The game is a love letter to Alice in wonderland. A girl gets sucked through a mirror and goes on a dangerous, action adventure through a wonderland inspired world with lots of boss fights and a cool art style. It’s a fun and quick game, good for newcomers or someone looking for a light game to playthrough.

🎮 For gameplay, you’re getting an action RPG of sorts where you hack and slash your way through enemies and earn XP and abilities along the way. Swinging your sword almost feels a little janky as you can stun lock most regular enemies just by spamming the attack button. I will say, despite this, it’s fun to have a game that feels old school in the sense that you aren’t animation locked when you attack. You can spam that sword as much as you want! You’ll also get a few abilities that you can use on your adventure and they’re actually pretty helpful… maybe too helpful?

🧀 There are lots of boss fights but most of them can be won the same cheesy way. You can run away from them, use your ice spell ability, maybe go in for a couple hits and repeat until done. Rarely are the boss fights configured any differently. There are a couple boss fights that add phases and change it up but not many. Run, ice spell, hit 2-3 times, repeat.

☝️ If you do find you’re having trouble, you could also grind out levels to easily destroy everything but it’s not really all that necessary as long as you remember to upgrade after boss fights and grabbing the heart emblems.

🎥 The worst part of the boss fights, and something grinding can’t help with, is you don’t have full control of the camera. You can swing it about 60% left and right but if most bosses get too close to the front of the stage where the camera is located, you can’t swing it around to see where the boss actually is. The boss basically disappears from view. Very Annoying! If you want to see the boss, you have to lure it away from the front and risk being hit because you can’t see where it is or what it’s doing. This was a very odd design decision.

🎨 The art style is unique as it’s a mix of voxel and regular 3d geometry. Most of the actual character models are voxel style but are plastered with vibrant colors and textures, giving the game a bright and fun feel. This might sound like a nitpick but the main girls face never seems to change and because of that, it’s a bit creepy. Also, she is wearing some jean shorts with pockets and the pockets stretch down as she runs and it looks very unnatural and strange. Because the camera is aimed behind her the whole time, this was hard to ignore.

😹 As far as characters go, the main girl is… a girl. The dialog from her is always so polite and milk toast that I found it unnecessary to read as there was no personality. Finn the white rabbit is really the closest you’ll get to a friend or a recurring character. There are a lot of strange and fun characters throughout the game but you don’t get to spend too much time with them, so it’s hard to form too much of a relationship with any of them. There’s also no voice acting, so it’s not like they’ll stand out with a unique voice either.

🏁 While there are a few annoyances within the game, I had a fun time with it. This game is really meant to just be a quick, throwback adventure that you don’t think too much about. If I had to guess, I probably spent 4-5 hours in it and I got all the achievements. I think if any longer though, then it might’ve overstayed it’s welcome.

God this game is so fucking fun. You have so many possibilities and you can roleplay (although you WILL need mods for some roleplay). I am rarely bored in this game (unless im doing a merchant quest or im savescumming lmao)

You can conquer a kingdom.
You can buy fiefs and make an economic powerhouse.
You can dickride your way until your liege dies and everyone elects you as king, usurping the throne for your family.
You can just be a bandit and steal shit all game.

You have so much freedom in this game and your influence has a major impact on the game world. Make your mark, and get the "Minor Clan" achievement.

There was a time in my life when I had no friends. My school days were wrought with despair as I sat through my classes, unable to work up the courage or the compassion to talk to those around me. But when I sat down to eat lunch alone each day, there was one thing I could always count on.

Magikarp Jump got me through those days with its addicting gameplay, lovable cast of characters, and charming artstyle. My Magikarp jumped a little higher every day, and eventually, so did I. I opened up to people, made myself vulnerable, and learned how to make new friends.

Admittedly, as I grew closer with my peers, I slowly began to lose the urge to play Magikarp Jump. It’s a natural part of life: sometimes, making new friends inevitably causes us to drift away from old ones. These days, I don’t have Magikarp Jump on my phone anymore, but what I do have is a healthy group of friends that I rely on and confide in each and every day.

Magikarp Jump helped me during some of the lowest points in my life. It sheltered me, built me back up, and when I was ready to face the world, it let me go. For that, there’s really not much more I can ask from this game.

Thank you, Magikarp Jump. For everything.

extremely challenging game for me to appraise, and not just because it lives in the shadow of the first game. this game has such higher highs in terms of level design and complexity, but much lower lows in terms of combat scenarios and pacing. i lost count of how many times this game expects you to just tank fall damage. not to mention every enemy with a gun is a fucking nightmare to deal with if they're aggro'd, because they'll hit you from across entire rooms and through walls. and while the final boss was cute, it was a complete shitshow to fight.

i think had this game just scaled back a bit, this could've been a favorite of mine. i'm also trying to grade on a curve, because i played devilishly conservative with ammo, and by the end of the game i was sitting on an embarrassment of riches that never got used. maybe a replay of this in the future where i'm more aggressive with ammo will make some of my combat concerns fade away. i do want to love this game, because i genuinely adore the level designs in this game (wreck of the maria dora through and the living quarters + the temple of xian - the floating islands are all-timers for 3D platforming in this era for me). meanwhile, other levels drag ass (opera house truly felt never-ending in the worst way, and the first tibet level has some brainworm-y enemy design with those snowmobiles).

also, natla in TR was camp and fun, meanwhile bartoli is a dullard and i literally had to google what his last name was just because he was such a nonpresence in the game. i guess i just wish this game had more fun with itself, having the main antagonists be cult members willing to commit suicide for their leader is decidedly less fun to riff on. i don't need these games to tell a story of the ages, but i'd be lying if i said the story isn't contributing something here, for better and worse.

overall i'm leaning a bit more charitable here by sticking with 3.5/5.0, but i feel obligated to show this game respect considering how often i found myself impressed with it. it's graphically and structurally a step up from the previous game, which i already found remarkable. it's a shame that there's so much about this that i dislike at the same time, because there's a diamond in the rough here.