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.