[PC] Majestic Majolical Vol1 – Mini-Review

Title: マジェスティック☆マジョリカル vol.1
Developer: dazkarat
Release Date: 30th March 2018
Age Rating: “All Ages” (15+)
Length: 5+ Hours
Links: Official Website, VNDB

I was actually debating reviewing this game at all since I am still working on a translation for this game (albeit slowly due to health issues) and was worried about coming across as biased. So after many weeks I finally decided that a short and to the point mini-review would be a good compromise.

Majestic Majolical is a series of low-price otome games focusing on the young witch Lapis as she ventures to the human world in order to harvest twilight gems in order to try and regain some semblance of respect from her peers. Given the stellar voice cast and pretty artwork, there was absolutely no reason that I wouldn’t pick this game up and I ordered the animate set of this game. Given that this was dazkarat’s first title it’s fair to say I was mildly skeptical of the game being amazing but was still hoping for a decently enjoyable title.

As expected of one of these lower price titles, there’s really only two main characters – Mitsuki & Shiki. There is also a side route for one of Lapis’ brothers in each game, with it being Hauyne in this particular volume. Mitsuki & Shiki each have 4 endings – Happy, dependence, bad & rival. Hauyne only has a single ending.

I should probably explain the whole “rival” endings. They’re essentially endings in which you follow most of one characters route, but then because of the plot, you end up with the other character at the end. I’m probably not explaining it the best I could but I’m sure you get the gist. I think Ozmafia had a similar system for its three main characters?

Rather than being very plot-heavy, this is more of a typical chara-ge but there’s nothing wrong with that. Overall, it was definitely an enjoyable/worthwhile read.

Okay, so I’ll start with Lapis. She initially seems like she may be your typical stuck up ojou-sama heroine whom is out of touch with the human world. Which I guess she kind of is to a certain extent, however, she becomes more interesting once you take into account her insecurities regarding her lack of magical ability and protecting her family’s standing.

Mitsuki is the first of our two batchelors and is (by some considerable distance) the cuter of the two for me. He comes under a weirdly specific type of character that is slightly pitiful but you just want to give them a hug? I’m not doing him justice but essentially Mitsuki is an extremely good boy, with a decent enough route. I was initially worried about how the game would handle his rival ending, as stealing his best friend’s girl is not really in line with his character. That being said it was handled pretty well actually and in a way that made sense.

Shiki is pretty much the complete opposite of Mitsuki – he’s loud, brash and outgoing. However, there’s also another side to him that you see once you get into his route. He personally just can’t compare to Mizuki for me but I do think that he’s probably a polarising character.

I’m sorry to announce for all the fans of older brothers (myself included) that Hauyne’s “route” is very short and non-romantic. Although, it was nice to see siblings being genuinely supportive and caring towards each other without any underlying motives. This route also focused a bit more on Lapis and her future, giving her some extra depth and development. I’m going to assume that the routes for the brothers in the subsequent games are pretty similar.

Most of the side characters are actually the heroes of the other games. I must say that this game made me particularly interested in the third volume, mainly for Lapis’ childhood rival Shell.

I really enjoyed the artwork by Hakuseki, it had a certain softness to it that appealed to me. There’s a reasonable amount of CGs given the length of the game. Backgrounds and such were also of a good standard.

As I alluded to earlier, the voice cast for this title was absolutely stellar (Kaji Yuuki & Masuda Toshiki) with even the Idocrase brothers all having known voice actors. I mean, it’s a pretty good sales strategy for a new company as we all know a good voice cast can easily convert to interest and sales in a title.

The game’s system was generally pretty decent, with one weird exception. For some reason, the OP movie lagged really bad when it played at the start of the game. There was no problem with the ending movie & it’s not something that I’ve notice happen with any other visual novels so I’m not sure what happened there.

The game does have a little “mini-game” for the gem collection scenes, which I even hesitate to even call a game. It essentially involves clicking on the sparkling area on the guy to get a fluffy voice line & a gem. There’s a lot of in-game warnings about not harvesting too many gems at once from one person so make sure not to abuse this system if you want one of the best endings!

Final Thoughts

My Score: 7/10

With a decent pair of characters and good routes, the first volume of the Majestic Majolical series starts off surprisingly well. However, this is definitely one of those titles where how much you like the characters will highly influence how much you like the overall game.

That being said, it’s a relatively cheap game but had decently high production qualities and let’s be honest, if the game was trash, I wouldn’t bother translating it.

Thanks for reading~