Disney Magical World (3DS) Review

I had absolutely no idea what to expect going into Disney Magical World. On one hand I was pretty sure that I wasn’t the target audience for this game so I’d probably hate it. On the other, I love all things Disney so there was bound to be something I’d love to be found in here. But upon spending some really heavy time with an import copy of Disney Magical World, something was off. It’s a pretty good game, but unlike it’s contemporaries it lifts many of its concepts from, it’s clearly targeted towards its target audience and nobody else. Which is unfortunate, but it certainly doesn’t mean Magical World isn’t a game for you (or even your child).

Magical World opens with the player creating their own character, who will fit in with the game’s art, or simply importing their Mii. Said character then receives an invite to the kingdom of Castleton – a typically Disney-esque world where magic can be found around every corner. As you’d expect, it’s populated with all the Disney characters you know and love like Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. The story plays little role here and merely serves as a backdrop to get the player to Castleton, but since that’s really the only point of it, it seems successful.

Castleton itself acts as the central hub to all the action in Magical World – think of it as Disneyland minus the charm, charisma or presence. You’ll be introduced to the kingdom’s denizens and quickly be acquainted with them and their specialties in a rather arduous tutorial that definitely holds the players hand for way too long. The specialties are all pretty standard – Daisy Duck has her own boutique, Chip and Dale have their own workshop while Scrooge McDuck, in true conglomerate fashion, runs his own department store complete with overpriced items.

To its credit, Magical World does feature a wide variety of activities to indulge in. There’s a typical gardening task that definitely evokes memories of Animal Crossing games gone by, but there’s also dancing which incorporates rhythm game elements too. Clothing can be designed and manufactured, furniture can be built and even small businesses can be developed and managed. The only problem is that most of these quests are so simplistic that they’ll border on automatic completion, lacking any engagement whatsoever. It’s true – Magical World really wastes no time in making it how obvious its target audience is and how narrowly designed this game is to appeal to them.

You complete these major quests, minigames and milestones to earn stickers, which are then used to unlock more and more locations and activities including but not limited to Agrabah and Wonderland. For a game modeled on such an open type of game design – the progression system for these unlocks is fairly linear and doesn’t give the players much room to breathe.

On the flipside, a great thing about Magical World is that it doesn’t require the player to wait for arbitrary real world time limits to pass, much like Animal Crossing does, which is a major betterment this game holds over Nintendo’s flagship franchise. But as you’d expect, this also means it’s possible to plough through Magical World much faster than you ever could in a game like Animal Crossing.

Presumably to keep the game from being a 1:1 Animal Crossing clone, Disney Magical World also includes a dungeon trawling component. From time to time, missions will see players thrown into a short dungeon to exorcise it of demons or ghouls. They’re incredibly simplistic, and lack any of the tactical gradation you’d expect from a dungeon crawler, but they do break up the monotony of the repetitious tasks quite a bit even if they are easy.

Thusly, Disney Magical World’s problem is probably that it’s trying to take on too much at once without actually putting thought or depth into its interacting components. There’s a customisation system, but some quests are rarely successful unless you’re wearing exactly what the other characters want you to.

There’s hundreds of tasks to complete, but none of them have enough depth to keep anyone’s attention but young children – you’ll be fetching items from all over the place, you’ll be speaking to people in a pre-ordained order to wow them or you’ll be showing them your outfits. That’s almost all there is too it. It’s just too shallow. Perhaps throwing in a villain or two from Disney’s storied collection might’ve helped spice things up or provide some urgency to things.

One of the better elements that’ll probably extend your Magical World experience is the café management aspect, which also functions as a pseudo-multiplayer mode for the game. Once built, players can decorate the interior, dress up the staff or take foodstuffs to other kingdom dwellers. On top of this, it’s also possible to visit other players via the Internet, checking up on them and unlocking special items.

But just like with other aspects of Magical World – this online interactivity falls short. Visiting another players café doesn’t actually let you see the character you’re visiting, you’ll just visit a recreation of their café and be offered the opportunity to leave a gift. That’s it. It’s no co-op affair like, say, Animal Crossing for example. Additionally, playing with StreetPass apparently unlocks items too but given the limited availability at the time of writing (locally, at least) we couldn’t really test this out.

As you’d expect from a game like this, the presentation is brimming with that signature Disney look and feel – to the point where the game manages to assimilate your Mii into the world of Disney without looking like it came from somewhere else. Everything is bright and vibrant. Everything is incredibly cheery to the point where it’s possibly asinine. All of your favourite characters are here and look just like you remember them. But on the technical side of things, the frame rate is sorely lacking. Even with the 3D effect turned off, the game looked pretty average when running around Castleton to the point where it felt pretty sluggish.

It sounds like I’m pretty down on Disney Magical World and to be quite honest – I am. It’s a concept that works so brilliantly on paper, but when brought to life it’s just so dull, monotonous and repetitive. It’s like it’s copied all of the worst parts of Animal Crossing, added its own undercooked features into the mix and hoped that the target audiences’ short attention spans will fill in any haemorrhaging holes of satisfaction this experience leaves the player with. If you’re a super hardcore fan of Disney or you’re just really young and love the grind of this kind of repetitious monotony, you could probably add one point to my final score. But Disney Magical World is only serviceable – not great – which a great disappointment is considering the property it’s based on.

Rating: 3 / 5