Game Story

• The story is one of the only semi-high points of the game.
• It’s a very basic and predictable RPG storyline, but it’s done well.
• You play as Calintz, lead mercenary of the Tears of Blood, who all have a strong hate for the Yason, a new race of human like creatures.
• The Yason and Humans have been unable to co-exist peacefully for many years, and war between the two rages across the land.
• The Alliance army (human side) discovers a way that may be able to end the war for good – using the ‘forbidden magic’ to destroy the Yason race.
• When this backfires, it is discovered that the ruler of the Yason, Queen Amila, used the ‘Magna Carta’ to stop it.
• The ‘Magna Carta’ is a legendary form of magic that nobody was supposed to be able to employ.
• The Tears of Blood are sent on a mission to investigate what happened, and to help put an end to the war between Humans and Yason.
• Shortly afterward, Calintz discovers an amnesiac girl named Reith hidden away in a cave, and the story progresses from there.
• I don’t want to give too much away, otherwise you’d have absolutely no reason to torture yourself playing this game.
• However, nearly every plot twist and development is blatantly obvious, so maybe I wouldn’t be spoiling anything.

Gameplay

• The lowest point of the game: nearly every aspect of the gameplay is absolutely pitiful.
• It’s like Softmax took everything RPGers hate about the genre and mashed it all together into one big ball of crap.
• We’ll start with the battle system:
• It’s an active-turn based system akin to Grandia in some ways, but don’t get your hopes up.
• It uses a new concept called Chi (which Atlus decided to change from ‘Khan’), where there are 8 different forms of elemental energy that directly affect your ability to attack and do damage.
• Each zone has its distinct elemental properties, but they are changeable through the manipulations of Chi Lanterns.
• Each character’s fighting styles use a specific form of Chi. If the area you’re in has a low level of that kind of Chi present; you will deal less damage than you normally would.
• Three characters participate in battle, but you’re only able to control one character at a time.
• There is no option for an AI partner to control any of the others.
• In order to deal damage, you need to properly and accurately complete a 3-button combination (or a much longer one if you decide to use a special move).
• Each character can use a variety of fighting or magic styles, and the button combination for each is different.
• This may sound like a refreshing change from the general menu selection, but it forces battle to move extremely slowly, and gets very repetitive. Even the simplest of battles can take what seems like forever to complete.
• The escape feature works maybe 5% of the time, and enemies are nearly impossible to dodge on the field.
• The field system:
• Magna Carta is one of those games where you can see enemies on the field, and avoid them if you don’t feel like going through another battle.
• Softmax pretty much negated the positive aspect of this by making the areas so enclosed and linear that it’s nearly impossible to avoid any battle.
• There are two ways of moving about fields:
• Detect Mode
• You have a wide range of view, but move very slowly.
• This enables you to see enemies before they see you, giving you the opportunity to surprise attack them, or attempt to avoid them.
• Dash Mode
• In dash mode you’re running quickly, but can’t see any enemies or treasure chests.
• If you run into a baddie while in dash mode, they will surprise attack you, preventing you from moving while they dish out a few attacks.
• A massive negative about the field is the way Softmax designed the camera to work.
• It’s fixed, meaning you have absolutely no control over where the camera swings and changes.
• Based on where you move about the small, enclosed area, the camera changes without warning, and provides you with the most awkward of views.
• It’s usually impossible to see what’s in front of you, lessening your ability to avoid nasty battles even further.
• There are points where I spent minutes going around in circles because the camera would change in a really bad spot.
• Whenever I moved, it would change again, pushing me in a different direction, usually towards another camera change point.
• The camera changes around so much and so randomly that you’ll be relying almost entirely on the mini-map to figure out where you’re going.
• The wildly repetitive feeling of everything:
• Zones are re-used so much, it’s unbelievable. There are only about 10-15 in the entire game, including cities.
• And if you think backtracking in Metroid or Castlevania is annoying, you’ve got another thing coming with Magna Carta.
• You’re required to fully complete most dungeons twice, and trudge though most other zones (full of enemies each time) an average of five times or more.
• What adds to most of that backtracking is that Reith and Calintz’s parties eventually split, and you take turns playing as both of them.
• Instead of using items like a regular RPG (potions, etc), Magna Carta uses a card-based system.
• You find cards throughout the game, through battles, merchants, or fusing old cards together to form new ones.
• They can be used to recover health, cure poison, temporarily alter stats, etc.
• It’s not a bad idea, but you don’t really make full use of cards until much later in the game.
• There are a few side quests available in the game, allowing you to acquire new equipment.
• In each town, there is a blacksmith. When you talk to him, he offers you a quest, which requires you to obtain several items through killing monsters.
• Once you get the necessary items, you can return to him and claim the equipment he is offering for that set of items.
• Most of the equipment you can gain from these quests is a fair bit stronger than equipment available from regular merchants.
• What I don’t like about the blacksmith’s quests is that you may only accept one quest at a time.
• In order to cancel your current quest to get another, you must return to the blacksmith who gave you the quest.
• That is impossible at some points during the game, which is why it’s frustrating.
• Another very annoying part of the game is the over-abundance of long, drawn out load times.
• It takes about 3-7 seconds to load a battle.
• 10-13 seconds to simply change screens.
• 12-16 seconds is not uncommon for changing areas, which is done a lot.
• Many load times are also present during the real-time cutscenes, really interrupting the flow of the dialogue and story.