Maliki: Poison of the Past Review
When She Loved Me
Graphic novels and comic series have become one of the most dominant forms of reading over the past decade. This rise in popularity has led to a plethora of different series and formats for readers to enjoy. The French webcomic series Maliki, which has been running since 2004, has been adapted into a puzzle-RPG titled Maliki: Poison of the Past for PC and Nintendo Switch. Although RPGamers do not need to be familiar with the source material to enjoy this adventure, the game has some unfortunate shortcomings that can make or break the experience.
With humanity on the brink of extinction and the space-time continuum ripped open by the fearsome plant-monster known as Poison, players take on the role of Sand, a young individual who has been transported from his home to the world of Domaine. Domaine is far enough away from Poison’s grasp, and it’s here that Sand meets Maliki and her companions, who are plotting a way to repair the space-time continuum and restore the world. However, Poison has taken root in multiple periods, and somehow, they are all connected to Maliki herself. Sand and their companions Becky, Fang, and Fenimale must go back in time to get rid of Poison, and also restore Maliki’s memories, to save the world.
Prepare for trouble! And make it double!
The story in Maliki: Poison of the Past is wonderful and very thoughtful. The game does a great job connecting players to the game’s cast of characters, who are a lovable and empathetic bunch, each with their struggles that they must overcome. The best parts of the story are the reveals surrounding Maliki’s past and her relationships with the party members. One particular, very melancholic moment in the game is sure to leave many in tears because it provides such a hard-hitting and emotional scene. There’s a lot of strong writing throughout the game, and hitting the story beats is easily a highlight, as the story constantly takes interesting turns. There are many beats where one would expect the story to go a specific way, only for the scene to take a completely unexpected, and often welcome, turn. With strong writing, an interesting story, and some adorable characters, there is much to love here.
Unfortunately, the same praise cannot be given to the gameplay elements. In Domaine, players can take time to enjoy farming and take care of the Thousand-Root Tree to expand the area, but these elements are not very engaging or well-connected to the game at large. Farming is a nice distraction, and players can cook meals that offer temporary stat boosts, but beyond that, there’s little reward for utilizing these features. Outside of the Domaine, players will explore different areas connected to a period in Maliki’s past. In these areas, players will have to complete multiple puzzles using each of the characters’ skills. Sand can move objects backwards or forwards in time, Fang can move items freely to different spots, Becky can poke entities with her pitchfork, and Fenimale can make flowers and vines connect to remove obstructions. However, there are so many objects in each area that collision issues are a normal and frustrating occurrence.
This seems awfully familiar…
Many of the puzzles require the player to quickly switch between multiple characters, as many of their elements are timed. Players will have to constantly redo the puzzles because they often only have a second or so before parts reset. There is no way to adjust the puzzle difficulty or the timing issues, and for any player with dexterity issues, this is a major problem. The puzzles are frustrating, poorly designed, and lack variety. There’s nothing fun about them, and having to do multiple puzzles that feel very similar to each other makes for a dull experience. Additionally, there’s no incentive to explore the areas because there’s not much actually in them, and given how overstuffed they are with objects, it makes navigating the levels a challenge. Coupled with the issues with the puzzles, the levels simply are just not fun to play.
Not helping is the game’s combat, which is a snoozefest. Battles are slow, enemies are spongey, and the time travel elements actually slow combat down too much to keep it engaging. Players can block, attack, use techniques, or use focus to build temporal points to reward or move forward in time. Turn actions are visible in the top right of the screen, and players can use time travel to set up combo attacks or even heal, but the downside to this is that one has to constantly build focus to use these skills, and given how much health the enemies have, it often prolongs the battles. Combos are also difficult to uncover, and it requires players to hope that the characters even have a combo together or enough technique points to pull one off. If one character has technique points and the other doesn’t, the one without them forgoes their turn completely instead of being offered the chance to at least attack. It’s an unnecessary and frustrating punishment for the player.
BEAAAAAAAAM!
Battles are a miserable experience, especially boss fights where patterns can change on a dime and players don’t have the means to quickly react. Game overs are easy to come by, with the option to restart the battle at full health or return to the last portal, allowing players to go back to Domaine. Since battles in Maliki are weighted in the enemy’s favour, every encounter feels like a slog, and since enemies are beefy and often have more turns than the player, it takes a long time to get through even simple battles. Grinding also doesn’t help much, as it takes so long to level up and gain new skills. The battle and levelling systems are perfectly functional, but are just slow and tedious. Under this game’s cutesy exterior, its challenge level is just too difficult that it will easily alienate at least some of its audience. This comes on top of rampant glitches that occurred during the review playthrough, where enemies would attack while dialogue occurs, for the text to repeat itself multiple times. This happened during the last two chapters, with bosses needing to be redone often, causing frustrating experiences of text boxes obstructing one’s view of the game’s battle commands, and often allowing bosses to gain a free hit while trying to skip through said dialogue.
While the gameplay is mediocre at best, the opposite can be said about the game’s soundtrack, which is a knockout. There is such an excellent variety in tracks, unique instrument choices, and it’s clear that primary composer Starrysky (with contributions from Motoi Sakuraba), understood the assignment. There are tracks that evoke deep emotion in the story sections, and some absolute bangers during combat. Despite having to replay battles, the combat tracks never get dull, and worm their way into one’s head even after playing. While there is minimal voice acting beyond sound effects, what is there fits the game’s vibrant visual aesthetic. Maliki: Poison of the Past is also a very colourful game, and one where all of the important characters have very distinctive designs. There’s a lot of variety in the game’s locations, as areas such as Paris in the 2000s are much more muted in tone than Paris in 1993. The graphics are quite pleasant and mostly pleasing to the eye.
Although Maliki: Poison of the Past offers strong storytelling, great art direction, and a stellar soundtrack, it’s still a game, and games need to be fun to play. I want to stress that the strongest elements in Maliki are amazing, and I found myself absolutely loving the characters and their world, but the translation to being a video game wasn’t as smooth as it perhaps could have been. Maliki: Poison of the Past is an ambitious title that can’t overcome its gameplay issues, making it difficult to recommend, but if you’re interested in this series, there are thousands of comic strips to enjoy.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
Fantastic soundtrack
Emotionally engaging story
Cute characters
Frustrating puzzles
Spongey enemies and slow combat
Text glitches create obstructions during combat
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