Too School for Cool
Mado Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy is the rather long but aptly named dungeon crawler where you play as Fia who attends an academy in hopes to become a Great Mage but in essence just ends up ruining the whole ceremony in a somewhat over the top fashion.
The game starts with an overly long cutscene where just about everything is going wrong, Fia and her pet carbuncle ruin the ceremony whilst the professors look on in horror and pretty much put everyone involved in the fiasco, guilty or not in some kind of detention before they all are all friends again. Fia attends the academy and is on a mission to become a Great Mage here on out and the general gameplay loop becomes apparent. Attend the academy and then fight monsters with a bit of synthesis and gardening on the side, although Fia is not just limited to playing a Mage role.
Mado Monogatari has a decent blend of action and exploration while also serving a favourable slice of downtime. You can play as a Magic Knight, Wizard, Witch Thief or Hermit Hunter, all these roles have varying abilities and you can reset your role if you feel the one you have is not working for you.
Whilst attending the academy you will take mandatory lessons which will move the game along and in doing so you will get to progress by learning new abilities and progress onto the next lesson later on. This general gameplay loop keeps the game moving along at a decent rate.
Gameplay consists of a blend of free roaming around the field and turn based combat. You can do normal attacks as normal but are also able to use magic when available, the game does have an action bar and when Fias portrait moves to the left she is able to use this magic, using magic proves useful as you will collect left over magic essence on the field which collects as shown by a meter on screen, by having the correct elements saved you are able to use Grand magic which is a powerful spell that requires no mana to use and is especially more useful later on when you can synergise these spells with your party members into more powerful magic, emphasised by the word Grand.
Dungeons are randomly generated and play out like any of the Mystery Dungeon games, Touhou Genso Wanderer, Etrian, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and Chocobo’s Mysterious Dungeon, if you’ve played any of these then you know what to expect, however you are not locked to a grid and the combat means you never need to worry about positioning, there are a few traps and hazards and light puzzles thrown in but nothing that will have you stumped. Whilst exploring you will pick up items, defeat enemies and fish within the dungeon, these can end up being long and tedious and having a stamina meter means having to keep it in check so you don’t lose health and die, fortunately the secret food known as Curry will keep you going longer. The game is genuinely not a long game at all that is padded out longer due to the fact dungeons will require you to traverse floors you have already. The game does do well to mix it up with story segments that are well needed and balanced to help alleviate the grind when it comes to it, it is is also a relatively easy game even on the hardest difficulty.
Mado Monogatari is a nonsensical game with characters you would expect, over the top interactions and one that those that get suckered in will see to the end, it is also a game you can switch your brain off and get into the repeated loop of farming the same floors over and over, you probably will still have a good time here. Graphically the game is fine for what it is but it is not the strongest especially when it comes to dungeon design, at least the character models are great and the overall interface is clean and not cumbersome at all.
Mado Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy is a good game, it’s simplicity and short lived end means it is not a game that is perfect and feels repetitive, while the original series of games created by Compile at the time, the new modern version of the game is created by Sting has the seal of Idea Factory approval on it and whilst most of their games are on the mediocre scale in terms of being a game I will say Mado Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy is definitely one of the better ones and you should definitely give this one a go if you were not too impressed by some of the other games from their somewhat huge library.
A PlayStation 5 code was provided by Idea Factory. This article is featured on OpenCritic
