Magnificent Million Arthur review: good, but only as good as your phone and data plan

Magnificent Million Arthur is the world’s first English version of Square Enix’s Kaku-San-Sei Million Arthur card battle RPG, and boy, is it a big one. Developed by Mighty Craft and published in Singapore and Malaysia by Cherry Credits, Magnificent Million Arthur is a sci-fi card-collecting re-telling of the legend of King Arthur and his many knights and minions.

(Enjoy card battle games? Try this one for size.)

In this game, Arthur is a teenager who suddenly finds out he’s able to wield the legendary sword Excalibur—and that he’s not alone with that talent. There are close to a million others vying for the throne of Britain, also armed with Excalibur, and Arthur needs to get there, pronto. But he can’t get there alone.

Magnificent Million Arthur is practically a playable anime. There’s an anime-style opening cutscene replete with dramatic looking-into-the-distance poses and a catchy song; there is your old-dude-mentor in Merlin, and then there’s your little half-naked sidekick. Story chapters in Magnificent Million Arthur have voice packs, and are narrated with as much aplomb as an anime series. It’s pretty impressive for a mobile game, and it looks and sounds great.

An example of the art you’ll see in game.

One thing Magnificent Million Arthur does really well is its art; characters in the game, while done in stereotypical anime style, are still well-conceptualized, and while I’m not comfortable at all with my sidekick being a half naked pre-teen girl with a blank expression, I have to admit the concept art in the game is really good.

Knights of the round

As with the legend of old, Arthur/you needs his/your knights. If you wanted to make a comparison with the original King Arthur story, card acquisition in Magnificent Million Arthur would be the equivalent of King Arthur rounding up his knights, except with better sound effects and background music than the clip-clopping of coconuts.

A look at the card deck layout.

Knights in Magnificent Million Arthur are bestowed upon users in the form of cards. These cards can be picked up in the field, dropped after battles, or generated from the game’s gashapon system. You start off with one player card and two additional rare ones, and these are more than enough, for a while. A total of twelve more cards can be added to your deck as you progress through the game.

Every three cards in the deck make up one attack, and these attacks are played out automatically in battles.If your first attack doesn’t kill off the enemy, then you trade attacks until either one of you dies. Observing the game’s combat can get a bit bland, but at least there’s exciting music to keep you awake!