Magic Knight Rayearth

"A game for fans of the Anime"

Magic Knight Rayearth is a Super Nintendo RPG that was only released in Japan. Judging from its length, difficulty, and gameplay, it was only made to cash in on the Anime of same name's success.

Gameplay

Like virtually everything in the game, the gameplay is fairly simplistic. It is your standard turn based RPG, devoid of any tricks or turns that would vary up the action. Here's how it works.

You get three characters from the start of the game. At various points throughout the story, a fourth character will join you and help for a short while. Soon afterward, however, he/she will leave you to fend for yourself once again. This can become frustrating when you lose a good fourth only to pick up a rather lousy one.

Weapons and Armor are set based on the story line. As you progress, your armor will be upgraded and your weapon will be either given to you, changed, or upgraded. There are no sub or side quests that you can undertake that will improve your characters any.

Once each of your characters learn how to use magic, she will learn more by leveling up. Unfortunately, basically all of the spells fall into one of two categories, ''attack one'' or ''attack all''. Each new spell is merely an upgrade of a past spell. After a major event occurs in the story, your character's will learn powerful new magic spells. These new spells have some diversity, but not much.

All this turns out to be rather monotonous, but it goes even further into monotony. All the battles are straightforward and don't change except for the specific enemy you're facing. The problem is that there are TONS of these battles. You run into a battle every few steps almost without exception. Near the end of the game you'll be running just to avoid having to fight.

Even though there are that many battles, none of them are really difficult. In fact the only difficulty in this game will arise from being worn down by fighting 300 fights in a row. It's rather sad that the difficulty had to come from that.

Story

From what I've been told (because I haven't seen the anime myself), MKR pretty much follows the anime's storyline. I'll try to explain without spoiling anything.

The Story starts out that three high school girls have been summoned by the ''Pillar'' to the magical land of Cephiro. They were summoned there in order to save the ''Pillar''. However, they are unable to do so in their current state. The enemy would defeat them easily. Therefor, they must become the legendary ''Magic Knights'' so they go out to find the spirits that will make them into the Magic Knights.

Graphics

It's a game based off an anime for fans of the anime, so what do you think the graphics are going to be? Big Cutesy eyes, small noses, and oversized heads. That being said the graphics are just decent for 16-bit. Mediocre, like almost everything else in the game.

Music and Sound

Sound quality is, not surprisingly, mediocre. Most of the Music is as well. However, there is a couple glimmers that I enjoy particularly. The two boss battle themes I found to be quite catchy and enjoyable. Other than those two, however, there wasn't anything.

Replayability

Nope. The only glimmer of replayability might be in it's short length. There's not much to do, so I guess It wouldn't hurt to play through it again. I guess.

Summary

If you liked the anime or want to see what the anime is about, this might be for you. I'd rent first, then buy if you absolutely must have it. Though I don't see why you would.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/02/02, Updated 11/02/02