MAGLAM LORD

It started out as interesting but you eventually hit a brick wall in the form of repetitive quests and super slow levelling. The premise was OK, a Visual Novel mixed with 3D exploration and 2D combat, but what killed it for me was that I couldn't progress at all since the stat scalling of higher level enemies becomes ridiculously steep (Basically you end up dealing 0 damage and get hit with a 1000), and getting EXP is a super slow process on top of it being the same gather/slay missions over and over again. Even if you could steamroll against normal and boss enemies (Because you need to beat those in order to progress), the game is just always the same, stride across the same maps picking up stuff of trying to find where the enemy target is (Surprise surprise!: it is most likely at the end of the long ass map you have already done in the past 15 missions!). The 2D combat sections weren't super terrible, but when the games lags on you every time you land hit, stunlocks you and gives the enemy animation cancel everytime you block an attack, it becomes insufferable. If I could just keep the VN parts of the game and get rid of the rest, I would say its okay, but since I can't do that, I say leave it on the shelf.

A bit of a spiritual successor to the Summon Night series. Would love to see another Maglam Lord! There are many areas that could be improved, the gameplay loop could certainly be helped. This is a problem I've experienced in every summon night I've played, so it was not something I couldn't bear to get through. Also, less grindy than many NIS games i've played, so that's a plus. But to those who aren't used to things like that, it would definitely get tedious. For me, I only started to feel the grind once I got to the final chapters, and made worse by my decision to clear out every single request (not for an achievement or anything, just the way I play sometimes). But my tolerance for this stuff is much higher than most people probably. There's not much at all to the combat, so anyone looking for a solid action RPG system, this will not be the place to find it. Outside of the gameplay loop, there's the story, which I found quite nice. A bit marrred by how much focus was on some characters, but still an engaging exploration on what "freedom" and "peace" mean. throughout you also get choices which don't change anything really, outside raising relationship points with a character allowing you to get more dates and eventually get an ending, but they do offer fun reactions depending on how you answer. The characters all were pretty great, and there's someone for everyone. Though people who want a husbando may find the choices a bit lacking. Not that the choices aren't great, just not as much to choose from. The MC herself(hisself if you pick the guy) is also a really interesting character who does actually experience growth, but it tends to be less pronounced than any other characters. Still, it's very much there, just have to look harder for it. There's one NPC that plays a pretty strong role in things that isn't the big M. I would definitely recommend this, as long as you can be ready to deal with the gameplay loop, and are okay with a lot of VN cutscenes. Also, if you like the option of playing a Japanese RPG with actual Japanese text, like I myself did. Julette is who I chose, zero regrets. There is one other character I was curious about, but not enough to go for anyone but Julette