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I think it’s appropriate that I make a retrospective thread for my experience with Magia Record NA. Since I wanted to give a proper send off before I migrate to the JP servers.
I’ll start from when it was first announced. I’ll admit that I was a bit iffy at first since it’s on mobile and not a proper continuation of the main series. But over time and seeing footage for the game gave a better impression of the game than initially.
And when it was announced that it was coming to America, I was excited. And it came out around my graduation day too. So this made for a great graduation present.
Now in terms of gameplay and story, I won’t go too into detail since, if you played Fate Grand Order, the gameplay structure should be similar, but in terms of story, it’s a long segment that for the sake of this thread, I won’t go too in-depth with it for now.
I will say that in terms of characters from the beginning, I thought they were gonna be clones of the Magia Quartet. Doesn’t help that Iroha shares similarities to Madoka. But through out the course of the game, they grew on me tremendously and actually stood out on their own.
Iroha was a great leading protagonist, Yachiyo, while started off cold at first, became a great character, Tsuruno is amazing, Felicia’s funny and has a surprising amount of depth to her, and Sana I wanna give lots of hugs after hearing her story.
The other supporting cast faired better too. And The Wings of the Magius are really great villains. While some eventually turned to the good side (Amane Sisters and Mifuyu for example) other members are just pure evil. Alina Gray is the biggest example of that.
It’s also the first time I’ve seen an actual villain in a Madoka story too. I don’t count Kyubey since they’re the sole reason why the universe with the series is functioning, and I especially don’t count Devil Homura since Homura still had good intentions at the end.
Keep in mind, at the time of writing this, I haven’t seen any manga spin offs yet so for this thread Magia Record is the only other spin off I’ve seen. Back on topic, the Magia Quartet do make an appearance too. I was giddy when Mami made her first appearance in the story.
I could go on, but I want to point out a few highlights of my experience with the game. Getting Madoka in my team was a pleasant surprise since at launch there’s a Fate Weave with both Madoka and Mami as featured magical girls. I wanted Mami, but Madoka was still good.
As the game went on, I gradually got other members of the Magia Quartet too. I don’t count Glasses Homura since she was free. At first I got Madoka, then Kyoko, then Sayaka, and then finally I got Mami. I jumped for joy when I got Mami of course.
While on the subject of Mami, when the Holy Mami event arrived, I was terrified because I didn’t have enough gems at that point. I eventually got the amount required, but it took over 30 pulls. And I attempted another 10x pull and the moment Holy Mami arrived, I screamed.
On the subject of event only magical girls, Tart was another highlight for me because after playing through the Tart Magica event, it peaked my interest to read the manga series she came from. And when her rerun showed up, got her and was incredibly happy.
Holy Alina was also a pleasant surprise because I was not expecting her to be the strongest grass unit in the game. Ashley Taylor is a very good surprise since I got her within 5 pulls. And she became my go to dark unit in the game because I liked her blast disc powers.
Homura Akemi (original) is another magical girl I was incredibly happy to get. Because not only was she incredibly strong, but it was also around the time me and my Discord friend, Aaron started dating. And I was starting to grow a strong liking towards Homura too.
Don’t even get me started on Ultimate Madoka. You wanna talk about a wallet killer, try getting gems to even attempt to get her. I didn’t spend too much thankfully, but man, that was painful. Not Ultimate Madoka herself though as she’s powerful and I jumped for joy when I got her
But the biggest highlight in terms of getting magical girls for me, is getting Nagisa. Her event I dreaded the most because that came straight after Homura’s event. I cleared her event story and got tickets for her Fate Weave. I used one ticket, and then Nagisa arrived.
My Discord friends can attest to that. The fact that I got her on my first try is the luckiest I’ve ever been in any gacha game I’ve played this far. Of course I participated in other events such as the manga exclusive events and the Last Magia event.
And finally, besides talking about this with my friends, I even found a couple people on Reddit (hear me out) talking about the game as well. And they’re surprisingly welcoming too. (Well about as welcoming as you can get with people on Reddit but I digress.)
It felt like I was a part of a community that I wasn’t terrified of being a part of and it felt like I was at peace because I love this franchise. Of course, around last month, they announced that they’re shutting down the NA servers this month. I was upset after hearing that.
But I’m not gonna dwell on it too much. All I’ll say is that I’m happy to finally experience this game in its fullest (At least the first story arc). And I’m happy I got people into this game and got to be a part of a community that is just like me.
A Madoka fan who always holds onto hope for the future. It sucks that the NA version is coming to a close, but I’ll jump into the JP version with a clean sleight. And a new experience is always good in my book. As the NA version comes to a close, I bid you farewell.
To all of my friends from Discord, and the people of r/magiarecord, thank you for making this experience memorable for me. And I’ll never forget my time with this game. And I’ll look forward to getting into the JP version. So to Magia Record NA, goodbye.
Here’s to a new beginning! Thank you for reading this retrospective. See you on the other side!
