Until Nintendo gets on the idea that could dethrone World of Warcraft, the closest you’ll find to a Pokemon MMO is the recently released Magi-Nation, a game that has you traversing a series of worlds, battling monsters, and using them for your own personal bodyguards. Though there are some nags here and there to mire the experience, fans of both the franchise and those looking for a new (and free) fix might find what they’re looking for with Magi-Nation: Battle for the Moonlands.

THE STORY SO FAR
The story of Magi-Nation has you playing the part of a young trainer, being tasked with going out into the world to smite the evil that is out there and threatening the peace of your very existence. Though the game starts out with a bit of story, most of the narrative comes more from a quick introduction on an alternate screen rather than the natural progression of the game through quests and NPC dialogue exchanges. You almost have to have a preexisting knowledge and relationship with the current animated series on television to really feel like you are a part of this world. I caught a part of an episode not long after first starting the game and found myself enjoying the game more than I did in the beginning since it put the game’s events in perspective.

GAMEPLAY
Magi-Nation is a completely free, Internet based role-playing/MMO. When you first start the game out you’ll pick your character’s nationality, determining the look and base characteristics of your character, choosing their sex, and then giving them a name. The game then throws you into a series of tutorials in order to introduce you to the various aspects of the gameplay. You’ll learn about the story and get the ropes of the gameplay.

The gameplay of Magi-Nation is a mixture of Pokemon meets Jade Cocoon, where you can do damage to enemies directly or you can summon creatures to help you out. Whenever you go into a battle you go in alone, only being able to cast the single spell at your disposal. You do have one starter creature to help you out, however, which you can call into battle by taking a turn to do so. Instead of having a standard health bar and mana bar like setup, Magi-Nation combines the two into one energy bar. When you use a spell or call on a creature, you’ll see a bit of your energy deplete since you are using the power of yourself to do damage. When an enemy attacks and deals damage, you’ll also see your energy meter deplete. The single nature of the energy bar often leads to some very long battles, as you not only have to spend time throwing out creatures and spells, but also taking the time to sit back and focus your energy, letting you summon back some of the energy you’ve lost.

Unlike other creature based battling games, it never seemed so much like one type was better than the other in the usual Paper, Rock, Scissors formula. Creatures in Magi-Nation have their own special attacks and moves – some are better than others – but for the most part the usefulness of a creature comes from how much you level them up and build them into a powerhouse. Magi-Nation features a typical experience gaining system, where every time you beat an enemy you get experience points for your trouble. Instead of automatically leveling you up whenever you reach the required amount of points, the game will give you the option to either spend your points leveling up yourself or leveling up one of the creatures you have in your party. When you level up yourself or one of your creatures, you’ll always earn points to up some of your crucial skills, but from time to time you’ll also be able to pick new powers for your characters to be able to use in combat.

You only start with one creature, but as you fight other ones you will occasionally get a dropped shard of their essence, and once you have enough of them you can turn them in to a specialist in the HUB world and have them create a creature of that type for you. Once created it’s as easy as dragging them into a box and then suddenly you have the ability to summon them as well in battle.

The advancement system of Magi-Nation involves taking on a series of quests that have you exploring randomly generated areas and often trying to either find something or complete a task in under a certain amount of time. You always start in a main HUB world where you can talk to people to buy items, equipment, or check stats. If you don’t want to farm for your money in the game, however, you can cash in cards you buy that will unlock free money for you or either use a credit card to buy items right away. Whenever you go into the randomly generated level layouts you’ll be able to choose tasks like exploring the area until you find a treasure chest, beating all enemies within a time limit, or searching for another trainer and beating them in combat. You can only access the exploration quests when first starting out, but as you complete more and more of them you’ll open up new quest options.

So where is the “multiplayer” portion of this game? Though a lot of the game feels like a RPG for the most part, the MMO aspect comes from the PvP battling system that lets you duel other gamers from around the world. After your character has reached level ten, they’ll suddenly be able to go into a dueling arena and fight other gamers. Each player takes into the battle their own abilities and their own creature companions. The battles play like the other battles in the game – especially those against other trainers in the game – but you’ve got the satisfaction of beating a real person. The game also tracks the top players in the game, letting you see if you can manage to crack the best of the best Magi-Nation players out there.

The gameplay has a solid foundation, it’s just that not everything has been smoothed out to perfection. The biggest problem is the pacing of the battles themselves, as they can go on for minutes on end sometimes, and a major reason is the juggling act of the one energy bar, plus the fact that many of your attacks won’t land on their first attempt (or even the second or third time on some occasions). Other problems include the random frozen black screen during loading from time to time and a general lack of motivation to compel you forward as there just isn’t enough story or difference to keep you striving forward.

GRAPHICS
The game isn’t amazing looking, but that is partially because the game is played over internet browser. With that said, however, Magi-Nation is the best Internet browser based RPG experience I’ve played before. The creatures are for the most part pretty interesting. The game is also bright and vibrant, especially when it comes to the background images. Still, despite a crispness, the background images are re-used throughout the same dungeon areas, animation isn’t as solid as it could be, and some of the main characters aren’t as cool looking as the creatures.

AUDIO
The game is pretty disappointing when it comes to the audio, as the sound effects just aren’t that immersive, fairly dull, and there isn’t much in the way of background music either. Perhaps it’s the best that could be done when looking at an Internet based game, but still we were letdown.

IN CONCLUSION
Magi-Nation isn’t a great game, but it was a fun diversion from time to time, and since the game is supported completely by an Internet browser, it’s easy to quickly get in, fire the game up, and do a little battling and leveling to tide you over for a few minutes whenever you have time. Magi-Nation fans will probably enjoy the game immensely more than new players to the franchise, but even those should find a decent game to keep them happy.

Rating:
Our Scoring System

Visit the site to play the game today

login or register to post comments