Well, well, well. You’ve booted up Makai Kingdom: Reclaimed and Rebound for the first time, have you? And Lord Zetta — ahem, ‘Badass Freakin’ Overlord Zetta’ — has set about on his quick quest to prove Pram wrong only to find himself seemingly fulfilling her prophecy instead. Zetta’s gone and trapped himself inside a book, and just like that, Makai Kingdom has opened itself up to you massively.
Creating units? Amassing an army? Launching your loyal minions from within places like a hut, a hospital, and even a warehouse? The game throws a lot at you right off the bat, trusting that you’ll find your way. And find your way you shall, but you’ll do so in good comfort with some help from our guide on x beginners tips for Makai Kingdom: Reclaimed and Rebound.
Focus on a Few Units Early On
In the early going, the enemies in Makai Kingdom won’t be terribly numerous. The game sort of assumes players aren’t going to spend hours upon hours creating a sizable army. There’s a maximum deployment of eight units, as you’ll note, but even that much is pushing it. Better to shoot for four or five, and experiment with a larger selection a couple of chapters into the game, once you’ve unlocked more content.
You might be thinking, “that’s all well and good, but I’ll be in fantastic shape for whatever comes my way if I neglect this advice and train a ton of units right off the bat.” Nah, not really. Leveling up takes time, and you’re already going to be looking at redoing a few early fights a dozen or more times if you want to give your gang of Zetta’s chosen misfits a nice leg up on the competition. Increase the number you’re attempting to train at this stage, and you run the very real risk of burning out on the game entirely.
Bonus Stat Distribution
From the moment Zetta instructs you to create your first unit, you’re going to notice that the character creation process concludes by having you place three extra stat points wherever you’d like. This is a great perk that not only helps you to define your team to your personal taste early on but also lets you crank your stats up incredibly during endgame and especially postgame since reincarnating a unit lets you go through the process all over again. (With a higher number of extra stat points, at that.)
In the beginning, your unit choices are Apprentice, Witch/Wizard, Healer, Pickpocket, and Junk Trader. Apprentice is your warrior-like class route, so consider putting those bonus points into Attack.
Witches/Wizards(the female and male counterparts are statistically identical) will benefit most from an uptick in Intelligence, while Healers will do their job best with more Resistance. Lastly, Pickpockets and Junk Traders should go with Tech.
A word on those elemental bars, by the way: ignore them until later. Basically, each of the three main elements — Fire, Ice, and Wind — will range between -100 percent and +100 percent. You’ll likely never see something so exact; most of the time, a unit’s spread will look something like +30 percent, -80 percent, and +50 percent. In this example, the unit is a bit strong to Fire, terribly weak to Ice, and amply strong to Wind.
After a bunch of reincarnations have improved your other starting stats, feel free to fiddle around with these as well, but that comes much, much later.
Happy Dungeons Are One-Time Affairs
If you don’t know ahead of time that Makai Kingdom’s so-called Happy Dungeons are only accessible once per playthrough, you may become sad instead. (Look, we aren't paid per joke here.) These dungeons, few and fleeting, are treasure troves of high-quality items. Bring plenty of open armor slots to maximize your loot, but most importantly, don’t tackle one until you’re well and truly ready.
There’s no one-size-fits-all way to know when you’re ready, so don’t take that too literally. What we mean is, if you’re half-asleep in the middle of the night feasting on some leftover chicken, go replay a story stage instead. Tackle the Happy Dungeons when you’re bright-eyed, so you don’t miss some of the game’s best treasures. And one final word of warning: make sure there are enemies left on the map while you're scouring for baubles, and disregard Zetta inevitably mentioning that you're "done." You're only done when your slaves say you are, Overlord.
Killing Your Units for Fun and Profit
It may sound rude — okay, it’s terribly rude — but you can kill your own units to maximize the amount of mana that your preferred party has in stock. Considering characters can be created from just about every item in the game, you could feasibly feed your party an endless amount of mana so that wishes can be made with alarming ease and speed.
You can, but maybe you shouldn’t. Not just because offing defenseless people who have come to Lord Zetta’s aid is a wicked thing to do, but also because if you do this to more than 49 units in a single playthrough, the ending you receive will be marked as one of the “bad” ones. We won’t spoil it, except to say that karma has a way of catching up with even the most badass freakin’ overlords around.
On the other hand, if you’ve already obtained the good ending, and you’re aiming to see the rest? May Laharl have mercy on these poor souls in your possession.
Enemies With Invite Signs Are Not Your Friends
If there is one question we’ve seen asked time and again, it’s how to invite your enemies to join your ranks. We wondered this as well at first, and not for no reason. On some maps, one or more foes will have a big “Invite” sign above their heads. Given that “Invite” is the command used to send your own lads and lasses out to battle, and heck, considering the very definition of the word, it’s easy to assume this means you’ve encountered recruitable characters.
And wouldn’t that be cool? But it’s flatly untrue, and you can find yourself in hot water learning that the hard way. The sign, in fact, counts down every turn until at last more enemies pop up on the map. Yes, indeed; these blokes weren’t open to peaceful dialogue. They were slowly but surely summoning additional units for you to dispatch or die trying.
So yes, do prioritize getting to them. But don’t ask them for tea and crumpets. Bludgeon them.
Careful With Those Keys
Most maps include initially invisible additional zones that come into focus once either an enemy or item marked ‘Key’ is destroyed. It’s tempting to get those extra areas out immediately, but the more you do this, the harder your life is going to be. That’s not to say refrain indefinitely; you’ll, uh, never beat the game unless you do. But timing is critical.
Whenever possible, take things slowly. Defeat that ‘Key’ target, then move into the new zone and handle whatever awaits you. But don’t go killing every ‘Key’ all at once. Unlocking every zone in short order means fending off mayhem from multiple sides. Your units will be trapped. In tougher stages, it can get ugly.