Posts about MAGICAMI
Following Japanese server's schedule, Magicami is getting an update in just 2 days and this means quite a lot of changes to the game. Though many might not have heard about the game, so I'll quickly explain what the plot, gameplay and so on are, so that hopefully more people decide to try it out.
The Plot
Magicami's story takes place in modern day Japan (and not only) where everyday peace has been disrupted by the appearance of otherwordly demons who hurt, kidnap and kill people. The only ones who can stop them are the Magical Girls, a group of 12 chosen girls who can transform using an app on their phones, and their ally/mascot Omnis (who's the "protagonist" of the story).
The story, despite the game's colorful art style and upbeat music, quickly turns dark and unforgiving as both the girls and the protagonist struggle to fight and survive the increasingly difficult challenges. Only struggling and clawing their way through failures can they reach a happy ending. It's incredibly easy to make comparisons to both Steins;Gate and Re:Zero in terms of suffering that can at times be suffocating, yet the writing manages to balance it well with interesting, funny and charming dialogues and conversations between characters.
The Gameplay
The game has several modes, ranging from PvE, competitive PvE between guilds, and full on PvP. Teams are usually formed using 1 to 4 characters, each wearing their own dress. What's a dress? In most games, that'd be a "unit". Themed costumes like "casual summer", "baseball", "Shinsengumi", "Pirate" and so on are just a few of the many, many possibilities. However, every team can have only 1 girl at a time, so strategy and team building can be challenging at times depending on combat ahead.
Each girl comes with room for 4 subdresses, which contribute some of their stats to the main dress (except critical chance/damage which contribute in 100%), and all of them can equip Orbs, which are special items boosting one Main stat (like HP%, Atk%, Speed etc) and a bunch of substats. Matching subdresses with main dress gives a bonus to stats, and matching element (or using R rarity dresses, or Orbs with matching sub-element) gives even bigger bonus.
As for game modes: there's regular story mode, events that always come with a free UR dress, Demon's Tower which is a monthly climbing mode with increasingly difficult floors (and at the very top a UR ticket as reward, for both Normal and Hard mode), Challenges (for one-time achievement rewards depending on party composition), Daily Quests (some easy, others end-game level difficult) and Endless Conquest which is a 2x daily quest with decent rewards and ranking system.
There's one PvE competitive mode called Sinisted Five, where once a month for roughly 9-10 days clubs beat the crap out of five bosses in a rotation to get as many points as possible. Rewards include Jewels (gacha currency) and Club points (also called M points, as they used to be separate from PvP rewards) used to buy Shards for special series gacha dresses, Orbs and Orb upgrade materials and so on. There's also Sabbath, fully PvP mode, though it's not real time and there are NPCs on lower ranks to help out new players get higher ranks and better rewards. This mode also gives M coins as well as Jewels for daily wins and weekly ranking rewards.
Art and Sound
One of the strongest points of the game. The fights are in 3D (no chibis), have good animations, and the soundtrack is godlike. Some of my favorite tracks include Karadaemotion and Daylight. Have I mention the game has a banger OP with equally amazing animation?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9TOYgnbSCo
All of the dresses are very well made, and you can even pick and use their visuals on any character, even the entire team if you wish so.
The Girls
Twelve, like I said. You have the bright and cheerful Iroha, who's a magical girl otaku. Her friend Kaori, who has a complex about wanting to be "normal" (but usually has weird quirks). Polite and proper Seira, gambling addict Hanabi, glasses-wearing otaku Marianne, foul-mouthed idol Iko. Petite genius Akisa and her equally intelligent, though way more quirky friend Eliza. Perky and bubbly, yet motherly Cocoa. Half-sisters, the mature and sexy Aka and tomboyish, knight-like Ao.
They all have their own role in the story, be it due to their nature, personal history or goals in life. They never feel like just a set of traits given form, but actual characters who grow as the story goes forward.
The Lewds
The game has both SFW and NSFW modes, on both Johren and Nutaku (with Nutaku having a mobile Android version as well). As far as the scenes go, about 70-80% of them are very well animated and voiced, with exception on some story, Tower and event scenes (though the aforementioned UR dresses from events almost all had a 18+ scene). It's also fairly easy to unlock them, as just hitting level 30 with the dress is enough. All UR dresses except for Doctor Eliza, "coin" dresses from Drake/Leukosia/Arachne series and a handful of "rerun banner" dresses have an animated scene.
The Gacha
This aspect might be divisive. On one hand, the game gives out a LOT of free tickets to pull on general banner, 2xUR tickets for Tower clear, free dresses from events and 1-2 times a month we get Magifest during which rates go from 3% to 6% for SSRs. On the other hand, the pity is at 300 and it takes about 4-5 months to save up said pity...
However, I would say that you don't need to worry about that unless you're a hardcore PvP player. Entire game and tower can be finished without gacha units, same with events. Sinister Five mostly relies on Leukosia/Drake series dresses and even uses some SR or free UR units to great success. And as for Sabbath, it's easy to sit around Silver rank and get optimal rewards even without success in gacha (as my JP account can show, where I started last year, took few months of break but had no issues catching up).
The Update
The update is quite big, to the point where the JP version rebranded the game from Magicami to I=MGCM (read as "I Am Magicami"). New system for middle to late game players called Spirit World Survery was added, where you can run expeditions for rewards every few hours using special currency gained from events, daily Endless Conquest and other modes. New upgrade system called "Beast Mode" will be added to further boost maxed out dresses with new materials, to give them more power and special skills. New mode "Magidess" will be added, where players will compete against 3 bosses with monthly rankings to gain items required for said Beast Mode upgrades.
The game will also be getting a new home screen to choose from, new UI, as well as increased max account level to 70.
When to start?
Best time would be either now, to get Xeno Seira/Cocoa (ideally both), or after 21st when most likely new Magifest banner will appear. The featured dress will be very useful (as I can personally attest, as I joined JP server during said banner last year), as well as Succubus Aka which can easily carry most new players through most content and even in PvP.
I have more questions
Best way to get an answer to question, or find solution to a problem is on the official Global discord server. There's also Sanahtlig's Beginner's Guide which explains in way more detail everything the game might throw at you (even though the game does have in-game Help window explaining a lot of terms and mechanics). There's also fan subreddit at r/magicami though it's arguably less frequented (it does usually have new banner information and other news regarding the game).
One of the best H gacha games on Nutaku/Johren is celebrating it's second birthday today! Lots of freebies totaling a bit over 9k jewels (30 pulls) from logins and anniversary missions + in-game currencies, 2 week long lottery with a chance of winning up to 10k jewels and a week of free 10 draws!
In addition to that, current Magi-Fest banner is one of the best times to start the game, especially when combined with the aforementioned free currency to roll on it. Reroll targets include Yuki-Onna Seira (very sought after PvP dress), Ultimate Magica Lilly (strong PvE and PvP unit) and Lunatic Succubus Aka (not rated up, but still worth getting for both PvE and PvP).
Nutaku (18+ version): https://www.nutaku.net/games/mgcm-dx/play/
Nutaku (SFW version): https://www.nutaku.com/games/mgcm/
Johren (18+ version): https://www.johren.games/games/mgcm-dx-en/
Johren (SFW version): https://www.johren.net/games/mgcm-en/
Always useful Sanahtlig's Beginner's Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11-Bml0nbBUMw9sCQDAAwfyb_ve3kCvqvKmJEuP5N2-Q/edit
As /u/Abedeus mention a couple days ago, r/Magicami's largest update has arrived on the EN Server! If you're on the fence of trying out a high budget, magical girl H-gacha, now is the best time to give it a shot!
This update corresponds to the JP Server's 2nd anniversary, so aside from the content updates it came with a ton of login bonuses:
Daily free 10-roll between Jun 22 to July 1st (100 rolls)
10-day login bonus: a Limited UR Selector ticket
Magifest gacha: Doubled the regular UR rate at 6%
Rate-up banners for Ultimate Lilly and Xeno Cocoa, two top tier meta dresses.
Additionally, there's an ongoing Twitter retweet campaign for an additional 3k gems and another UR Selector ticket!
As an eroge, Magicami is only available on two alternative platforms - Nutaku and Johren. Johren is easier to reroll on and generally the better gold deals if you intend to whale.
A reroll account will start with at least 50 rolls:
Gems: roll on the Magifest Ultimate Lilly banner; if acquired, try Xeno Cocoa.
2x multi-roll tickets
Free daily 10-roll
Rerolling takes less than five minutes, simply make a new Johren account with a random e-mail, then when you have an account you're happy with, update the account e-mail.
Join us at the official Discord if you have more questions!
