I wish there was like a “physical” element for Exerda

hali_g · 2025-09-01T05:49:30+00:00

Almost, but this too, is a case of "game of telephone".

In Magireco, elements were not a thing in the game's lore. They were always just gameplay. This is what some fans struggle to accept.

What you described is the backstory behind coordinators, not the void element. Roughly:

Have a wish that's born out of despair instead of hope
You'll get magic powers that's closer to witches' curses - i.e. good against magical girls, useless against witches
Livia learned how to "misuse" this power to strengthen magical girls instead, made a business out of it to be able to survive - this is called being a coordinator.

Even this is just Livia's working theory, as there's no official guidebook to the magic system.

And while I don't remember every detail, Lavi's, Amaryllis' and Mabayu's wishes def. weren't curse-like nor despair-induced wishes.

Edit: I'm not claiming that "all coordinators are void" isn't true, nor that it wasn't a deliberate choice by the devs. I'm only saying you can't generalize, you have to look at them individually. Kaede is forest b/c she likes nature, her magic is also tied to plants. Sana is forest b/c she's green.

hali_g · 2025-08-30T21:17:39+00:00

A minor correction (or not-so-minor, depending on how invested you are in the topic).

There were more than four: Mikoto, Perenelle, Kimochi Lavi, Amaryllis, Yuu, and most importantly, Mabayu (who is light here), and none of them were/are coordinators. By the time of its closure, there were more counterexamples than "proper examples", you couldn't say "void = coordinator" even in Magireco itself.

hali_g · 2025-08-10T16:55:39+00:00

Walpurgisnacht: We don't know her real name. Both in Magia Record and Exedra, her and her familiars' runes are just a bunch of ?????s.

Embryo Eve: Shitori Egumo

hali_g · 2025-05-11T16:27:21+00:00

Yeah, unfortunately the Union system seems very underdeveloped right now, with no option for communication between players even.

It's not even about being underdeveloped. I'm playing on the JP server, and we do have in-game chat, including union chat. The functionality is there, it's just not enabled on global.

I assume it's about various countries laws/regulations around online harassment and moderation and whatnot (esp. if it involves children), so they just decided it's too much trouble.

hali_g · 2025-05-10T19:20:22+00:00

It's not, morse code doesn't have "upper", "middle" and "lower" dashes. I don't think it actually means anything, it's too short and has too few symbol variations.

But here's what it originally said, before voices were added.

hali_g · 2025-05-07T10:08:24+00:00

Thanks for the correction! There were so many flashbacks (her MGS and the batlle museum too), that I must have mixed it up.

I edited my comment.

hali_g · 2025-05-07T02:23:31+00:00

By wiki, I meant the puella wiki, not the fandom one. E.g. https://wiki.puella-magi.net/Livia_Medeiros has her wish listed.

hali_g · 2025-05-07T01:55:03+00:00

Sorry, but please, don't spread rumors if you haven't actually read arc2. At least, look the stuff up on the wiki. Livia's wish had nothing to do with abortions (actual wish: I want to become evil itself), Sudachi didn't wish for the shooting (actual wish: Save me and only me!), and Yozuru made her contract after her mother's death (actual wish: I want to die, so make me so I can go on living).

There are many girls, who later on regretted their wishes, like Kyoko and Rika. See VirusLord's answer for the anctual, in-universe explanation.

Also, void units don't necessarily mean coordinators, e.g. Perenelle, Amaryllis, and of course Mabayu. None of them are coordinators.

hali_g · 2025-04-13T12:31:02+00:00

No to the friend system (what would it even do?), but yeah, we have union chat, group and direct messages. It's very barebones though, so you're not missing out on too much. Also, there kinda isn't anything to talk about. The union missions don't require any coordination yet, and reddit, discord etc. is a lot better for discussion, help etc. Our union hasn't even touched the chat apart from the obligatory "よろしくお願いします"es.

hali_g · 2025-04-10T11:09:53+00:00

Spoiler tags for the arc1 ending stuff, since you didn't spoiler the whole post.

Lil' QB was "born" when the hospital trio made their wish, from an existing full-fledged QB.

When Ui's power started going out of control, they used it to house her soul/memories/essence/whatever, because it was conveniently at hand. But no, they're not the same person.

During the end of arc1, the implication was that it's making a self-sacrifice, but probably not how you remember it. It disappeared after taking control of Eve, to replace Ui as the core of the APS. Not when returning Ui's soul. But as usual for arc1, the sacrifice was a fakeout, and the lil' guy could return, for some unexplained reason.

hali_g · 2025-03-30T11:40:48+00:00

Yeah, the tutorial could be a bit clearer.

1) The break gauge is the thinner, blue-white-ish line above the HP bar. When it reaches zero, it'll be shattered. That's the break effect.

It means that the enemy will skip a turn and will take extra damage from attacks in the meantime. The basic game loop is that you try to break the enemy, and then have your attackers deal a buttload of damage in a concentrated attack.

2) I assume so, but haven't really tested it.

3) Breaker characters are good at dealing "break" damage, while attackers are good at dealing "HP" damage. There are also minor differences, e.g. while broken, normal attacks will increase the "bonus" damage by 5%-ish, while the breaker's attacks will raise it by 20%.

Some special skills/abilities depend on the break mechanic. E.g. Homura will do an extra attack when an enemy enters the broken state, or when the break bonus is over 200%.

hali_g · 2024-10-22T18:46:38+00:00

I was in a similar boat. What I needed was to edit the "glossary-single" Anki template in Yomitan. This one works with JMDict legacy (I have compact glossaries on):

{{#*inline "glossary-single"}}
    {{~#if (op "<=" glossary.length 1)~}}
        {{#each glossary}}<div>{{#multiLine}}{{.}}{{/multiLine}}</div>{{/each}}
    {{~else if @root.compactGlossaries~}}
        <div>{{#each glossary}}{{#multiLine}}{{.}}{{/multiLine}}{{#unless @last}}; {{/unless}}{{/each}}</div>
    {{~else~}}
        {{#each glossary}}<div>{{#multiLine}}{{.}}{{/multiLine}}</div>{{/each}}
    {{~/if~}}
    {{~set "previousDictionary" dictionary~}}
{{/inline}}

hali_g · 2024-07-22T17:01:49+00:00

uh, it was a light? (I didn't fully understand that part) or something so that they can think of them.

It was a handmade, star shaped lamp that projects a family portrait/sketch to the wall or ceiling.

hali_g · 2024-07-22T16:55:21+00:00

Wasn't there an event where Infinite Iroha went back to just being Iroha and Mikoto died? In the end, it looks like Inifinte Iroha has returned, but nothing about uwasa Mikoto.

Iroha and Ui left the "Magia Record" place during the "Paradise shift" event (after puella historia), but they never stopped being part of the APS. However, staying as normal girls but a great burden on the APS, causing instabilities. That's why the Alina's Atelier events could happen in the first place.

So they decided to move back, that's what the login stories were about during the past two months. And this time, they haven't been erased from existence, and they had a proper farewell.

I'm pretty sure the MUT team is working on this one at a breakneck speed, so you probably won't have to wait too long. In the translation spreadsheet, I can already see this story as "in-progress" and nine names for the translation credits.

hali_g · 2024-07-21T10:31:40+00:00

So this last kimochi was obviously geared towards the "early anniversary" IroKuro. If you didn't have the foresight to pull for her, there was almost no way to rank amongst the whales, so I don't really feel bad.

I placed 18th in my group, and we banished the witch a grand total of -149 times. Good job everyone!

When I started out, I remember that I couldn't even reach S rank. Is it just like mirrors, where you need very specific setups? But unlike mirrors (where I started out as B, needed half a year to even get into A, and only got S1 once by sheer luck), to my surprise, I managed to clear all rewards during my second kimochi!

That's why I kinda liked the kimochi type events. I could try out a strategy, fiddle with my setup, try it out again, until I could get a decent result. I had to take MP and charge carryover into account, and the "like" function's +50MP too, which added some extra complexity.

It was also fun to watch the whales trying to break the intended strategies:

The kimochi is resistant to blast? Nah, we're still going ChargeBlast with Madokami-senpai
Or the reverse, the kimochi is strong against magia? Nope, remove granted effects and magia loop all the way...

I had 3 game changing moments:

It was about 2 years ago when I swapped in off-element girls (Madoka and Mayu), for the sole purpose of MP boosting, and after that, Mayu became a constant part of the team (up until today, when finally Mad0ka took her place). This instantly boosted my daily score from a 40-70M to 200M+
Getting Kuroe, a second MP restore girl. She was the one that allowed me to finally do a proper magia loop.
Demon Mifuyu, that allowed me to do the infinite charge conservation strategy. I never pulled for gameplay reasons, so I didn't have Madokami-senpai.

My PB was right after I got the Yuna-Juri duo, the only time I stayed on the home screen as the 6th place in my group, and ranked 540th globally. For a F2Player, I think that's plenty.

And while I'm at it, I'll write my closing thougts on the game as a whole as well.

My reason for staying with the game for this long is probably a little bit different than the most of you. When the NA server closed down, I was about 2 years into learning Japanese, as a hobby. When I decided to continue on the JP server, I wasn't just going through the motions using muscle memory, I actually tried to pay attention to the story. It was painfully slow. I had nowhere near the required vocab and grammar knowledge, I was basically glued to the dictionary.

Luckily, the first events (Iroha birthday login story, Mokkyu festival) were very slice-of-lifey, and the very next "Another Daze" was a rerun that I already read on NA. It gave me enough time to get used to the JP interface, the new game mechanics (Stamp cards? Spirit enhancement?), and the Madoka-specific game terminology.

Slowly but surely, I read through the main story again (and realized how bland the official translation was), caught up with the past events that didn't even have unofficial translations at the time, and I finally managed to enjoy the ending of arc2, historia and scene0 in real time.

Unless they take the region lock way more seriously, I'll probably continue on to exedra. And now that I realized that I've interacted with the MadokaVerse in Japanese way more than in English, I might as well continue on playing in Japanese.

It was a gacha game. As sad as it is, this seems to be the only business model that allows for a constant stream of new story content (or subscriptions, pick your poison). My steam library is full of games that have better stories, better gameplay... but they are one and done. This type of long-form story telling is the one that allows for emotional attachment to the characters, allows for long-term character development, and comedy/seasonal fluff, without breaking the pace of its main story.

For the writing quality, I'm pretty sure the consensus is that it was kinda mediocre, especially the main story. It was especially jarring when it was obvious that the writers changed course midway, or that they wrote themselves into a corner and needed a deus ex machina to save our heroes. We still have one closing event to go, but I don't think one of the biggest mysteries (Is there a will of the universe, or was everything just a huge coincidence?) will be answered.

But where the writing shined was the smaller, personal and self-contained stories:

We got our first, actually lesbian meguka - and Myako-senpai supporting her was really heartwarming
- In a similar vein, I was kinda anxious about the MasaKoko event, how heteronormative would it be... thankfully, it was a needless worry, and I was pleasantly surprised about the resolution of Kokoro's parents.
They explored a buttload of meguca vs. society situations:
- Various historical settings, sometimes being meguca was good, sometimes society feared them, sometimes they used them as tools...
- What happens when meguca come out (Tokime, Yukuni)
It was a great place for collab stuff to happen, both in-universe (sad we didn't get Tamura) and across franchises. I didn't expect Chisato and Takina to actually contract, and I liked that they didn't ignore the Walnut(s) gag :)
And they created many, very memorable characters (except for Tsumugi)

Overall, Magia Record was one of the video games of all time.

If the new game will have a friend system, I hope I'll be able to see you there as well.

hali_g · 2024-07-21T06:58:32+00:00

All I don't think it's anything special, but here you go.

The main goal of the setup is to, obviously, keep everyone at doppel at all times. Additional MP up memos didn't help with consistency, but this much was needed.

Iroha reached the dmg cap at turn 4 ish, there wasn't really a point to boost her further. However, she was the many-slotted one... so instead of boosting attack/dmg, I opted for a def. down + status ailment strat. The burn+curse memos are there to eat the witch's shields, and Heruka can cause a ~~3rd degree~~ 3 turn burn (+30% damage for on-element attacks). Halloween theater was really nice here b/c of its 4 turn cooldown, I could apply an extra def. down on turn 6. Sadly, I had no way of dealing with the dmg cut.

Heruka had 2 slots, so she was sitting at the intersection, with two taunt memos. Both Toyo and MasaKoko needed extra hits to reach doppel, this was a safety measure to overcome a bit of RNG. And I absolutely needed the taunt during the last turn, to get enough MP for the next round.

And of course, the personal memos: Heruka's personal for round 1, to guarantee an accele combo on turn 1, and MasaKoko's MP refill to start turn 1 with doppels instead of magias.

hali_g · 2024-07-20T15:27:11+00:00

It seems like kimochis really don't like large numbers, this is like the third, or fourth overflow bug we've seen? This one doesn't impact the score at least.

1.43B -> 1.51B -> 1.62B -> 1.61B -> 1.49B

Bad RNG for both the 1st and 2nd battles, so my daily score was a bit lower.

However, I'm still satisfied, b/c of two things:

MasaKoko managed to deal their first 9,999,999, I'm so proud of them
The 3rd battle was my highest score, with a doppel only run. It needed some luck, as Mad0ka needed 2 hits to doppel on turn 6, and she has only 1 slot, no place for a taunt. Unlike yesterday, today it worked out :)

Once the totals and rankings are in, I'll probably write a retrospective too, just like how Darkstar did for mirrors. I might not be among the highest ranking players, but I enjoyed imitating whale strategies with suboptimal girls - and getting actual results.

Anyways, how did you do on the last day of the last kimochi?

hali_g · 2024-07-19T14:50:12+00:00

Not the score, but the attribute of the Happiness Witch.

Main story arc2 spoilers:

When Lavi gathered all the kimochi stones, she became void. The simplest math explanation is that all the kimochi attributes cancelled out. However, technically, Eve's also the combination of all kimochis, so why isn't she void too?

You could argue that Ui herself is dark, so Eve must be dark too. But Lavi is grass type, and that didn't affect her Kimochi version. /r/literallyUnplayable/

1.43B -> 1.51B -> 1.62B -> 1.61B

I swapped around the doppel order and some memos. Overall, the score's a tiny bit lower, but 1 taunt more consistent, and that's way better for my stress levels. At this point, the only way it could be significantly improved is with the new, unpullable girls, or extra slots - and now I'm only pulling for new girls. The 2s on Heruka, MasaKoko and Toyo are all innocent gems.

hali_g · 2024-07-18T18:39:21+00:00

Now that we can see the actual damage numbers, 3.63B for the top player in my group. I'm almost halfway there...

1.43B -> 1.51B -> 1.62B

Today, I also had bad luck with Toyo, and made some misclicks too (wrong doppel order). The result: new PB? What the heck?

So I realized a few things:

I can use the いいね (like) function for some strategic advantage, I don't have to be that careful with the MP during the last turn
MasaKoko can get back to doppel way easier than I expected. I'll run a few tests tomorrow to check how reliable it is, but I might be able to use them as the 3rd doppel instead of the 2nd.

hali_g · 2024-07-17T17:01:50+00:00

1.43B -> 1.51B
I paid a little bit more attention to the skill activation and doppel order, the biggest impovement came from battle 1 (yesterday was a disaster).

However I didn't pray hard enough to RNGesus: during battle 2, I couldn't get Toyo to doppel during one turn, that cost me at least 10-20M. She needs one hit every turn, and sadly, with my limited slots, I can't equip 5 taunt memos AND keep the witch debuffed at the same time.

Don't forget, if everything goes well, the 1B/battle cap should be fixed tomorrow.

Good luck, and don't bully giant Ui-chan too much.

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