Magical Diary: Horse Hall

released on May 31, 2012

You have been invited to attend a magical school. You can make new friends, learn spells, face exams, run for class office, and try to find a date for the May Day Ball.


Released on

Genres


More Info on IGDB


Reviews View More

It's a visual novel, yeah, so I'm not expecting the highest bar of quality, but it's pleasant to find that it's very well done. It uses the Ren.Py engine so it holds up pretty well with only a handful of graphical errors here and there. The writing is good, great at times even, with me really enjoying a couple of the routes you can take. There are a few errors here and there but overall, it's fine.

The gameplay for 80% of the time is box standard. But that 20% extra bit makes it...very interesting. There's a great magic system for learning spells, but in all honesty you only need to use like 5 or 6 spells throughout the whole game while the rest of your spellbook gets filled with things you'll never use, making spell navigation a nightmare. Overall it's not bad, but it needs a lot of work.

The other big issue is the graphics. Now, I'm not expecting Mona Lisa tier graphics, but I won't be the first person to admit that most of the characters look ripped straight out of one of those "How To Draw Anime" books you'd find as a kid at one of those scholastic book fairs. The sequel seems to have fixed this but still, it's a bit of a bar to clear if you're used to other visual novels on Steam.

Finally, you're gender-locked into playing as a girl. Granted, that's not at all a real issue considering that most visual novels on Steam force you to play as a guy, but it's still a thing to make note of. The sequel does do the inverse of this, but still. Just throwing this out there at the end.

Overall it's really not that bad if you can get around the absurdly dated visuals that you'll be staring at constantly through your playthrough. I wouldn't pick it up unless it was on sale, but still grab it if you like visual novels that give you the option to play with stats.

A little obtuse and reliant on chance in its mechanics, but it's still pretty fun. I hear the Damien route gets buckwild, but it's been a long time since I've played it and I got one of the more normal students' romantic routes. Anyway, it's very reminiscent of Harry Potter without the massive downside of being connected to J.K. Rowling herself, so like, maybe consider playing this instead of that new AAA game that will give her royalties. I haven't played the sequel yet, unfortunately, so I can't vouch for that one.