Secret of Mana Review

MY CHILDHOOD, MAN! Or at least one part
of it.

Just by looking at the screenshot above I can recall several things happening to me during my eighth year of life: I was about to start 2nd Grade, the childhood friend of mine (who is still friends with me today) would spend the night with me or I with him, and we'd rush into our bedroom just to play this game, and that's about all I can remember happening in 2nd Grade and it's all I care to remember, because you're not here to listen to me reminisce about the past, you're here to read up on my review of Secret of Mana, see what ol' Jestan has to say about it.

Well, while it's mostly good things to say, and this is a game that I have to go back and play at least once a year now, it seems like, it got me to thinking that maybe nostalgia has blinded me to some of the problems the game has? Well, let's find out.

There's no overworld travel in Secret of Mana,
instead the player travels through the game's
countrysides.

Secret of Mana was the first, I do mean the VERY FIRST Action Role-Playing Game (Action RPG from here on in this review) that I ever played, period. Remember, as someone who came from poor parents who themselves came from poor parents, I didn't have a lot of money. Even worse, where I live even today, there's not an awful lot to do outside, and so my Aunt gave me her copy of Secret of Mana. Originally, I hated the game, but over time it's become my favorite Super Nintendo game of all time. Not my favorite game overall, but my favorite game on the Super Nintendo. Anyway, the gameplay. For a Japanese RPG, this game was unique in that, instead of by traveling on an overworld map like most other JRPGs at the time, you instead traveled through the countrysides of the game's world. Now, you might think that this makes the game worse, but not really. It allowed for Square to make these beautiful landscapes that they just wouldn't be able to create, or for the player to see, by using the standard method of traveling on an overworld map. It really helps you to feel that you're actually traveling in the game's world and not just on a fantasy map. Of course, this means that for you to actually feel like you're in the game's world, the monsters are also roaming in these countrysides, visible to you, and they will come and attack you. This means that there's no need to load up a seperate map for the battle. This was unique at the time, and the only other games that I could think of that did something similar to the same travel map as the battle map would be games like The 7th Saga, Final Fantasy Adventure, and Seiken Densetsu 3. Okay there were others, but they were games like Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master, and Chrono Trigger. Whatever. Now, I like this. However, fighting in this game still works in a somewhat similar fashion to the Final Fantasy games in that whenever you make an attack, your characters have a cooldown timer where their attacks won't do full damage until it reaches 100% again, meaning that it still has a bit of a turn-based feel to it. So the easiest way to do it is to still play the game like an Action RPG version of Final Fantasy. Run up, attack the monster, run away until your cooldown time reaches 100%, and then rinse and repeat.

The Weapon Proficiency table...

 Something else that I really liked about Secret of Mana was the Weapon/Magic proficiency system. Yep, in this game, you didn't just gain experience points, you also had a certain level of skill with weapons and the elements of Mana, and the more you fought with weapons, or the more times you summoned a particular Element of Mana, then your characters would get better with that weapon or Element. When a character gained a skill level with a weapon, then they would learn a new special attack for that weapon which, shock of all shocks, in stronger than the standard attack. The problem is, is that you can easily clear out an entire room full of mooks with regular attacks faster than you can with the special attacks because the special attacks require you to charge them up, and it takes a while to do so, as well. I'm not saying that they aren't useful, it's just that they're slower, but hey, you have to keep power like that in check, right? It'd go to the players' heads, otherwise!

...and the Magic Proficiency table!

You then also have a Magic Proficiency table which, just like the Weapon Proficiency table, shows how skilled a character is with magic. Only Primm (the girl) and the Popoi (the sprite) have access to this table, as Randi (the boy) is too stupid to know how to use magic, but then again, Randi doesn't need it as he's physically the strongest of the three characters. This brings up something else that differentiate the characters from each other. Since Randi is physically the strongest of the bunch and can't use magic, he makes up for this by being able to master weapons the fastest. Primm is the healer of the group and uses healing magic and she's also the most well-rounded of the three, meaning that she hits harder with weapons than Popoi does, but not as hard as Randi. She also won't master weapons as fast as Randi does, but she'll master them faster than Popoi will, and Popoi is the group's mage, in that his strength comes from damaging enemies with magic rather than weapons. However, this means that physically, he's the weakest of the bunch, but what he lacks in physical strength, he'll more than make up for in magical strength, as he's going to be the one downing a lot of your enemies later on in the game. However, to make up for this, he'll also master weapons slowest of all three characters. Again, balance is everything.

Your characters sleeping at an inn.

This is just a minor point, but I love how the developers took the time to show the characters in the game sleeping in the inn. Most other games, even today, don't seem to do that, and even if they do, Secret of Mana was the first game that I ever saw do that. There's no point in this, I just think that's a really cool thing to show.









The music of Secret of Mana was composed by Hiroki Kikuta, and instead of having someone else create the music samples for the instruments used (or rather, imitated through a synthesizer) he decided to create his own music samples, leading to one of the SNES' (Super Nintendo Entertainment System) greatest soundtracks ever! The music runs the gamut from really cheerful to really moody, from Rock to Pop, and everything in between. There's some music in the game that I'm personally not a fan of, but it still fits the game and the mood that it's trying to convey at the time.

As for graphics... well, for a Super Nintendo game, they're very decent. You can tell what everything is, it's bright and colorful, and it really helps giving off something cheerful instead of something that would likely depress you, which is something I'm seeing more and more of these days in video games, it seems.

Now, as I've covered everything else, it's story time.

According to the opening scroll of the game, darkness is coming because Mana's power is fading, and the swords spoken of through the legends that mankind has created, all of those swords, including Excalibur, Kusanagi, Masamune, all of them speak to just one sword: the Sword of Mana.

Before the story starts, you gotta input your name, first.

After you've watched the opening scroll to see just what it is you're getting into, you get thrown into the game's main menu, where you have a slew of options, so much so that only two of them are available: New Game and Continue. If you're just starting the game for the first time, then you'll be forced to choose New Game, where you must input a name for Randi. Afterwards, you see an opening cutscene that shows the backstory of the game, and then you get to see the World Map in Mode 7, and after that, you get to see Randi and two other village boys goofing off somewhere they shouldn't be. They begin talking about how a ghost is around and that the Elder of the village told them to stay well-enough way, but of course, they just had to go exploring. Randi, of course, being the clumsy little oaf that he is, falls off the log they were walking on, and falls into a shallow stream just below, where he finds a sword imbedded in a rock. Getting the sword, as he needs it to chop down some bushes blocking the path back to his village, he discovers that a rabite is in the forest and it attacks him.

Blaming the rail-roaded player character.

Back at the ranch, it doesn't take too long for everyone to get royally pissed at Randi, because that sword he found in the rock in the stream? Turns out that it's none other than the legendary Mana Sword, and it's been protecting Potos Village from disaster for who-knows how long, and Elliott starts beating the crap out of Randi, telling him to GTFO the village, pronto. Randi asks him to stop, but he doesn't, and then an earthquake hits and Randi and Elliott fall into the pit, and inside the pit is a Mantis Ant, the first boss of the game. Now, this boss is painfully easy because you simply can't die. Even if you do die, you just get revived and the fight continues until you win. Needless to say, the game won't always be this forgiving, but just this once, the dev team has some mercy on the player, probably because of how long the opening is. Anyway, after beating the Mantis Ant, Randi is told that he's too young to wield the Mana Sword and that something must have happened to the sword, but Randi is told to come to the Water Palace if he wants answers. The man gives his name as Jema and leaves. In the Elder's house, Randi is told that monsters are attacking the village because he removed the Sword of Mana from it's resting place and that they're in danger as long as he's there, and so he is banished from the only place he's ever been able to call home. Left with little choice, he sets off to fulfill his destiny as the Mana Knight.

Primm has daddy issues.

Needless to say, Randi meets some traveling companions along the way, which would be Primm and Popi. Now, Popoi will always be met in the exact same way every single playthrough, but the game has some leeway when it comes to recruiting Primm. You can get captured by goblins and have Primm save you and then meet her in Pandora, or you can rescue her from Werewolves in the Haunted Forest. Either way you slice it, you'll have to recruit both Primm and Popoi eventually, and the way in which you do it is totally up to the player.

Secret of Mana is still a fantastic game, and it's one I easily recommend that you play. It does, however, have it's problems. For starters, only about 60-67% of the game is here, because Squaresoft was planning on releasing for the SNES Play Station add-on, but when that fell through, they were pressured into just releasing it on a standard SNES cartridge, meaning that a lot of the game had to be cut or reworked to fit on a Super Nintendo Cartridge. Now, though I have read stuff that says this, I can't back it up, but a lot of Secret of Mana's unused content went into the creation of another Squaresoft game, Chrono Trigger, maybe you've heard of it? Another problem I have is the game's pathfinding system for the AI party members. They'll get stuck on everything, and I do mean everything, even things you didn't know the AI could get stuck on, one of which can actually force the player to reset near the very beginning of the game! Thankfully it's rare to happen, but be careful, especially if you haven't saved in a while. I also don't like how long it takes to grind weapon and magic skill levels later on in the game, but that's really just a minor nitpick.

If you want Secret of Mana, well, there's plenty of ways of playing it. You can track down the SNES original cartridge if you have a working Super Nintendo Entertainment System and you have the money for it, or you can go out and purchase a SNES Classic (good luck finding one of those, eh!?) You can also purchase a port on your iOS or Android devices, or purchase it in 3D for PS4, PS Vita, or Steam. I'd say go with the 3D remake. It's very close to the original game, several bugs are fixed, voice acting was added, and the pathfinding system was also fixed. It was also fixed on the iOS and Android ports, but those have crappier control schemes, although I do think controller support was added for the iOS port, but you should avoid the Android port, as it has a very serious game-breaking bug for Undine's magic, which renders the game unplayable. Apart from the Android port, any one of these versions are fine.

I give Secret of Mana a 9.0/10. Go out and play it at least once before you die!!!

This review, including all text and screenshots, are copyright by Jestan Diams™. Secret of Mana belongs to Square Enix. Jestan Diams, Jestan Diams Magical Tome of Games, and any other original characters are © and ™ of Jestan Diams. All Rights Reserved.