Customer Reviews

Magic Pengel: The Quest For Color

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this as a Christmas present for my five year old daughter. She usually has to watch her older brothers play video games and is left out. She is artistic but obviously likes games as much as any kid. So Magic Pengel looked promising.

She loves it and the older boys like it as well (9 y.o.). It is quite something to draw something and see it come to life, walking around, throwing things, jumping, dancing etc. It doesn't really matter how well you draw - although nicer drawings usually make cooler (not necessarily better) doodles.

And I'll admit it - I've drawn a fair number of doodles myself - including a crab with spinning eyes and a trident, a mean robot named Bud and a yellow belt karate dude. Your imagination is the limit.

The combat system is simple definitely requires a little thinking - another plus - not just jamming the x button over and over.

Could it be better - of course! Load times are a bit of a drag - you eventually top out and can't go much farther - and the doodles don't do anything outside of the arena. So what? There is nothing else like it that I've seen where you can put a little bit of yourself into it and onto the screen. I hope there is an improved sequel. Till then, try it out and use your IMAGINATION.

Someone said this game had no adventure ... Zoe's father has been imprisoned, possibly executed, nobody knows except a stranger who shows up thinking he may have buried Galileo, and who later proves to have some remarkable powers, there's a little girl who defies the tyrrant in the castle, openly, an undercurrent of grassroots resistance, and many questions unanswered.

And you, the innocent outsider who just came to the village to do a bit of doodle duelling, you're not only smack in the middle of it, it might all be resting in your hands.

My 4-year-old told me all that, based on what he and his 6 year old brother could read -- the only downside of this game for the very young is that not all of the conversations have been translated into sound-speech, so while they soon learn how to navigate, there are some gaps in their understanding when they can only pick out a few words (but they have fun trying). Apart from that, since we got Magic Pengel, nobody has wanted to play PacMan World 2 or Scooby-Doo ;)

This is an excellent game. It is similar to pokemon in that you have monsters that you get to battle with- but in this game, you draw your own monsters!
There are some drawbacks- no pun intended- there is very little game here, no adventure really. But, the fun you'll have drawing ANYTHING you ever wanted to battle with more than makes up for it. I hope they'll create another game with an expanded adventure.
This is a grerat gift for kids- all of mine love it- and adults too! I steal it sometimes to draw my own stuff!Fun, fun, fun!

This game is extremely entertaining. It has a battle style that resembles a pretty even mix between pokemon stadium and dokapon. I was surprised to find this on sale here, as I was under the impression that it was completely out of print. Ignore the stupid Title and cover designed for a five-year-old, this game is great for anyone with hands.

This is a great game.You can draw your own virtual pets and you can have alot of them two.I recomand getting a separate memory card for it though,as it takes up alot of space.Virtual pets are so cool! So this game so is cool.If you buy it,tell me. The only down parts are that it takes up alot of memory card space and that the game is too quick and its spoiled by a sad ending(all good games are.)Please tell me if you play it. You can neomail me my username is neogirl_7900. As for my email,I'm not allowed to tell sorry.PLAY MAGIC PENGEL!

I really like it. It has really good 3-D effects and I like to make doodles on it. It's pretty easy to use.

Magic Pengel appealed to the girly girl in me with its bright colors and cute characters. How fun would it be to create little creatures from my imagination? How much more was I delighted each time I saw something creative in the game that inspired me to think outside the "creatures" box and create even everyday objects that would fight for me? I remember early on battling a computer-controlled character's slice of pie and thinking I just HAD to have that for my own!

The concept of the game is pretty simple: Draw whatever you can imagine, it comes to life, and you use it to battle other peoples' doodles (mostly the computer, although there is a 2 player versus option) to earn colors and experience.

The doodling aspect of the game comes with both joys and frustrations. Parts would stubbornly not draw in the right places, or would move incorrectly when animated and have to be re-thought out. I think perhaps the most frustrating part was that there was no "eraser" button, so as your pengel (the pen you draw with) became more powerful and was able to add more to your creature, you would have to delete already drawn parts in order to make old ones bigger or re-do parts with a better part palette (eg. drawing a tail or head as a "hard" part and later as a more correct "wiggle" or "head" part when you earned them.) I would often just create piles of random flotsam around my doodles because I didn't want to have to redo them.

The combat is simple enough; it's like a modified rock-paper-scissors game, making it easy enough for a child to pick up, which isn't always a bad thing. The overall difficulty of the game always seems to be scaled such that at any given point, as long as you have maxed out the amount of drawing allowed for each of your doodles, you will be slightly ahead of the doodle you are up against in story mode, until the final challenges. I found the final challenges to be somewhat disappointing, personally. I don't want to spoil anything, but let's just say the last boss has some aces up his sleeve that make it feel rather unfair. It's like asking someone to play rock paper scissors, and you choose steamroller, which beats any of them. Or you choose paper and they chose scissors, but they decide haha, just kidding, the "paper" was a sheet of metal, you lose. It feels like a game for a five-year-old that cheats like a five-year-old, and considering you have to play all the way through multiple forms of the last boss, having it be up to luck of the draw in the end feels just mean.

Generally the game flow alternates between updating your doodles because your pen leveled up, doing another battle, and seeing another cutscene. There is a lot of travel involved, with the story-progressing fights on the complete opposite end of the game path from the area where you are allowed to work on your doodles, and the load screens are a bit long and frequent.

Unfortunately, the cutscenes may be the weakest part of the game. There isn't a lot of story to the game, and your involvement in that story is somewhat passing at best. It isn't very deep or very long (I completed the game, taking my time, in about 6 hours) and could really have been expanded upon.

The game takes place in a small village that seems to be just teeming with life. There are villagers and merchants of all kinds, living out their everyday lives. The noise, colors, and movement make the village really feel alive, and fans of anime will probably enjoy the feeling that they have just personally stepped into a three-dimensional anime. The game is vibrant and pleasing to look at, even 8 years after its release.

The music is cute, light, and catchy. I found some of the little jingles getting stuck in my head after I turned off the game. It's not epic, but it probably won't get on your nerves, at least.

The game has a little bit of replay value in that, after beating the main story mode, there are more bonus objectives you can complete. And, of course, there are always two-player battles.

Overall, it was a fun little game to while away a few hours without getting into anything too deep. I believe someone as young as early elementary school could probably understand and enjoy the game. However, I do think completing the end of the game requires some patience and perseverance - and a lot of luck! If you or your child are easily frustrated and give up on games you don't win on the first try, this probably isn't the game for you.

I go into games with an open mind- even if I'm far out of the intended age range for them. Starting Magic Pengel, it reminded me a lot of Graffiti Kingdom and Amazing Island. These were both games that I laughed at myself for playing, because I felt far too old for them, but I still enjoyed and played to completion. Like those games, Magic Pengel allows you to draw and create whatever you desire to use throughout the storyline (with varying success, based on your patience with the in-game drawing mechanic). But unlike Graffiti Kingdom and Amazing Island, Magic Pengel simply couldn't keep my attention. The plot is much thinner and I feel that even the innovative drawing mechanic was lackluster in comparison to games intended for similar age ranges, and while those other games can still appeal to older gamers with the novelty of this gameplay mechanic, Magic Pengel just can't because it doesn't contain the same charm.
If you're buying this for a younger gamer, they may still enjoy it, because the idea is still fun, but I'd highly recommend looking into other games that have employed this mechanic better, like the aforementioned two.

Magic Pengel: The Quest For Color is a fun game for most young children. The game will require a lot of reading and the ability to follow directions. The game would have received higher stars if,it could be save at different spots without going through the storyboard.

Magic Pengel caught my attention months before it ever came out. I was more than a little excited that we had finally reached the point where we can design and animate a character in a videogame without any actual skills. Also, it looked like a refreshing departure from the PS2's standard sports and shoot 'em up fare.

The game did not disappoint. In it you are a Doodler, a person pure of heart who has the ability to draw doodles that spring to life. In a typical RPG twist, there is a brutal regime that wishes to harness these people's abilities so that they can exploit it. The gameplay consists of drawing doodles and fighting other doodles. Although not spectacularly deep, the battle system is a glorified form of rocks, paper, scissors, it is addictive fun. The create a doodle system was deeper than the battle system by far. A doodle with long arms had a different set of attacks than one with short arms. The way a doodle is drawn affects everything from magic points to its attacks. It kept me riveted for days. I kept wanting to beat the next round so I could get another drawing option and experiment with different abilities. The real pull with this game is not so much the story, which is the tried and true good person versus bad government formula, as it is the opportunity to interact with the game on a deep level with your characters. A surprisingly large number of possibilities exist. My favorite characters included a flying piano and a vicious SNES controller which attacked with its cord. You are limited only by your imagination.

All told, I think this game landed on the wrong system. The load time is oppressive. Each time you move between areas it takes at least a full minute to load. If this were on the Xbox or GameCube, I don't think such extensive load times would have been necessary. Also, this game's personality wouldhave been more compatible with the GameCube. Not only was it's cel-shaded graphics similar to Nintendo's latest masterpiece, The Legend of Zelda, but it isn't particularly palatable with the PS2's audience of GTA and Madden fans. It is pretty much doomed to quirky, under-the-radar stautus. Of course, if this were on the Xbox, it would have sold exactly zero copies. Despite its shortcomings, the simplistic battle system and the load times, it was worth the fifty bucks and three weeks I spent on it.