A game that is constantly called one of the best games ever made, Secret of Mana is an RPG for the SNES developed by Square Enix, the makers of the Final Fantasy series and Super Mario RPG. Having sold over 1.5 million copies and developing a large fanbase, Square decided to extend the game into a full series. Thus, Sword of Mana, Legend of Mana, Children of Mana, and more were developed. Sadly, none of these games have even come close to reaching Secret of Mana's quality, and much like the Sonic or Crash series, this franchise appears to be under a "curse".
Passion for the
original game still marched on, however, and it has recently been released
on the Wii's Virtual Console. I downloaded it, feeling the need to try
out a non-Mario RPG for once. Let me tell you, I do not regret it. Anything
but that.
Storyline: 9/10
In a small town called Potos Village, a shining object was seen falling from the sky. 3 of the village's boys go to find it; namely Eliot, Timothy, and the main character who you name yourself, who I will refer to as "the Hero". Upon crossing a log bridge over a waterfall, the Hero falls down it, but lands on the ground alive and with no notable injuries. Trying to find his way back to Potos, he hears a voice calling for him to pull the nearby sword out of its pedestal. When he does, a ghost appears and reveals himself as the one who was calling. A brilliant ray of light then emanates from the sword, and the Hero takes it with him to help him get back to the village.
When he gets there and shows the sword to some of the higher authorities, this whole thing becomes an extremely dire affair. It is identified as the Mana Sword, a blade spoken of in an old legend...
Using the power of Mana, a civilization grew into one of the most powerful ever known. This power was used to create a devastating lair called the Mana Fortress. The gods were displeased with the creation of this entity and sent monstrous beasts to destroy the fortress. A war broke out because of this, and Mana seemed to vanish. But just before all chances were lost, a hero was able to destroy the Mana Fortress using the Mana Sword. With the fortress destroyed, the world returned to its normal state of peace.
By pulling this Mana Sword from its pedestal, monsters were released upon the world and the only suitable punishment was to ban this Hero from Potos Village. However, a great knight named Jema goes on a separate yet intertwined quest along with the Hero. The objective is to reforge the now-rusted sword by finding the Mana Seeds sealed in palaces around the world. But that is not the only problem he faces... At the same time, an Empire is also seeking the Mana Seeds for a much darker deed - to revive the Mana Fortress and use its power to terrorize the world like the civilization so many centuries ago did.
It's an RPG, what
do you expect? You can almost always expect any sort of RPG to have a deep
story. A few points were taken off, however, for the rather disappointing
ending of the game, which was too uneventful to really catch my interest.
Gameplay: 9.2/10
This here's a real-time RPG, it plays quite a lot like a 2D Zelda game, just with more role-playing elements like HP and Magic. On the overworld, you control the Hero around the map while using weapons and armor of your choice to defeat enemies and bosses. It's really quite like a typical RPG, and we've all played at least 1. The really great thing here is that, while there are some more diverse features, they don't interrupt the core gameplay too severely.
This quest is too big for one hero. You have to resort to your 2 ragtag groupies to help you battle through whatever threats will face you. These allies are a Sprite and a Girl, both of which you name just like you did the Hero. These two function quite similarly to the main hero, as they can use weapons, armor, and items. The big difference, however, is that in a point in the game they will gain magical powers. The Sprite gets offensive battle magic to devastate opponents, and the Girl gets gentle healing magic to assist the others in battle. I'll cover this magic in-depth soon, but I've got more to say about the allies. Most of the time, these allies are controlled by the AI, which, unfortunately can be a little slow. To mostly make up for this AI is the Action Grid command. When accessed from the menu, there's a checkerboard-like screen with "Guard" on the right side, "Attack" on the left side, "Keep Away" on the bottom, and "Approach" on the top. You can set the character on the checkerboard near the commands you want the AI to perform more often, so you can switch whether you want to play it safe or get aggressive. It is an impressive feature, if I say so myself, but it gets a bit tedious having to switch commands to fit select opponents, even though it sometimes isn't worth the time. And by the way, did I mention there's a co-op mode?
Let's talk about these magics now. See, in various points of the game, you will encounter Elementals that will give you their magic to use. Each Elemental has 3 spells for the Sprite and the Girl. These spells can be used on enemies or allies to cause damage, inflict status effects, or heal. You'll find magic comes in very handy, especially during boss fights to take them down easily. But you can't use magic infinitely, of course, because you only have so many Magic Points. The maximum amount you have will increase the more you train your magic. Magic can commonly be very good for fending off enemies, but if they're resistant to the spell, you could find yourself doing very low amounts of damage. Weaknesses and strengths can get confusing, but stick to your typical spells once you see what they works on and you should be fine.
There's not a wide variety of INDIVIDUAL weapons in this game. The weapons you get consist of a Sword, a Spear, an Axe, a Whip, a Javelin, and other things. Of course, after the time when you get these weapons, they can grow too weak for your character's level, so you gotta forge 'em to raise their power. Forging weapons requires the help of Watts, a dwarven blacksmith who appears in just about every town or village in the game. For a price, he can upgrade one of your weapons. Beforehand, however, you must have collected a Power Orb for the specific weapon to have it upgraded. These Power Orbs are mostly dropped by bosses, but they can be found in random treasure chests, and the final few in the game can come as rare drops from enemies. It's good that Square made weapon forgery a lot less frustrating by making Watts appear in every town, so you don't have to travel all the way back to he city he came from.
The controls here are a bit weary by default, with the GameCube Controller OR the Classic Controller. I didn't have the patience to get used to these controls, so it's pleasing to see there's a control editor in this game. With it, you can assign buttons various commands including dashing, attacking, your menu, and your allies' menus. Do whatever you feel comfortable with- Oh, and by the way, in this game the controls generally work better with the Classic Controller. It seems a lot of SNES games work better with it...
For such an acclaimed
masterpiece of a game, to my surprise, this game is actually pretty buggy.
And not the fun kind of buggy either, these bugs CAN interrupt your playtime
and progress. The most notable and annoying of these bugs takes a toll
on the battle system. If an enemy happens to pin you against a wall and
attacks continuously, you don't have much hope of escaping a long, painful
slew of attacks. Yeah, you can use your allies to distract the enemy and
help you out, but I don't care much, it's gotten me in to a bunch of tight
situations against some of the tougher non-boss enemies. Others bugs can
include getting stuck inside walls, graphical errors, command response
failure... They don't get in the way as much as I've probably been implying,
but still beware of these possibly-threatening bugs. They’re definitely
a problem.
Graphics: 8.5/10
Hmm... Well they're not graphics that we haven't seen before in Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or Chrono Trigger. I'm not insulting it for that, it really looks very pretty, but it's not the most unique graphical style I've seen. It’s properly shaded and well-detailed, and has nice-looking special effects, but I could ask a little more from the frame rate. Some characters and enemies have a very small amount of sprites, only the basic ones like idle, walking, magic-casting, attacking, etc. For some simple-looking character you can't blame the creators much, but a better range of faster-moving sprites wouldn't hurt.
And you know,
the bugs don't just hurt the gameplay, they hurt the graphics as well.
Graphical errors can occur quite frequently. The best example of this is
that occasionally certain parts of a character's body can get masked behind
the background.
Music and Sound Effects: 9.2/10
There are some genres of games that you can just instantly expect to have a great soundtrack, and RPGs are likely the most prominent of that bunch. Secret of Mana's... oh, where can I start? It's very atmospheric. Just about every piece of music, it fits RIGHT in to the atmosphere. The palace theme is atmospheric enough, but let's take into consideration when you enter a palace that's been invaded. There plays a dark, very-appropriately-paced tuned that's also one of my favorites in the game. The music that plays mostly in the area between Potos Village, the Kingdom of Pandora, and the Water Temple as well as some other places, sounds a little tense for such a peaceful area and I can’t say it sets a fitting mood.
Yes, yes, well
let's get to tunes that aren't just atmospheric, but are ones that I just
love. And pow, the boss theme pops into my mind. It starts out pretty typical
and exciting, but there's a certain part at the end where it gets to be
to epic that it’s fairly difficult to put into words. You'll know it when
you hear it. The Mana Fortress; when you finally reach that forbidden place,
don't expect a creepy and epic theme. While you might have preferred that,
I personally was quite pleased with its catchy, semi-techno theme. If for
some reason you don't want to get this game, at least do yourself a favor
and look up Secret of Mana's music and take a listen.
Characters and Bestiary: 8.2/10
(NOTE: Due to my inability to write well for the Controls section, it has been merged with the Gameplay section though with not as much mention as before. Henceforth, Characters and Bestiary will most likely replace the Controls section in most Reviews.)
An important touch to this section would be to make the main characters likeable. Indeed, Square succeeded at that. The dignified Hero, the aggressive Sprite, the sassy Girl, there wasn't any point where I thought lowly of them, minus their sometimes annoying AIs. Unlike some main RPG characters, these guys actually both talk AND have personality. Of course, there are not just major protagonists, but antagonists as well. Thanatos, the main villain of the game, is also a good character, mostly acting devious and heartless, but occasionally showing his sense of humor. I also have to praise the character Neko, quite possibly my favorite in the game. This purple feline merchant will travel to many places to offer you supplies and a save. Not only is he helpful, but well-designed and just cool.
But here's where it kicks off, at the Bestiary. The range of enemies and bosses is quite wide. The enemies... well, there are quite a few very common ones through the first part of the game, including Rabites, the Mana equivalent of Goombas that are found all over the place; Mushbooms, some living, walking fungi capable of numerous pollen blasts; and Drops, which are little blobs of goo that come in blue, red, green, and gray, each with a different amount of power. They get more diverse than that, but it's about time I move on to the bosses. What may be my favorites species in the game is the "Gigas" family. These creatures are dwarven giants with something of a hunchback, and are associated with various elements. I don't know why I like them so much, they just look really cool, or maybe it's just biased because of the awesome boss music.
In the first half
of the game, the enemy possibilities just seem endless, now don't they?
Yeah, but as you get farther you'll be seeing more and more enemies that
are just palette swaps. Rabites become Silktails, Mushbooms become Mushglooms,
Red Ninjas become Dark Stalkers, etc. It's actually not as big of a problem
as you might think; in fact, it's sometimes kinda nice to see these familiar
faces again. But honestly, who wouldn't have preferred a completely original,
recolor-less roster? Or maybe just a FEW recolors...Because really, Gigases
ARE awesome.
Length and Difficulty: 8.7/10
When buying this game, I was concerned that I might have a really hard time trying to complete it. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, a game in the same genre and system, had recently given me an extremely difficult and very tedious experience, so I was worried Secret of Mana would be like this and the game would be just about ruined. What a relief it was to see that the game is longer than it is hard, and there were only a few parts that involved high amounts of dying. The game's long enough to offer many hours of gameplay, but easy enough to avoid excessive tooth-gritting.
A few of the boss
battles were really a challenge for me, though. In many cases, it was due
to the battle system, which was worsened by the bugginess of the game.
Physical attacks that pin you against a wall and assure a large loss of
HP are one thing, but let's go to magic here. Sometimes the bosses’ magical
attacks aren't much of a problem, but other times, it's unbelievable how
much they can spam their magic. A certain boss I remember can cast an Earth
Slide on me, causing me to fall to the ground. Before I could even get
up, he cast another Earth Slide. And when I was just about to get up, he
cast a Fire Bouquet. This drove me to a point of frustration where I just
had Sprite cast all the magic he could use. If the boss spams their magic,
spam back. Just... try to know what their weaknesses are.
Replay Value: 7.3/10
Okay, I was a little disappointed here, especially for an RPG. Upon beating the game, there aren't that many sidequests for you to do. Actually, there are a fair amount, but they do usually lack entertainment and rewards. I'll name what I can...
The sidequest I've spent the most time on is forging all your weaponry to its best. Though you probably would have upgraded them almost fully while playing the game, most will still have a level or 2 to go before maximum power. Most of these last orbs are all hidden way up in the Mana Fortress. That place is home to some exclusive enemies, many of which contain the Energy Orbs needed to forge their respective weapons. These Orbs are uncommon, sometimes very rare drops from enemies. Each enemy has a certain Orb that you may get from defeating them, but it'll take dozens of kills to get them, sometimes even hundreds. While entertaining for a while, you may start to lose motivation as you go along, or defeat many enemies for an Orb without success. It's an excellent feeling of satisfaction when you finally get an Orb, but I do think they should have hidden them around the whole map, not just as drops from enemies, either.
The other... well,
it's really not much of a sidequest, but you might squeeze some fun out
of leveling up your characters to the max. This is easier than it sounds;
I did it whilst trying to complete the Orbs sidequest. The thing is, once
you max out, there's not much of a reason to fight if you can't get any
better. Of course, you can still level up your magics, but this is even
more tedious and I can only recommend it to the most patient of gamers.
Fun Factor!: 9/10
Ohhh, what a game, what a game! I had a ton of fun playing through this, beginning to end, even with the occasional lapses. Being a real-time RPG, you won't have to go through those long, turn-based battles, and it still maintains that RPG feel. Though I've been tempted before, don't quit playing just because of a scene you can't seem to get through. No matter how many tries it may take, it's worth it to play the game from beginning to end.
The only complaints
I have, I've already said in the 2 previous sections. The buggy battle
system can be a pain, and the game gets sort of dull after you beat it.
But it's all about the main quest, right? And you'll... just have to find
some way to fight back those bugs. It's not like there won't be a few negative
memories associated with the game, but it's totally worth it.
Overall: 95/100
Look past the annoying bugs and the lack of amusing sidequests and you're gonna find a gorgeous gem of a game. As far as SNES games go... it's not quite Super Mario World or Yoshi's Island, but it's about in the same league as Super Mario RPG. 800 Wii Points is a small price to pay for excellence, your investment will be worth every penny. Allow me to make this clear for you, this game is a must-have. All the times it's gotten any spot on a Top 100 Games list, I can agree that it deserved it, as it is one of the best games I've ever played. If Pikmin 2 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time didn't exist, this would be a very strong contender for my favorite non-Mario game. Just give the game time, all right? Great!
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