Majogami Review

Whether you love or hate amnesia as a narrative trope in video game storytelling, it’s a reliable way to throw you into the shoes of the protagonist and learn their story in real time. With a narrative that follows Shiroha, a girl trapped in a hostile, papercraft world, 2D action-platformer Majogami is the latest game to lean into this trope. After a brief opening battle sequence, Shiroha wakes in the forest with no memories and nothing but her sword. It’s here that she meets Shiori, a strange, sentient piece of paper claiming to be her father, although Shiori clearly doesn’t share his daughter’s amnesia, suggesting something amiss. The pair decide to team up, setting off on a journey to defeat the universe’s sinister Craft Witches, regain Shiroha’s memories, and hopefully escape this cursed world.

As you advance through the game, the narrative slowly unravels the tangled set of events that led Shiroha to her amnesiac predicament. It’s the kind of grand adventure that aims for drama over subtlety, but this is not necessarily a criticism; in storytelling just as in life, it really does take all types, and sometimes what you want is a theatrical spectacle to sweep you away. There’s magic, gods, and some really cool swords – but it’s not all flash either, with the narrative also covering themes of loneliness, heartbreak, and healing to round it out into something that’s exuberant and moving in equal measure.

Take down the powerful Craft Witches

However, the narrative is delivered in dialogue sequences between the engaging action-platformer gameplay, and the story suffers for this fragmented delivery. Although there are distinct chains of cause and effect that eventually get explained by the end of the tale, there’s a lot of fantastical logic that often gets pulled out of nowhere, making it difficult to keep all the threads of the story straight when you’re constantly task-switching. This fragmentation is exacerbated by the supplemental dialogues that can be unlocked during gameplay, as these extra conversations can often only be played outside of their rightful chronological context. You can review all of the game’s dialogues from the menu once seen, though, which is helpful for piecing it all together.

Majogami unfortunately also veers into the obnoxious in its sexualisation of female characters, most notably in the unlockable content. While you pretty much can’t exist as a woman in modern society without developing a thick skin around this brand of ‘humour’, it’s nevertheless enormously alienating, and Majogami crosses some lines that I’d hope most reasonable people would object to. Among other things, there’s some rather gross content where Shiori overtly sexualises his own daughter, which, while bad enough in its own right, is made exponentially worse by some context you learn in the late game. Aside from being problematic and straight up uncomfortable, this thread of ‘humour’ also detracts from the story’s emotional weight, which is a genuine shame from a narrative perspective. It’s also just plain unnecessary, and not at all what I want to have to sit through when I’m playing video games for fun and entertainment.

Use the setsuna ability to cut down your foes

Gameplay, on the other hand, is where Majogami starts to shine. Play is centred on combat, with Majogami’s main mechanic being the setsuna, a chainable special attack which pulls you up to your foe to slice them down in one action. The power of this attack is balanced by its need for ‘magic paper’, a limited gauge which depletes quickly if you don’t defeat your opponent with the attack. This can lead to clunky, undignified stumbles if you run out of power, although the game encourages a combo-heavy approach by also offering simpler moves that allow you to recharge, and learning how to use these abilities together is essential for getting the most out of combat.

You unlock an impressive array of abilities over the course of the game, including those granted by the god-like Astrals who become your allies on your quest. However, while the Astral power-ups are the strongest on offer, they have a limited duration and there’s little overlap (including in input triggers) between each set, which in practical terms significantly limits how much time you can spend committing them all to muscle memory as you play through the game. Many of the unlockable abilities also have distinct activation conditions – it’s not always a case of just learning a button sequence that can be used whenever you like – and while I enjoy games that require technical precision, memorising extensive lists of skills and their various requirements for activation is something I find more chore than fun. Once I found my favourites, I certainly found myself letting the others fall by the wayside.

With that said, once you find the combinations that work for you and it all starts to flow, combat improves beyond the ‘pretty cool’ of the early game to something that often feels great and occasionally rises to the outstanding. Many enemy encounters have been designed to allow calculated attack sequences centring on the setsuna, and it’s enormously satisfying to exploit your adversaries’ relative positions and unique defences to take them all down. The developers have also done a brilliant job conveying the sense of a sword slash in the setsuna, and its oh-so-pretty but mechanically informative visual feedback can be used to make effective battle decisions on the fly. The result is a compelling combination of quick-footed action and strategic analysis, elevated by an extensive variety of content both between and within levels that keeps you engaged for the long haul.

Astrals will grant you powerful abilities

Beyond the joys of slicing through your papercraft enemies like…well, paper, the setsuna is also integral to the game’s platforming. By carefully chaining attacks on enemies and the environment, you can access hard-to-reach platforms and hidden areas, and this creative use of the ability is highly satisfying in its own right. Some of the optional platforming sequences are mechanically unforgiving, though, and most enemies don’t respawn, so if you miss a jump after cutting down the only conveniently-placed adversary in your hunt for that last item chest, you’ll have to replay from the last checkpoint for another try. Some of the straightforward run-and-jump platforming is a little forgettable in comparison, but these sections are limited, and there’s a solid number of creative platforming mechanics to keep things broadly interesting throughout.

The world is broken up into distinct chapters or Acts, which each have their own unique themes, enemies, and bosses, and it’s impossible to overstate the creativity on display here. Although there’s little thematic continuity between regions and there’s also something of an aesthetic mismatch between the character models and the environments you traverse, level designs are imaginative and in many cases wonderfully creepy, and the boss fights are engaging, with highly varied attack sequences and some incredible artistic direction. The transition animations that play at various points elevate the experience with theatrical pizzazz, and the attention to detail throughout the game is phenomenal, with a clear commitment to the developers’ aesthetic vision coming through in everything down to the smallest UI animations.

Really. Cool. Swords.

Flair aside, though, the game is not for the weak-stomached. In one of the most memorable and stylish boss encounters, there’s one attack where blood gushes out from your enemies with such force that it defies gravity and effectively drowns the screen. While the art style is hardly photorealistic and this sequence is, frankly, awesome, it’s an incontestably gory moment, and beyond the visuals, there’s also plenty of weird and disturbing dismemberment, murder, and even cannibalism throughout the story itself. Yet, Majogami does it all with panache, pulling it all into a stunningly self-assured artistic package that’s almost boundless in its creativity.

The game’s soundtrack is equally well crafted, combining modern piano compositions with J-rock and J-pop, a combination that harmonises much better than it sounds like it should. Beyond creating a dramatic atmosphere that makes you feel like a kickass anime heroine, the distinction is also functional; the rock and pop get triggered when entering your powered-up phases during battle, and the return to piano once your powers have timed out is a helpful signal that you can no longer rely on your enhanced abilities. The Japanese voice acting is also rich and expressive, and although I did find the constant chatter between Shiori and Shiroha to be a bit grating during battle, it is nevertheless helpful, alerting you when you have taken damage and reminding you to charge your attacks when your magic paper is low.

Final Thoughts

Despite some notable stumbles, Majogami offers a striking experience that’s worth a look for fans of story-driven action-platforming. Well-designed enemy encounters and a synergistic range of abilities lead to some excellent moments during play, and it’s all tied together with incredible artistic direction that bleeds into the smallest of details. Where the pieces do fall together, the result is a memorable one.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2 // Review code supplied by publisher

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