Magical Diary~

Recently, I've been playing a lot of visual novels. I'm sure that there are a few individuals out there who would love to dispute the term 'playing' when it comes to the subject of visual novels - after all, they are essentially interactive storybooks. That being said, I am more than happy to abandon all preconceived notions and just enjoy them for what they are. I suppose it helps if you're a particularly empathetic individual, seeing as I tend to spend more time focusing on individual characters and their relationships than I do the actual plot. But, I digress.

I picked up 'Magical Diary' earlier. It's a visual novel with some very obvious influences - the biggest being Harry Potter. As countless other reviews and synopsis' before mine have pointed out, the game seems to present this in a rather "tongue-in-cheek" manner. I actually thought about picking it up before today - it was actually the Steam Summer Sale that drew my attention towards it, but I was reluctant to actually make the purchase since there were other titles I wanted more, - but that obviously didn't happen, so today had to suffice.

I have already poured seven hours into Magical Diary. I've managed to gain three different endings so far, two of which ended with romantic interests. I won't name any character names or give anything away (although I'm sure my achievement list will do that for me when it updates), but I still feel as though there's more to explore in the story. This is something which feels pretty rare in visual novels; the last two I played, Katawa Shoujo & Analogue: A Hate Story felt distinctly linear. Your choices made a pretty big impact on the storyline, sure, but you didn't get to make them very often.

Magical Diary is different. You're presented with a wealth of options in terms of what you want to do with your time, how you want to respond to certain situations, where you want to go.. I feel as though there are less viable romance prospects, but that's actually okay - I'm actually finding myself more interested in exploring the world, in seeing what spells the game has to offer, and in learning more about my classmates and whatever else.

I'm not *entirely* sure what the point of this blog entry was - beyond allowing me to gush about my newfound love of Magical Diary, - but I hope it's been of.. some.. use? Or at the very least, has made for (somewhat) interesting reading.

Jaeya out!

Recently, I've been playing a lot of visual novels. I'm sure that there are a few individuals out there who would love to dispute the term 'playing' when it comes to the subject of visual novels - after all, they are essentially interactive storybooks. That being said, I am more than happy to abandon all preconceived notions and just enjoy them for what they are. I suppose it helps if you're a particularly empathetic individual, seeing as I tend to spend more time focusing on individual characters and their relationships than I do the actual plot. But, I digress.

I picked up 'Magical Diary' earlier. It's a visual novel with some very obvious influences - the biggest being Harry Potter. As countless other reviews and synopsis' before mine have pointed out, the game seems to present this in a rather "tongue-in-cheek" manner. I actually thought about picking it up before today - it was actually the Steam Summer Sale that drew my attention towards it, but I was reluctant to actually make the purchase since there were other titles I wanted more, - but that obviously didn't happen, so today had to suffice.

I have already poured seven hours into Magical Diary. I've managed to gain three different endings so far, two of which ended with romantic interests. I won't name any character names or give anything away (although I'm sure my achievement list will do that for me when it updates), but I still feel as though there's more to explore in the story. This is something which feels pretty rare in visual novels; the last two I played, Katawa Shoujo & Analogue: A Hate Story felt distinctly linear. Your choices made a pretty big impact on the storyline, sure, but you didn't get to make them very often.

Magical Diary is different. You're presented with a wealth of options in terms of what you want to do with your time, how you want to respond to certain situations, where you want to go.. I feel as though there are less viable romance prospects, but that's actually okay - I'm actually finding myself more interested in exploring the world, in seeing what spells the game has to offer, and in learning more about my classmates and whatever else.

I'm not *entirely* sure what the point of this blog entry was - beyond allowing me to gush about my newfound love of Magical Diary, - but I hope it's been of.. some.. use? Or at the very least, has made for (somewhat) interesting reading.

Jaeya out!

Well, one point of this blog was to send me to Steam to buy this game. I love visual novels and have spent way to much time playing all sorts of them since I got hooked on them through Katawa Shoujo.

The screenshots over at Steam looked awfully bland and boring, but your description of the game piqued my interest. I tend to focus more on the characters and their relationships than the plot too.

Nice read. I might check it out.