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Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color

The main premise behind Magic Pengel’s gameplay is so unique and promising, it almost makes the game worth buying in and of itself. Much in the style of games like Pokemon and Monster Rancher, players keep a stable of monsters to fight enemies (As well as other players), but in Magic Pengel, these monsters are drawn by the players themselves.

Being Magic Pengel’s most notable feature, the game’s doodle creation system is one of the most imaginative ideas to ever find its way into an RPG. Players use a Pengel (A fairy-like creature with a brush for a butt) to draw a monster on a 2D plane, and the game automatically brings the design into 3D. Players can keep up to six of these monsters, called doodles, and can edit or completely re-draw them at any time.

Initially, players have a very limited capacity to create doodles. Starting with only one body type (The body, appropriately), three colors and one brush type, and a very limited amount of ink. As the player progresses through the storyline, they’ll vastly expand their repertoire, gaining the ability to draw legs, arms and wings, obtaining a wide variety of colors, and getting far more free reign to express their creativity.

All of this effects gameplay as well. The colors you use to draw your doodle determine its strengths and weaknesses, and the size and shape of the body parts you draw determine what abilities it has at its desposal. So while a blue and green doodle with big legs will be likely to become a strong magic-user with a decent kick attack, A red and yellow doodle with big arms will probably become a strong fighter with a good punch attack.

The way the game interprets your doodles in 3D is wonderfully executed, with a complete range of motion and each body part acting appropriately. Characters walk, attack, jump and dance appropriately, assuming you knew what you were doing when you drew it. And though at times, it may take one or two tries to get the game to render an object in the shape you had in mind, more often than not everything works far more smoothly than you’d expect.

The game’s presentation, while a bit difficult to describe, is appropriate to the theme. The game opens with a narrator giving a hillariously serious delivery of an absolutely rediculous story, speaking of doodle gods, and an evil human king looking to enslave all of doodlekind. It’s often hard to tell if this game’s presentation was designed to be aimed at young kids, or if it’s meant to be a parody. The game seems to take itself so seriously at times that I have to assume that the humor that results must be unintentional, although if that’s the case, I think the game is better for it as a result.

Overall, Magic Pengel’s voice acting is hit-and-miss. Most characters are very well-voiced, although there are a few that grate on the ears something fierce, a problem compounded by the fact that most of the time, characters repeat a single phrase over and over again. On the other hand, the game’s music is pretty good, with most of the game’s themes playful and lighthearted, a good match to the colorful setting.

The game’s environments aren’t anything spectacular, being bright and colorful but generally simplistic, with the exception of the doodles themselves, the game’s graphics don’t do much to stand out. The character designs do deserve mention, though. Crafted by Studio Ghibli (The animation studio responsible for film maker Miyazaki’s masterpieces such as Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away), Magic Pengel’s characters look like they jumped off the screen of a Miyazaki film, and the developers of the game deserve kudos for bringing them on board.

Unfortunately, while Magic Pengel’s concept and presentation are fantastic, its execution is extremely flawed. Problems start with the game’s interface, that leaves a lot to be desired. Players move through the game in first-person, following their pengel. However, because players control the pengel and not themselves, and the pengel itself is horribly slow, movement throughout the game quickly becomes a tedious and awkward affair.

Furthermore, you have no access to any menus of any kind in any place except the house you start out at. You have to be at this location to save, draw doodles, or even so much as look to see what your doodle’s stats are. This means that doing something as simple as seeing what colors you’re short on, or the HP of your favorite doodle, will involve a long walk back to the house (With one or two long loading screens inbetween).

Walking through the town and talking to the inhabitants, it quickly becomes apparent that there’s not a whole lot to do. You can buy Pengels from other people, but why do that when half the fun is designing them? You can challenge them to duels, but what’s a point of that if you don’t get anything particularly special for challenging different people?

Aside from that, all you can really do is duel in an arena or go back to designing your doodles. There are no items in the traditional sense, no sidequests, and not even so much as interesting an conversation to be had in the game’s town. All this wouldn’t be so damning if the game’s combat system was enjoyable, what with the fact that that’s essentially what you’ll be doing 90% of the time.

The combat system centers around a paper-rock-scissors concept. Players can attack, use magic, or defend, with each move completely negating one of the others. In addition, players can charge, replenishing a little HP and making the following turn’s attack more powerful.

And while attacks can be of varying efectiveness, and magic and defensive moves can produce occasional side effects (Sleep, poison, and locking opponent’s abilities, for example), in the end, the paper-rock-scissors setup simply makes combat too random, and every time you come out of a battle, you have the feeling that you won or lost not because of the way your created your doodle or the decisions you made in battle, but simply because of the way luck played out.

As a result, the amount of fun players will get out of Magic Pengel is pretty much directly porportional to their creativity. Those looking for a great RPG need to look elsewhere, but those looking for something quirky and unique will probably find Magic Pengel to be at least worth a rental.

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Posted by Jake McNeill on Sep 3rd, 2003 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.

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