Unfortunately, it's not fun
Funny to say, MAGLAM LORD was one of the games I wanted to buy the most in the first half of 2021, but after being too tight on hand and being intimidated by its expensive price as a "niche game", I finally had to give up for a while, and when I thought about it again, I found that its Chinese version had been put on the release schedule.
If you haven't heard of the game, it's not a strange thing – after all, the Magic Sword Story IP itself is a new thing that was only released for the first time in 2020, but when it comes to the "Summoning Night" series, there are probably not many people who don't know. The reason why "Magic Sword Story" has attracted attention is also because from the beginning, it has been titled "Summoning Night", or "the spiritual sequel of 'Sword Forge Story'", which is a very frightening name.
To put it simply, Magic Sword Story is an action RPG led by FELISTELLA, which once produced the "Summoning Night" series, while focusing on the "Summoning Night" spin-off, "Sword Story" series of gameplay. Because many of the developers are from the old "Summoning Night" series, coupled with its announcement timing, it is also chosen on the twentieth anniversary of the "Summoning Night" series, it is difficult not to doubt that this is paving the way for the long-dormant "Summoning Night" series. Perhaps in a sense, its success or failure will directly determine the resurrection of an old series.
But it turns out that some things may really not be forced.
Seriously, after only two hours of playing, I seem to have seen the whole picture of "Magic Sword Story", but out of the emotional addition to "Summon night", I still decided to temporarily ignore the "prejudices" from all sides, and put this crying and laughing game journey to the end - at least in terms of gimmicks, it is still quite attractive, although there are many "working" demon kings, but it is really the first time to give the demon king a "blind date".
How the game plays, we will not mention for the time being. It must be admitted that a few keywords that "Magic Sword Story" has been using since the publicity stage have indeed earned it enough eyeballs. Although it is still the rotten set of "Japanese swords and magic" in terms of worldview setting, words like "blind date" or "endangered species" can't help but make people a little extra interested in it.
At the beginning of the game, the protagonist of the "Demon King" was forced into a dormant state because he was hunted down by his old enemies, unexpectedly, after he woke up, he found that the world had undergone earth-shaking changes: a harmonious human society, instead of endless wars, not only did the enemies who tried to kill themselves disappear, even they became an "endangered species" that needed to be protected by the government, in order to restore their original strength, but also to satisfy the inner emptiness, the simple demon king could only start to help humans run errands in peacetime. The "happy life" of going out on blind dates from time to time.
As mentioned before, "Magic Sword Story" has been called "the spiritual sequel of 'Sword Casting Story' by many players and the media", part of which is due to its relationship with the "Summoning Night" series, but to a greater extent, it is because it almost completely applies the "Sword Casting Story" game system, that is, the unique gameplay of "entering the battle stage after the big map encounters monsters" and "obtaining materials for forging weapons", and the so-called "blind date" is actually only one of the characteristics of "Summoning Night". Nighttime communication", replaced by a gimmicky "blind date".
For those who are not familiar with the "Forged Sword Story" series, we make a simple explanation here, as one of the most well-known spin-off series of the "Summon night" series, it is contrary to the classic gameplay of the original SRPG, and the battle link is designed as a horizontal action game with higher requirements for player operation. The "cast sword" in its title is not just talk, it is the most direct embodiment of the degree to which the player strengthens himself in the game, because the materials for building weapons all come from the adventure, which further enhances the "brush" element in the game. In addition, the rich weapon mods, character favorability determined by night dialogue, and specially customized summoning beast systems can be regarded as the treasures of the series.
A battle session in Sword Story
Logically, "Magic Sword Story", which inherited the mantle of "Forged Sword Story", should not be too bad in performance. But as long as you actually play for a while, you will find that the makers of the game have no idea what the player really wants.
On the surface, Magic Sword Story is really like "Forged Sword Story", they all have nearly the same gameplay, players can control the character to explore the map, encounter monsters into side-scrolling battles, collect materials and synthesize more powerful weapons. But compared to it, the former is a little too rough, even lazy.
First of all, the biggest difference between "Magic Sword Story" and its predecessors is the game's story advancement mode, although the battle links are all set of action-driven ARPG, but there is no concept of map design in "Magic Sword Story", and what players have to do is basically to take the task from the menu interface, and then be directly transmitted to a separate copy, and the monster level that appears in it will also be marked in advance.
This set of things looks really familiar
The biggest benefit of this is naturally to save a lot of production resources. Whether it's a key main story or a side quest dedicated to certain characters, it can be solved with simple text and stand-up dialogue, but it doesn't have the "sense of adventure" that is characteristic of "Sword Story" or any orthodox JRPG. More often, the player seems to be mechanically filling out the corresponding entry in the task list, and after a while, they will feel sleepy.
Even if this point is left aside, the combat and exploration of Magic Sword Story is extremely boring. I admit that it does inherit the system of "The Story of the Forged Sword", but in the end it feels like drawing a dog against a tiger, and the only thing the two have in common is that they are all four-legged walking.
First of all, despite the same horizontal battle mechanism, the action part of "Magic Sword Story" is extremely confusing, not only the types of weapons that players can use are only swords, axes, and guns, but also the combat actions of the most critical characters are extremely monotonous. Because each action of the character is a separate animation, there is almost no concept of "articulation" or "derivation" between attack or avoidance, resulting in what the player has to do, basically becomes the most simple key to fight monsters, there is no "skill" to speak of.
On the other hand, although Magic Sword Story allows players to choose operable characters in the game, whether the character you choose is male or female, whether you are a brave or an animal ear idol, there is no substantial difference, not only the action mods are exactly the same, but even the skills that can be used are not much different.
What's even more outrageous is that the demon king who is the protagonist in the game will incarnate as a "magic sword" in battle for his partner to use, and when a certain amount of energy is accumulated, the player can directly summon the demon king with stronger ability points to fight - does this sound very similar to the summoning beast system in "Sword Forge Story"? But the problem is that even if the Demon King is summoned, the player can still use the action template of the "sword and axe gun", but the magic that can be used has become more abundant - to put it mildly, even those lottery mobile games now know that it is necessary to make a difference to the character in order to attract the player Krypton gold.
As for the "forging" of one of the core systems of the game, it is more like a part of stimulating the player's feelings. As just said, the only types of weapons that can be used in this game are swords, guns and axes, which also greatly limits the difference between weapons, and even the process of forging weapons itself uses a very concise one-click production, without the unique sense of ritual in "Sword Casting Story", as if the only difference between these weapons is in those fancy names and insignificant attribute special effects.
Put it this way, over the course of more than ten hours of gameplay, I forged no less than dozens of weapons to enhance my character's attributes, but they left little additional impression on me except that the underlying stats were rising. At the same time, the chance of a special forging event triggered by the character's favorability is too low to make people feel the necessity of this system at all.
The only thing that's a bit interesting is that you can personalize the look of your weapon
Finally, let's talk about the issue that many people are most concerned about - "Demon King Blind Date".
In The Magic Sword Story, the "Night Dialogue" system is replaced by a "blind date" system that sounds very nonsensical, but its role has not changed much, and the ending of the story will still change due to the favorability of the characters. In a good sense, "blind date" makes up for the regret that in the past "night dialogue" can only choose one person, as long as the battle has enough favorability, the player can start the so-called "dating event" with the favorite character, but in the bad sense, these are extremely weak in the dating event and the main line of the story, in order to highlight the personality of these characters in dating, the presence of the demon king has also been greatly weakened, coupled with the number of dating events itself is not very rich, it is difficult to see any fun from it.
To put it bluntly, the actual feeling of playing "Magic Sword Story" is a bit too different from what I expected, compared to the "Forged Sword Story", which is impressive in both gameplay and story, it is more like the JRPG series that was mass-produced by COMPLETE HEART (Mine Society) and is better at attracting players with cute characters, and even more unpolished.
Facts have also proved that this "feeling" is not without reason.
In 2013, after the defeat of Summon night 5, FELISTELLA began to cooperate with Idea Factory, the parent company of COMPLETE HEART, starting with the super-dimensional game Neptune: Rebirth, participating in and dominating the production of a number of Mine Society games, although it is not to say that it is integrated with the Mine Society, but in terms of the performance of "Magic Sword Story", they have indeed forgotten almost the original things. If something is dead, maybe let it lie down.
Of course, we can also say the other way around, if you like other games of the Mine Society, then you will most like Magic Sword Story as well. At least compared to "Summoning Night 6" 6 years ago, which sold both of its word-of-mouth sales, it has a complete voice performance, and the character design to personality is quite likable, if it is used as a game to collect CG, these shortcomings seem to be less unbearable -
Anyway, for Summoning Night, there will be no more loss.