Okay, so I've been playing some Magicoal recently, and here are a few things I've found.
First, I also got stuck in the burning village early in the game for a while. The solution is that you have to use the key, which should be in one of your characters' inventories, as an item. It will unlock the door of that one intact building in town and allow you to proceed. Put the key into a characters' active inventory and use it on the door. Remember that you can switch between characters via the top button in the pause menu that "character select" thing at the game start is kind of pointless.
More importantly, I'm having issues with the Memory Base 128. Magicoal is supposedly designed to be MB128-compatible, and it's on the MB128 compatibility list, but unless I'm missing something, MB128 support is in fact completely broken. With both my (real) copy of the game on my TG16+CD (w/Super System Card) or an ISO of the game in Ootake, after the MB128 is plugged in/enabled in Ootake's menu, the game goes into MB128 mode, but always fails to actually load games. You can now copy Magicoal files between the system and MB128, though not other games' files -- this doesn't have a full memory manager as far as I can see. However, with the MB128 plugged in, you can only load from the MB128, not the system. This is an issue when files you load from the MB128 don't work! After hitting the button to load, the screen goes black and stays that way; need to turn off the power to get out of this, since the usual Run+Select to reboot shortcut doesn't work in Magicoal. This is really annoying -- few enough games support the MB128 directly as it is, and it's so incredibly convenient versus copying around blocks of backup memory data from the MB128 or Tennokoe Bank that I would at least want it to work in the few games it supports. Bah!
Third, the magic... okay, so you have various spells. Your two characters each can cast a different selection of magic, and you'll get more during the game. Simple enough. But sometimes I can't use some spells, and I don't know why! Is there some magic meter I can't see (or recognize) which determines when I can use spells? Because like, why could I use the fire shield for some time but not the magic-ball shot? I don't get it at all. If there's some kind of meter, it should actually make it clear where it is. I think some kinds of item fixed this, but I'm not sure why. I imagine the language barrier is the biggest problem here, but it is unclear, there's nothing I could see that clearly states why the magic wasn't working...
And last, your partner's AI is TERRIBLE! Basically, both characters are on screen at all times, but unless you're playing the game two player co-op (recommended if you can), you've got to rely on the AI to control the character you're not controlling at the moment. You can switch characters in the menu, but one is always AI.... and they're USELESS. Basically the AI will stand around and fire at the monsters, without taking in to consideration things like "walls" or "trees" that could be in the way. They will also sometimes stand there firing at the wall, keeping you from going around to attack an enemy, because the screen has to keep both players visible at all times. You could switch back and forth to force them to move forward, but that's awkward (you switch in the menu, not with a button, after all) and annoying. Even slightly better partner AI would have been great, not because this game is hard -- the beginning, at least, is pretty easy -- but because the partner is a problem sometimes.
Despite these problems, though, I do like the game so far; it's okay to good, I would say. The game really has fantastic graphics; this is one of the better-looking games I've seen on the system, for sure. There's almost no animation in cutscenes, but ingame graphics look really nice. The game also has a somewhat unique balance between adventure and action elements -- don't play Magicoal expecting it to just be all fighting like Secret of Mana or something, it isn't. You spend time wandering around towns trying to save people (can get items or magic if successful), talking to people to progress the story, etc. There are also some basic puzzle elements I've already seen, such as that bit with the key I mention at the top of this post. This is a fairly simple game, but it is fun. Of course the adventure elements would be better if I actually knew much Japanese, but still, it's alright; the combat in this game is fairly simple anyway, so I don't mind the breaks.
