Secret of Mana is, hands down, my favorite game of all time. Jank and all.
I played this game when it first came out. I was born in '89, and this came out in '93, so I was really young when I played with my brothers and dad. So there are some nostalgia goggles, but the prescription lenses are thin.
I hear a lot of people say that the story is very generic, but most of these people are saying this after playing it for the first time 15+ years after release. So I think some of these people may have seen this type of story enough times that it's gotten tiring. Which I get. But when I played it? It wasn't generic to me at all. It was actually quite different from the stories I was used to hearing at that point in my life. Namely a hero defeats big baddie and saves the princess. Compared to that (and my tiny brain) this was a grand adventure! Not just a specific country, but the entire world! SoM's story involves an accidental hero teaming up with two unlikely partners initially in it for selfish reasons, but then they slowly realize the bigger picture. They travel around, deal with an evil empire and a few other hooligans, and try to stop the revival of an ancient weapon and save the Mana Tree. Again, when I first played it this type of story was new to me. That said, looking at it now it's still fine as it is. It's not as bad or boring as people make it sound, but I do get where they come from. There is a re-translation patch that fleshes out, and puts back in some dialogue that was lost in translation if that helps. Which I think it does. Normally I would tell people to play vanilla, but I think this patch will make your experience much more enjoyable.
Gameplay wise this was familiar yet different. It's a fast-paced action RPG that plays like Zelda, but with a bit of turn-based mechanics. The idea is if you attack with your weapon, you attack at full strength. Once you do, a little counter will quickly go up from 0%-100%. You can still attack as much as you want, but if you don't let it get to 100% then your attacks will be weaker. This encourages a get in, get out type of approach in some fights, but can also leave you open to attack from the enemy. Avoiding attacks are pretty easy, minus magic (which I'll discuss later). It's not a painful wait for that % to fill up. It's about a second or two. Some people really don't like it, but it's really not as bad as they make it sound. I get what the developers were trying to do, and I think they succeeded. It's even in the sequel, though the wait time is significantly shortened to the point of barely being noticeable. Which is interesting since the sequel's gameplay is arguably slower than SoM, but more on that on my eventual ToM review. For those of you who really don't want to deal with the %, there is a patch that removes it and re-balances the combat, but I feel it makes the game way too easy. Try vanilla first, but the option is there.
I also think this was the first game to introduce the radial menu? The menu is great and simple, but it does sometimes slow down combat when you need to swap weapons, or use an item/spell.
The music and the graphics are amazing! I mean it when I say that back in the day, this was the most colorful game I ever played. I am fairly certain this is the game that sparked my creativity and lead me down the path of an artist/animator. The art for this game is gorgeous, but the MUSIC?! The music is fucking BUMPIN! Every song absolutely fits each setting and scenario perfectly. Highly recommend listening to some of the music if you have not. Meridian Dance, What The Forest Taught Me, A Bell is Tolling, Fear of the Heavens, and The Oracle are some of my favorites.
As an adult learning about what this game could have been like on the SNES Disk System, and how much they had to cut to make it fit on an SNES cart gives me an even deeper appreciation for how well this game turned out.
Right! All the positives out of the way, I'll get into the jank. Again, I love this game even with the jank, but it wouldn't be fair if I don't at least mention them.
Magic is broken. Once you unlock magic, bosses are significantly easier. So long as you have walnuts, you can basically just win every boss fight without much effort. And if you level up your magic to 8, you can unlock even stronger version of the spells you have. It's fun to use those level 8 spells and completely DESTROY everything in your path, but it's broken. There is a patch that re-balances the magic to make it less broken, which I do recommend. But I would still say play vanilla just to experience it.
Stunlocking can happen. Be it by you, or by the enemies. It doesn't happen often, but it can happen and it. Fucking. SUCKS. It mostly happens from the quicker enemies, but you can also get ganged up on. There's suppose to be invincibility frames when you're knocked down, but...they don't work. Again, it doesn't happen OFTEN, but it does happen and it can be frustrating. I personally see it as a challenge, and find it satisfying to come back stronger and then stunlock THEM. Still, stunlocking sucks.
Weapons and Magic have a level up system that looks like it's simple and to the point: Every monster you kill with your weapon, and every time you use a certain type of magic it will gain points and eventually level up. Every time you temper your weapons, or touch a mana seed, you have the option to level each up a bit further. However it starts getting complicated. From level 0, every monster you kill with a weapon is worth 9 points. Your weapon levels up once you get 100 points. Now that weapon is level 1 every monster is now worth 8 points, and so on as you level up. Weapons are arguably quicker to level up, but if you think you can level up every weapon to level 9...you'll find you can't. You can TEMPER your weapons to 9, but you can't level all your weapons to 9. There is more to the system than I know of, and when I looked into it...it's a headache. So pick your favorite weapons, and level those up and you'll be fine.
All your magic, however, can level up to the max. You gain spirits as you progress, and each spirit gives you access to 3 spells. The points work the same way, but it is directed towards the spirit not the individual spells. So using any spell under Undine will level up all of Undine's magic. Instead of gaining points per enemy defeated, you gain points per use. However, leveling magic is PAINFULLY slow. You have very limited MP, and you'll find yourself grinding for hours. It's my least favorite part of the gameplay.
However, you can get on just fine if you ignore all of this. It's just annoying if you're looking to 100% the game.
Finally, I want to end this review with trying to describe how this game feels. This game has a feeling that I haven't felt in any other game ever. And every time I come back to replay this gem, I feel it again. That feeling isn't nostalgia. I feel nostalgic replaying Ocarina of Time on my N64 during Christmas time, or hearing any songs from Mario RPG. This feeling? I don't know what it is. It's just this little type of magic I feel that no game has ever come close to replicating. Maybe it's the colors, maybe it's the music, maybe it's the gameplay, maybe it's the jank, maybe it's the story...or maybe it's a combination of all of them. There are loads of games that are arguably better than this, but not a one of them fills me with the sense of joy and wonder and creative energy like Secret of Mana does.
I'm sure there are some things I am missing which I'll add in if I remember, and I may try to clarify things a bit better later, but even then...this is my favorite game of all time. Thanks for reading.
I played this game when it first came out. I was born in '89, and this came out in '93, so I was really young when I played with my brothers and dad. So there are some nostalgia goggles, but the prescription lenses are thin.
I hear a lot of people say that the story is very generic, but most of these people are saying this after playing it for the first time 15+ years after release. So I think some of these people may have seen this type of story enough times that it's gotten tiring. Which I get. But when I played it? It wasn't generic to me at all. It was actually quite different from the stories I was used to hearing at that point in my life. Namely a hero defeats big baddie and saves the princess. Compared to that (and my tiny brain) this was a grand adventure! Not just a specific country, but the entire world! SoM's story involves an accidental hero teaming up with two unlikely partners initially in it for selfish reasons, but then they slowly realize the bigger picture. They travel around, deal with an evil empire and a few other hooligans, and try to stop the revival of an ancient weapon and save the Mana Tree. Again, when I first played it this type of story was new to me. That said, looking at it now it's still fine as it is. It's not as bad or boring as people make it sound, but I do get where they come from. There is a re-translation patch that fleshes out, and puts back in some dialogue that was lost in translation if that helps. Which I think it does. Normally I would tell people to play vanilla, but I think this patch will make your experience much more enjoyable.
Gameplay wise this was familiar yet different. It's a fast-paced action RPG that plays like Zelda, but with a bit of turn-based mechanics. The idea is if you attack with your weapon, you attack at full strength. Once you do, a little counter will quickly go up from 0%-100%. You can still attack as much as you want, but if you don't let it get to 100% then your attacks will be weaker. This encourages a get in, get out type of approach in some fights, but can also leave you open to attack from the enemy. Avoiding attacks are pretty easy, minus magic (which I'll discuss later). It's not a painful wait for that % to fill up. It's about a second or two. Some people really don't like it, but it's really not as bad as they make it sound. I get what the developers were trying to do, and I think they succeeded. It's even in the sequel, though the wait time is significantly shortened to the point of barely being noticeable. Which is interesting since the sequel's gameplay is arguably slower than SoM, but more on that on my eventual ToM review. For those of you who really don't want to deal with the %, there is a patch that removes it and re-balances the combat, but I feel it makes the game way too easy. Try vanilla first, but the option is there.
I also think this was the first game to introduce the radial menu? The menu is great and simple, but it does sometimes slow down combat when you need to swap weapons, or use an item/spell.
The music and the graphics are amazing! I mean it when I say that back in the day, this was the most colorful game I ever played. I am fairly certain this is the game that sparked my creativity and lead me down the path of an artist/animator. The art for this game is gorgeous, but the MUSIC?! The music is fucking BUMPIN! Every song absolutely fits each setting and scenario perfectly. Highly recommend listening to some of the music if you have not. Meridian Dance, What The Forest Taught Me, A Bell is Tolling, Fear of the Heavens, and The Oracle are some of my favorites.
As an adult learning about what this game could have been like on the SNES Disk System, and how much they had to cut to make it fit on an SNES cart gives me an even deeper appreciation for how well this game turned out.
Right! All the positives out of the way, I'll get into the jank. Again, I love this game even with the jank, but it wouldn't be fair if I don't at least mention them.
Magic is broken. Once you unlock magic, bosses are significantly easier. So long as you have walnuts, you can basically just win every boss fight without much effort. And if you level up your magic to 8, you can unlock even stronger version of the spells you have. It's fun to use those level 8 spells and completely DESTROY everything in your path, but it's broken. There is a patch that re-balances the magic to make it less broken, which I do recommend. But I would still say play vanilla just to experience it.
Stunlocking can happen. Be it by you, or by the enemies. It doesn't happen often, but it can happen and it. Fucking. SUCKS. It mostly happens from the quicker enemies, but you can also get ganged up on. There's suppose to be invincibility frames when you're knocked down, but...they don't work. Again, it doesn't happen OFTEN, but it does happen and it can be frustrating. I personally see it as a challenge, and find it satisfying to come back stronger and then stunlock THEM. Still, stunlocking sucks.
Weapons and Magic have a level up system that looks like it's simple and to the point: Every monster you kill with your weapon, and every time you use a certain type of magic it will gain points and eventually level up. Every time you temper your weapons, or touch a mana seed, you have the option to level each up a bit further. However it starts getting complicated. From level 0, every monster you kill with a weapon is worth 9 points. Your weapon levels up once you get 100 points. Now that weapon is level 1 every monster is now worth 8 points, and so on as you level up. Weapons are arguably quicker to level up, but if you think you can level up every weapon to level 9...you'll find you can't. You can TEMPER your weapons to 9, but you can't level all your weapons to 9. There is more to the system than I know of, and when I looked into it...it's a headache. So pick your favorite weapons, and level those up and you'll be fine.
All your magic, however, can level up to the max. You gain spirits as you progress, and each spirit gives you access to 3 spells. The points work the same way, but it is directed towards the spirit not the individual spells. So using any spell under Undine will level up all of Undine's magic. Instead of gaining points per enemy defeated, you gain points per use. However, leveling magic is PAINFULLY slow. You have very limited MP, and you'll find yourself grinding for hours. It's my least favorite part of the gameplay.
However, you can get on just fine if you ignore all of this. It's just annoying if you're looking to 100% the game.
Finally, I want to end this review with trying to describe how this game feels. This game has a feeling that I haven't felt in any other game ever. And every time I come back to replay this gem, I feel it again. That feeling isn't nostalgia. I feel nostalgic replaying Ocarina of Time on my N64 during Christmas time, or hearing any songs from Mario RPG. This feeling? I don't know what it is. It's just this little type of magic I feel that no game has ever come close to replicating. Maybe it's the colors, maybe it's the music, maybe it's the gameplay, maybe it's the jank, maybe it's the story...or maybe it's a combination of all of them. There are loads of games that are arguably better than this, but not a one of them fills me with the sense of joy and wonder and creative energy like Secret of Mana does.
I'm sure there are some things I am missing which I'll add in if I remember, and I may try to clarify things a bit better later, but even then...this is my favorite game of all time. Thanks for reading.