Adventures With a Boneheaded Wingman
Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is host to a handful of ideas and concepts that if given a finer degree of refinement could have made for a really fun original title.
The story begins after you break into the palace where the Majin is being held prisoner. Tales of Majins great power as a beat of the gods has led you to seek him out to help you on your quest. When you find him you quickly find out that Majin is a dullard, who speaks in broken english and constantly trips over his own feet. Regardless he is also the only one who can help you save the kingdom from the Darkness that has taken it over. Majin agrees to help you in exchange for freeing him and from there you control the Majin as you travel throughout the kingdom tracking down the Majin's lost powers and eliminating the dark generals that block your path.
There is an interesting dynamic in your relationship with Majin—you desperately need him to get anything done. Without Majin, you wouldn't be able to open any gate, finish a fight, or reach most heights. Even though you are the one in control, your quest would be a miserable failure without his assistance. While this leads to some interesting avenues of gameplay, there are times that it backfires. Overall it is handled fairly well and issues like these have plagued this style of play forever. Kudos to Hexa Drive and Game Republic for trying something that other developers shy away from.
For as big of an oaf as Majin is, he is quite useful at solving puzzles. Across the land are fruits that contain the powers of the Majin, restoring his elemental abilties that he can then use to help you overcome all sorts of obstacles in your path including jump-starting generators and lighting explosives. Finding the right path isn't completely painless. There are occasional markers in the form of lizards as to which areas you are supposed to be able to reach, but these seem like an afterthought and are not always present.This can lead to frustration when using Majin as a springboard. Your imprecise control over where he stands can lead to scenarios that are unclear if you are missing a jump because Majin isn't standing close enough or because you just aren't supposed to be able to reach it. You will also falter at the edge of certain cliffs but not at others, which can through off your flow if you are leaping across platforms. There is a lot of thought put into these puzzles and not only are they the best use of Majin but really the shining point of the game.
The same abilities that Majin relearns that help you though the world will also make him more formidable in combat. Luckily Majin's brute strength can get you through most fights without too much worry, as you encounter larger groups of tougher enemies, everything begins to fall apart. You can issue commands to Majin to use magic, but his short attention span causes him to revert to swinging away when he gets hit; the bigger the groups get the quicker that happens. You get to a point that the pair of you can take quite a bit of damage without actually taking any one enemy down. There is an underdeveloped stealth mechanism that is not fun to use but in some cases very necessary to get the fight to a fair number that Majin can handle.
Playing through I never encountered anything game-breaking in Majin, but it is full of quirks that over the course of the game leave it in a negative light. One example is the display guide, which is misguided at best. It is constantly hogging the screen showing you commands that you picked up ten minutes into the game, but if you turn it off it hides anything else you might need including context sensitive controls that you haven't previously encountered such as "Push Crate" or "Pull Lever". Another quirk is that there area handful of times that it is not clear how to advance and you end up holding down the "Command Majin" button and wildly manipulating the camera until you find an object that Majin can interact with. The game also does a poor job of explaining new techniques to you like combination attacks and finishing attacks, both of which they included achievements for and neither of which they explain how to execute. I took issues with the amount of backtracking that is required and the fact that the teleportation system is practically useless with a third of the locales you can travel to not being unlocked until you defeat all but the last boss.
Visually the game is less than stunning, the voice acting is laughable, and the story is abundantly unoriginal, but the platforming is enjoyable end-to-end to make Majin just charming enough to pick up.
