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Great strategy / RPG combo with replayability

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 19 / 19
Date: August 21, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Makai Kingdom is brought to us by the same people who created Disgaea, La Pucelle, and Phantom Brave. You are cartoon style characters moving in grid combat on random boards.

The graphics are quite reasonable for this style of game. Makai Kingdom is about strategy and not about visual speed, so while the individual characters are cute, they are not overly detailed. This is OK if you're playing on a small screen TV, but once you move up to a larger screen and/or high definition TV, the characters begin to look a bit fuzzy and pixellated.

The sound falls into the same category. You get generic electronica-sounding background sounds, along with dialogue such as "Take This!" and effects like "BOoooom!" Since you tend to tune out all of those sounds while focussing on your strategy, it's fine.

Actual gameplay is very enjoyable. Each character has strengths and weaknesses, a variety of attributes to customize and weapons / armor to work with. Makai Kingdom can easily take you weeks, if not months, to finish, if you really put the time and effort into tweaking your characters to fit your playing style. The more effort you put into your characters, the more fun gameplay will be, and themore smoothly your battles will go.

Really, the game is a colorful, multi-dimensional, customizeable strategy game that really tests your planning and strategy skills. Given the number of characters and situations you have to keep track of at any point in time, it's an impressive way to keep your brain cells active and alert. For anyone who reads those studies that say "crossword puzzles help keep your mind alert", I suggest they give this game a try. Talk about a game sure to help your thinking processes become more acute!!

Highly recommended for any strategy / RPG fans.

Another original RPG

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 14 / 14
Date: August 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Well, Nippon Ichi has done it again. For those people who loved Disgaea and/or Phantom Brave, here is another entry in twacked out RPG arena. As an aside, if you don't know about Disgaea or Phantom Brave, might I recommend those as well.
Back to Makai Kingdom. Lord Zetta, the demon Overlord Laharl would be proud to have grown up to be, arrogantly destroys his Netherworld, and it becomes your job, as his pawn, to help him recreate it. How, you ask? That's where the game gets interesting. You start off with one character, an unfortunate soul floating in the Netherworld cosmos, whom you confine into an object. This is remniscent of Phantom Brave. The system is pretty easy to pick up on, where each object has a set of stats that you use to determine which job a character created from it would best suit. Rocks have good defense and attack stats, so they make good warriors. Flowers have good magic and intelligence, so they make good wizards, and so on. Later on, you can sacrifice these created characters to call into existence buildings, which give different bonuses in battle. On top of this, there are also vehicles, which are essentially mechs, or mobile fortresses with weapons. Finding the proper mix of leveling your characters and sacrificing them for power is where the joy lays in this particular mechanic.
Of course, what game is complete without a large selection of skills, spells, weapons and items. Yes, the standard spells are there, but you can also use a ball and chain to spin the battle grid into the sun, as well as using flamethrowers, gatling guns, frying pans and pies as weapons. I have not completed this game yet, and I'll probably put a few hundred hours into this one just like I did Disgaea, but I felt the need to try to persuade other people to enjoy this game as well before I did. Purchase, and enjoy.

Makai Kingdoms? Another Disgaea perhaps?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: August 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Makai Kingdoms is about an arrogant overlord of the netherworld that makes a horrible mistake dooming himself and his world to oblivion. This once great overlord must begin anew with a ragtag army and rely on the help of other overlords to regain his power, among other things. It is your task to lead this army and help him regain what he lost. That is the overall just of the storyline and plot. The story is pretty easy to follow and has an interesting twist or two in it with multiple endings. This game has both a serious side and a comical side to catch the interests of most players. If you don't have a sense of humor I'm not sure you will like the game though.

Makai Kingdoms is a strategy turn-based RPG game. Similar games include: Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, La Pucelle, Phantom Brave, and the Vandal Hearts series. I suggest playing at least Disgaea, if not Phantom Brave as well, before playing this game because you will recognize some hidden characters later from these games if you do and better enjoy the humor in it.

As for game play, it works much like Disgaea, if you are familiar with it, with a little of Phantom Braves' confining added in for the formation of characters. Unlike Phantom Brave, you don't have to confine everyone to items for battle....THANK GOD! It works like Disgaea where you can summon them on screen within a certain distance of the base, or Zetta, in this case. It has added the use of mechanical vehicles and buildings to add a more interesting combat environment.
The graphics are similar to that of Disgaea....which gives it an anime type feel.

The UPS to the game:
Characters can multi-class, leveling is quick, skills are attached to people rather than weapons, you can store over 1000 or more items if I recall.....I've never needed that much though, vehicles, facilities, smooth motioned game, replay ability, hidden characters, new classes and monsters, multiple endings, clean humor, and the prinnys are back!!! :)

The DOWNS to the game:
In order to get ANY of the secret characters it requires you to go through the game a second time and in order to get ALL of the secret characters you must go through the game 5 times over. A second time is fairly reasonable but any more is getting a bit carried away. This is particularly a problem since nothing changes when you go back through it. This wouldn't be so bad if there was another reason to go through all the level 1 monster stages but there really isn't. It would make a lot more sense to allow the option to go through again or just have the aftermath stories AFTER the fact and let you remain at the end with the option to unlock further levels and return to previous stages. The language is a little harsh, which is fine for me, but not for most teens. It is rated TEEN with Language, Mild Fantasy Violence, and Sexual Themes. So, it is stated, in a manner. Okay, bugs.... I know if you put out the maximum of 3 facilities, put out the maximum of 8 fully equipped characters and try to throw some object out of bounds in some random dungeons it says you can't have anymore objects on screen. AKA too much stuff for the game to handle. Well, if that was the case, it shouldn't let you bring on that many items, characters, etc. I've also noticed it is possible to summon someone into a situation where they cannot move stuck in an object...However, this is very rare.

I hope this helps you with your buying decision.
Zen

A New Way for Strategy

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: October 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

As a movie and book collector from the videogame generation, it's difficult not to get involved in videogames. Unfortunately, it takes a lot for me to pick up a game outside those companies I trust (Square-Enix; Konami; Sony). From the moment I saw Makai Kingdom I knew I wanted it, so I took the chance on the small name publisher. I was not disappointed in any way. I bought this game two months ago, beat it four times, and I'm still playing it and finding new things (I can't beat the Prinny Overlord). The replay value of this game is huge, to the point where nearly every new game feels completely new, depending on the characters you create and use and the weapons you master with each character. It just keeps going and going. My only problem with the game is the battle system, which started out excellent but soon grew old. Its one drawback is the ease in which I was able to beat it the first time. Still, the character and weapons systems will keep you going for some time. Makai Kingdom is worth the price tag, as it will take up a lot of freetime.

Changed, but awesome none the less

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: April 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I'll admit, at first I thought that Makai Kindom was a poor excuse for a Nippon Ichi SRPG. The levels were even more abstract than those in the other games, with random tiles and themes. Disgaea and La Pucelle both had maps that had something to do with the story. Also, due to the removal of the movement tiles (now any character can go wherever), and extravagant jump heights, some strategy aspects were missing. Long range healing meant that even if one couldn't reach any unit in need of health, the spell probably could.

However, the more I played, the better it got. The story is quite possibly the best yet, and the characters are superbly interesting and diverse. Phenomenal artwork is spread across the game, through area creation events and dialog scenes, to name a few. All the composers knew what they were doing, and the soundtrack is worth owning separately. There is a huge amount of customization available, from weapons to stats, and good variety of characters. And, as the game progresses, more unconventional play tactics and fields are introduced to increase its appeal.

While I haven't played Phantom Brave, and I don't usually go for the power-levelling play style, I still deem this one of the best playing experiences I've had in a loong while. NIS deserves the support of everyone, so go and buy a copy now!

As fun as Disgaea .... much uglier though

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: October 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Anyone playing this game is obviously into the Nippon Ichi titles. I know because I am, and if I weren't, I wouldn't look twice at this UGLY game. This is just as fun as the rest. Disgaea, La Pucelle, y'know. It plays like a suped up Phantom Brave, as you expected I'm sure. However, this is the LAST title I'll ever purchase from them. Its one thing to not improve your game.{Like Koei and the same -old hack n slash DW} But its quite another to take a step BACK. The Nippon Ichi games look worse and worse everytime. Obviously they aren't even TRYING to improve graphic - wise. Thats unexecptable. I gave it 3 stars because its a five star {fun} but a hurtful 0 star {UGLYY looking} game.

I'm not the type that put graphics over everything else. But I'm not the type that likes 16 bit {SNES} characters on my PS2 either.

well

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 22
Date: December 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

this is one of those, so called, strategy games, you know like final fantasy tactics or disgaea and so on. if you're into building armies and stratigically doing whatever then this is sooo for you! this game isn't a rpg, and it will bore those with short attention spans, like me! i gave up like the first ten minutes, i actually tried to rent a different game but instead i got this one. tee hee.

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