Makai Kingdom: Chronicles of the Sacred Tome

"Nippon Ichi had the book upside down."

Overlord Zetta receives a horrible message from an Oracle: "A sacred book will soon destroy your Netherworld." Lord Zetta sets off in search of the book, when he finally finds it, he reads a single sentence that boils his blood. The rude statement boils his blood so much, he decides to destroy the book. But then all hell breaks loose. The Sacred Tome held his Netherworld in perfect balance, once Zetta unthinkingly destroyed it, his world was obliterated along with him. Luckily, at the last moment Lord Zetta fuses himself with the book. Now, the most "Badass Freakin' Overlord" is an almighty...all powerful, omnipotent...book. Yes, Zetta was turned into the book and now he can't remake his world or restore himself back to his original form. His Overlord "friends" help him and together they make a new Netherworld for him...full of adventure and excitement. Too bad he can't partake in it until later, for now you'll have to use his lowly servants to fight enemies that want to control his new Netherworld!

Makai Kingdom is a Strategy RPG made by Nippon Ichi, famously known for they SRPGs that allow players to power level up t level 9999. Makai Kingdom is no different in this respect, but altogether Makai Kingdom uses many new gameplay elements and also updates a few old ones while it's at it.

Makai Kingdom uses the Gridless areas much like Phantom Brave, where instead of panels characters walk on a character can walk anywhere in a certain radius. They also updated this but allowing you to move the character with the analog stick instead of point and clicking where you wanted to go. This gives the game even more freedom on where you want to move. It takes a few minutes to get used to but once you do, it's pretty nifty.

When you first start playing Makai Kingdom, you will notice that most of the areas a bit small, but your eyes deceive you. Not all of a stage is shown. There are times where enemies and even items hold a "Key" to the next part of the stage. Once you kill the object holding onto the key, more of the stage will appears, along with a random effect such as all character on screen falling asleep or all characters on screen losing half of their life! There also could be positive random effects like being able to pick up rare items.

Another thing about stages is this: you don't have to defeat all the enemies to end a stage. Instead, Makai Introduces the Points System. The Points System makes all enemies/items on the field hold points and once you destroy that item or enemy you receive those points. Sometimes stages only need 200 points to be beaten but you can still get more points that than which leads to more reward after battle(much like how you would revive more rewards after linking more geo-panel chains in Disgaea)

Pro: Refreshing way to expand on stages and Stage rewards.

Cons:None

Makai Kingdom uses the Ability system used in Disgaea and also their equipment system. Certain classes learn different abilities when leveling. Mages are the best to give an example to because most of the skills they learn are from leveling up. Other characters like the Thieve class and many other physical job classes don't learn abilities through standard leveling but by learning skills from items. The more times a Fighter uses an axe, his axe level will rise which will allow him to gain axe type attacks, same thing can be said about using fishing poles to rapiers. It's a bit disappointing that you can't equip more than one weapon though, it would've been nice to learn two different weapons at once or be able to fuse skills from one item into another ala Phantom Brave.

Pro: Lots of new weapons to use in battle:Fishing poles, pies, spatulas and even magnets!

Con: Same old same old..

I think the most frustrating part of the game is the Buildings. In Makai Kingdom, not only can Zetta call out characters, but he can also call out building onto the field filled with henchmen to do his bidding. Most buildings have certain effects. For instance, if Zetta summons a Hospital, all the characters that come from it heal 10 percent of their HP, other buildings can raise attacks and defense too. You can also expect enemies to use buildings also, there are many battles where buildings can be great pain to bring down due to the fact that enemies can use these power ups also. You can also take over buildings by putting your characters inside of enemy buildings. It's a lot like how you could recruit enemies in Disgaea; enter a building abd you will automatically fight whoever is inside it until all your characters die, or the enemies character's die. The biggest problem about buildings is the fact that to create more or to even Level up buildings, you need to sacrifice a character with a bunch of mana. This isn't fun, the only way you get get a high leveled building is by actually giving away a high leveled character. In the end, you end up wasting a perfectly good character to make a building. And then, in a few hours you'll need to to it again because the building you made will be underleveled.

Pro: Good for storing characters and having certain character with stat increases.
Con: Frustrating because you end up sacrificing a good leveled up character that could've been used on the battlefield.

Vehicles are also a new addition/frustration to Nippon Ichi games. A character can jump into a vehicle(Motorcycle,Tank, weird spring thing...etc) and use it to have more area to fight in battle, but it also is a god way to shield characters from being attacked due to the fact that vehicles also have stats of their own. You can also equip them with parts to make them even more powerful in battle. The disappointing thing is that you have to use a certain currency(not average money that you get in the game) to heal and buy new items for these vehicles. It's kind of annoying since it takes a while to get used to but also it's pretty damn expensive to maintain more than a few vehicles at a time.

Pro: Great in battle and a force to be reckoned with.
Con: Expensive to maintain.

To be honest, Makai Kingdom isn't a bad game, but it has to many problems to be very fun. You have to waste time training characters you'll soon be giving up to make buildings which in turn will soon be outdated. I think if Nippon Ichi put a little more time into this game, it would've been more worthwhile but it rushed; just as the director of Makai Kingdom stated:

"We produced the new game Makai Kingdom in a hurry, in half the standard development period" ~Mr.Yoshitsuna Kobayashi

And it shows.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/01/05