The first couple hours of this game are absolutely incredible but the tension and excitement fades pretty quickly over the subsequent hours spent running through some pretty uninspired dungeons that often require far too much backtracking. The combat system has some cool ideas, mainly being the elemental sprites that you can summon to raise your own damage while dampening the damage of your opponents based on type matchups but the characters all feel a tad too similar in their use cases for there to be any real variety. I bet this game eventually escalates enough both narrative and gameplay-wise to have an impactful and satisfying conclusion but I just couldn't stick with it long enough to find out.

A lovely little game whose most compelling moments are entirely within its first hour. The game's opening act is nothing short of jaw-dropping—melancholy rests beneath this game's every moment like the underpainting does any well-crafted painting. The characters are grounded, their relationships believable, and their struggles interesting. I wish it had stayed in that sort of bittersweet tone for, if not the whole game, at least a little longer than it did. It hit for me in the same way Night in the Woods does, and considering Night in the Woods is one of my favorite games of all time, that is no small feat. Though I wasn't a fan of the score, the art of this game is unlike anything I've ever seen, pixel art or otherwise. I feel that this game isn't the best at being a JRPG—though I found it charming, it's a bit unwieldy. I was not charmed by its obtuse mechanics and demands of the player's time. Where it fails as a JRPG, however, it succeeds as a piece of art that will definitely stay in my mind for a while. I know I got what I wanted out of it, though I was far from reaching the credits when my playthrough ended.

Magical Vacation is a very obscure rpg that drew me in due to it being created by the same folks who made Legend of Mana, one of my favorite games. Brownie Brown's creations usually tend to be on the more emotional side, an experience that seems to struggle against its rpg aspects with a desire to build a world and reach out with a story that connects. Sadly, this game does not have an offical english release... there is a very shoddy fan translation that is missing a few lines and comes off rather stilted, but im grateful for its existence so i could experience Magical Vacation in some capacity.

The beginning moments of this game stuck out to me the most in the 20 hours or so i was playing. I started MV a few months ago so im a bit shoddy on the details, but immediately the game impressed upon me a very bittersweet atmosphere with some of the most gorgeous pixel art the gba has ever seen. The game starts off as an almost coming-of-age story, surrounded by your fellow students listening to their troubles and desires for the future. Hearing school gossip and myths, there is a very warm and familiar feeling within the group of students, as if everyone was well acquainted and has been for years. The professor pulls you all to the (magic) bus to send you and your class on a (magical) vacation, which is required as a practical skills exercise that determines if you pass the grade. There is a sense of comedy to the dialogue and the sprite-work that i havent really seen in any gba games ive played, maybe minus Mario & Luigi. The character artist from LoM returns as well, so the designs are very unique and distinct from any other game ive ever seen.

I kind of wish the vacation with your classmates lasted a bit longer, for its not too long before youre attacked by very weird looking monsters and a bunch of your friends are dragged to another world in a very traumatic fashion, and you must look for them.

Unlike most rpgs, this game allows you to have 6 party members and has... 24 elements, i believe? It sounds like it'd be a wreck but i found the fighting to be very fun, however the downside is of course everything takes very, very long to do. It suffers from problems of its time, like there being a rough sense of direction, battles being very unbalanced and taking up a lot of time, and of course.... random encounters.

There are many good conversations with other characters throughout the course of the game, but they start stretching few and far between, and the fan translation starts letting me down as well with entire lines being absent or just gibberish.

I desperately want this game to be remastered and brought to the west, there are few games that deserve it as much as Magical Vacation does with its unique way of storytelling and combat. Unfortunately i did have to put this down because of how grating the random encounters became, and the lack of dialouge, but maybe ill return to it again one day. Until then, i encourage anyone who likes old rpgs to give it a go, if you dont mind the grind then i believe it is very much worth your time.