Magical Diary - Pass the Walkthrough Please

Magical Diary is one of those sorts of games which under normal circumstances, I would run in the opposite direction of and if it wasn't for bundles, its usually the sort of game I wouldn't have even touched, let alone played through properly. Magical Diary is essentially a mix of two different Japanese genres, the visual novel and the raising sim. Visual novels being where you follow a story, going off in different paths and reaching the ending. Meanwhile 'Raising Sims' follow a different approach, where the story changes more depending on what skills and areas of expertise you have chosen to follow.

Anyway, lets jump right in shall we?

Firstly, lets make this clear. Magical Diary is near to 100% story-based, there's lots and lots of dialogue and story to go through at all times so if you happen to be the sort of person who rolls their eyes the moment a cutscene starts up, this may not be the game for you. The main meat of the game follows dictating what your character will do on any given week with a choice of one of five different classes (raising skills in each magical 'colour'), choosing to go to gym (usually raising 'Strength'), choosing to Study (Raising the 'Smart' stat) or napping (No boosts but reduces stress).

As you raise up the different skills, new spells unlock, some useful... some more useless and there just to keep up progression. Along the way various moments happen, holidays, chance meetings and other such things, each containing various choices, raising or diminishing peoples opinion of you. In addition, throughout the school year, you'll have various 'tests', each one placing you into a dungeon and asking a task of you, said tasks can only be accomplished via careful use of spells.

All of this equals a very story-rich environment... with one large issue. Should you actually want to pursue a specific story, be prepared to either get lucky, get a walkthrough or be prepared for lots of re-runs, repeats and masses of save-scumming everywhere. This really can be a big issue as often the game chucks hints of story, possible plotlines and clues to things you haven't seen... but if you don't happen to do EXACTLY as the game requests of you, they just vanish. Realistic yes, irritating? Very much so.

However... some may see that as replayability. If I have to nitpick any further with the game, personally, some of the character designs just are a bit odd. Having almost every male character in the game look androgynous being the big issue for me. Again though, that's more personal rather than anything the game actually does wrong.

Overall its an interesting game that finds its niche incredibly well... It would just be nice to have someway to understand the story-branch areas without resorting to a walkthrough.