Maliki: Poison Of The Past (Nintendo Switch) Review

Mankind is, yet again, on the brink of extinction. This time from a plant-based entity known simply as “Poison”, which is mucking up the space-time continuum. Enter the enigmatic Maliki, a young woman whom the Poison seems to fear. It’s up to her and her wacky band of comrades to travel through time, fix the continuum, and beat the ever-loving chlorophyll out of Poison.

You play the role of Sand, another young woman pulled from the time-stream to help Maliki in her fight. Along with Becky, Fang, and Fenimale, you make up the team whose job it is to jump from time period to time period, shunting off Poisons minions for good, and, perhaps, unearthing the mystery behind both Poison and Maliki.

Maliki: Poison Of The Past, from developers Blue Banshee is a cute but highly ambitious cozy RPG for you to sink your teeth into. The game combines traditional turn based combat with environmental exploration and a good deal of cozy farming and upkeep – well, if you decide to follow that path.

Based on a series of graphic novels, Maliki: Poison Of The Past places a great deal of emphasis on it’s story and characters. Doing so lets it create a slightly off-kilter cast with great and amusing dialogue, and a plot that drew me in easily from the beginning. Good RPG’s live or die on the strength of their story, and Maliki’s kept me invested throughout.

The story is powered by anime style cut-scenes, while the game uses super-deformed chibi designs for it’s characters. This cutesy character design, along with some vibrant and brightly coloured visuals, makes Maliki: Poison of The Past a rather attractive looking title, whose whimsical looking visuals suite the story’s more off-beat moments while still delivering on it’s darker sequences.

From a gameplay perspective, it melds different play styles together. You’ll start your journey in “The Domaine”, a realm outside the flow of time that is protected by an ancient tree. The Domaine serves as your base where you can upgrade your equipment and craft new gear to buff your stats. It’s also here that you can invest in the games gardening element by chopping down trees, smashing boulders, and generally preparing ground ready for you to seed with a variety of fruit and veggies.

As you progress through the game, new sections of The Domaine can be opened up to explore and garden in. You don’t have to plant and harvest if you don’t want to, but the ingredients you pick up can be cooked into various plates of food, which do provide a variety of buffs in combat. For an easier time, it may be well worth your time to develop a green thumb.

Outside of The Domaine, time is frozen in the different periods you go to. NPC’s and animals are all stuck in place, which makes for a cool visual effect when you’re running beneath a flock of frozen flying birds. Poison’s minions, however, are not affected by such a silly thing as frozen time, and roam the levels just waiting to pick a fight with you. There’s no random encounters here and getting into a fight is as simple as running into one of the games many monstrous mutants.

Combat is the traditional turn-based stuff. Each party member has their own weapon type, attacks, abilities, and specials, with new ones unlocked as you level up. The twist here is the ability to manipulate the time bar by rewinding or fast forwarding time, both of which have unique effects. Taken too much damage? Rewind the bar for that character and you’ll get health and TP – think mana – back. Fast forward the bar enough and you can create combo attacks between your party members which is perfect for boss fights. Be warned though, fast forwarding the bar can also put the enemies into the same combo state. TP is used to power you special attacks, while the ability to affect the time bar can be built up by attacking enemies or sacrificing a turn to focus and build up points.

Beyond this twist, there’s nothing surprising about the turn-based combat but it is satisfyingly engaging and adds a layer of tactical depth – especially to boss fights. And this is where you’re going to need it because, despite it’s cozy visuals, Maliki: Poison Of The Past puts up a pretty stiff combat. It’s nothing that some levelling up, craftingm and outfitting can’t help, but using your abilities while paying attention to each monsters weaknesses makes this more engaging than simply laying back and pressing the attack button while checking the news on your phone.

Which brings us to a slight wrinkle in the traditional power-levelling gameplay. That being it’s rather time consuming to do in Maliki: Poison Of The Past. Each time period only has a handful of enemies roaming the world for you to pick on. Leaving the period and then returning will respawn them as long as you haven’t killed the boss. Once you do kill the boss, however, time resumes as normal in the affected area and the enemy numbers are both reduced and many are hidden. Since each fight gives you a pretty paltry sum of XP, it takes quite a bit of farming if you’re looking to grind your way to victory.

Environmental puzzles also litter the time periods and all of them require your teams special abilities to deal with. Sand, for instance, can fast-forward and rewind people and objects, while Fang can move heavy objects. Most of the puzzles are designed around opening up new areas for you to explore or to complete a side-quest, though some can only be completed later in the game.

One of the design aspects I appreciate is that once the boss is beaten, new sections of the level can be opened up to explore while other side-quests become available, such as optional bosses that, early on, can wipe you out in one turn. This adds a nice bit of replayability and gives you reason to return and explore, rather than just fighting for XP. One nitpick I do have is that while NPC locations can change and you no longer need Sands Chronopack to speak to them, they remain static. Some basic movement to give the impression of more life would not have gone amiss here.

Wrapping up, Maliki: Poison Of The Past features wonderfully colourful and charming visuals that are backed up by a fun and well written, character-driven story. While I feel that fights should net you more XP to minimise the grind, the combat itself is a lot of fun and tactical. It kept me thoroughly engaged from the get-go and provides a charming RPG experience that you shouldn’t pass up on if you’re a fan of the genre.

Maliki: Poison Of The Past was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided to gameblur by the publisher. It is also available on PC.