Look at this guy! Look at him!
Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom is a game that relies so heavily upon the appeal of its main character; I'd say that it's to the detriment of the rest of the game, except that much like the main character, the game is sweet and inoffensive. Honestly, after seeing what I thought would perhaps be the first game to truly transmute the Zelda formula to HD consoles in a new and exciting way, merely having the game be "OK" kind of sucks. Because outside of getting to travel with a gigantic stone muppet for twelve hours, there's not much going on in Majin that hasn't been done in other, better games that you should probably just play (again, if need be) instead.
See, the problem isn't anything that Majin does, per se, but moreso what it doesn't do. And what it doesn't do is create an identity for itself, outside of rote "spot the influences" gameplay that's little more than a mashup of the most cursory elements of Zelda, Ico and Prince of Persia. Basically, Majin is like the videogame equivalent of the band Oasis – pleasant enough to listen to on their own merits, but failing in comparison to the Jam, to the Stone Roses, or to the Beatles, influences that they clearly wear on their sleeves.
The game begins with a Zelda-style introduction to the world of the Majin, though done in a much more accelerated fashion. Tepeu, a thief from a village that is on the verge of dying from the attacks of a "dark force," has set out into the world to attempt to contract the help of the Majin, a race of golem-esque beings who have the power to fix what's wrong in the world. One day while scouring an abandoned castle, Tepeu comes across Teotl, a Majin who has been imprisoned inside. Freeing him, Teotl feels a great sense of loyalty towards Tepeu, and the two of them set out from there, in an effort to restore Teotl's lost powers and bring order back to the land.
This introduction is well done, but there's problems. I realize the developers' wishes to make this intro different from the standard Zelda intro, but they've gone about it in all the wrong ways. That intro takes literally a minute to get through, and the game picks up right where I left off. I consider myself a bit of a Zelda scholar, and I could write entire books about why the one-to-two hour long segments at the beginning of most 3D Zelda games are as important to the gameplay as the later dungeon crawling segments are, and that's because they show the arc of a "hero's journey," and in the medium of videogames, Zelda games are perhaps the very best example of how to get a player to instantly identify with the main character and take ownership of the proceeedings without being completely overt about it. This is all glossed over in Majin, and it's made doubly bad by the inclusion of Teotl – now you have two characters that you're supposed to be developing a bond with, and the game doesn't really allow for that, at least not for a very, very long time, and only in a very superficial way.
For all of the strength of the design of Teotl, his personality isn't quite the right fit for this game. I know that it's a faux pas to criticize a game based on how you think it should be instead of based on how it is, but Teotl shouldn't be the game's equivalent of a dog; he should be a majestic, awe-inspiring force who has a real personality. Instead, we have this game's clipped, no-verb using version of Teotl. Now, I'm not against the idea of a sweet idiot in a game, per se; but here, it doesn't really seem to fit the presentation that's otherwise been put together.
As I mentioned before, the game is a mostly-seamless blend of Zelda-lite puzzle solving (lots of levers and boxes to be pushed around and catapults to be shot out of), Ico-esque buddy progression (though unlike Ico, your character is the weak one, and the AI is what you rely on – a bit of a misstep in my estimation), and Prince of Persia's combat. Definitely not PoP's acrobatics, as Tepeu is, unfortunately, a bit of a tank. Anyways, outside of the buddy mechanics, which are actually kind of cool and work well (you aim at something with the right trigger and send off Teotl to do it – though ordering him around feels a little bit heartless, actually), the game is thoroughly mediocre. Combat is a chore – too often you'll find yourself relying on Teotl to do all of the heavy lifting, because Tepeu's abilities are so meagre and uninteresting. Lots of canned animations and forced "combos," though Tepeu himself is quite weak. That's not a problem, necessarily – it's actually kind of neat that for once, the player character isn't a God. The problem, though, is that in a lot of cases, Teotl is a God, so you just rely on him to heal your character, beat up the enemies, etc. etc. It's all very thoroughly uninteractive, which is a shame.
Much more successful are the implementations of these buddy mechanics for some OK puzzles, though none of them reach the deviousness or complexity of anything from a Zelda or Metroid game. Generally it's a lot of scouting with Tepeu, using Teotl to reach higher planes, and working in tandem. It's nothing spectacular, but it's easily the best part of the game, which is a good thing, because the game is composed entirely of puzzles and combat – each area (most of which look really, really good, though the game doesn't make such a good first impression with its dour castle level right off the bat) is comprised of separate "rooms," basically, that require you to either defeat all the enemies or solve the puzzle. Besides some open areas that connect the game world, which are a really nice touch and a welcome move away from discreet "levels," you're going to be doing a lot of puzzle solving. The fact that it's generally OK to play is a good thing.
But the fact that Majin is generally "OK" is just too bad. This was an opportunity to take really great character design and put it into a context that meets that standard. Unfortunately, the developers are too beholden to their sources. Why listen to Oasis when you can listen to The Beatles, right?