Heroes of Mana

"Another epic failure for Square Enix...."

As many of you know, ever since Squaresoft made the monumental blunder of making the horrific film, Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, hey had been doing poorly, this folly got them bought out by a company by the name of, you guessed it, Enix.

I personally have gotten down to my last hope for Square. This game nearly takes the cake. Way to ruin the greatest RPG company Enix!

Anyway, moving on to the review...

Gameplay: 4/10

In all honesty, when I heard that Heroes of Mana was gonna be an RTS/RPG, I was borderline ready to crap myself. But 4 days ago, as I joyfully unwrapped my new game from is plastic coating, this, is where it all happened. I've tried almost TOO hard to like this game, mainly because of the denial that I could've used that 40$ for something more useful, such as wiping my butt. The entire game consists of repetitive, monotonous battles, in which you have to gather resources, treant berries, and gaia rocks, both serve their own individual purpose. The objective is, have your lame characters build little stations inside your base, which can create units for fighting/gathering resources, this is basically meaningless. considering it takes about 2 seconds to build your army, and once it is, you just have to send them off and watch them kick every thing's ass. Once this is done, you send them off to battle as they lay waste to the entire battlefield (ergo, WAY too easy >_>) The units are usually lame looking, and, with them, you can really do nothing more than direct them to the enemy, and watch them repeat the same attack over and over for the next 10 minutes, not only that, but if you want to move them, they have to have the "flag" icon under them, meaning, unless you can find the flag icon wherever you last placed it, you have to go searching for it before anything can go anywhere :| The worst part is, the ONLY RPG element in this game, are the most USELESS accessories in any game I've ever seen, and the customization options are so limited, it's painful, not only that, but investing that much time and effort into a battle, to get literally NO reward, is just lame.

Story: 7/10

It's an ok story, I won't spoil it for players who are silly enough to waste 40$ on it. It's similar to the old Mana stories, it has the dark ambiance surrounding it, and 2 counter-acting magical artifacts endangering the world.

Controls: 2/10

I don't think I've ever seen a more superfluous and disengaging control scheme in my life. You make use of both the stylus and the d-pad on the battlefield, and it also doesn't cater to left-handed players (I'm not one, but my friend who tried the game is)

Sound/Music: 5/10

Nothing new or special, rather mundane and overused jigs, more than battle hymns/music, one thing every good RPG needs, is good music at the very least, which can suffice for lack of sound quality in some cases.

Replay value: 1/10

If you enjoy fighting the same lame, monotonous battles time, and time again, without reward, this is your game....

WiFi: 2/10

Literally all WiFi does is connect you to a server to show you your worldwide rank on battle times.

Overall: 3/10

A game that Square Enix should have a mark of shame branded on their foreheads for. This game will eternally scar their already bad reputation.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/30/07