A Quiz Where The Knowledge Is Far From General
There’s niche and there’s Majotori. Let’s follow the flow diagram to see if you are one of the people it’s made for.
First of all, are you up for a quiz game on the Xbox? That’s not necessarily a given. Next, are you up for a single-player quiz game? Sure, you can answer cooperatively, answering as a hive mind, but you have to be fine with lack of competitive play. This is far from Jackbox.
Still here? This is where the funnel thins even further. Are you a fan of movies, anime and video games? Not one of them: ALL of them. If you’re a fan of two rather than three, you’re likely to feel a burning frustration because of how Majotori’s scoring system works. And it doesn’t matter if you have interests outside of those three groups, as 80% of the questions are covered by those three umbrellas.
Go With The Flow
The flow diagram doesn’t stop there. You can play and enjoy Majotori at this point, but to truly love it, for it to be your utter jam, you need to have deep knowledge of all three. You can’t just dabble. As an anime fan, you need to enjoy deep cuts like Kanin or Gurren Lagann. As a video game player, you should be at a level where you know details about Age of Empires II or Shenmue. The movie questions swing from arthouse to Arnie.
I suspect that Majotori was made by Majorariatto first as a game for friends, and second as a game for everyone else. That sounds like a criticism but isn’t: it just feels aimed at such a small subsection of the gaming community that we can’t help but imagine that it’s personal. And if you’ve reached the end of the flow diagram that we outlined and are still interested, well, Majotori has a number of pleasant surprises up its sleeve.
Majotori isn’t just a quiz game. The questions are framed by slice-of-life stories. You pick a character and a short story plays out, invariably with that character hitting a problem and wishing that problem wasn’t there. Then a witch, Lariat, turns up and offers to grant that wish as long as you, the player, can complete a quiz.
Fatima wants to be a rock star but her hair is falling out. Ava is a princess during a referendum on whether the monarchy should exist. Another character is locked in a video game and wants to get out. There’s a fierce wit about these that I love to bits: they don’t often play out as you expect and some of the conundrums are far-fetched. The final wish is even a tad meta. And succeeding or failing can lead to a subsequent scene where you get to follow that person’s life further.
As a glue to keep playing, these sequences might not be the most artful, but they dragged me through to the end. Even when I was cursing the quizzes for various reasons (more on them in a bit), I was chuckling along to them.
I’m Just Not Otaku Enough
Then the quizzes begin. There are nine questions per scenario, and they shuffle between the film, video game and anime categories we mentioned. Now, I’m a nerd, particularly on the film and video games side, and I was getting a hit-rate of about 80% on those categories. It’s been ages since I watched Hana Bi, for example, and I certainly didn’t expect a question about it. If Majotori was solely about films and video games, I would have loved it: it’s a level that really pushed me, and success was far from a certainty.
I’m not an anime lover, though, and I hadn’t even heard of half of the ones mentioned here. I know my One Pieces and Dragon Balls, but not Shadow Star Narutaru. That left me with a 1 in 4 success rate on anime questions (thank you multiple choice!), which didn’t stack favourably with my 80% hitrate on movies and games.
That’s not a problem, but it became irritating with how Majotori deals with the scenarios. The nine answers – correct or incorrect – are put on a roulette wheel and one is randomly chosen. If it lands on an incorrect answer, you have failed the quiz and poor Fatima doesn’t get to keep her hair.
No, Fatima, No!
I’m never going to Las Vegas, I tell you, because my luck on Majotori was awful. I could almost guarantee that, if I got two out of nine wrong, I would get a wrong outcome. That’s RNG for you, I guess. I don’t hold it against Majotori. But when there are up to three scenarios that sequence together, and they are dependent on successful outcomes, it can be so frustrating to fail and lose out on a completed tale.
Tying the story to the quizzes is fantastic and elevates Majotori above the Who Wants to be a Millionaires of this world. But it does put a lot of weight on the questions. If the questions aren’t made for you, as they dive into topics like ‘80s anime, then seeing failed scenario after failed scenario can burn.
A High-Stakes Test Of Niche Knowledge
Which is why I started the review with that flow chart. To love Majotori – and Majotori is absolutely capable of being loved – you need to walk in its world. You have to enjoy anime, movies and films to a detailed and knowledgeable degree. If you don’t, the story sequences are depressing and unsatisfying. It’s not a quiz where you can bumble through and still have fun.
Nerds unite! This may well be the quiz for you. ‘General’ knowledge is a dirty term: Majotori is interested in anime primarily, with some film and video games to sweeten the deal. If those are your Mastermind subjects then buy Majotori. If they’re not, you might find that this quiz looks at you with disdain for a couple of hours. Take a half mark off that score and think critically about picking it up.
Important Links
Think You’re Smart? Majotori’s Trivia Challenges Might Prove Otherwise – https://www.thexboxhub.com/think-youre-smart-majotoris-trivia-challenges-might-prove-otherwise/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/majotori/9PGZHLG6HZTQ
