The Unlikely Return of Madō Monogatari

By Marc Normandin | July 30, 2025 | 12:00pm

Video Games Features Madō Monogatari

A brand new, from-the-ground-up Madō Monogatari game was released on July 28. That hasn’t happened since the 1990s, when the Sega Saturn and developer Compile were both alive and kicking. This game was released worldwide, too, which is not a thing that’s happened since… well, it’s never happened. Madō Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy, available now on the Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, and Playstation 5, is a first in this regard.

What’s especially odd about that is how, even if you don’t know what Madō Monogatari is or have never played one, you know these characters. Have you ever played a Puyo Puyo game? Then you’re aware of the whole Madō Monogatari-verse: its characters, its weirdness, that you will sometimes see a dancing fish with visibly muscled arms and legs while you’re going about your business.

Puyo Puyo took off amid the breakout of falling block puzzle games—back when any title with blocks and clears was referred to as “Tetris-style” because we lacked the language to call it anything but that—and its success was enhanced by Sega getting involved with its developer, Compile, to turn it into an arcade game. Madō Monogatari didn’t go away at this point, but the focus would mostly be on remakes and re-imaginings of the original game, putting the series on more and more platforms, while Puyo Puyo became the focal point of Compile’s entire business plan.

Let’s talk about that business plan so we can understand why the release of Fia and the Wondrous Academy is significant. Compile had a few key points that they focused on, both broadly and specifically. They made tons of shooting games—STG, or shmups—and were highly influential in that space thanks to the likes of Zanac and the Aleste series of games. Puyo Puyo eventually became the pillar, but it was far from Compile’s only puzzle game (or its last one). Outside of retail games, Compile put a ton of energy into their Disc Station magazine, which, despite the name, included disks. These were full of demos and smaller games, things Compile was messing around with or had made, fully formed, and only released them via this subscription magazine for Japanese computers like the MSX and PC-98.

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One game, released for Disc Station Special: Christmas Edition in 1989, was known as Madō Monogatari Episode II: Carbuncle. Despite the naming convention, this was the first game in the series, and it was much larger than the games that Compile usually included in their Disc Station releases: hence the “Special” issue naming convention, and also the doubled price tag for it. People bought it and loved it despite the price hike, however, because they wanted to play this new first-person dungeon crawler, and they told Compile as much when asked. That sealed the idea of making it into a full game, which was Madō Monogatari 1-2-3, released on the MSX2 in 1990.

It was a first-person dungeon-crawler unlike the ones already out there. For one, it starred a kindergartener climbing a magical tower in order to graduate, and battles didn’t show off numbers. You had to use the facial expressions of the portrait art for your character—Arle—and the monsters she’d fight to gauge how close to losing either was. All combat was magic-based, and not all monsters were the unfriendly sort. There was a right way and a wrong way to play, and you had to figure out what the former was to progress the way you hoped. The game was successful enough for Compile to make sequels, spin-offs, and remakes for all manner of platforms of the day, each a little different than the last, to the point that the Mega Drive remake of Madō Monogatari I had combat that was a mix of real-time and turn-based, and utilized what were basically fighting game inputs for your attacks. They kept changing things, too: Madō Monogatari: Big Kindergarten Kids, released on the Super Famicom in 1996, ditched the 3D, first-person view for an overhead setup.

Even as Compile found success with Madō Monogatari, their continued shoot ‘em up development, and Puyo Puyo, they bled developers. The first major exit occurred in 1989, after Madō Monogatari was introduced via Disc Station, and led directly to the formation of Sting, which was founded by ex-Compile sound engineer Takeshi Santō. Additional waves of Compile employees would join Sting over the next few years, too, many of them involved in Madō Monogatari and Puyo Puyo, including the central figure behind Sting’s masterpiece, Baroque, Kazunari Yonemitsu. This is going to be important later on.

As more developers left—another major wave left in 1993 to form Raizing, which would go on to make their own all-timer in Battle Garegga after devs from Toaplan and more joined up—and Compile started to have more financial trouble, they focused more and more on Puyo Puyo and Disc Station games. Puyo Puyo ended up on more platforms, not just Sega ones: Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine was a Puyo Puyo game with Sega branding in North America, while the SNES received Kirby’s Avalanche. Actual Puyo Puyo games with that name would release on Japanese consoles on various systems, too… until Compile temporarily sold the series to Sega, anyway, as part of a plan to be solvent once more. As they retained use rights through 2002, the idea was that they could make money off of the sale, make more money off of Puyo Puyo games, then buy it back from Sega as had been agreed. Sega would publish various Compile games utilizing the characters of Madō Monogatari/Puyo Puyo, like the roguelike, Waku Waku Puyo Puyo Dungeon, and the isometric dungeon-crawler simply titled Madō Monogatari, both for the Sega Saturn—both of which significantly changed up the Madō Monogatari formula even more.

The problem is that Compile did not get their heads back above water in time per the agreement with Sega, however, so they were unable to buy back their most significant series as planned in 2002, and would close their doors a year later. (Meanwhile, Puyo Puyo is the sixth-best-selling franchise in Sega’s portfolio at 25 million units, behind Sonic the Hedgehog, Total War, Megami Tensei/Persona, Like a Dragon, and Football Manager.) Compile’s final game, Pochi and Nyaa, was basically an attempt to reboot Puyo Puyo in a franchise Compile owned, but their bankruptcy proceedings made finishing it impossible, and it had to be completed by a successor company, Aiky, started by Compile’s founder and creator of Puyo Puyo, Masamitsu “Moo” Niitani.

Here’s where things get complicated: Sega owned the Puyo Puyo series and the characters within that specific context, but it was D4 Enterprises—the company to which Aiky and Niitani transferred ownership of essentially everything else Compile—that had the rights to Madō Monogatari the series. D4 didn’t just sit on their compile licenses, either: they used them for various remasters in partnership with Sega over the years—remember, D4 doesn’t have the rights to the characters within the series they have the rights to!—and for their Project EGG re-releases of classic Japanese video games, and have continued to do so into the present: Madō Monogatari 1-2-3 for the MSX2 is currently available on the Nintendo Switch worldwide, even. It’s not translated into English, but it’s there!

Additional complications: Compile had already split off into companies like Sting and Raizing while they were still active, and then Aiky to finish Pochi and Nyaa, but then further splintering occurred, with many of the remnants of Compile forming the Idea Factory subsidiary, Compile Heart, which would be managed by Niitani until 2012. Before his exit, Compile Heart brokered a deal with D4 to make brand new games based on Compile series that they had the rights to. Which is how 2013’s Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God was developed. It’s a spiritual successor to the Madō Monogatari series, featuring none of the characters because Sega had the rights to them, but it did attempt to at least feel like it belonged in that universe.

A look at the reception for the game—even among people into Madō Monogatari games and Mystery Dungeon-style roguelikes and dungeon-crawlers—will tell you that it didn’t quite reach that goal. No other Sorcery Saga games were developed, which is incredible considering that Compile Heart and Idea Factory straight-up crank out RPGs and dungeon crawlers in series that don’t necessarily get a warm reception. Somewhere along the line, Compile Heart decided that the missing element was Madō Monogatari, and it needed to be replaced in two ways.

The first: a deal had already been reached with D4 to make Madō Monogatari-style games, so now an agreement was needed with Sega to use the characters that used to populate them. Next, what was needed was to bring back Compile. Well, as close as you can three-and-a-half decades after it first splintered. That’s where Sting comes back into our story: Sting and Compile Heart co-developed Madō Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy, with rights-based blessings from both D4 Enterprises and Sega. Sorcery Saga was an attempt to recapture the magic in a familiar form, in the same way that Pochi and Nyaa was for Puyo Puyo. Fia and the Wondrous Academy, though, is the real deal.

Madō Monogatari: Fia and the Wondrous Academy

It’s not a grand return to form that will forever change the nature of dungeon-crawlers and RPGs starring cute kids with an alarming affinity for magic, no. But Fia and the Wondrous Academy is a worthy successor to the Madō Monogatari name, one that takes mere seconds to let you know what it’s about: doing bits. It caught me by surprise in the first real character interaction in the game, in a way that made me laugh, and it was just kind of off to the races from there. It is not here to take itself too seriously, and neither should you. This is a game where a transforming dragon girl—who is a classmate at the academy—first tries to challenge Fia to a duel where the loser is eaten by the other one, as is the custom of her people. And then, after losing said duel and not being eaten by not-a-dragon Fia, she decides that this act of mercy was performed out of love, and will now make it her life’s quest to be married by the girl who defeated her, instead. Everyone has to deal with this from that point forward, and it’s delightful.

Fia and the Wondrous Academy is here for some solid gameplay with mechanics that are just engaging enough to keep you going, to bring you from one goofy, entertaining bit to the next. Will is dying to be a hero, which he thinks will be achieved by following a strict code, but also through yelling out some really sick names for finishing moves—there’s a joke early on where it has to be explained to a roleplaying professor that Will isn’t quite bright enough to understand the layered motivations of a nuanced antagonist. Leena is meant to be the aloof, better-than-everyone else smartypants mage of the group, but she also keeps trying to open up and claim these classmates as her true friends, only for Fia to constantly stop listening after believing she got the message that Leena wants to be left alone. The writing here is much better and more consistently entertaining than in Sorcery Saga, which suffered in the same way that too many of Compile Heart and Idea Factory’s games tend to—whether you can thank Sting’s steady hand for that, or it was simply Compile Heart rising to the occasion for this rare opportunity, is unknown. But it works.

While Fia and the Wondrous Academy plays much differently than the original, you can also say that about basically every Madō Monogatari entry, and plus, it’s 36 years later, anyway. It’s still a dungeon-crawler, and while there are—gasp—damage numbers to check out, the character portraits still make faces to let you know if they’re feeling great, terrible, or in between. You have a party with you, and you get to choose which two of the other four characters will join the titular Fia in battle, but it’s Fia doing all of the running around. And you can’t swap her out, either. She’s your Arle here, vital to the proceedings in every way.

There are familiar faces, and immediately. Carbuncle, Compile’s mascot and namesake of the very first Madō Monogatari title, is Fia’s travel companion and curry aficionado, who can also fire off a beam when he sneezes. You’ll recognize the skeletons, and your muscular fish friend (?), and many more, with plenty of wink wink nudge nudge references peppered throughout to make you wonder what other characters from a game you’ve already played before are going to show up in some way.

There’s a clear gameplay loop here, where you select a mage class and then a class class—which is either going to be a story mission or some kind of tutorial that will also grant you “Learning Points,” which are just skill points with an educational theme given the setting—and then enter into a randomized dungeon to complete whatever task it gives you is. Take classes, get stronger through battles and picking up items and opening treasure chests and completing these classes, then use the stuff you find (1) to synthesize stronger equipment, (2) as fertilizer to grow special items to help you synthesize even rarer stuff, (3) to cook curries which keep your Vitality points from falling in dungeons, and (4) upgrade your Grimoire, which is where your skill tree lives. Rinse, repeat, one class and chapter at a time.

Those Vitality points are at the center of how you’ll play: every time you do anything, you lose some Vitality, and you lose the most when you ascend to the next floor of whatever dungeon you’re in. You can find little pickups in dungeons that give you back some Vitality in the same way similar ones do your Hit Points and Magic Points, but eating curries is the real way to bring them back. You can cook them to have special abilities, too, like spicy ones that raise your strength until your body has consumed all the vitality that the curry gave you, or ones that boost your growth rates. Curries do rot over time, and those slow your rate of regaining HP, but there’s a positive that comes from rotten curry, too: they make a killer fertilizer to quickly help you earn the strongest possible items from the tree you use them on.

Run out of Vitality, and your maximum HP decreases, which will make battles difficult… assuming you play on Hard, anyway. Easy, Normal, and Hard are available from the start of Fia and the Wondrous Academy, and Easy is supposed to be a story mode. Normal forces you to consider strategies, but if you’re familiar with dungeon-crawlers and any kind of real-time combat in RPGs, you’ll be fine there, to the point that you’ll always have excess recovery items when you return from a mission, no matter how difficult. Hard is where you want to be if you’re looking to risk death, because the game does not mess around here: enemies will seize openings and take out party members, which completely changes the balance of a battle given how that system works.

The magic system is not complicated, but it is involved. There’s a turn meter, and regular attacks will pause its progress for Fia (the only character you directly control in battle). When it’s your turn, you can choose to use a powerful magic-based skill instead. Every skill utilizes elemental magic—fire, water, wind, light, or dark. It will leave a trail behind where the attack landed, and that trail includes a floating orb. Once absorbed, it’s added to a meter—fill the meter with the right orbs, and you can utilize powerful magical spells that attack all enemies at once. The party members you pick each have an affinity to one element or another—for example, Will’s fire magic is potent, while Leena leans water—so you can customize your party for the kind of foes you’re seeing in a dungeon. Monsters are also all color-coded for their elements just like your own characters are: Will is a redhead, Leena wears blue. Mixing different kinds of elemental trails together creates higher-level orbs, which allows for casting more powerful magical attacks. On Normal, you barely have to deal with any of this, but on Hard? You’re going to want to tear through bosses as quickly as possible with high-level spells, before they end you.

You need to get to the bosses in the first place, which is where that Vitality meter comes in. You don’t necessarily want to explore every square inch of a dungeon, but instead need to balance progression with exploration in order to not starve to death, or use up all of your MP healing yourself and fighting, and so on. The punishment for falling in battle is losing half of your money, which is less of a problem later in the game when you have a lot of it, but a terrible price to pay when you’re saving up for expanding your bag, which can eventually carry up to 200 items at a time—you’ll need the space as dungeons get longer and longer, and synthesis becomes more complicated.

It all comes together well once you start to get more skills and stronger spells and longer dungeons to go through, but the recommendation to play on Hard cannot be made strongly enough if you’re looking to be challenged here. The game doesn’t bare its teeth on Normal unless you’re just not paying attention or you skip fighting pretty much altogether, but Hard leaves you a mistake or two away from royally screwing up at all times, which feels right for a dungeon-crawler.

Fia and the Wondrous Academy isn’t going to win any Game of the Year Awards, but that was never the intention. It was supposed to be a return to form for a series that was almost immediately pushed from the spotlight by its more successful spin-off, and it accomplishes exactly that, far more successfully than Sorcery Saga did. It’s difficult to not assume that Sting’s presence here made all the difference, given their pedigree in their post-Compile years, but what matters the most is that all these disparate bits of ex-Compile, be they developers or the stewards of rights to their games, came together to make this one. And it worked. It’s fun, and it’s funny; what more do you need from Madō Monogatari?

Marc Normandin covers retro video games at Retro XP, which you can read for free but support through his Patreon, and can be found on Bluesky at @marcnormandin