Maglam Lord Critic Reviews

The story is charming, fun, and full of hidden depth at times with characters who can’t help but grow on you and an enjoyable relationship building system. It’s a shame that the action RPG elements are so simple and threadbare comparatively, but I’d still recommend the title to both Summon Night 5 fans and visual novel lovers in particular given how easy even the action RPG parts are to pick up. Unfortunately, fans of challenging action RPGs might have to look elsewhere. It is obvious that Felistella clearly knows how to spin a good tale if nothing else, and I’ll continue to look back on Maglam Lord fondly as I prepare for an eventual second playthrough!

There’s a place for this kind of game, though, and thanks to the great sense of humour, Maglam Lord remains a delight from start right through to its end. It’s a kind of comfort food that operates within the expectations of the genre, and so, while someone who is not familiar with JRPGs will find it all confounding, if you do appreciate the nuances and of the genre it’s going to entertain you a great deal.

Maglam Lord uniquely combines an action role-playing game with heavy visual novel and dating sim elements to create an experience that stands out from the JRPG crowd. While the action combat portions of the game are underwhelming and the graphics are outdated, the beautiful art direction, engaging narrative, and excellent cast markedly make up for it. You might initially play for the artwork, but you’ll stay for the characters.

Sure, Maglam Lord isn’t an epic AAA experience aiming to compete with Tales of or Shin Megami Tensei, but it is a pretty solid adventure all told. The Switch version does suffer from a touch of slowdown from time to time. It mostly happens if you’re in the middle of a really awesome combo in battle. But when you just want to sit down and enjoy something a little more lighthearted, it certainly scratches that itch.

It’s those little humorous little touches that help make keep Maglam Lord going, even if it’s not especially ambitious or finely tuned in its basic action RPG setup. The story of a Demon Lord turned endangered species playfully riffs off JRPG tropes, finding plenty of laughs in the silliness of its own concept. Sharp writing makes sure every joke hits home, even when they seem on paper like they should fall flat, and there’s an unexpectedly earnest heart beating underneath it all. The game itself may not be anything memorable, but the journey that Maglam Lord takes you on makes it all worthwhile.

Maglam Lord had a lot of potential with its great character designs, music, and premise, but it is held back by lackluster combat and some poor design decisions.

In the sake of fairness, I’ll admit that I genuinely enjoyed playing through Malgam Lord, and I think that it definitely has a niche fanbase that will enjoy it just as much—if not more than—I did. Despite any personal enjoyment, however, I can’t help but feel as though it’s ultimately a very middling game. While Maglam Lord does have some decent high points in terms of its story and setup, its bland level design, repetitive combat, and compressed crafting system weigh it down to an unfortunate degree.

When Maglam Lord is sticking to its visual novel elements, it’s rather enjoyable. You can choose your reactions and responses, building relationships and going on dates with the various other characters. The writing is decent, and the sense of humor is fun. Unfortunately, this is only half of the game. The other half is a somewhat dull action-RPG where you wander through uninteresting levels and engage in combat that turns out to be lacking in engagement. There’s an emphasis on grinding for materials to raise your strength, but nothing about the battles make this an enticing prospect. It’s not a very long game, but it feels absolutely interminable at times. Not without its charms, but hard to recommend on the whole.

Maglam Lord has a lot of potential, but you'll need to stick it out and try to squeeze some joy from its repetitive combat system and stale dungeon design. Along with its writing, an excellently drawn cast of characters — who can be recruited and romanced through the dating mechanic — offer shining moments in an otherwise unremarkable action-JRPG. The potential is certainly there for something special, and the game's visual cues for possible results of dialogue options removes much of the guesswork common in other games, but the execution falls flat in the combat department and holds back the enjoyable visual novel elements of this package from being as good as they could be.

Maglam Lord has enough that some will thoroughly enjoy their time with it, particularly those looking for an enjoyable story and cast. However, it’s brought down by uninspired missions and poorly realised combat. It’s certainly not a bad title, and thankfully the issues that are there are such that they don’t create an active barrier to progress, but the entertaining parts are steadily diluted enough that the experience as a whole misses out on being something to be fully celebrated.