(RPG-ween) [Review] LostMagic · 7:03pm Oct 28th, 2016
Eeehhhhh...
Look, I'll be honest with you guys; I kinda have a history with this game. What that history is I'll explain to you about within the review, but just know that it is not a very nice history.
Now many of you are probably wondering what the actual fuck is LostMagic anyway, right? Well, I can officially say with utmost certainty... I'm not sure. I am... really not sure. I remember there being RPG elements and a level-up system, so it's obviously an RPG, but there's something missing from my mind that I seem to be forgetting. Something far more sinister...
Lost Magic at its core is a DS game that came out under the Ubisoft name. Joyous day. It was developed by a little corporation called Taito, and if you don't know what Taito is I don't really blame you. A long time ago, Taito came out with the original Space Invaders game, meaning these guys are old school like Atari. And just like Atari, they never seem to be able to GO AWAY AND DIE. Case and point? This game.
So, I guess its time to talk about it. Spoiler warning as per usual.
Buckle your fucking seat belts, kids.
Story
First off, sorry for the small pictures. Photos of this game are rare. Anyway, on with the review.
This game's story is... a thing.
After throwing pointless plot bullcrap at us involving the main villain, the Diva of Twilight, and some Light Mage guy, we get introduced to Isaac, our main Gary Stu for the evening. He lives with his grandmother who isn't actually his grandmother and is actually a mage who teaches him magical bullshit with his father's wand.
Grandma tells us to get some water from the nearby giant fucking waterfall, because it has something to do with Isaac's training or whatever, and that Isaac should talk to the Water Mage living there. He eventually comes across... um...
...
...y'know what? For the sake of humor, I'll just call people their names based on their appearance, because I honestly can't remember the names of any of these pointless, bland and forgettable characters. I know a quick google search could probably solve that mishap right up, but I'm too lazy and this is honestly funnier.
Isaac eventually meets up with Gandalf who was corrupted by some evil junk and you have to defeat him! Once you do, you have to go home with the water or something. But all of a sudden the Diva of Twilight appears who then proceeds to burn down grandma's house and laugh like a fucking madwoman, sparking the player's need to murder this bitch!
Or something along those lines.
Isaac then walks around a bit, fights some monsters and eventually sees our main Mary Sue fall out of the sky because REASONS???? She introduces herself as... let's call her Mary for the sole fact she's a Mary Sue. Mary is a Mage who can't use her magic for some reason, so you two embark on a journey to quite literally the only town on the continent of which you play the game on. So much for RPG, right?
The plot then takes some twists and turns here and there. Like for example, one of the other Gary Stus in the game is the Dark Mage and his mother is a fucking dragon (not even adopted or anything). And then there's a split choice between the good or bad endings. Admittedly, I'm not sure which ending I like and hate more. The good ending has you fight the Diva of Twilight and destroy all magic in the world, including the monsters you took so damn long to raise, but the final scene is cliched and boring. The bad ending has you fight all of the elemental mages and eventually Mary (bosses are a topic I'll talk about later), but the ending is slightly better because Isaac dies like a little bitch and evil is awesome.
Nuff said.
So, story gets an X from me. Sorry.
Gameplay
The gameplay in this game sucks balls!
If the story wasn't your thing and expected at least the gameplay to make up for it, much like Fire Emblem Fates, then turn the other way because this game plays like a pile of trashy rubbish. For starters, the entire game is played with touch controls. Now, some games like The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks nails the touch controls thing like cotton candy perfectly wrapped around a stick, but here the controls are sluggish and painful to get through. You move yourself and your party like a RTS game, dragging a box over the characters and touching where you want to go. Doesn't sound too bad, right? Well, when you combine constant lag with the fact Isaac moves at a snail's pace when moving, it all adds up to an unpleasant experience.
The game plays like a standard RPG: Leveling up, stats, HP, elemental resistances and weaknesses, the whole sort. Only somehow, someway, this game even screws THAT up. Elemental weaknesses and resistances are unbalanced and exploitable (Fire and Water are weak against each other for god's sake), stats mean jack-shit, and the maximum level (in an RPG, may I remind you) is 50. Fucking 50! Five-Zero! WHAT?!
This may not seem like that big of a deal if you really get down to it seeing how Fossil Fighters: Champions' level cap was 20 and that's one of my favorite DS games out there. However, remember I was talking about the bosses in this game? Okay, yeah, there's your problem. The bosses in this game are HARD. And not difficult yet challenging and fun like Cynthia's final battle in Pokemon, and not hard as balls yet satisfying to understand like Dark Souls' bosses, I mean the absolutely unfair kind of hard. In fact, everything wrong with the game can be summarized in the game's bosses. Allow me to give you a small essay.
The first main issue I have with the game is the monster collection aspect. Monster collection in RPGs is probably one of my favorite things to do in an RPG, hence why I love Pokemon so much. But here it's a little, how you say, dumb and stupid. Monsters in no way evolve to become stronger, nor can you fuse them together to make new monsters, essentially making this the lamest monster collection feature I have ever had the displeasure of using. Furthermore, some monsters are clearly better than others, such as the elemental wyverns you can get after a few side-quests. But worst of all are the monster circles. These spawn monsters nonstop unless you or one of your own monsters stands on it, rendering said party member entirely useless in missions where you have to defeat all the enemies or in missions where the enemy count is physically hurting your DS. And capturing monsters is way to similar to Pokemon where you whittle down its HP and use a spell to finalize your capture. Speaking of spells...
The second main issue I have with the game is the spell function. By holding the L or R buttons, you can activate the rune circle, allowing you to draw various runes with your stylus. I'll give credit where credit is due because there are a multitude of runes to draw and most of them can be combined with one-another to create a totally different spell. However casting these spells is the worst thing in the history of ever. Activating the rune circle does not pause the game, meaning anything can hit you while you're trying to heal your party or stack up a three-chained spell. The three main types of spells you WILL be using in the game by the way are Fire, Water and Light. Fire because its easy to draw, Water for monsters that resist Fire, and Light for healing allies. All spells cost MP, naturally, but you'll find yourself losing MP faster than most other games because literally your only way of attacking is through spells. Thankfully you can recover MP naturally and even recover it faster if you purify some weird crystal things, but that's a whole other story.
The final main issue I have with the game is the stat system. I already told you how the level cap in this game is 50, but would you believe me if I said the only reason you have a "Level-up" system is to increase your HP? Stats are managed through a hexagon which shows how powerful you are with each spell, and the more you use a spell the higher that spell's number on the hexagon becomes. It's essentially like Final Fantasy 2's stat system where depending on what you do in combat you either increase or decrease your stats. And like Final Fantasy 2's stat system, it sucks and I hate it. Also note that there is no defense stat in this game, only HP. This means you have to tank through every attack coming your way whether you like it or not. So how is this still an RPG if you barely have RPG elements, you may be asking? Simple: your monsters have stats but not you. What the hell?! Why do my grunts get defense and regular stat boosts whenever a level-up happens and I get diddly dick?
All three of these points plus lag and touch controls are present in boss battles where you should have full control of the battle and yet don't because you don't have proper stats, you don't have a functioning monster collection system, and you can't cast spells fast enough for bosses to counter literally everything you try to use against them. This isn't even mentioning the atrocious level design, the stupid random encounters you can't run from or the ear-grating music that plays, the latter of which we'll get to later.
It is for the bosses alone that I was unable to get through that goddamn game until just last year. Do you want to know how long I've owned my copy of LostMagic for? NINE YEARS. Oh, and just to add insult to injury, all the missions are timed.
Fuck. You. Taito.
Characters
Bland and boring. Next!
Oh, alright, I'll expand on the subject a bit. But not for too much longer because I am actually, seriously getting sick just writing this review. I hope you all appreciate what I'm doing for you.
Every single character can be summarized in one word: "Boring". Isaac is a Gary Stu who offers little if no substance to the plot of the game and is literally just there to be a character you can relate you. He's not even a silent protagonist, so already you've screwed that one up, Taito! At the very least I can say I've seen worse protagonists in RPGs... *coughcough*Corrin*coughcough*... sorry, I had something in my throat.
Mary, who is actually called Trista if you're tired of jokes but I'll keep calling her Mary anyway, is a straight-up Mary Sue, but I would have much rather preferred playing as her because she actually has decent story relevance and a family relation to the main antagonist of the game, the Diva of Twilight. Though because she's a side character that tags along with Isaac, she constantly gets captured, spouts pointless dialogue and is overall just useless. I personally think the game would have been better if Mary was trying to stop her sister from destroying the world, but whatever.
The Diva of Twilight is a forgettable villain with cliched dialogue and a stupid plan to take over the world. In fact, the only reason I remember her is because her final battle theme is actually kinda cool. But that's it. She is honestly one of the worst villains I have ever gone up against in my years of playing video games, and that's saying a lot considering all I've been through.
Any other character is just so bland that I can't even remember what they look like. There's the Mages, Isaac's father, Dragon boy and a few others, but quite frankly I really don't know and don't care about them. I do have funny names for them though! For the mages we have: Gandalf, the Water Mage; Bruno of the elite four, the Earth Mage; and Amaterasu, the Fire Mage. For Dragon boy we'll call him Hugh, and for Isaac's father we'll call him Emo Hat.
The monster designs are pretty cool though!
Seriously moving on this time.
Music
...just listen.
Ear-grating.
Ear-grating and repetitive.
Ear-grating and disappointing (because I usually love desert themes).
Ear-grating and annoying.
There are some exceptions to the usually ear-grating OST however. And that makes the OST even more disappointing when you realize just how much better the composers could have done.
Makes you feel adventurous! Good beat too.
Shame this only plays during the atrocious boss battles.
Actually really sad-sounding.
And like I said, the final battle theme really stuck with me.
But honestly, the tracks range from either decent to god-awful. Basically, not a very good OST, but it does have its good things here and there. You just have to find them.
Final Verdict
Don't play LostMagic if you're not a sociopath.
Almost everything is wrong here: the characters, the story, the combat and the music. Minor annoyances within the gameplay result in the experience being completely dampened and just not fun to play, and even if you could bear through the gameplay to get to the story there really isn't much for you to find in terms of plot. But the saddest thing about the game is that there are clearly buds of a good game just waiting to burst out and become beautiful flowers, such as the rune system. I mentioned it sucked here, but do a bit more tweaking to it and it could become something truly special. Actually, that goes for most of the game, TBH. But in its current state, it is just not a very good game.
LostMagic (yes, that's how it's spelled) earns...
4/10
If SuperKamek was IGN...
+ Signs of a good game buried deep within cartridge
+ Interesting monster designs
- Bland characters
- Terrible combat and stat system
- Mediocre soundtrack
- Too much magic
This has been SuperKamek saying thank you, have a great night, and while this isn't the worst game I've ever played, let alone the worst RPG I've ever played, I can't say I'd ever want to experience it again. Oh, and I was serious about that sociopath comment. You'll need a pretty insane and twisted mind to get through even an hour of this game. Maybe that's why I was able to push though? LOL!
Happy rest of the RPG-ween, everyone! I'll get three more things done before this month finally closes off, including the Final Fantasy VI review and the shot reviews, so don't you worry about a thing!
Speaking of shot reviews, or review requests, I'm still taking ideas for the final RPG-ween day. There is NO limit to what you can suggest for me to review, so just comment away and tell me what RPG you want me to quickly share my thoughts on! Oh, and if you need further definition of what I'm talking about, click the link provided below:
We always have Joel to cheer us up after a bad game.
4275118
OMG, that is too funny!
4275131
Always a shame to hear when an RPG turns out like this, especially when it seems there's like interesting ideas trying to crawl out.
If your a fan of monster catching games, I've heard nice things said about Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, though my main familiarity with the series lies with the mainline titles, I admit.
Entertaining review as always, my friend.
4275178
I'd play RPGs more often if they included the ability to try to put pipeweed into people.
4275131
Oh yes, RPG-ween. That was a thing
Failed attempt to be funny aside, I'm sure I won't play this game soon and I'm looking forward to rest of RPG-ween
4275178
I saw Joker on some shelves just the other day... I'll think about it, thanks!
4275205
The rest of RPG-ween which will have to be jammed down your throats at the last second.
4275219
I have time this weekend
Though maybe I should use it for something important
4275218
Definitely check out some game play. Just because Bethesda tries to convince us that gamers not getting access to reviews before launch is a good thing, doesn't make it true. I'm personally going for DQ7 myself, But yeah, I've heard good things about it!
That does sound bad!
So Sans level.
In all seriousness, this sounds like it could have been a good game. Oh well, the industry's full of those.
Well that's one game I'll never play.
4275795
Only unlike Sans, the difficulty has no relevance to the plot.
4275452
It is... And I still have my copy somewhere in my house. But is it the worst game I've ever played? No. I'll get to that one a bit later, I promise.
4275959
Good! Spread the word!
4276246
Will do. That music was at the very least disappointing