Makai Agito

I beat Makai Agito today, so I thought I would share my thoughts. I found the game searching for some more dungeon crawlers I could play, as I am a big fan of drpgs and have already played most of the story ones that I am aware of. Unfortunately I am not able to add Makai Agito to my list of favorites anytime soon. It was by no means a terrible game, but also not a game I would recommend unless you've run out of drpgs and must play a new one even if it might not live up to your expectations. I think it is an alright game for one playthrough, but the game doesn't offer much in terms of replayability. [h1] Characters / Story [/h1] You start off the game being able to name the MC, a feature that I enjoy. Shortly after though you are thrown into a town only to discover that there is a [spoiler] curse [/spoiler] you are obligated to try to end. You meet a few misfits and together you immediately start crawling the dungeons with them. The game will definitely give you Persona / SMT vibes but unfortunately I don't think enough time is spent on the dialog / characters and as a result I didn't feel much of an emotional connection to any of the characters. Because of this, it is hard to recommend for anyone who likes story heavy games like Refrain or Galleria, as it is not very story heavy. Once you beat the final boss you pretty much immediately get the credits with only a tiny bit of story after the credits. The conclusion didn't really feel all that rewarding. [h1] Dungeon Crawling [/h1] The dungeon crawling itself was fine. I felt the different dungeons had enough color / background variations that they didn't feel too repetitive. E.g. there is an [spoiler] underwater [/spoiler] and [spoiler] forest [/spoiler] dungeon among others. There are typical features that will feel familiar to drpg fans like [spoiler] traps, holes in the floors, breakable walls, etc [/spoiler] . Nothing felt too stressful though and I didn't feel like you needed to backtrack / go up and down the floors as much as say an Etrian Odyssey game. [h1] Combat [/h1] The game offers 3 difficulties easy, normal, and hard. I spent 7 hours of the game on the normal difficulty. This difficulty I found fine. Some boss fights did feel challenging but I utilized demon fusing and transferring spells to demons that would be able to target enemy weaknesses or heal my party every turn. The combat will feel very similar to Persona/ SMT for anyone familiar with those games, minus the UI. Enemies will have various elemental weaknesses and strengths they can also reflect certain elements as well. After 7 hours I changed the difficulty to easy, as I wanted to beat the game a bit faster. When I did this, I noticed I needed to fuse monsters less and could get away with only "medium strength multiple shot " spells and attacks until the final boss. The final boss I did find a bit challenging due to the boss's ability to [spoiler] heal itself for 2000-3000 some hp [/spoiler] . The boss did this multiple times so I felt the fight was lasting forever. To be fair, I wasn't optimally leveled since I was mainly using my originally level 20 some demons with their "medium" damage spells. If I spent the time to fuse level 45 ish demons with "heavy" attacks, I could have probably beaten the boss a bit faster. [h1] Graphics [/h1] The game looked a bit blurry to me, but I am not sure if this was just a stylized choice. The graphics didn't reduce my enjoyment of the game or anything. [h1] Extras[/h1] Outside of dungeon crawling there isn't too much to do in the game. There are no quests. There is a shop where you can buy better gear and items but besides this, there isn't a whole lot to do. [h1] Conclusion [/h1] It is hard to recommend the game for people who love a good story or characters in their drpgs. If you don't care about story or characters, the dungeon crawling elements are fine. I thought it was better than Monyu but not Undernauts or Galleria/Refrain good imo. If you are an achievement hunter though, this is an easy game to receive all the achievements for, as there are no quests or any filler content making the game longer.

[b]A+ Tier | 13/15[/b] [b]TL;DR[/b]: I love this game. I never expected it to be this good. I had so much fun merging my Arcanes (Demons) and fighting with them. The only reason I can’t rate it higher is, because it feels a bit too much like a copy of another game. I would like to see more unique ideas. Besides that it feels very polished. I looked for a game with gameplay like SMT, because I played all of them since 3DS and Atlus unfortunately focusses more on the Persona series. So, I ended up here. And it really is very very much like SMT. From the SMT games I played, it felt closest to SMT Devil Summoner Soul Hackers. [h2]Combat[/h2] I played everything on hard difficulty. It is very good balanced and I had a nice amount of challenge. It feels like hard is the default difficulty. Otherwise, it would be too easy. The MP cost are right – you can use a lot moves, but will run out over time (not like Etrian Odyssey where you just can do three good moves to get empty). But sometimes I got randomly one-hitted. There are many game systems, like stats, ailments and range, which makes combat very interesting. I like it very much, that you have a shortcut for every move you can make in combat (like item/skill/Arcane …) I love it that ailments are not as useless as in SMT. You can poison and burn, blind and blow bosses. That makes so fun. I almost never used that in other games. The game can only display one buff/debuff/ailment on the screen and changes them every second. I would like it more to see all of them at once. At the beginning the enemy level is a bit … off. I randomly had to fight with level 6 against enemies with level 21 in the overworld. Later the enemies in a new dungeon are a few levels higher, but you get to their level soon, so you can recruit them. But I never used that mechainic. About the endboss: [spoiler]I really liked the boss graphics design. But the combat design was one of the worst. The boss had a resist to everything, besides Light. She also isn’t affected to any ailment. So, it took ages to take down her HP with nothing but damage and buffs. She also has this weird attack which is reducing the HP to 1 – which felt useless, because it doesn’t kill. Without MP restores I would be screwed. [/spoiler] [h3]Team Members[/h3] You get some team mates during the game. Each of them have advantages to elements like Fire or Ice. That made a big difference, so I build my Arcanes regarding that. [spoiler]I would like to have a full team of 6 members. I thought there has to be another guy joining, but there isn’t. It looks weird to me that there is always an empty spot. So, there isn’t any character, who supports Elec Skills. [/spoiler] [h2]Arcanes[/h2] Like in SMT you have your Demons with their skills. But they are named Arcanes here. There some which look familiar, like Decarabia, Eligor or Alraune. There are sooo many of them. I didn’t expected that. The dev really knew, that this is the core element. The Arcanes design are the opposide of modern Pokémon games: New Pokémon look ugly af. Arcanes look sick af. Probs to the designer! I love them so much! I think my fav is Snow White. [h3]Skills[/h3] There are so many different moves which are all useful, so you can have a lot of different skilled Arcanes. As you level them up, they learn new skills, which you can merge to other Arcanes. I spend a big amount of time just merging a good team, which stomped later bosses. The game has very handy tutorials which you can easily access in the menu. You don’t have to play a tutorial or something like this. I like that approach. Weird: The games doesn’t tell you the name of the next skill, but the effect, so you know it anyway. Poison Damage doesn’t scale. It always deals 100 dmg. Early on it’s op, later it gets bad. Then it gets useless because bosses are immune in most cases. [h3]Recruiting new Arcanes[/h3] Like in SMT you can recruit your enemies. But you don’t have to do this annoying conversation. You just give them an item or money and they’ll join you. Every time. Even if it is very handy, it feels like an useless game mechanic. I would like a different approach here, like a mini game or something else. Most of the time the enemies have a higher level then you, so you cannot recruit them. So I didn’t used it at all. There is a better method to get them anyway: [h3]Merging and Synthesis [/h3] Every 3 Levels you can merge new Arcanes. So there is always something to look forward to. Like in SMT you can fuse your Arcanes. But you also can synthesis them with items and money. That is a handy tool but it takes away any reason to fuse Arcanes you didn’t had before, because you can just buy them with this mechanic. [h2]Dungeons/World[/h2] It’s a dungeon crawler. The tilemaps are a nice size and have some different interactions within it like secret doors, traps and hidden items. Just as it should be. You meet some NPCs there. All of them have their own sprite, but just one useless sentence. Weird combo. The NPCs tell you where to go next. But if you have a bad memory like me … or just don’t really read text, you can get a bit lost. I would like to have the opportunity to recall the last important conversation. Everything is played in a single city. That’s totally okay. But I like it more, if you are on a journey and traverse through the world, rather than entering different buildings. [h2]Story[/h2] There is a tale of a witch which got killed many many years ago. Her bodyparts got separated prevent her from reviving. Every 13 years a strange phenomenon happens in the region – the Witching Hour. The “Makai” is a realm where the Arcanes live and now enter this world. There really isn’t much going on in the story. It’s maybe 5-10% of the game. And I like it this way! I gave me a reason to clean the dungeons, set a nice atmosphere and doesn’t waste my time. [h2]Music[/h2] I really like the music, it fits very well and has a good variation. Each area and fight has its own cool track which adds perfectly to the overall feeling of the game. I didn’t expected it being this good. Especially the combat music is fantastic! [h2]Technical/Bugs[/h2] [list] [*]As I started the game. The controls were very confusing. Even though the games recognized my Dualsense Controller, the inputs aren’t right (I press X and the game reads it as circle). If I use Steam-Input it works. But then I get Xbox button prompts. An option for choosing the button prompts would be nice. [*]It is possible that your current Arcane isn’t registered as equipped if you select it in the merging screen, even though it is. You can use that to equip the same Arcane to two different characters at once. [*]The sound of the Result-screen doesn’t loop [*]If I open and close Steam overlay, the overlay is still visible in the part of the screen which extends the 16:9 ratio (I have a 21:9 monitor). If I tab in and out it goes away, but it’s still a bit annoying, because it also happens for achievement and screenshot notifications and this NVIDIA overlay notificiation you get by starting a game. [*]The achievements are kinda … random. There is one for killing the first boss and one for finishing the first dungeon, with is almost the same. Most of them you get during the first two hours. But for some reason there isn’t one for collection all Arcanes or anything else but finishing the game. [*]Besides that, everything went fine. [/list] I hope the dev continues making games just like this with some more courage for more own ideas. This game really felt like a hidden gem to me!

Someone recommended this game to me one day and I decided to jump on day one. And immediately I could tell I was going to enjoy this game as a fan of the Megami Tensei series. Makai Agito is a very charming dungeon crawler inspired by games like SMT Demon Summoner and Soul Hackers, and it performed pretty well given that it was made with RPGMaker Unite (I assume, do correct me if I'm wrong). The story and characters are simple, but I don't see that as a flaw. Game is also pretty short too. The gameplay is great. I like the Synthesis mechanic as a way to make Monsters on the fly. Merging the monsters is also really fun in this game with the opportunity to inherit more skills than usual, allowing players to customize their Monsters and the skills they use. The various dungeons in the game was also well made, and I enjoyed exploring the area Overall, while this game is a bit janky, it's worth checking out if you're a fan of SMT-style games or first-person dungeon crawlers.

Solid old-school dungeon crawler RPG. Obviously very inspired by early SMT and Persona games, so if that sounds up your alley, give it a go.

This plays and feels closer to devil summoner than the actual sequel, 9/10. ♥♥♥♥ the left arm

Makai Agito is what I believe to be a JRPG inspired by the early eras of the Persona and SMT series, It has some charm to it and what appears to be a decently built foundation for it to expand on… however the game itself is on the good side of “Alright” in my eyes. It does a decent job and has a fair few nicks in its armour that could honestly be fixed up and made much better if the developer decides to make another game with this as a foundation. Visually it’s quite nice, this is where the early era of Persona and SMT shows in my eyes with its first person dungeons and overhead world map. Many enemies (named Arcane) have interesting designs but I won’t say some of them make me question what was going through the mind of whoever made them…. (why were there MULTIPLE small humanoid Arcanes that just looked to be screaming constantly…). Honestly I feel this could have run on the playstation one itself albeit at a much lower resolution. Its audio is alright, music tracks do a decent job but I can’t name any place in the game that stood out enough for a mention in my opinion. The sound effects the game uses however are in need of improvement, a good number of them are fine but I can’t be the only one to feel an ability to cause a scream should well… make a scream. It is the debuff inflicting abilities I have issues with here because they just sound so lackluster. Gameplay is alright a lot of the time in my eyes. The roster of Arcane you can fight and recruit is fairly high for the length of the game however I will say it's too easy to get what you need in terms of items to summon Arcane’s and just items in general, by the later half of the game I was swimming in money and could just buy the Arcane’s I wanted since you have a compendium that tracks what you encounter. Another area (albeit small) I feel half and half towards is how upgrades are given. It’s fair and nice that defeating bosses provides passive benefits but they all simply make it easier to fuse Arcanes a higher level then you, it would of been nice if some those upgrades increased your limit on how many Arcane’s you can keep with you, I mostly suggest this as come late game a majority of that limit is used by Arcane’s equipped to your party which limits what you can do without a lot of menuing. Lastly I want to say a bit about the dungeons, sadly while they do try to give interesting ideas a lot of the time they don’t work well and I believe this is mostly due to a lack of communication towards the player, hurt tiles and ambush tiles are easy to understand since you can see them for one but in the later half of the game it gets mean and starts hiding broken floor tiles or teleporter tiles in some dungeons…. I honestly hated it because it always came out of nowhere since you have no way to see them as far as I’m aware. Of course trying to explain such traps without interrupting the game is hard but maybe the dungeons with broken floor tiles could have had some already broken to hint to the player for example? I just slowly started to hate some of the dungeon floors at the end because of gimmicks I couldn’t see or be aware of until its too late…. Honestly, that's the main point’s I wanted to get down. I do believe I enjoyed my time with the game when I wasn’t getting jumped by an invisible teleporter tile… It has an ok story and doesn’t try to keep you going for a very long time as it’s honestly quite a short JRPG (it took me under 13 hours to beat it and I feel that’s fairly short). It clearly has room for improvement but hey for less then a tenner you could do worse so I recommend trying it if you’re a fan of the genre.

SMT 1 - 2, but without the SMT story. Dark themes in the same vein. Find enemy weaknesses. Grind levels and explore each level. Very fun so far.