The title implies some connection with Magical but that doesn't seem to be the case from what I can tell.
This one gave me a pretty good initial impression, but I ultimately never finished the game (though looking at other comments it seems I got close).
The custom art is really, really nice. The character busts are amazing, the designs are neat, and the animated battlers look great. If there's one thing that stands out about the game it's this. I'm not sure what style this is called, but I like it.
On the other hand, the stock RPG Maker assets are just whatever. They're not bad, but they're pretty same-old at this point. The world design is decent, it has some visual weirdness and the layout of the facility is odd, but the level of detail is appreciated. I do wish there was more variety in the music even if that just meant pulling tracks from OpenGameArt or Incompetech.
Love the Ririka cameo. I thought she'd be in more games to be honest.
The writing is a bit awkward at times, and the lines are clearly sized for a smaller window. However, the story is intriguing. It's not perfect; I wish there was more background to set up the world and the premise is quite frankly a case of "the science makes no sense", but it does a good job of establishing tension early on and pushing you to move forward.
I'm not sure why some characters have prompts over their head and others don't, and I'm not sure why some characters are wearing weird masks. Also, the directions you're given to the cafeteria are wrong; it's east, not north.
I liked the basement (side?) quest. It was a good introduction to the mechanics. I really like that there are no random encounters, but I do wish enemies had proper world sprites.
I really liked the battles at first. They were satisfying and enjoyable, and had just enough complexity to make you feel smart getting through them. The fantastic art was fun to look at. I thought with every battle I was progressing a little through the game.
Unfortunately, the more I played the less I enjoyed them. Things just got very repetitive and tedious after a certain point. Use effective attack, wash, rinse, repeat.
It wasn't clear what the purple burst meant; eventually I figured out that it means you get to attack again. It's still not clear why. It looks almost like it's set up for side view battlers but just doesn't have sprites for the protagonists. Some elements are more effective against some enemies, but it seems pretty arbitrary, and the physical/melee attack seems pretty useless.
There's definitely some stuff that I either misunderstood, wasn't explained, or doesn't work. It's not clear what the dropped energy shards are for; I thought we needed to collect them to fix the sun for a while. Enemies seem to respawn, which really threw me because I thought we needed to kill all of them. I thought magic was supposed to recharge after every battle based on a line from the Director, but this doesn't actually seem to happen.
The difficulty is all over the place. It was relatively easy at first, which I liked for a jam game. But then the demon/fairy battle gets thrown at you and it's quite hard. Doable, but far more difficult than I'd expected. The devil battle is so ridiculously unbalanced I legitimately though it was not supposed to be winnable; I'd be defeated, there'd be a cutscene, and the story would move forward. Asia went down the first turn, I managed to land an attack that did almost no damage with Alicia, then Alicia went down the second turn.
Reading some reviews, it seems the battle is winnable and it is the final boss, but requires grinding levels and/or getting lucky with the RNG and given how tedious the game has become by that point I just have zero inclination to do so.
One specific thing I found annoying: Asia is a glass cannon and I found myself burning through all my items and mana just to keep her from dying.
I think it actually would have been better to shorten the game up, at least for this jam. If there were fewer battles and no requirement for grinding, then we'd be through the game before the battles got old or the flaws started to become apparent.
I get a black screen after losing a boss fight where the characters are visible and I can walk around but I can't do anything. This seems like a glitch.
Are the enemies from mythology? It seems almost like it, though they're not familiar to me.
I like the concept of this game, and I can't say enough positive things about the art. It's the repetitive battles and weird difficulty that ultimately brought it down in my eyes. It's an interesting game with a really strong beginning but in the end it was definitely a case of "I really want to see the story end" versus "this is really unfun to grind through".