"Looks new, plays old"

I had high hopes for Magical Starsign. After all, it's only the 5th game in the series; all the previous instalments never made it out of Japan, and I kind of see why. This latest episode makes use of the DS dual screen display, but apart from that, you'd be hard pressed to see any other technical feats. Magical Starsign is an old-skool turn-based RPG. If you have mixed feelings with this genre, then it is probably best to avoid this one. For those willing to try, you may find the cute characters (with a nice "different" art style) and pretty funky dialogue worth the slow-paced battles. But this is the next century, and I'm afraid magic can't hide the fact that this is essentially an "old game" with a "glossy exterior".

Visuals - 7
Sound & Music - 7
Gameplay - 6
Lasting Power - 7 (Around the 25 hour mark)
Replay Value - 5
Learning Curve - 8

Starsign outlook? - 8
VERDICT - 6.0

Saved by the Battle
I was totally shocked when I first started up Magical Starsign (MS). The character designs are different to the norm, but I think they are rather nice. During conversations, the portraits that come up are vibrant and big. In stark contrast, the field graphics are teeny-tiny it's barely possible to make them out from ants. The game looks like an 8-bit, maybe 16-bit, RPG - I can't really tell since everything is scaled down so small. It's a real big shame considering that magnifying the sprites somewhat would have improved the visual side of things by far.

Upon switching to the battles, things change for the better. A semi-isometric view is utilised here and all the sprites are detailed and large enough to not have to strain your precious eyes. The viewpoint allows for some rather spiffy spell effects, as magic does form the basis of such a title. But there isn't a lot of variety; 5 spells for each of the 6 characters, with different effects depending on a front/back position assumed. It may seem like a lot, but when there's nothing much else to look at (enemies frequently re-use your magic spells!) repetitiveness does set in quick. And some of the spells take a while to sit through at that.

Sounds better than it looks
The music fares better than how the visuals stacked up. It's a nice mix of traditional RPG-style tunes with some light metal-rock tossed in between. Some of them are quite nice to listen to, but none are amazing. The battle themes (normal, pirates, and boss) are actually quite engaging, and after a playing through lots of random battles, I still quite like them.

The sound effects are straight out of the SNES for the most part. Not bad though, but the text-running blips are highly irritating.

Look ma! I'm on TWO screens o.O!
Magical Starsign uses the dual screens rather well. In battles you have a long view of the action (similar to Lunar DS and Mario & Luigi). On the field the bottom shows off your too-old environment, whilst the top displays a rough map, starsign placement or vital statistics. Adaptation here is excellent.

What else does this game do with the DS hardware? Touch screen of course! In a strange move, the developers sought to integrate fully touch-controlled gameplay, bar using the d-pad as an alternative to moving on-field. Sounds like a nice idea, but having to specifically touch certain "small" icons all the time gets lame. And using the stylus to guide movement could have been done much better by having your characters actually stop moving once you lift your stylus off!

All about Random Battles
Random battles are the deal here, but the encounter rate is quite low relative to other similar games out there. The problem I have is that the battles themselves take way too long to go through; about 2-5 minutes for an average simple, single grind! This is due to 2 main factors. One is that the animations themselves take a while to run their course, and for most of the game the enemies attack first too. The second is that the touch interface results in very slow acknowledgement of your chosen decisions. The boss battles are alright, but getting through simple enemies, even just to escape, takes its toll.

Stars in your Eyes
The battle system is your standard RPG fare, with a heavy focus on magic; your single physical attack becomes worthless about halfway. There are timed "touch" actions to enhance your attacks or defend (the latter which is mostly too difficult unlike Mario & Luigi) and these serve to make the game more interactive, but not more fun. You will have to pay attention when grinding with this one fellas.

The star of the show is the Starsign system. This allows for strategic powering up of your characters (and enemies can harness its effects too) and makes for some thoughtfully played out battles. Once you obtain all your characters and obtain the celestial shift power, things get going. But there's about 6-8 hours of trudging before that, and in that period the game is very mediocre.

There is a pretty big learning curve from my experience. Just so you know, I went through Gren before Puffia, which is highly 'unadvisable' to all those out there considering a play. Initially your options are very limited, and so you will be using a lot of healing items in between the hammerings. Levelling up is an absolute must in the early stages of the game. If not, the stats-based play of the game will totally knock your socks off. Bearing these things in mind, the game starts to come into itself eventually, but too late at nearly the halfway point!

Moving around, 8-bits at a time
The progression is the fairly typical "go there, get that, rinse and repeat". There are some tasks to perform by using your magic in certain situations, for example using wind magic to activate a fan device. Apart from that it's all ho-hum. The dialogue is good with some funny lines like Mokka the robot's, "sometimes when I think too hard, I can smell burning plastic". The story doesn't build up to anything epic, considering the whole space theme and misleadingly stated Magic School Bus similarities. It's a case of not using the characters to their potential, nearly all of which are named after foods, like the moles all named after types of cheese!

The effect is lost when you know how the magic works
A good idea (Starsigns) is brought down by too many faults in the end. Menu navigation and equipping is clunky, the warp system is unnecessarily priced, cheap enemies with limited self-retaliation occurs in too much of the game, controls are far from ideal. Saving anywhere is a good thing, and it is something you should make use of very often. But it does get annoying having to save after every seemingly important moment in fear that the next unexpected boss battle (or even randoms too initially) will take you out.

Once you gather your crew, the real adventure picks up. More variety is to be had at this stage, but moving the characters between rows during battles is painstaking. And with this it means most of the time you are either targeting one enemy/ally, or the whole bunch; no simple selecting available. The spells look good, but they drag the battles on for too long. The first half deserves 4/10 from me, but it does get better and more like a real RPG after that. But even then, Magical Starsign doesn't do enough to capitalise on what assets it has got.

6/10 - A great battle system marred by too many things to count really

And so ends my completion of the quadruple RPG whammy that appeared just under a month ago. GBA's Swordcraft Story 2, and DS's Children of Mana, Contact, Magical Starsign. All are fairly good, but all are equally flawed in providing substantial fun. But if you are a fan of the genre, do still consider them after having read my reviews. Phew! What a ride with many 'diversions' in between, finals included!

16/11/06

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/06