Maglam Lord (PlayStation 4)

Today we’re looking at the hack and slash RPG, Maglam Lord. The title from developer Felistella was published by PQube on the 4th of February and sees you take on the role of the blade lord, a demon lord on the brink of extinction as you try to overcome your newly appointed status as an endangered species.

The story of Maglam Lord starts with you selecting either a male or female character by the name of killizzerk (though this choice seems to be little more than preference). As the demon lord of blades, a being so feared that they became known as the nemesis of all creation, you find yourself hunted by a alliance formed between gods and demons set on taking you down. However before your life’s flame can be sniffed out one of your loyal retainers saves you at the last second. Due to the battle and the wounds however you find yourself waking up in a world without gods or demon lords, and a pretty red tag from the government indicating you the last of your kind.

Watching an all powerful demon going from hunted out of fear to the government proclaiming you an endangered species and promising to protect you at all costs in only the first 5 minutes was kind of amusing and sets up the whole tone for the game.

As the game progresses you find yourself with two main goals. The first is to regain your power, something that is achieved by hunting down beasts with your companions as you complete quests and advance the main story. The second goal? To become un-endangered! In other words to er…. multiply, and who better to aid you on your quest for love than a strange man in a shirt you met in an alley calling himself the love guru, who totally doesn’t give me vibes of a certain dragon ball character at all ….. you all know the one

Over the course of the game new allies will join you that are also regarded as endangered, ranging from the last in the line of heroes to a robot weapon that serves as your valet, all of whom are potential marriage material for the demon lord. Honestly the story and writing overall is a bit bizarre, everyone’s personality’s and alignments clash and make for some humorous moments as they try and work together and understand each other. I have to admit to enjoying the interactions between the cast as well as progressing the story to see what weirdness was going to pop up next.

Visually at least with the visual novel story sections and interactions, I quite liked the anime styled 2D artwork. There are some interesting designs that make the characters stand out from one another alongside their personalities. The exploration and combat visuals however felt quite dated, while the character sprites were passable everything else seemed very simple almost like something from the days of the PSP or early PS3 era. For starters, considering the focus on the games weapons the maglams, the ones I’ve mainly come across thus far are just plane ugly hulking bits of jagged metal for the most part and something I ultimately found disappointing.

The games audio has some nice Japanese voice work to accompany the visual novel aspects of the game, with most of the cast being voiced in a majority of scenes. While there are a few exceptions overall, said voice work does a good job at putting across the characters personalities. The background music also does a decent job. there seems to be 18 tracks in total according to the music gallery and I enjoy a majority of them.

Gameplay follows a simple system of requests, both story related and optional, that you can accept from your base with a few verifying objectives. The former of course advances the story while the latter seems to allow for gaining useful items via new enemy’s and to train your characters. The missions themselves tend to require killing x amount of enemy’s or gathering x amount of a certain material and Generally speaking don’t take too long to clear up, unless you are farming rarer item drops they can be cleared quite quickly.

Combat plays a big part in the main area of the game and every 30 seconds or so can lead to a fight. If your not actively avoiding confrontation though most battles don’t take much longer than 30 seconds either, so it’s worth cutting down those in your way at least. While exploring and in combat You will play as one of the blade lords companions wielding the maglams possessed by said blade lord, altogether you will have 3 equipped. Generally speaking a sword, an axe and a spear, you can switch between them freely with a tap of a button. Each enemy will have a weakness to a weapon type, as well as a type resistant to, with said weakness displayed next to the foes HP bar. Think of it of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Chances are most battles will contain 1-2 enemy types so getting used to switching weapons in battle will be a must.

The actual combat is usually quite fast if you play to the enemy’s weaknesses, however you’re nearly always outnumbered by enemies who’s assaults come thick and fast, making getting used to new foes behaviours a priority unless you wish to get trampled. At first combat was fairly enjoyable and new foes mix it up a bit, however before long the new enemies were little more than recolours with higher stats and the same move sets. At this point battles became quite repetitive and less of a challenge with no new surprises to catch me off guard, I found my interest waning quite quickly.

Overall Maglam Lord was equal parts hit and miss with me. while I enjoyed some areas and found them to be done well, there were areas that fell below the expectations set up by other parts of the title. The fun story and strange cast seem to have been a highlight for the game, however if I were to recommend it to someone I knew I’d have to tell them to wait for a sale.

3/5