Secret of Mana Review:

Secret of Mana is the second game in the Seiken Densetsu series.

Unlike other RPG's of the time, it was an active-time RPG, that

had real time battles.

This game was revolutionary, and while yes other games did have

real-time battles, none were like this at all. However, one thing

not a lot of them had (at least from what I can remember) this

game had a 3 character party, no big deal right?

WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This game can be played by you, and two of your friends at the

same time, on the same cartridge!

Yep, you heard me correct You need the game, three controllers and

one of the SNES multitap devices and you and two other people can

play the game at the same time. Each person controlling a

character, and each character (and person) able to do whatever

they want to, when they want to. You want to use an item while

they heal or Vice versa? Go right ahead!

That was one of the best things about this game, and for some

stupid reason, not a lot of games have done this.

The story of the game is, (you are a boy living in this village)

you are out playing like you do any other day. Next thing you

know, you hear a voice coming from a waterfall, and notice that

there's a sword in a rock there. You decide what could possibly

happen?

By the way, that's the worse thing to ever say, trust me! Karma

will run you ovah!!!!!!!!!!

Once you do this though, you have since awakened monsters, that

are ravaging different places, and in doing so have you hated by

the village that you would live in for removing the sword, and

ultimately kicked out of it. Now you are on your own, but on a

mission to save the world.

I could go on, but I'd rather not spoil anything in case people

have yet to play, see or let alone hear about this game.

I said before that there are three characters, and each of them

have their abilities and flair to them. You have the boy, a

warrior class, able to learn lots of different weapons.

There is the girl (who I call the white magic class) she is

useful for healing and defense. Then sprite, who uses black

magic, damaging magic onto foes.

You can play by yourself, and have the AI take control of the

other two characters. however you are really missing out on a lot

of fun when you don't have people to play this game with you.

The "menu" system really reminds me of how Dishonored has their

weapon/magic wheel menu. I love the whole circle menu in my

opinion, I find that it's faster and easier since you can really

move around in the wheel, vs a traditional menu.

Each magic and each weapon have a skill level attached to them,

the higher the skill, the better the item(s) magic spell(s)

For weapons, you can charge up a powerful attack, however please

keep in mind, that for each level that you can charge your attack,

it takes longer to charge it up. So a level 1 charge is nothing,

but a level 5, 6, y, etc. will take longer and leave your

vulnerable to an open attack.

The graphics in the game, while not as good as other games, feels

more inviting then the rest, it's something you hardly see

anymore, sans Ni No Kuni. I guess that doesn't surprise me, and

shouldn't surprise you, since some of Secret of mana's graphics

looks like they were (at least to me) hand drawn/painted. Which,

even if it wasn't and given the illusion of that, makes it really

more inviting to play a game like this. It makes me want to play a

game like that more since it shows how much they care, not only

about their games, but about their consumers as well.

The sounds and music fits the style of the game, but the sound

effects could have been a bit better. First things first, the

music describes the game perfectly, it really melds well with the locales that you are in, when you hear the music.

The sound effects on the other hand, while not bad, are not great either. They are in a sort of happy medium. Some of the sound effects get repetitively, and I really don't know why they didn't take a little bit more time to work on he sound effects, especially since it's on the SNES and there were many games with better effects.

In the end, this game deserves all the credit that it gets and more. Well it should get more since I believe it was translated in a little bit more than a month, and they did a great job in doing so.

I highly recommend this game to people who want to enjoy a nice adventure with either nobody, or with up to two of your friends.

I give this game a 9.8 out of 10

I really feel that the sound effects, being so limited and that there are quite a few dry spots in the story (ones that I won't spoil for you :P) hurt this game from a perfect score.