Vidya Review: Magical Drop V

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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There ain’t anything Winter 2015-related for me to review yet, so have some filler.

Bouncy Girls

If you’re as 25 years old as me, you may remember these gifs, and how they was so hype across anime forums for, like, a month or so.

Magical Drop Bounce
Or maybe longer, I don’t know. Drinking to forget apparently has long-term effects.

Well, apparently they’re from the Magical Drop series. I only bring this up to let people know that the franchise didn’t always make me want to kill myself.

 

 

The Gameplay

It’s a puzzle game, and I’m not a middle-aged housewife, so I can’t say I’m the best person to review this. Too bad for Magical Drop.

Magical Drop Screenshot
Screenshot 01.

There’s a bunch of bubbles and you match colors to– Don’t you think this review would work well as a video? Yeah, so do I. Maybe I should look into that for the future.

Almost Hype
If this picture was moving, I bet you’d give it more than a passing glance. Though, honestly, it doesn’t deserve more.

Whatever, it’s a puzzle game. Moving on.

 

 

Typical Gameplay Session

Video Gaming
A day in the life. Well… closer to 15 minutes. Tops.

 

 

1. Press Start

Magical Drop V - Start

 

2. Pick Story Mode, Normal

Let's fight for justice
Don’t get too impressed, ladies.

 

3. Cringe at the dialogue

Myon Meow
The four sentences in this exchange did more damage to the English language than phonetic spelling reform could ever hope to accomplish.

 

4. Cringe at the loading screen

I shit you not, this is a fucking loading screen for the game.
I shit you not, this is a fucking loading screen for the game.

 

5. Lose

Fuck Magical Drop
The fuck?

 

6. Try Story Mode again (this time on Easy, but let’s pretend I kept it at Normal)

Death Time
Anyone named Death can’t be a bad person.

 

7. Cringe at the dialogue

Death1

Death2
Yes, this dialogue was supposed to be spoken by the girl. They couldn’t even position the dialogue boxes correctly.

 

7. Win \o/

Magical Drop Victorly
I don’t know how it happened, but I think this makes me MLG.

 

8. Lose the next round

Magical Drop Lose

 

9. Quit

Sweet release!
Sweet release!

 

 

 

Verdict

Nonon - Thunbs Down

This is a bad anime game.

 

Stats:

MSRP: $0.99 (Yeah, I know you’re tempted, but if you buy it for the +1, keep it in the backlog.)

Metacritic rating: Who cares? Fuck Metacritic.

# of times I enjoyed myself playing it: 0. But I watched Shoujo Sect right afterward, so we’re good.

27 thoughts on “Vidya Review: Magical Drop V”

  1. Have you played pocket girlfriend 2, D_S? I downloaded it for my phone after watching the

    Spoiler:
    terrible

    anime, and it was even worse than the anime!

    Reply
  2. Wŭt du ju hav ëgenst Spelingriform? Pråpërly dŭn it kød meyk ingliš Orþågrëfy bouþ yzyër and mor igzôtik-løking, ðë Latër ŭv witš wød definitly meyk ju fyl kulër wen ryding and rŭyting it. It wød sëvyrly kŭt daun ån Spelingmisteyks and påsibly inkrys Litërësy ål ouvër ðë inglišspyking Werld.

    And if ju dount keër ëbaut helping Pypël (az åy ikspekt ju mŭyt nåt), rimember ðat if wy beys ðë nju Orþågrëfy ån ëmerikën Ingliš (az ëpouzd tu sŭm Britiš vëråyity, for egzampël), it wil signël tu ðë Werld ðat Ëmerikë iz ðë best, and ju lŭyk Ëmerikë bying ðë best, rŭyt?

    Åy ëgry ðat låts ŭv egzisting Prëpouzëlz for riformd ingliš Speling år ryly ŭgly, bŭt its këmplytly påsibël tu meyk ë prity wŭn.

    Reply
    • >re-adding Old English characters
      >using varying regional pronunciations
      >inconsistently applying rules
      >non-nonsensical rationale
      >random agglutination
      >capitalizing some nouns and not others with no clear reason
      >puts the silliness of IPA to shame
      >silly usage of y
      >changing the sounds consonants make to how they sound in other languages
      >random assorted silliness for the LOL SO RANDOM XD
      >basing reform on aesthetics

      Absolutely disgusting as a spelling reform. 2/10
      It’s even meh as a cipher (like leet)
      If the reader knows what the characters mean, it isn’t that difficult to read. Translation spoiler below.

      What do you have against spelling reform? Properly done it could make English orthography both easier and more exotic-looking. The ? of ? would definitely make you feel cooler when reading and writing it. It would severely cut down any spelling mistakes and possibly increase literacy all over the English speaking world.

      And if you don’t care about helping (as I expect you might not) remember that if we base the new orthography on American English (as opposed to to some British variety, for example), it will signal to the world that America is the best, and you like America being the best, right?

      I agree that lots of existing proposals for reformed English spelling are really ugly, but it’s completely possibly to make it a pretty one.

      As a bonus:
      http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/humor/spelling-reform.html

      Reply
      • Nice objections.

        >re-adding Old English characters

        Diagraphs suck, and if you need single letters to represent IPA /ð/ and /θ/, why not eth and thorn?

        >using varying regional pronunciations

        Like what? Other than certain words that are pronounced slightly differently when unstressed (like “a”) everything follows what most guides recognize as General American.

        >inconsistently applying rules

        Like? The only non-phonetic things I think I used were “ng”, which could be /ŋg/ or just /ŋ/ (because ŋ sucks) and not transcribing the American “flap”. But I’m consistent with that.

        >non-nonsensical rationale

        Þ-Þanks?

        >random agglutination

        Noun-noun compounds are agglutinated, as are non-predicative compound adjectives.

        >capitalizing some nouns and not others with no clear reason

        Like variety and example? Maybe I just suck at remembering how to do it.

        >puts the silliness of IPA to shame

        IPA is kinda silly, you’re right.

        >silly usage of y

        Well, “i” had to be used for /ɪ/ because it’s such a common vowel in English, and y is already used for /i/ in a bunch of places (like at ends of words), so why not? It’s a nice un-diacriticized vowel that needs to be put to use.

        >changing the sounds consonants make to how they sound in other languages

        But the whole point is to make English more like other languages because other languages are better.

        >basing reform on aesthetics

        I’m also in favor of introducing a mandatory full-period calligraphy class in every high school in America.

        Reply
      • Oops, I forgot to go back and change the two ?’s that I left since I didn’t immediately understand as I was reading it. They are “latter” and “which” respectively.

        >digraphs
        Why don’t go all the way and use characters for all the sounds used in the English? What’s wrong with nearly doubling the alphabet?

        Diacritics are at least as silly as digraphs, if not more so.

        >General American
        Yeah, I assumed you weren’t. I also doubt you are a native English speaker, which sort of biases any sort of “reform” you may want. I’m guessing German or a Scandinavian country. Yes, I’m also including Finland in that regardless. Or maybe I should say Nordic and include Estonia. Oh the jokes. Or in the case of German, let’s assume Standard German is all there is.

        >capitalizing nouns
        My mistake. From what little I know, it looks like you are following the German form of capitalizing.

        >other languages are better
        It’s certainly true that English is alone in that it is a major language whose development centrally directed by an organization.

        >calligraphy
        “”If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
        Steve Jobs apologist pls.

        If anything, your proposal is reactionary, and certainly not a reform.
        Why not Esperanto or other synthetic language?
        All spelling reforms are probably doomed to failure.

        There’s a short story that comes to mind about linguistics that comes to mind, but I don’t remember its name. It was about the evolution of “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn” over the course of several centuries which included several catastrophes and the general downfall and rebirth of humanity.

        There’s another one that does come to mind and it’s called “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang about literally alien ‘linguistics’.

        I only have minimal interest in linguistics.

        Reply
        • It is (mostly) one character for each phoneme in (American) English:

          a = /æ/ (as in “cat”)
          e = /ɛ/ (as in “red”)
          i = /ɪ/ (as in “pit”)
          o = /ɔ/ (as in “more”) or /o/ when used in the ou diphthong (as in “both”)
          u = /u/ (as in “spoon”)
          y = /i/ (as in “need”)
          å = /ɑ/ (as in “pot”)
          ë = /ə/ (as in unstressed “a”)
          ô = /ɔ/ (as in “caught”)
          ŭ = /ʌ/ (as in “fuck”)
          ø = /ʊ/ (as in “book”)

          All the consonants are pretty intuitive except

          j = /j/ (as in “yes”)
          š = /ʃ/ (as in “she”)
          ž = /ʒ/ (as in “pleasure”)
          þ = /θ/ (as in “thing”)
          ð = /ð/ (as in “the”)

          Now that I’m listing it out again, both the “cow” diphthong and the “no” diphthong should probably use aø and oø respectively, since that’s more accurate, but aø and oø both look ugly so maybe I’ll swap ø or some other letter… maybe y with some sort of diacritic.

          And I guess there’s no real need for o and ô if I’m going to let o be both /o/ and /ɔ/, should probably do something about that…

          Reply
          • My comment about phonemes was that there 26 letters in the English alphabet, but that there are ~38-45 phonemes. With “General American”, it’s listed as 38. So, with the 26 base you’d need to add 12 characters to have a 1:1 letter:phoneme ratio. You have 9 listed, å,ë,ô,ŭ,ø,š,ž,þ,ð, which puts you 3 short of the “minimum” amount. As such, I asked “Why not go all the way?” Yes, the doubling remark was a bit of an exaggeration.

            There still remains the problem of what to do with representing new loanwords that use characters, let alone phonemes, that aren’t in the native language. The façade is there, but is there anything inside?

            Reply
            • I understood what you meant. The problem with those listings is that they either list phonemes that are only distinct in regional dialects or ones that are really allophones of each other.

              Going off this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American#Phonology

              It says there are twelve monophthongs (not including the r-colored ones, because those can be written as just vowel+r), but also notes that /e/ is rarely pronounced as such (usually closer to /ɛɪ/) so we can use whatever character we use for /ɛ/ in there. That leaves eleven vowels, matching the eleven I have: a e o i u å ë i ô ŭ y.

              It also says there are twenty-four consonant sounds, so thirty-six phonemes in total. As I mentioned earlier, /ŋ/ sucks, so there’s no character for it. /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are also counted as separate phonemes in that chart, but they can just be written as t+ʃ and d+ʒ. Then add in that c and x are unused and it all adds up.

              And loanwords can be handled the same way loan words are handled in many other languages with phonetic scripts, by writing them phonetically. When a word is loaned into English, it doesn’t keep its original pronunciation — it always invariably gets Anglicized somehow. Façade would be written “Fësad”. Besides, why would you use foreign words anyway? Are American words not good enough for you?

              Reply
      • It’s okay. When the future comes and we are all telepaths we will communicate with our FEELINGS and EMOTIONS and IMAGERY or something. Then there will be people trying to standardize those and continue the oppressiveness of prescriptivism.
        Then of course calls for reform. I guess it never really ends.

        Reply

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