Mahokenshi: A short deck-building adventure with turn-based strategy

The genre of deck-building games has been quite popular among recent releases and with that we have new variations of its gameplay. And here enters “Mahokenshi”, which combines deck-building with the famous turn-based strategy style.

In our adventure we are introduced to the celestial islands, which need to be protected by the 4 mahokenshi warriors, each following a theme and a mystical creature that represents them. I was fascinated by the art style of the game. The character designs are very beautiful and eye-catching, each one is very unique and makes you want to play with them all.

However, I cannot say the same when it comes to its 3D models. I found both the characters, scenery and effects to be very lifeless, colors too dark and not very eye-catching, which was the opposite of what we saw in the artwork. Of course, this is up to one’s taste, but with such a beautiful universe in this game, I believe a more vibrant 3D art style would really help to draw more attention.

“Mahokenshi” combines two well-worn genres

The gameplay of “Mahokenshi” is a combination of turn-based strategy games, similar to “Final fantasy Tactics” and “Disgaea,” with deck-building, a genre that became especially popular with “Slay The Spire,” where you are given a fixed amount of cards, usually 5 to 10, with basic moves like slash, defend or heal.

As you progress through the game you are given options to add new and much more powerful cards to your arsenal, allowing you to make incredible combinations. And in “Mahokenshi” this applies very well, possessing a good amount of synergy between your cards.

On the strategy side, there’s not much new: it’s pretty much the same old thing. You have an amount of energy that you can use to move around the map, encountering enemies, items, cards, and events.

The Progression System encourages you to move forward, but without a good replay factor

The game boils down to choosing a mission and then one of the four available characters (remembering that you start with just one and gradually unlock others during the adventure). You choose your equipment and set off on your adventure.

It is also possible to upgrade all characters after each mission, making them stronger with each completed mission.

Although the deck-building genre is closely related to roguelike games, this is not quite the case here: the maps are fixed, i.e., enemies will always be in the same position, events, stores, etc. The only thing that will be random are the cards you can pick up and the items. Just as if it were a real board game.

This is not a bad thing, but it also limits the game a bit. It is good that the game is finite. However, there could be a random map mode or community map creation mode so that players could challenge themselves and enjoy the game a little more after finishing it, after all, “Mahokenshi” is not a very long game.

Good performance, but not very exciting for live stream

I played the Steam version of the game and it ran smoothly here, there were no crashes and I didn’t see any bugs. For a live stream gameplay, I find it to be a very stilted game and not very intuitive for the public. Its dull and unflashy colors also do not appeal in a more still strategy game. The music also has nothing so unique, however, a streamer who already brings in to his channel games of this genre can achieve a good engagement with his audience, because the possibilities of combinations here are high and, from half of the game on, there is a certain increase in its difficulty that brings bigger challenges to overcome, bringing with it an excitement to his audience in the expectation of overcoming such a challenge.

Moreover, the game is translated into fourteen languages, which makes it quite accessible to a large public, however, the translation to my native language of Brazilian Portuguese was not very good, it needed some revisions.

Fezudu