Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 consists of three separate adventures, all of which star young magician Arle Nadja. Billed as a "Magical Voice Role Playing Game", Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 combines diverse, colorful monster design with a then-unusual amount of voice work. The game is also notable for a near-complete lack of numerical stats, instead portraying health, damage, and magic capacity using text cues and Arle's face portrait.

Madō Monogatari is a three-chapter first-person RPG that chronicles the adventures of the young apprentice sorceress Arle Nadja with all three chapters made as independent games but released under a single package. The first game starts as the little Arle attempts to graduate from her magic school by conquering the evil Satan tower. The second game jumps forward in time to a 16-year old Arle, now an accomplished magician, who must escape a dungeon and defeat those that imprisoned her. The third and final game in the package faces Arle off against an evil sorceress that aims to avenge the deeds Arle did on Satan tower back in the first game. She must now escape a dungeon and defeat the evil minotaur that has been sent to destroy her. All three games share the same engine and gameplay mechanics, playing as first-person RPGs in which your main view is composed of a 2.5D view of the dungeons you are trapped in, and the rest of the interface is used to give graphic feedback to the player instead of relying on stats and numbers (for instance, a picture of Arle serves as the means of telling how damaged she is, and a group of gems that encircle the screen show how closer you are to advancing a level). Combat is turn-based and involves selecting and casting spells to obliterate the many baddies in the dungeon. There's also a fair amount of puzzle solving and plenty of NPCs to run across in each dungeon, all being characters from the Puyo Puyo series.