons this opening movie is so good is the inclusion of the song "Tsubasa wo Motomete". This song is my single favorite thing about this game and it honestly was the only reason I went back to the game a second time to complete it; I just had to hear the song again. In fact, I am tempted to purchase the soundtrack for it alone and probably will have already done so by the time you are reading this. Elsewhere the music is well-done with tracks that fit the game perfectly, even if they aren't the most memorable, but there are some problems with the mixing of the music when there are also voices and sound effects laid on top of it. Speaking of voices, the game sports voice acting for all characters and narration and the talent heard here is great. If only this excellent presentation had made its way into the gameplay...  Instead of Salamander, Sobel gets Undine as his main companion. This is that part where I usually talk about story, but honestly, there isn't really one besides what I've said already. There are some twists after the end of the first route, and Sobel's route is quite different from Medianne's and offers twists of its own, but I never really found myself caring about what happened next. You're only goal is to climb the tower and reach Celestria and it never deviates from that. When I found out Sobel's route used the same levels as Medianne's the only thing that kept me playing was this review and that amazing opening song. Not a good sign for a game if a song and obligation were the only things that brought me back to it. I also mentioned that this game is short, well it's also easy if you are fairly competent with action games, besides some odd jumping mechanics and bad controls, you can get by this without much trouble. I completed much of Sobel's route by simply ignoring enemies and moving past them, a trick I wish I would have discovered earlier. I beat this game in its entirety in a little over two hours. There are achievements for doing it in under 30 minutes and I think this is completely doable if you know what to expect. Short games don't have to bad simply because of that fact, but the experience you get in that time isn't one that makes you want to return to the game. I guess it can be argued that you can keep playing to unlock everything, but honestly, there really isn't much need to as the game can be completed with the most minimal of effort and anything beyond that is just busy work. The game just doesn't really feel like it rewards you for the time you spend with it and part of me actually wishes that this game was made into a visual novel with more story and ditched the action elements. So let's wrap this up. The game has great art, okay graphics, great music, and can be fun at times. The controls are pretty bad, the replayability is pretty much non-existent, and the balance of the game is flawed in just about every way. There is some fun to be had here, but I can't honestly recommend this one at the price that it is being offered at. At $15 dollars, this game seems a bit pricey for what it delivers. I'm usually not one to speak about price, but it is one of the factors we review, and I do feel that it is important in this case. If the price were $10 then I could recommend it to fans of the action RPG genre. If you ever see it available at that price via a Steam sale, then I think you should pick it up if you fit that description. If not, then pick up the soundtrack (also available on Steam) as it is GREAT! -Manuel (alavic_222) You can check out MAGICALxSPIRAL now on Steam at the link below! http://store.steampowered.com/app/521510/ Graphics: GREAT+ Sound: GREAT+ ("Tsubasa wo Motomete"=PERFECT) Gameplay: QUESTIONABLE Value: QUESTIONABLE OVERALL: GOOD- FULL DISCLOSURE: This game was provided to A-To-J Connections free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of review. MAGICALxSPIRAL Promo Video  |
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