"Easy, idiotic, and with a mascot between a rat and a rabbit that keeps saying “puu puu” all the time. For hardcore fans only."

Surprisingly, Bandai has nothing to do with this game based on the anime of the same name, but sadly this time that does not make it better. In case you don’t know, Magic Knight Rayearth is the typical “magical girl” anime, that is: three college girls (very ugly ones by the way, you are not going to find the typical ultra mega super hot babes we usually see in this kind of shows) have been chosen by I don’t know who to save some world, so after saying the magic words they become “Magical Knights” (of course with the typical transformation scene that leaves nothing to the imagination) with brand new “magical powers and weapons” that will let them fight evil creatures (well, at least this time we are not going to fight a bunch of drag queens from another world like in Sailor Moon).

Story 5/10:
I have described the plot above, you will have to save Cephiro from an evil guy called Zagato by becoming a Magic Knight. That is the typical storyline we find in every rpg so we can’t blame them for that right?, right, but we HAVE to blame them for the dialogues, they are painful!, horrendously cliché and so embarrassing that they would make a five year old kid feel like a complete idiot. But aside from that it is true that the plot itself is not that bad, there is a couple of interesting events (but just a little) as the game follows somehow the plot of the anime.

Graphics 7,5/10:
Nice, specially the combats, they look like a primitive version of Super Mario RPG but they are nice.

Music 6/10:
Nice again, some tunes are from the anime and, don’t know what else to say.

Gameplay 6/10:
Perfect in terms of control, but the game lacks some things that should be in any good rpg.
You are only going to able to buy items, never weapons or armor or anything aside from recovery items, and as the game is so easy and one of your characters has very powerful healing magic the shops are basically useless. And if these weren’t enough, in every corner we are going to find healing springs and chests full of recovery items.
Then this game is slow, very slow, and with a very high encounter rate, that’s slow combats every two steps, and that’s terrible in a game like this.

MKR is not a bad game, but it is for beginners and for fans of the anime only, as an rpg is way too easy, short and slow, then the high encounter rate will make everyone else stay away from it. As is said before, only huge fans of the series are going to like it.

””My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry.””

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 11/04/03, Updated 11/24/03