Makai Kingdom

[Jeremy]

Not on your life. I wish I could say I was surprised that I'm getting bitched out for just having a different opinion about a game, but given that this is TNL, I'm not. I feel the game goes slower than it needs to due to inefficient design, that's it. Most everything else is great, because I don't like one thing, I must be given endless shit for it.

[RedCoKid]

Instead of using the move command, go directly to Attack. Select your attack, press and hold square, then move, aim, and click X to accept. It's very fast.

[Jeremy]

Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout, thanks.

[RedCoKid]

Similarly, you can go directly to the Lift/Throw options and move by holding square.

To clear a stage fast, check out the score needed to win, then find which segments have the monsters with the highest points. If Zetta is too far away, invite 1 person (bandits work well), pick up Zetta, throw him toward the segment you need to open, invite a building/character onto the invisible segment (this bypasses having to kill demons to unlock each segment), pick Zetta up, and repeat. When you're close to the monster(s) with the highest points, invite your building, and go to town. If you're not strong enough for a stage, you'll have to take it slower.

[g0zen]

Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout, thanks.

See, if you'd actually played the game enough, you'd have known that.

[Jeremy]

Oh just get the fuck off my case. I already said on the second page that I wasn't all that far into it. You never offered up a shred of actual help, so just STFU.

[ssbomberman]

1) The cutscene graphics are absolutely horrid, relative to NIS' already subpar standards. Anyone who deems this acceptable isn't thinking quite straight. Excluding the intro & ending, all the graphics look like that. The menu icons are unrecognizable, too (more noticeable in the import because you couldn't read the item descriptions). Why are the graphics crap? The game was developed in 6 months (see interview in strategy guide).

2) You can't play with the main characters until long, long after you win the game. The main character Zetta is a stinking base square. Aside from the facts that it's a totally unconventional game design and a waste of the character designer's talent, not allowing you to play with Zetta & friends also makes the main storyline completely irrelevant to the battles (except stages 8-6 and 9-10).


I can't believe EGM and other reviews won't touch these subjects. IMO they dramatically reduce the appeal of the game. The gameplay is fun & the voices are good, but MK deserves 6/10 maximum.


Re: some other comments so far. Most battles take 5-10 minutes! How can that be "slow pacing"!?

Red Co. I have to disagree about the graphics. I mean if you play it on hi-res yeah it will look bad, but I play in RGB and can confirm it on S-vid and it looks fine. Colors are decent and graphics are simply 2-D low res. Nothing bad at all. I actually like the quirky style of the graphics. you can't look at that linked graphic cause it is all pixelated, actual graphics look better than that IMO. Plus I like the way they make those simple expressions for their moods, i.e. exclamation point above head etc. Also menu options are fine on my end, I dunno. Not quite as clean as Disgaea but I really like the animations and weapon/spell effects. I guess I didn't even think much about it. they look good enough for me not to notice them, though of course I would love a high res version.

As for main characters, I never even gave it a thought. I don't actually want to use zetta, I like my own characters better. The storyline works because he is using the gamer to command the army. So I am in charge in doing his work. This never really crossed my mind, but I guess it makes sense to people looking for a more straighforward and accessible SRPG. Start with Disgaea then move to MK. Disgaea is better, I make no bones about that, but MK is not a D game? Come on, D games are like freaking bottom of the barrell.

See for me they do not lower the appeal and in fact they are simply an after thought. My interests lie in the depth of the game engine.

I would say this is a high 8 out of 10, but that is what makes the world go round I guess.

ssb

[AaronChance]

But what depth is there in MK's engine compared to Disgaea or Phantom Brave... or even La Pucelle for that matter? I lost interest in MK, not because of the graphics or the lack of story characters, but the shallow nature of the systems. Even the addition of houses and mecha are handled in such an awkward way I can't make myself interested in them. I'd rather replay NI's previous games.

[ssbomberman]

Well atleast for PB, I hated the way you confined only temporarily, add to it that you only equipped one weapon and that weapon took up a slot in your battle. Disgaea is def a better and deeper game, no argument there, but I say MK is better than the others, well this is how I would rate the NIS America published games: Disgaea > Atelier (I know not NIS developed) > MK > La Pucelle > PB

But of course this is all preference, cause my friend worships PB, while I couldn't stand certain things.

For me in MK I love the confinement system, how you borrow skills and special attributes from your previous incarnation. I like the way you can build up stars, sacrificie or reincarnate to make higher level facilities. I like how you have both an engineer and merchant for buying things and how the professor pimps out the vehicles (thought to be honest I ain't really into the vehicles). I like the advanced tactics and tricks to mana farm (using box skills and other tactics) and power level. I like the expanded weapons and character classes and thinking up new ways to make use of them.

The battle system for me is almost perfect. I loved PB free system and I love the Disgaea system for everything else, though I really like the way MK did the invite system and you can bring out facilities, bring out troops, drop another facility down to add to the board effect (like EXP + 30%)...but I am sad that they didn't just bring back team attacks. The lack of dark senate and being able to increase board difficulty makes me sad as well. Lack of item world doesn't really bother me, the free dungeons are good enough. And this is small, but I really like the fact that in a dungeon, when I load an item from the board into my character slots, they disappear after clearing the board, so I can fill up my thief again on the next floor...

So yeah I think this is a good game, not Disgaea, but good enough to hold me until Disgaea 2, if we ever see it. But the way I see it, there are so many linear character driven SRPGs that are simply mediocre, it's ok for me to enjoy this untraditional take on the genre. I think if we look into the future a bit, we'll see that MK is just a step in the evolution of NIS and that sometime soon they will launch a game that eve kills Disgaea in level of quality. I still give this an 8/10, where Disgaea would get a 10 compared to other US release SRPGs, of which there are very few with this level of replayability.

ssb

[RedCoKid]

ssbomberman,
Re: the cutscenes, I wasn't talking about the resolution. NIS chose not to use (or could not due to time restraints) either Disgaea's full-screen portraits or Phantom Brave's large animated sprites. Also, look at the background. It's a starry sky! They could've been more imaginative by hand-drawing galaxies, supernovas, black holes, you name it. But they didn't. Instead we get tiny, tiny characters plastered on top of a 1980's screensaver. It's ugly.

Re: main characters
There's virtually no relationship between the story unveiled in cutscenes and the enemies you face in battle. As a result, MK is just a generic NIS strategy-RPG expansion pack (albeit an addictive one) stapled to a radio drama. The intro battle, stage 8-6, and stage 9-10 are the only ones that have anything to do with the story. I dare you to name some more (Raiden, the mid-boss, doesn't count)! The rest is just... there... for no reason. Zetta is always off doing one thing while all his friends squabble over something different. For example, in the chapter with the corn, why couldn't they make you fight "The One" instead of some insignificant husk?

It's inaccurate to call MK a strategy-RPG in the traditional sense. It's more like a strategy-dungeon crawler with bits of unlockable story.