Magical Dears is the newest VN by one of Navel's subordinate companies, Navel Honeybell... and to be honest, I was interested to see what they would do with it.  The VN itself is your standard slice-of-life charage based in an alternate Earth where magicians have been working behind the scenes to save the world since the dawn of civilization.  In this world, the magicians revealed themselves when they realized that intervening behind the scenes to prevent disasters had already reached its limit as a strategy, and in exchange for their activities, they asked for independent lands of their own to live, work, and train.  Unfortunately, magic society's female:male ratio is at 10000:1 by the time the story begins, so the males are kept locked up for their own safety until they can reach adulthood and be put to work doing what guys do best, lol. 

Anyway, despite this setting, this VN isn't a nukige... but it does have its problems.  It has some decent concepts, and the idea of competing in magical battles for social status and money is interesting.  However, the battles themselves are described poorly and the protagonist is made to be an overwhelmingly powerful individual... except the description of the battles makes this aspect so weak as to take all the fun out of it.  More annoyingly, Navel has repeated one of the mistakes they made with Tsuriotsu 2... cutting voices for certain characters during random scenes.  I'm on Diana's route, and during an entire chapter of it, Minazuki (one of the two imouto heroines) had her voice cut altogether. If it had been just a  few lines, I would have forgotten it soon enough, but an entire chapter in which she played a vital role, and in an important scene rather than a mere slice-of-life scene?  To be honest, this is one of those times I don't think I can comprehend just how stupid Navel can be.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this VN is that it has all the makings of a first-rate harem non-nukige with a real story... and they made the mistake of making it a mere charage and cutting lots of corners.  The second you get into a heroine route, the pacing becomes choppy, and the heroines become more and more... uninteresting.  It is hard to figure out why an experienced studio like Navel would make so many amateurish mistakes in what is obviously a high-budget VN.

Edit: Minazuki doesn't have a voice right to the end of Diana's path...

Edit2: Diana's path

For various reasons, I almost always choose the 'famous heroines' first, because their paths tend to either be the worst or the best in most VNs they come in.  Diana's path... was a bit weak.  This was simply because her characterization during the common route was generally less distinctive than the other heroines, and the fact that her lifestyle wasn't integrally linked to the protagonist's seemed to lead to difficulties in bringing her character to life.  As a result, much of the drama of her path lacks the emotional impact it should have had, leading me to feel that the path was a failure, overall.