Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom Review
Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom
Being the first senses that are aroused when playing a game I really do like starting with the graphics and sound. The graphics in general are really beautiful, rendering this fantasy world in bright and magical colors with various terrains and architecture that instill a true ethereal aesthetic; though when looking a bit closer there are a few noticeable blemishes. The character of Tepeu has a few bad facial animations, and there will be occasional glitches with shadows and texturing that resemble vertical blinds. These blemishes are few and will not distract you from enjoying the beautiful world around you or from the gameplay. The next sense which you’ll derive more pleasure from, the music; a very fitting ethereal feel to the soundtrack and really quite eerie at times when the darkness closes in or when a boss fight is about to begin/going on. Music is one of the most effective tools in setting a mood and Majin does a good job for the most part even though the same exploration music seemed pervasive. Not as noticeable but just as important are the voices, which were pretty good despite the remedial, dialogue used to tell the story; as if to children.
One of the best visual aspects of Majin are the silhouettes used in the memory scenes to explain the back-story. These small scenes have a little animation to them and are accompanied by voice work/dialogue, but the art itself is just beautifully crafted.
The story of Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is the classic tale about the force of good fighting against an evil spreading throughout the world, this time though a literal darkness is spreading. The darkness is slowly destroying nearby towns and forests killing people and nature alike. This is where an unnamed bandit makes his appearance. This bandit has the unique talent to speak to animals and lives deep in a forest that is slowly being consumed by this growing evil. It is known that the darkness is emanating from a particular castle and while many soldiers have ventured forth to defeat this evil, none have returned. There is a legend that talks of a powerful Guardian somewhere in the castle and that this Guardian is the key to defeating the darkness and bringing life back to the forest, his home. He breaks into the castle and manages to find the Guardian covered in darkness and bound by a magical seal. The bandit manages to pull out the seal, which becomes your weapon, and release the great magical beast. After they introduce themselves the Guardian, Teotl, gives the unnamed bandit a name, a very special name: Tepeu. You then discover that his powers have been stripped from him and sealed in magical fruits that have been placed in different areas within the kingdom. In order to defeat the darkness you must help the Guardian regain his former glory by gathering said fruits and restoring his magic.
The interactions between Tepeu and Teotl are incredibly friendly even borderline cute. From the first meeting, Teotl is incredibly adorable and perpetually hungry, he actually reminded me a bit of Winnie the Pooh. Teotl is such a charming character that I don’t think anyone with half a heart could not like him. Tepeu on the other hand seems a bit flat in terms of personality, luckily the lovable lug that is Teotl really completes the dynamic.
As the heart of any game, the gameplay is what can make or break it. In Majin you’ll be solving a lot of environmental puzzles while fighting off soldiers of darkness with a fun and intuitive combat system. The first step in and out of combat is that you’ll need to give Teotl general orders of what he should be doing in terms of which enemy to target, the use of specific magics and where/when to move. He will attack enemies that get close or the next nearest enemy once another is defeated and will use magics conservatively without your command so you don’t feel like you’re constantly babysitting.
The next thing to know is that Tepeu cannot defeat enemies on his own, Teotl must be there to truly finish them off; enemies Tepeu solos will revive in a few minutes. When fighting together, Tepeu’s quick but weak attacks still aren’t very effective and he relies heavily on Teotl’s brute force attacks, where he does shine is in triggering and executing combination attacks and finishing moves; the heart of all combat in Majin. When Teotl knocks an enemy down you can run over to them and begin wailing on them. Doing so will allow you to execute a combination attack via a context sensitive button press. There is a combination meter that is constantly depleting and by executing several combination attacks in quick succession you can use a very powerful finishing move. These not only are really well done with bright colors and unique animations, but they are very powerful attacks that can make even the toughest fights a piece of fruit…cake. As Tepeu relies on Teotl for the main part of combat, Teotl relies on Tepeu for healing as well as magic generation. Only by attacking soldiers of darkness with Tepeu can Teotl’s magic charge up. This is a very well designed mechanic to keep players in the middle of every fight even if at first it seems useless.
These combinations and finishing moves growe even more powerful as you defeat enemies and gather life and friendship orbs. Life orbs are essentially XP that raise Tepeu’s health and allow him to do more damage. Friendship orbs are only attained by defeating enemies with a combo or finishing move and they increase the damage the combination and finishing moves do. In addition to these powerups you can acquire several passive abilities via armor you acquire from treasure chests or memories; most of these abilities only reduce damage dealt by a certain type of enemy. Throughout the kingdom you will find Teotl’s four magical powers: Wind, Lightning, Fire, and Purification (turns enemies to crystal). To make combos and finishing moves even more powerful you can infuse them with the different magics that Teotl regains turning the typical finishing move into a ten-ton crystal hammer attack that smashes all enemies in range to dust or an electrically charged ground pound. These magics not only make combat easier but are used extensively for puzzle solving, before that though I’ll round off the combat.
In addition to the tag-team fighting there are some sections throughout the game where Tepeu will be on his own because some impediment is preventing Teotl from traveling with you. These moments are usually part of a puzzle where the first step is to stealth your way through an area either stealth-killing enemies or avoiding them, then find a lever or wheel to allow Teotl to rejoin you. To assist in the stealth portions Tepeu can throw rocks to draw enemy attention and navigate around them or to set off traps to catch enemies in them instead. The stealth sections of the game are actually pretty fun and offer a nice change of pace that doesn’t remove from the overall experience. Even in sections where you don’t need to stealth, stealth-kills can be very handy in getting an upper hand over a group of enemies. Included in the stealth portions or just areas where Teotl can’t get you will find a number of misc items to help Tepeu defeat and/or bypass enemies. You’ll find explosive barrels you can drop to knock down enemies and clay pots that will stun enemies allowing for a quick sneak attack.
The best part of all the combat sections are the creative boss battles you’ll fight with uniquely designed enemies. The only down side for me was that there were only 4 boss battles before the final stretch. These fights were incredibly fun and included puzzles within the fights. My favorite fight was the second boss, iirc, where you were placed in a small arena with gongs in the corners. The boss would spit darkness ooze, which slows you down and prevents attacks and commands, as well as do a nasty AoE spin that knocks Tepeu and Teotl down. The trick is to distract the boss by throwing rocks at the gong then having Teotl attack with magic allowing you to attack building up the magic meter and triggering a combo attack. The other boss fights use similar mechanics either emphasizing the latest magic Teotl acquired or a combination of different magics for puzzle solving and attacking.
My favorite parts in all of Majin are the environmental puzzles you’ll need to solve to gain access to new areas, magic fruits and treasure chests. Each area of the kingdom (~45 in total) has a puzzle to solve that will allow you to collect something that will assist you in defeating the darkness. I mentioned that the magic is used to strengthen combinations and finishers, but you’ll use magic to solve puzzles just as much if not more that you will in combat. Each area/puzzle will appeal to a particular puzzle element or magic depending on where you are in the story. Some areas use catapults to launch rocks and Tepeu to gain access to elevated areas, some require Teotl’s wind magic to move platforms, or Lightning magic to power levers and elevators, and some require a bit of everything. Most of the puzzles are pretty easy if you only want to get what’s required for progression, but to get everything in each area you’ll run into a few more difficult puzzle elements that have lots of steps to complete.
As a measure of good design the devs put a number of subtle/vague hints around the areas to help you figure out what to do or where to go; should you ever get stuck. Since Tepeu can talk to animals you’ll find mice and parrots in each of the areas that offer you either some piece of the story or vaguely suggest what is needed to complete the puzzle in the area. Objects that can be interacted with by either Tepeu or Teotl will have bright blue butterflies ever so gently hovering around; like levers to open doors, chests filled with treasure, or walls and pillars to topple unto enemies. If you get stuck and can’t see how to get to some areas, there will be a gecko on the wall that hints there’s a way over or under. These puzzle elements combined with the intuitive combat round off a really fun gameplay experience.
Before I wrap this up I have a few other points to make that didn’t contribute directly to any particular element, but did a great job in bringing together the entire experience. One such element to the game was that as you solve the puzzles and regain Teotl’s powers you’ll see a physical change in his appearance. He’ll go from just having a few plants and flowers on his back to having small trees, large flowers in bloom, bark/branches protruding through his arms, and he’ll glow with the warmth of fire and the power of electricity. Teotl will also gain new attacks with every strength fruit acquired ranging from a two-hand push to a jumping body slam; most of the later attacks are powerful AoE knockdowns. So not only does he get stronger in battle with new and better attacks, but his regained magical powers and strength will manifest physically. Another nice touch is that as Tepeu takes damage it isn’t so much as he’s losing health but being taken over by darkness. As such his appearance will become more and more like the evil soldiers of darkness dripping with black ooze. Depending on how low his health is he may only have darkness on his feet that stick to the ground as he walks, but the closer to death he is the more he is consumed by it and takes on the exact appearance of the soldiers he’s been fighting.
This could probably go into the combat section but I thought that was rounded off rather nicely so I’ll add a bit more here. I said before how much I enjoyed the combat in Majin and I’ve already discussed the basic combat mechanics, but what I’m going on about right now is that each enemy type requires a slightly different tactic. Most enemies will be defeated similarly to what I mentioned about the combination system, but when you first encounter a new enemy it’s like a little puzzle about how to defeat it. Like when you first encounter flying enemies that Teotl can’t reach and Tepeu’s jump attack doesn’t connect with, you need to start throwing stones to knock them down so Teotl stomp on them. Or when you have enemies on platforms that you can’t reach and throwing stones just annoys them, you’ll need to knock them off with Teotl’s wind magic. As you get further into the game you’ll discover what elements the different enemy types are weakest to and towards the end you’ll still encounter new enemies, some of whom will that have magical immunities that require extra attention to isolate and defeat. There are a lot of different enemies in the game and most of them will grow in strength and gain new armor making a need for some new tactics.
I really don’t have much to say in the way of negative comments. I’ve pointed out the handful of graphical blemishes that don’t ruin the experience much at all. If there was one thing I’d have liked improvement on it would have been the map. It properly displays all the areas and how they connect, but it would have been nice to have waypoints or markers of where to go or at minimum allow the player to add markers. I say this because the map is pretty large and you do a lot of backtracking, and I didn’t get to play for a day and pretty much forgot where I needed to go after I had finished unlocking a door somewhere. Each area does have a corresponding list for the collectibles that will be marked as found or yet to be found that makes knowing where you need to backtrack a bit easier. Since the entire map is somewhat large you’ll find a few teleporters that can take you to the far corners of the map. These could have been better with a few additional locations as you’d still have to pass through 8-10 areas to get to some parts of the kingdom.
Much like after the demo, beating Majin left me wanting more. I had a great time traveling with the charming Teotl, solving interesting and creative puzzles, experiencing a variation of the classic good vs. evil take, and traveling through this beautiful fantasy world. Though I was left wanting more puzzles and more combat, which leads me to the biggest letdown of all: there’s no real replay value. Sure you can replay for fun to experience the story and puzzle elements, but it will be the exact same experience as before. You’ll get about 10 hours of gameplay if you run straight through to the end, by going back through the levels and collecting all the powerups, chests, and memories you’ll add 2-3 hours more (memories only appear at night and the day/night cycle takes ~20min each, meaning you could be waiting a while for those last few memories/collectibles). Taking all this into account with the fact that the price point was dropped to $40 I’d say this is a must buy. I had a a lot of fun playing Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom and highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys simple, well designed, lighthearted and charming games.
Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom has also received a DLC pack. If you'd like to read a review for the DLC check it out at my blog.
If you enjoyed this review please check out my blog at Ramblings of a MAD Man where you'll find more reviews (with images and video) and news posts with lots of trailers and info to enjoy.
