Makai Kingdom was released in summer of 2005 as the fifth rpg game from NIS. Its release however didn't garner the kind of attention that NIS had hope following the successful releases of games like Phantom Brave, Disgaea, and Atelier Iris. Makia Kingdom had shown promises of a possible hit rpg with feature gameplay being a mix of Phantom Brave and Disgaea but yet to this date, it is mainly considered a failed rpg game even amongst the NIS fans out there. We'll take a look at just what went wrong with this rpg game.
STORY
The Sacred Tome is mine now!
My mana power will save Salome.
In the vast multi-Netherworld universe, the most powerful Overlord of all the Netherworlds, Lord Zetta has decided to destroy the Sacred Tome because Pram, an Overlord with the abilities to see into the future, had a vision that Zetta's Netherworld would be destroyed by the book of Sacred Tome. Lord Zetta attempt to destroy the Sacred Tome did not go as planned as his Netherworld ended up being destroyed by the book in the end. To save himself from destruction, Lord Zetta confined himself into the Sacred Tome, thus becoming the book itself. All is not lost however as Pram revealed to Lord Zetta that he can re-create his Netherworld again. And once his Netherworld is re-created, Lord Zetta will no longer be confine to the book of Sacred Tome.
To re-create his Netherworld, Lord Zetta will need the help of the other Overlords in the universe to make a wish on the Sacred Tome to re-create part of Zetta's Netherworld part by part. But parts of each Netherworld are inhabited by enemies that Lord Zetta must defeat first. Being the most powerful freaking bad ass Overlord in the cosmos, Lord Zetta sets out to restore his Netherworld.
If you can't tell, the gameplay objective is the story. In fact if you take out the gameplay element in this game, the entire story of Makai Kingdom could be told within 15 minutes or less. That's how much of a disappointment this lack of story is. The story is basically just comical, dumb, and pointless all at once. They throw characters in that have no point in the storyline and they throw dumb plots into the mix that doesn't make any sense on top of an overall senseless plot to begin with. The whole point of the Sacred Tome destroying Zetta Netherworld doesn't fly because you don't really see any result on how that happen. The story just says and mentions that Zetta Netherworld was destroy but they don't show it happening. Nor does it make any sense as to why Zetta has to confine himself into the book. These events only happened to give purpose to why you are playing this game and the way the gameplay is set up. By the middle of the story, the introduction of the coming of the One and the curse of the One was just even more idiotic amongst the already dumb story. By the end of it all, there really isn't a story here at all just pure gameplay. Some may say the story is a humorous one that's not to be taken as a serious rpg story but the fact is that it's too dumb to be funny.
Score 4/10
CHARACTERS
Hey, can I be part of the gang too?
Even though the story is weak and pointless, the characters are even worst. There are a total of 7 main characters in this game with the main focus on Overlord Zetta. None of the characters have any real background development or any real purpose in this game. They just show up for some small idiotic dialogue in-between the few story scenes and that's it. The characters are all one dimensional characters with nothing that will draw interests to gamers. The game obviously uses these characters as nothing more than colorful comic relief and even than they fail at that. These characters just stand around in the Netherworld universe sprouting their usual one liner in hopes of maybe trying to get a laugh here and there out of you and that's about it for the entire game. This is probably one of the weakest and poorly developed casts of characters for any rpg game for quite some time. It's not that I don't have a sense of humor, it's just that I like to be able to see characters do more than just stand around in space for a few dialogue for the entire game. Unfortunately that's what all these characters pretty much do.
Score: 4/10
GRAPHICS
My light saber can destroy anything.
Graphical presentation is more of Playstation graphic standard than Playstation 2. The game doesn't even come close to pushing anything that the Playstation 2 can offer. You are looking at pretty much a 2-D world with 2D drawn short sprites that you see quite often back in the old gaming days a few years back. Unfortunately those days have come and gone and the graphics in Makia Kingdom is very outdated and too plain by today's standard. There aren't a lot of drawn details in these sprites nor are there in the background scenary and the battle maps. Things are kept quite simple here. The colors used in this game are the usual standard flare like with most rpg games. The battle animation of spells and special attacks are done much better than expected out of this 2D graphic so that's a plus. But still for the game, the graphics are way outdated for a Playstation 2 system and for an original Playstation 2 game. When people pay top dollars for a new rpg game, they expect to see top quality graphics.
Score: 6/10
MUSIC
Let me sing you a song, Zetta.
Most of the music has a bit of a J-Pop theme to them but they are average at best. Nothing that really stands out and most of the noticeable themes are the battle musical scores. Story presentation is very lacking in this game so you won't get much out of event musical scores. The voice sound effects from some of these sprites when they take an action during battle is the more intriguing sound that you'll hear in the game. The voice dubbing or acting for the game is quite nice despite having very weak dialogue to work with for these voice actors. Musically wise it could be better but nothing that would concern you too much as there are other weaker areas in this game to worry about. In the end you don't really pay much attention to the music at all.
Score: 5/10
GAMEPLAY
Which job class to choose from?
Can we beat him? He's level 1000.
Game Information
Genre: Strategy Rpg
Publisher: NIS America
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 305 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Analog Control: Yes
Digital Control: Yes
Rating: Teen
Release: July 2005
The gameplay contains elements of past NIS rpgs such as Phantom Brave and Disgaea. The end result of the gameplay is still a strategy rpg game but with familiar features that's been watered down a bit to make it easier for newer players. The core of the gameplay is base on you starting each battle map with Lord Zetta as the Sacred Tome. From the Sacred Tome you can invite or deployed up to 8 characters and 3 facilities. While you can only have up to 8 characters on the battlefield, it's possible to have up to 24 characters to choose from during the battle thanks to the use of facilities. Each facility can house 8 characters. By housing your characters inside a facility and then deploying that facility, you can than switch your fighters in and out during different battle situations even after you reach the maximum invite of 8 characters from the Sacred Tome itself. Once you deployed your characters, you can move them around and have them take actions. Movement is done in a radius area effect, unlike the usual checker board square by square movement. The actions you can take are the usual normal attacks, special attacks, or magic attacks. This is still a turn base strategy system so once all of your characters have taken a turn, it's the enemies turn next. Each battle map will have a set condition of score points that you must achieve in order to clear the battle map. Obtaining points is easy as every thing on the map will have points attach to it. To simplify things, just kill everything until you have enough points to clear the battle map. The regular gameplay is pretty simple to get into and understand. If you get into trouble clearing a battle map it usually means that your fighters are a bit under level. In that case just re-do some of the previous battle maps to level your fighters up. Of course if you want to get into the heart of the gameplay which is really taking on those hidden bosses in the Extra features than you'll need to spend a lot more time dabbling with some of the unique features in this game to build your team of ultimate fighters. This means unlocking different job classes, re-incarnating your fighters, and searching for ultimate items in Free Dungeons. To do all that, you'll need to understand what some of these features are.
Confinement: In order for you to create a fighter from scratch or even
reincarnate a fighter to a different job class, you'll need to confine them to
an object first. In other words you basically create a character from an object.
The object can be a weapon, tool, or equipment. The interesting thing to note
on confinement is that if you want the best results, it's best to confine a character
to an object that has a star or a few stars attach to it. This way the character
will receive certain bonuses from the object. Job Class: This game is heavily base on different job classes and their
abilities. Most job classes have 5 different rank tiers but at the beginning you're
start with the first tier rank. You unlock the higher rank tier job class by simply
leveling up the first tier job class. Other hidden job classes can be unlock base
on you unlocking and acquiring other various job classes as you play deeper into
the game. The first tier job class won't cost you any mana to create but the higher
level job classes will require a certain amount of mana. Facilities: There are various different facilities. Facilities have 2 purposes in this game. One is to house your fighters inside so that you can have access to them during battle as you deploy a facility onto the battle map. This way you can have total access to all your fighters after the maximum of 8 deployments have been reached from the Sacred Tome. The second purpose is the effects that a facility can give off. Each different facility will give off a different protection effect to those fighters that were housed inside the facility. Another effect is the attack affect that a facility will initially give off when you drop or invite a facility onto any character on the battle map at the beginning of deployment. Now there are two conditions that come with creating a facility. The first condition is that in order to create a facility you need to basically sacrifice or kill a fighter. The second condition is that the fighter you are sacrificing should have enough mana to create a facility as each type of facility and level of the facility will have different mana requirements. Vehicles: The introduction of vehicles in battles for Makai Kingdom is a nice touch. Vehicles work in the same way as regular fighters in that they have regular attacks and special attacks. You can equip vehicles with various ammo and armor as well. In order for a vehicle to be deployed and use in battle you need to equip a driver onto a vehicle. While all jobs can drive a vehicle, it's best to have a certain job class to be the driver that will enhance the vehicle stats. When deploying a vehicle it will count as 2 units deployed on the battle maps due to the vehicle carrying a driver too. Reincarnate: The best way to customize your fighters into the ultimate
fighters, or to customize them into a higher job class, or even changing job class,
you'll need to reincarnate your fighters by sacrificing them. This is done in
two ways. The first way is to sacrifice them by creating a new facility. Once
this is done you can reincarnate them into a different job class and adopting
the abilities of both old and new jobs together. Of course creating a facility
and then reincarnating a fighter into a higher job class will cost a butt load
of mana from that one fighter. To cut down the cost of mana, you can simply reincarnate
your fighter by bypassing the need to create a facility if your fighter was confine
to an object with a star attach to it. Hence, one of the bonuses of confining
a fighter to an object with a star. Out of Bound: Out of bound works in the same way as in Phantom Brave. You
can throw any object and character out of bound on the battle map. Only characters
that aren't equipped with an item can be lift up to be thrown out of bound though.
When an enemy is thrown out of bound, they will give a slight increase in level
to the enemies that are still remaining on the battle maps. Combo Attacks: Combo attacks take in effect when you are directing a number
of consecutive attacks onto one particular enemy. Each consecutive attack will
give an added boost to damage output on the combo attack. Free Dungeons: The purpose of Free Dungeons are for you to have an area
or battle map area where you can level your characters outside of the game storyline
as well as hunt for rare items in the game. You'll need a certain amount of mana
to create the Free Dungeons for each fighter. The number of floors that are inside
a Free Dungeon is equal to the level of the fighter that created the dungeon.
In other words, if a level 50 character created the dungeon than the dungeon will
have 50 floors.
At times the gameplay can be fun but yet at other times the gameplay can be a bit too grueling to the point where you tend to lose interest in it. The regular story gameplay is pretty short and straight forward that you don't really need to get into the heart of powerleveling your fighters to an extremely high level or using any of the unique features that this game has to offer. But to get into the fun stuff which is to fight all those high level bosses, you do need to spend a lot of time powerleveling your characters. Powerleveling can be fun but it can get very repetitive very quickly that you'll be bored very quickly. Phantom Brave was about combining items to make your characters stronger. Disgaea was about sending your characters through the Item World in search of finding those rare weapons to make your characters stronger. In Makai Kingdom the focus is more on making your characters super strong by re-incarnating them through different job classes and powerleveling them up for each job class. This wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for the fact that the game is too unbalance. Your mages and support fighters are too weak that if they even come within range of an enemy attack range, they are guarantee to die right off. Heck even your stronger fighters can easily be killed by enemies special attack or magic attacks. The key in winning this game is more or less kill your enemies off right away before they can even move or they will do you in. There's not much of a strategy element here when you're basically inviting your fighters in to try to kill as many enemies as you can on the first turn to get the stage score needed to clear the stage because to stay any longer on a battle map will mean death to your fighters unless your fighters happen to be at an ungodly higher level than the enemies you are facing. It's really not fun or challenging if you are at such a higher level than your opponents that it makes killing everything too easy. On the other hand it's not fun when you can get wiped out too easily when you are facing enemies on the same equal level. Hence the gameplay is too unbalanced during battles. Another part where the game is very unbalance is the fact that in order to do anything in this game, you need mana for each of your fighters, a lot of mana. The higher level your figher is, the more amount of mana you need. You need mana to create a high level job class, you need mana to create a facility, and you need mana to create a dungeon. Mana is hard to come by in this game, a bit too hard. Since killing enemies is the only source to get mana, only your top fighters will probably have enough mana to do anything. And the higher level you are, the more extreme the amount of mana is needed that even your top fighters have a hard time keeping up with the mana demands. You'll definitely going to have a hard time re-incarnating or building up any of your support fighters as they will have little to no mana at all since they don't do most of the killings for you. This is probably the main reason why this gameplay is too unbalanced. The amount of mana needed to do anything is too high while the source to get mana is too limited. It takes away the fun of creating new job class and new dungeons because not only do you have to take the time to powerlevel your fighters but to powermana each of the fighters too in order to customize them. The gameplay seems more work than play in the end for just a bit of some small fun in defeating extra bosses since the regular gameplay is average at best because most of the customizable features of creating the ultimate fighters by combining job classes aren't needed in the regular story gameplay. Clearly Makia Kingdom gameplay has less to offer than what Phantom Brave and Disgaea did. On top of that, some of the adapted features from those two games such as confining and throwing out of bounds weren't needed to be added in this game. I barely use the throw out of bound features in Makai Kingdom as I did in Phantom Brave. And having to create characters from a confine item could easily have been removed and the game still wouldn't miss a beat. The notion of having to find the right item to confine your character in when you need to create or re-incarnate someone seems more of an annoyance here than anything else. Still there is a bright spot and that's the ability to be able to create and re-incarnate any fighter through different job class and adapting each job class abilities to create an ultimate fighter is very cool as the end result. It's just too bad you have to jump through hoops and spend hours of powerleveling to get the levels and manas you need to do so. It's such a shame that in the end, the gameplay comes of as a cheap version of Phantom Brave and Disgaea.
Score: 6/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
Are we in the right game, Castile?
The only extra features in this game are the extra special boss fights you can get during your first play through and the many play through after that. There are a total of 15 possible extra boss fights. And just like with all the previous NIS rpg games, you'll need to level your fighters up to an extremely high level to have a chance at beating some of these bosses. Still this is where most of the fun and challenge of the game comes from. With 15 boss fights, that is a lot for any game. It's just too bad that you really do need to spend endless hours trying to achieve level 500+ or more just to be able to take on some of these bosses. And that's not something most gamers are willing to do. When we talk about level 500+, we are talking about the number of times you need to reincarnate your fighters and level them up over and over again after each reincarnation.
Replay value comes from the many possible multiple endings you can get when facing off against these extra boss fights as most of the boss fights will result in an alternative ending. You'll be able to carry over your stats, fighters, level, and items onto a new game as you try to achieve the next possible ending. So in the end, there's really something for everyone to try and set a goal for if they looking to get a complete game even if the goal is near impossible for most regular gamers.
Score: 7/10
Makai Kingdom is without a doubt the weakest of the NIS rpg games so far. Ignoring the weak story and characters all together, its gameplay in itself is too unoriginal and offer little to captivate gamers. Borrowing a bit of gameplay from both Phantom Brave and Disgaea: Hour of Darkness isn't enough for Makai Kingdom to make its own mark in the rpg genre. You're best bet is to pick this game up at a used bargain bin than anything else as it's not worth the money or effect to get this game as a must game to own even for the NIS fans out there. As for the future of Makai Kingdom, it's highly unlikely we'll be seeing a sequel to this game.
