Maglam Lord (PlayStation 4) Review

The Summon Night series never got insanely popular, but always had a pretty good cult following even though many of the games were not initially released outside of Japan. Following the general split between half visual novel/light dating sim and action RPG, they ranged from side-scrolling to full on tactical grid-battles. While not a true or direct sequel, it is obvious both from being by the same developer and the style of gameplay that Magnum Lord is a spiritual successor to those games.

The problem is that there is not that much here that is interesting to recommend. While the initial premise starts strong it falls flat soon after. It opens with the story that there was a battle between the gods, demons, and humans, and the former could not be killed, short of special human weapons. Somehow the main character, named 'Killizerk', gets a weapon and forces the whole world to ally up to stop him. Waking up in the future, no one knows or really cares about the past, and he (or she as you can choose) now goes on their merry way with equally 'endangered' heroes to have some light-hearted adventures.

Characters are the strongest point of this game, not that they ever achieve a status more than mildly interesting. Ranging from the 'hero in training' Darius who hates the demon lord to the big-hearted and bigger-chested Onee-san 'Charme', there is some humour which provides entertainment while going through the story. It would have been better to have more dialogue, but the little present is often buried too deep in endless dungeon grinding.

The dungeons and fights are so lacking it ruins what might have been at least a passable story. Graphically it is so bad it looks like the game could be home on the original PlayStation. A horrendously low polygon count, simple colours, and abysmal level design all stand together to reduce Magnum Lord's integrity. The dungeons are uninspired, repetitious and wholly uninvolved. At least a few hours are spent running around in the same brown hill dungeon which is a couple of large squares linked together. The crafting is completely forgettable, and on each turn it is obvious that the game is not good. It is not terrible, after all it is playable and there are some occasional laughs in the story, it just there is so many easy criticisms to point out.

It does not take long to realize there is little to the combat system. There are three weapon categories, the sword, the spear and the axe which all engage the opponent slightly differently, with combat best summed up with the word 'random'. Often a battle can literally finish in a few seconds if it is the correct weapon and simply perma-stuns the enemies to death. Other times the enemies get the player in a stun lock until they themselves die or take a huge beating. Regardless of all of this, even though there are some different moves it never turns into any cool type of combo game: simply find one or two attacks that work and stick with those.