Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven Review (3DS)
If the name hadn’t sold me, then the seven cute girls did. If the cute girls didn’t sell me, then the gameplay did. If the gameplay didn’t sell me then, uh, you get the point!
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when going into Lord of Magna: Maiden Heaven other than some harem tendencies but it honestly left me pleasantly surprised with how fun it is. The story is simple but the character interaction makes it much more enjoyable than it could’ve been. You follow Luchs (or whatever you want to name him) as he struggles to take care of his family inn day after day, having promised his father that he would. He soon runs into trouble when Charlotte, one of seven powerful sisters (who obviously become maids for you inn), comes and saves his life from a monster attack. From then on Luchs vows to help Charlotte find her other sisters and to regain her memories, as well as letting her live at his inn.
Yeah, it isn’t particularly mind-blowing in anyway but it’s an entertaining game which is something that not all games can claim to be. The characters follow all the standard anime tropes but are all incredibly likeable, along with Luchs who’s just pretty chill about everything, really – he has seven beautiful girls living with him, Luchs hasn’t got a whole lot to be down about other than the monsters trying to kill him and stuff.
Chances are if you’re interested in Maiden Heaven, you already know what you’re getting into. The gameplay is fun and surprisingly addictive even if it does feel pretty mindless. You take your team of four into battle and fight a huge amount of enemies which consist of leaders surrounded by pawns and whilst the pawns can be taken out in one hit, the leaders put up more resistance and regularly summon more pawns to make up for the ones you’ve killed. Killing ten enemies in one turn grants you an extra turn which can turn the tide of battle, so it’ll serve you well to consider your attack plan before you take action; pawns bounce into other pawns which also instantly kills them, so it’s a case of knocking them into a group of enemies that’ll yield the best results.
Honestly, I played through the game mostly only using my standard attacks. The bouncing pawn system makes the wide ranged skills mostly irrelevant and if that wasn’t bad enough, they noticeably do a lot less damage. You’re best off mixing items with standard attacks to maximise the damage you deal in battle as you’ll rarely find a time when a skill will be better than a typical slap to an enemies face. It’s fun but it won’t mentally tax you by any means, you can get through all of the battles fairly easily with standard attacks and ensuring that you’re healing when you need it – if anything, the battles feel far longer than they feel difficult and some do become a bit of a chore.
I’m very impressed with the game visually and love what Marvelous have done with the chibi models here, giving them a papercraft children’s book-inspired look that looks beautiful in motion. The way they’ve handled the chibi art makes everyone look incredibly cute and packed with personality where it doesn’t need to rely on the 2D portraits to project emotion. Saying that, as you can see above, the 2D portraits also look gorgeous and are dynamic, despite the fact that they don’t look as clean and crisp as they could’ve on any other current system – the 3DS limitations makes them look unpolished which is a shame.
The audio is the weakest aspect of the game due to very little voice-acting and repetition in music. What’s there isn’t bad by any means but it’s certainly underwhelming – I’m not sure why they bothered including any voice-acting at all considering only a few lines are spoken across the entire game. The tracks are generic and it feels like the bare minimum was done or that the audio wasn’t viewed as a priority, although the sound effects are surprisingly really nice, especially the rain and thunder.
There’s not a whole lot to do other than the campaign unless you really enjoy fighting and wish to partake in extra battles but it’s not something I particularly enjoyed doing, nor do I feel they were necessary as the game isn’t very difficult. I went in expecting some sort of inn management system to the game but didn’t find it, not that it matters because nobody comes to your beautiful inn as it’s in a quiet town that nobody really visits – it’s a labour of love that that inn is even standing still. You can progress your bonds with the fairies by talking to them when they have a heart above their head but it doesn’t make for much ‘downtime’ in between battles, just a few extra sentences.
Overall I enjoyed Lord of Manga: Maiden Heaven even though it’s firmly in the ‘average’ camp where it doesn’t excel or perform horribly in any aspect. It’ll keep you occupied for 15 or so hours but there’s not much reason to go through it again and I struggle to recommend it for £25 and feel that £15-20 would have been much more suitable. I’d like to see a sequel that builds on the games faults as it does feel rather unpolished, and it’s one of the stronger eShop titles available, so it deserves another go. It’s far from being a bad game but it’s failed to leave any memorable impact on me, although I’ll miss how cute those little chibi models are!
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