Secret of Mana is a game for the SNES and is actually the second game in the Mana series. The first was released outside of Japan as Final Fantasy Adventures, while from the second game onwards, it uses the Mana title. The game is an action RPG and it has a battle system that’s actually quite similar to The Legend of Zelda, but nowhere near as versatile. You control Randi (although you can name him anything) and he initially wields a sword. The B button is used to swing his sword, and while you can button mash to make him swing the sword in quick succession, it weakens its power. To the deal the most damage, you swing once, wait for the bar to return to 100%, and then swing again. During this process, you move Randi out of the way of any attacks. Holding down the attack button will charge your attacks. As your weapon level increases (which is dependent of the number of enemies you defeating using that weapon), an extra level of charging is added. However, since it takes the same time to charge up each level, you’re better off not waiting a full minute to charge up to the eighth level and then have your attack miss anyway or have it hit the damage cap.
The menu system is confusing and is only explained in the manual. The Y button pulls up the menu, and while there is an equip sub-menu, you need to use the up / down buttons for other equipment or to use items. Then the X button is used to cycle through the other members. It’s clunky and takes a while to get used to. Once you get additional party members, they are controlled by the AI. You’re able to choose how aggressive they are and whether they will go towards enemies, allowing some degree of customization to suit your play style. There are still a lot of idiotic AI moments where they can’t navigate the turns in the path. The game is unique in that you can have up to three players playing at the same time, each controlling a party member. You can swap characters at any time with the press of a button. This is useful because if the character you’re currently controlling is stunned, you can just swap to another without waiting for the original character to snap out of it.
The enemies roam the environment and will respawn after a while. The move away from random battles that plagued so many JRPGs of the time is appreciated. Several weapons can be equipped and they have slightly different play styles as they vary in range and attack power. Defeating enemies will raise the party members’ levels as well as the weapon level. There are some initial hit detection issues so you’ll just have to get used to what works and what doesn’t. While this is the second game in the series, it is easy enough for a new player to pick up. Randi finds a sword one day and manages to pull it out. Unfortunately, this means that the village loses the sword’s protection and monsters start to attack. Randi then travels the world in order to power up the sword. The story is very light in the beginning and while it never gets that much more involved, there is more dialogue in the second half. The characters that form the party only get together due to typical JRPG flimsy reasons. Primm wants to save someone while Popoi is just along for the ride. Randi is the chosen one with the Mana Sword and he is powering it up to eventually save the world.
The game has not aged gracefully and there are a lot of elements that are annoying and frustrating in this day and age. There is a cheap early boss that will turn you off the game. Since it is in an early part, your options are limited and this boss jumps around all over the place in an already tight spot. He’ll stun you upon landing and will continually stun-lock you. As if that wasn’t enough, it can jump out of range of all your weapons and then spam magic attacks. You end up having to burn through all your health items plus more, and it is a frustrating, poorly designed mess of a boss. Using magic will mean you will have to navigate the increasingly clunky menu. One of the worst features is that magic levels up via usage, which is always tedious and never works well. However, magic is an overpowered attack as not only does it do way more damage, and way more accurately than your physical weapons, but will freeze the enemy when the magic animation is happening. You’ll end up chain casting bosses to their deaths towards the end of the game.
The problem with the hit detection was already mentioned. The other annoying combat issue happens when you get stun-locked. Every time you get hit, your character is out of action for at least a second where you cannot move. Even more annoying is when your character gets knocked away. This could very well mean you’ll be hit again just as you recover. The amount of required backtracking in the early parts of the game is tedious. You visit the same place multiple times and is made even more annoying when the paths are like a maze and the game doesn’t give you clear directions on where to go next. The second half is a lot better as you get to traverse through many different types of environments. A lot of the later enemies are also palette swaps. You’ll end up fighting each boss type at least twice.
The later “dungeons” are also small. Even though you have to go through eight palaces, it’s not as long as you would expect. The final dungeon is the biggest one and there are no save points within. You’ll need to make sure you have enough time to go through it as well as enough items and are high level enough to go through multiple bosses including the final boss. The game takes 20-30 hours to complete so it is not exactly that long for a JRPG. Overall, you can see that Secret of Mana has attempted many new things for its time, but not every element has aged that gracefully. While this can lead to frustration at many points of the game, once you get into the rhythm of things, Secret of Mana is a lot of fun, even if the story is simple.
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