Magic Scroll Tactics

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

.

Review:

Magic Scroll Tactics, first released on PC in 2018 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019, is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG that approached the genre from a side-scrolling perspective as opposed to the more traditional Top-Down view, making it somewhat uncommon for games of this type. The Nintendo Switch version includes full gamepad and touchscreen support too, which is nice… and which I mention here because there isn’t really a better place for me to put it in this review.

The presentation in this game features some nice pixel art characters and anime-style character art, though other elements of the game seem somewhat poorly-designed, such as the ugly menu design. These visuals are backed by a synthesized RPG-style music that works well enough, but it sounds very generic. Oh, I should also mention that the story in this game is poorly-localized, generic, and boring, and the speech bubbles for characters are made harder to read by the fact that they’re transparent. It’s not horrible, but it’s definitely not great.

Really, the main focus here is on the gameplay. While not the first side-scrolling Strategy-RPG (off the top of my head, Steamworld Heist comes to mind as another game that takes this approach), it’s still uncommon enough that it has a lot of potential to be interesting. Unfortunately, the way it’s handled here is not particularly good.

Because of the core game design and level design that often doesn’t seem to take this into consideration, you have the end result of forcing characters to all fit on the same path as they each take their turn, crowding each other and forcing them to basically shove other characters back on their own turn so they can move where you send them. This can have the almost comic effect of having multiple characters basically making no forward progress as they each run to the front of your line, shove everyone backwards, and then get shoved back in turn by the next character. You can break this perpetual comedy of errors by simply opting to have a character do nothing on a turn so the others can pass them by, but this feels like slapping a Band-Aid on a gaping wound.

What makes things even worse is when your characters have to contend with a change in elevation, like a ledge they need to climb up or down. Often, this means that they will have to spend an entire turn just to hop up or down, which means that everyone behind them has to wait. Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen another Strategy-RPG where simple movement was handled this poorly.

Beyond this core flaw, Magic Scroll Tactics is still a fun and fairly unique take on the genre, albeit not an especially inspired one. However, “beyond this one flaw” is glossing over a lot when that one flaw is how simply moving your characters around on the battlefield is a logistical nightmare. I can still see some fans of the Strategy-RPG genre enjoying this game for what it does right, but I think most will find this is far outweighed by how broken the movement in this game is.

tl;dr – Magic Scroll Tactics is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG where the gameplay takes place from a side-scrolling perspective. Unfortunately, this perspective combines with poor level design to result in characters piling up and bottleneck in the game’s levels, making the simple act of moving your party needlessly frustrating and tedious. Fans of the genre may find some enjoyment here, but most are better off skipping it.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Talissa, Eli Goodman, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}