/jp/ - Otaku Culture

Finished Mahoyo / 魔法使いの夜, the untranslateable Type Moon classic that came out in 2012. What can I say but damn. Mahoyo is just an absolutely stunning package, solid on every single front - visual presentation, music, writing, etc. One might be put off by the fact that two sequels were planned to follow it up yet never came out, but Mahoyo is fairly standalone - it's shorter than Tsukihime or F/SN, being 20 hours long, but the plot is complete and has a very satisfying ending.

If for nothing else, Mahoyo is worth playing for the visuals. To say that Mahoyo pushed the medium forward immensely would be an understatement. Nothing really comes close to what Mahoyo does - while playing it I felt that it was the first "visual" novel I had ever played. There seemed to be a rule in Type-Moon that every change in paragraph had to be a new visual, and indeed it's so - there's no static sprites standing behind a text box here. There's constant movement, shifts in angles, new assets/effect - all used to Create The Scene, the Mood.

I don't like comparing games or being so negative, but to some degree I do think it's kind of embarrassing that Mahoyo came out ***8*** years ago and barely anything can compare to it. Nothing else has made me feel the stagnation of VNs so hard. That's being unfair, but still.

Anyway, I could go on all day. The music is baller as fuck and I could list a lot of kami tracks. The writing is good - I would like to call special attention to Soujuurou being chad as fuck, and his back and forth with Aoko being great. If I had to force in some criticism for Mahoyo, I guess the thing most people could point to as a flaw is the lack of voice acting. Personally I don't really care as much about VA as other people do, but the lack of it here does contrast with the production values a bit.

But yeah. Mahoyo is a great game and a very complete package. I don't think I really need to shill this game to people (it's Type Moon after all) but wow. I put it off since I thought it was incomplete, but don't make my mistake. Mahoyo stands alone and is well worth a play.