Sword of Mana

"The sword has rusted over..."

There was a time when I was obsessed with RPGs on the GBA. It wasn't just about collecting; it was more like a craving, a desire for the random battles, the constant leveling and the intriguing characters. I had collected every game of the genre within a few months time, picking up both new and used without my usual discretion. Then late last year, Sword of Mana was released onto my favorite handheld. After all the hype that surrounded this game, I felt no hesitation in picking it up at my first opportunity. Sadly, like with so many over-hyped RPGs on the GBA, this game a falls short of expectations.

Before I say anything bad about this game, I'll still give the game designers credit for giving their audience a darned good introduction to the story. Basically, we come to a land under siege of an evil tyranny. The ruling dictator has declared that all people of the Mana Clan are heretics, and should hunted down and chastised for their use of the almighty mana power. Thus evil tyrant has the Mana Clan in a death lock, with little or no hope of survival. Thus begins the stories of out two characters. We can either choose the boy or the girl, thus letting us experience two entwining storylines. Our hero is a young fighter who is haunted by the memory of his parents being murdered at the hands of the dictatorship. The heroine is a teenage girl searching for her long lost parents. When these two meet up, it's time to set out on their adventure in search of the Sword of Mana! Too bad that that's all you'll really understand about the story, since nothing else is explained very well through the progression of the game. Sure, there will be plenty of emotional scenes and character growth, but the details are shrouded in a haze of bad writing and confusing dialogue. But hey, at least they tried.

But once we leave the wonderful introductions, everything starts to go downhill. This game revolves around walking through various dungeons and hack n' slashing anything that crosses your path. In a fresh turn from the turn-based RPGs on the GBA, the battle system takes place in real time. All you really have to do is mash the attack button quickly and you'll perform a three hit combo. You've got a decent variety of weapons to choose from, along with various magic spells to supplement them. All of the weapons have their specific qualities and limitations, since each enemy has their own strengths and vulnerabilities. It's up to you to mix and match the different weapons and mana attacks to figure out the best method of attack.

Now, all of this is just fine and dandy, except for the fact that the controls are shoddy and the battle system has some awful hit detection. You could do as many stabs and jabs as you like, but they won't make much of a difference if they don't even hit your opponent. The same goes vice versa. Sometimes an enemy can hit you multiple times within a blink of an eye, sucking out your HP like a vampire at a blood drive. And since the controls can be pretty unreliable, you're going to have to be careful as to how you approach the battle. If you do manage to get a hang of the lacking battle system, you can spend as much time as you want maxing out your character and leveling up for as long as your patience will allow. If not for the controls and unreliable hit detection, this game would have been a walk in the park.

It's pretty evident that the game designers tried to make up for the bad battle system by implementing a sort of co-op style of gameplay. Remember, you're playing with two heroes, no one. While you're controlling one the computer AI will be following in identical pursuit. If you jump, your partner will jump. If you try to slash an enemy, so will your partner. At least, that's how it's supposed to work in theory. Unfortunately, your partner is just as unpredictable and unreliable as the battle system. Sometimes they'll hang back and try to shoot mana attacks instead of backing you up. For some reason, they can never follow close enough to you and tend to get stuck on corners or doorways. Also, they're completely inept at fighting by themselves. Most of the time you'll be reviving them from being killed by the simplest enemies. I guess you can never have too many decoys…

Also, there are a myriad of pickups strewn throughout the land. You can pick everything from health restorers to Dryad Icons to special seeds. Do any of these pickups have any prevalent impact on the progression of the game? Not really. Unless that cruddy hit detection victimizes your partner, you won't have much use for an Angel Grails or any other the other HP giving items. You can use the seeds by taking them to giant cacti that loom at the borders of the towns and get them converted into new weapon or armor upgrades. Yeah, that's right, you take some seeds to a giant cactus in order to get your new equipment. If there's anything that made sense about this game, I think the giant cactus idea pretty much killed it. There is really no need or emphasis placed on the various pickups of this game, just a strange use of the local flora.

At least this realm of the Mana Clan is presented with some effort. All of the buildings, walls, floors, and generally anything solid have a fair amount of detail and light attempt surface texture. Everything is colored with a simple pastel theme that creates a sort of fantasy world in which the game is supposed to be set. Unfortunately, the characters and enemies didn't get the same treatment. I find it a little sad that the most pronounced feature of the hero is his blond mullet. And unless you look closely at the screen, you'll think that most of the enemies are just moving blobs of color. Also, the dramatic techno music mix and the faint clinking of metal against metal make for a decent mood. Too bad that none of the characters don't have any voices whatsoever, not even the simplest battle cry. In the end, the game lacks the dynamic and realistic qualities found in other RPGs.

You know, I got this game without even knowing that it came from a lineage of a very popular game back on the SNES. I've never played Secret of Mana, but my condolences go out to those that have played it and were looking for a follow up to the supposedly classic game. Maybe if the game designers spent more time working out the little inconsistencies of this game before making an over-hyped release, maybe thing could have turned out better. Although this game has a decent story, it comes off as a flawed hack and slash RPG. Any saving grace that this game could have had is swallowed up by all of the small yet irritating problems that makes Sword of Mana a disappointment.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/26/04