Magia Record Year 1 Review

​With both the first arc of the main story and the first year anniversary event recently completed, I felt now was a great time to write a blog fully focused on my favorite mobile game, Magia Record. I’ve written about the game twice on my blog briefly, first in my 2019 Anime Expo recap blog and a second time during my top ten favorite games of 2019 blog where it ranked fourth overall. I clearly really enjoy Magia Record, but I want to share more in depth about why it is so special to me.

Magia Record is a gacha RPG game billed as a side story to the magical girl anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica which to this day remains my favorite anime of all time. I saw Madoka in my first year at my college anime club in 2011 when it was airing. It actually wasn’t my favorite anime of all time at first, but as I collected the DVDs as they released on rewatch it became cemented as my favorite as I truly appreciated just how amazing the animation is and how densely plotted it is across its twelve episodes. No matter how many times I view it, I’m still blown away catching all of the little details in the show and come away catching something I didn’t notice on prior viewings. In my final year of college, the Madoka movie, Rebellion, released and I journeyed up to Los Angeles to see it with my Dad. I’m not 100% sure if Rebellion is my favorite anime film since I go back and forth if I like the wildly fun Girls Und Panzer film more, but Rebellion is certainly the most important anime film to me. 

​I’ve slowly collected a few other things connected to the show over the years, a few manga books (Another Story is awesome!), plushies, and figures for example, but aside from the movie in 2014 there really wasn’t any significant other way to enjoy Madoka since it came out and ended besides rewatching the show. And that was fine I felt. A huge part of the reason why I loved Madoka was how densely crafted it was so adding more didn’t seem necessary even if the show and Rebellion each ended with the possibility for more.

I never got my hopes up for Magia Record ever coming out in America as other Madoka games were all skipped over (maybe one day!) so I never looked into it too much ahead of the global release. The moment it was announced for a global release I was really excited to check it out, but I was also nervous because I knew it was a gacha game. If you are unfamiliar, a gacha game can be of any genre, as it is merely a game with a lottery component. Often you “pull” the gacha to get characters or power-ups of some sort. A vast majority of gacha games are free to play with the option to pay large sums of money to get extra pulls. At that point, it is de facto gambling and all you get is a small digital prize. I’ve played a good deal of gachas, but most often I bounce off them in less than a week since they are huge time commitments and if a few of the hooks are off (the story, gameplay, or presentation most frequently) they aren’t worth investing time in. In January 2019 when Kingdom Hearts III released, I finally gave up the gacha game I had logged into for well over 1,000 days, Kingdom Hearts UX, and was free from gachas for a few months. As you can imagine from the enormous number of days I played, I had developed very, very strong feelings about KHUX. I didn’t want to quit, but KHUX had devolved from a game I thought was smartly designed into a fireworks show as every fight became fought in auto-battle and I was done with the thin story being delivered at a glacial pace.

​I could never have imagined a year ago when I started on launch day what Magia Record would ultimately mean to me. It took a few weeks to truly get its hooks in me, but even early on I was pretty optimistic it would as I quickly invested in a plushie and a figure of the main character, Iroha Tamaki, at Anime Expo shortly after launch. I wasn’t planning on it, but I also ended up attending the Magia Record panel at Anime Expo 2019 which exceeded my expectations as it was primarily a voice actress panel with the voice actresses of Homura and Kyubey and had an unexpected preview of the Magia Record anime. I’ll never forget either from that panel when Chiwa Saito, the voice of Homura, confirmed a third mainline Madoka anime project was in the works with the president of Shaft present. It has been a year and we still haven’t seen anything from it yet, but that’s ok!

What makes Magia Record stand out the most from other gacha games that I’ve played is its strong focus on story. The ten chapter main story is fully voice acted from start to finish which is especially impressive with its large cast and length. Beyond that is a second campaign, Another Story, focusing on the five characters from the original anime. Perhaps more amazingly every character in the game gets three character episodes which is awesome to spend more time with characters you like or to better know the characters you don’t. All the limited time events in the game all have large story components that can take hours to complete. Even the PVP mode has a story attached to it as you see new scenes as you increase in rank!

​The main story of Magia Record focuses on Iroha Tamaki who is searching for her missing sister Ui in the mysterious city of Kamihama. While Iroha starts her journey alone, over time she becomes friends with four other girls, Yachiyo, Tsuruno, Felicia, and Sana. I liked Iroha right from the start. Though she is always a bit shy, she never lets that stop her and she remains kind despite all the obstacles and setbacks on her journey. I especially enjoyed watching Iroha grow in confidence over the course of the story to become a leader and a pillar of support for her friends. In Iroha’s group, the other standout character to me is definitely Tsuruno, the self-proclaimed “Mightiest Magical Girl.” Tsuruno is almost always super energetic and she steals practically every scene she is in with her infectious enthusiasm. 

While the search for Ui is the main plot of the story, it is far from the only interesting story thread in play. Magia Record strikes a good balance of introducing interesting new mysteries and providing good answers. At the same time Iroha enters Kamihama, Homura from the original Madoka anime receives a vision from a girl who claims salvation for Magical Girls resides in Kamihama. Homura isn’t the only one who received that vision as more magical girls and witches begin to all converge in the city. A mysterious group resides in Kamihama as well, The Wings of the Magius, that seems to protect witches and a new enemy, Uwasa, nasty rumors that are monstrously coming to life. This villainous group has some big personalities attached to it including the Amane Sisters, twins who are mysteriously in perfect sync, and Alina Gray, a psychotic artist obsessed with death and witches. Uncovering how all of these mysteries and more all relate to each other kept me engaged even in the slower early chapters of the story where it took its time introducing the main cast. Once the main story picks up it never lets up until the end of the epic finale where everything comes together.

​​One element I enjoyed in the main story is how the original Madoka cast weave in and out of it. While they are fully in focus in the Another Story campaign, I liked seeing the five original characters show up one by one often in surprising ways. Kyoko for example actually joins your group when she gets pulled into a plot of The Wings of the Magius together with Iroha and Felicia. I especially enjoyed seeing Madoka and Homura together because they have a different dynamic here than they do for most of the original series. I was hoping to reconnect with my favorite anime by playing Magia Record, but I really wasn’t expecting to get such an awesome expansion for it here as I saw new sides of characters I thought I knew. I also really enjoyed seeing how Magia Record relates to the original story and I love some of the new elements it adds to the lore especially in regards to Kyubey which I’m still thinking about a few weeks removed.

There was one element of Magia Record that really caught me off-guard and it has to do with the limited time events in the game. I didn’t get to play every event as they often barely lasted a week and some of them required you to play more of the main game than I might have wanted at the time to unlock tickets to play them. But even from the ones I did play, I started to become really attached to the extended cast in the game. Events in Magia Record all have lengthy stories attached to them that take hours to complete. They range in topic from fun holiday events (Halloween, Christmas, Summer etc.), introducing new extended cast members, expanding on the lore/backstory, and crossover events. I usually finished the events I started because when I made the time for it, they were all pretty fun and worthwhile.

I’d like to share a bit about three of my favorite events, especially since they can’t be experienced again. My favorite one for sure was definitely Nagisa’s event as she was a new character that was hyped up for the Rebellion movie, but ultimately only had three lines in the movie. We never received her backstory in the main canon, but Magia Record actually reveals her dark and tragic backstory including seeing why she made her wish and what it was. The game uses its restrictions to its advantage here, as there is ultimately a really creepy serial killer at the heart of this story whose face we never see. If there was one event that could be adapted as an anime OVA, I think Nagisa’s story should be it. Shaft would elevate it.

​My other two favorite events are way more light hearted. The first was the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha crossover event that saw Nanoha, Fate, and Hayate visit the world Magia Record. The three compete in a team battle tournament together with all of the main characters, Momoko, Kaede, and Rena, and the other groups in the city. Considering there is no way to legally watch Nanoha right now (which sucks!) it was cool getting a new adventure with characters I like and I was super happy I beat the odds with the gacha and actually got all three Nanoha characters on my team before the event ended.

The other event I really liked was the summer event from a few weeks ago. This event was split into two sections. One followed the original Madoka characters summer vacation being interrupted by a ghost and the other followed Iroha’s group as they enjoyed more traditional summer activities including going to the beach, embarking on a treasure hunt, and enjoying a summer festival. Events like the summer event and the Nanoha event weaved the large extended cast in and out of them and even spread character development across them as well. I was glad to see characters frequently reappear in these stories, such as Karin, a girl first introduced as the magical girl of Halloween, and in subsequent events is revealed to also be really into manga and the occult, because you knew they’d often make fun scenarios much wilder. More restrained characters like Konoha, who was an anchor on my main battle team, but rarely appeared in the main story, benefited from these appearances as well as I experienced a fuller picture of who they are. When events in the main story escalate to threaten the city of Kamihama as a whole, it really meant something seeing all of the extended cast come together to face the threats and it was fun seeing some characters finally meet for the first time.

​While the story and characters are the main reasons I love Magia Record, I do want to talk about the gameplay as well. Simply put, I’m very happy with Magia Record because it never succumbed to the power creep that is a feature of most gachas. Magia Record laid out all of its major progression systems from the start and never introduced anything extra throughout its first year. The goal for leveling up characters remained the same then throughout, increase your characters rank to five stars, level them up to 100, collect items to unlock your buffs and power up your Magia super attack, hopefully collect duplicate characters (dupes) in the gacha to unlock more accessory slots, and, if applicable, unlock their ultimate Doppel attack.

There are a few systems that make this a little easier than the daunting task it appears to be as there are a few different currencies you can exchange to collect the items and dupes and many events made certain items and dupes even easier to get. Most significantly a few months in the developers introduced daily coins (earned by playing at least one PVP match a day) that you can exchange to collect one to three of any item in the game. Every activity feeds into the various character growth systems so you are always progressing. I played the game free to play (I put $8 in as a tip which didn’t even give me a single ten pull of the gacha) and by playing daily I had no problems leveling up twelve of my favorite characters to level 100 and even had a few with Doppels. By swapping around accessory cards at this point (which of course have their own level up systems), I was more than strong enough to clear the main story with minimal revives.

​When you are on the battlefield itself, you bring in a team of four characters and select a guest character from other players. You and your enemies each reside on a three by three grid. Positioning matters here, as you pick three of five attack discs to attack with, pulled somewhat randomly from the pool of discs your characters own (each character on your team has five). There are three types of discs: Accelerate discs deal the most damage and significantly charge your MP, Blast discs strike across a row or column, and Charge discs are weaker, but power up the next Accelerate or Blast Disc. Selecting three Accelerate discs grants every character 20+ MP instantly, three Charge discs grants a +5 charge, and selecting three Blast discs or any three discs from the same characters grants significant extra damage.

While the basic action is thus very simple, select your targets and click on three attack discs to execute your attack, there are quite a few other systems in play besides your characters stats. Every character has one of five elements and you need to manage your charges and your MP gain to deal the most damage and build up to your Magia and Doppel attacks at 100 MP and 200 MP respectively. Your characters might have buffs/abilities to trigger that have cooldowns attached to them that can turn the tide in battle as well.

​All of that is nice, but the one system that really proves the most interesting in Magia Record’s combat and has kept it interesting for the year is the ability to Connect with another character after they have made three moves. When you Connect you not only share your characters attack disc, but you also grant some abilities, buffs, and rarely heal that character as well depending on which character initiates the Connect. This is where the most strategy comes into play in battle because all the other systems are affected as well. Giving a character your turn can help them get the damage boost from using three discs in one turn, it can help build MP, and it can more obviously let a character with a better element exploit a weakness. I mentioned earlier that at the start of the turn the attack discs were presented semi-randomly because if you use a character’s disc on one turn they will very likely be excluded from the next selection of discs. It is of upmost importance then in the more challenging fights to plan a few turns ahead when selecting who and when to attack in order to build up resources and have the right characters available to Connect with.

Over the course of the year I really enjoyed mixing up my teams’ compositions and reassigning the right accessories to create uniquely powerful characters and combos. One of my favorite simple ones was to give Tsukuyo a Charge buff accessory because three of her five discs were Charge discs. It gave me flexibility to make her Accelerate or Blast disc all the more powerful in addition to her normal role of building up the Charge Counter for her teammates. That her Connect ability grants 100% Critical Hits made her even more effective in this role. Another example is when I reorganized my party around Rena in the final chapter when she unlocked a third accessory slot. She was already a glass cannon, but by upping her attack and critical hit rate as much as possible she can regularly deal four times the amount of damage the rest of my team can deal.

Magia Record’s combat system works well for PVE obviously, but its strength really shines in the asynchronous PVP mode as well, which again with the lack of power creep typical of gachas has actually remained interesting for the year. The matchmaking does a surprisingly good job of presenting opponents around your level. You can bring up to five of your characters into PVP and direct them to fight against other players' teams controlled by the computer. Fights often come down to the wire and I’ve been most impressed that most of the time I lose I usually can pinpoint where a different decision in combat would have helped me win.

That is more or less Magia Record the game, but there is one more element of the experience that I’ve really been enjoying and that is the anime adaptation that started in January 2020. Shaft is of course handling the Magia Record anime themselves and while it hasn’t been a perfect adaptation, the action scenes are a little lacking and I don’t like the changes they have made to Iroha’s character, it’s been awesome seeing a Madoka TV show again. A lot of the direction and shots are incredible, I love seeing some of my favorite characters come to life in full motion, and I do like that it isn’t a straight adaptation since it keeps me guessing exactly how things will play out. The first half of the anime ended on a wild cliffhanger so I’m looking forward to whenever it will resume. Also I love just like they do for the game, Trysail provides the opening theme song for the Magia Record anime. It’s hard to beat Kakawari, but Gomakashi comes close!

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That concludes my latest blog and I hoped you enjoyed it! Feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @JustinMikos to share your thoughts! Until next time!