Adventures of Mana is a remake of the first game in the Mana series, titles Final Fantasy Adventure (which was on the Game Boy). Interestingly, it was remade in 3D for iOS, Android and PlayStation Vita, making the Vita version the only version of this game available on a non-smartphone device. It’s an extremely faithful remake of the original game, right down to the separate scenes that has a short sliding transition animation as you go to the next one. The graphics are solid, relying more on the aesthetics rather than as a graphical powerhouse, it’s actually really reminiscent of the Final Fantasy III remake, and works well enough here.
The best part about the Vita version compared to the smartphone versions are the physical buttons. You can still play using the touchscreen but thankfully, Square Enix has mapped all the controls to the physical buttons and they work great. You use the analogue stick to move, X to attack, square to pull up the Ring Menu, triangle for the system menu and Circle to use the equipped item or spell. Furthermore, there are three additional shortcuts that you hold down either shoulder button and a face button, so you don’t have to constantly equip and unequip your most used items. There is a bar at the bottom of the screen that slowly recharges. Once it gets full, you can unleash a special attack that’s unique to each weapon type. You can also block using a shield, but it’s automatically by not moving and facing the attack so it can be clumsy to use.
Unfortunately, it’s such a faithful remake that the game lacks a tutorial and throws you straight into the game to explore and figure out yourself like many games of that era. At least it’s a simple enough game to figure out the basic combat system which just relies on one button to attack, and you quickly learn that you are hurt by either you running into a monster, or a monster running into you (except for bosses, enemies have no attack animation). Perhaps more annoying is the tendency that if you run through screens, the enemies load just a tad bit after you enter, so you’ll end up running into an enemy and taking damage, which can feel unfair.
Back in the day, the game touted the Ring Menu, which is basically a menu in the shape of a ring. Intuitive and ingenious during the era that had relied more on menus using lists, but nothing spectacular in this day and age, and actually a bit confusing to use at first. It can be clunky browsing and selecting the items you have, especially when equipping or selling them. There’s a limit to the number of items you can hold, and several key items required for progression have limited uses, so you’ll either need to find or buy it again if you are unlucky enough to have exhausted that item and require it to keep going.
As mentioned earlier, the game lacks a tutorial, and it lacks any sort of objective marker. You’re left to figure out where to go, which can be a bit frustrating when all you have a vague “go to the east” or something like that. It gets harder and harder to know where you’re supposed to go as you progress the game. There is a simple map that uncovers as you enter each area, and has a grid layout since the game has a grid layout reminiscent of the NES and SNES Zelda games. Playing this top down action game with such basic controls really feels like a 2D Zelda game but has enough of its own quirks and features to not feel like a cheap imitator.
The story is simple, as you’d expect of a game on the Game Boy from so long ago. While you can name the protagonist anything you like, his default name is Sumo. He was a gladiator and managed to escape. A chance encounter with Fuji later, they travel together until she is suddenly snatched away. The setting of mana is revealed, and then basically, Sumo travels around chasing and trying to rescue Fuji. If you know where to go, it is fairly fast paced, but the trouble is, you’re more likely to not know and the game’s pacing dramatically stalls as a result.
While Sumo usually travels on his own, there are guest party members that join. They’re controlled by AI and are basically useless since they rarely attack and more often than not, misses when they do. The game is easy in the beginning since enemies aren’t too aggressive and don’t swarm you. Most enemies usually deal damage by running into Sumo, while some have projectile weapons. Even the early bosses feel too passive. By the halfway point, the challenge increases but is not unmanageable since by this point, you should have become familiar with the battle system.
One of the most annoying traits of the game is that while you can put items in the shortcut, you cannot put weapons there. Therefore, you’ll constantly go into the menu to swap weapons, so that you will have one that can remove trees or grapple to another area. It’s clunky and breaks up the flow. This gets worse when the game spawns monsters that each are immune to a different weapon, and to top it off, have an environmental obstacle that requires yet a different weapon to clear. Constantly going to the menu to swap weapons starts to get on your nerves at that point.
As per usual, Sumo will gain experience points by defeating monsters. Upon gaining enough and levelling up, you get to pick a specialisation. Each of the four will put stats into different parameters, so you can end up building a character that suits your own playstyle. Coupled with how fast you can level up, and this is quite addictive. There are some minor flaws in the game’s presentation though. The game likes to freeze for a split second when going between environments or transitioning into cutscenes. Since the rest of the game runs so well, this sticks out.
Despite the simplistic story, there is enough of it that it keeps the game chugging along quite well. You also end up growing attached to the characters to the point where you will be affected by the ending, and the fates of the characters. It helps that the music is great, and as you reminiscent about your journey to this point, you’ll realize how much fun the game actually is (when it doesn’t annoy and frustrate you with its other mechanics). Interestingly, the final boss is too easy to beat since you get a strong weapon just before it. There were several other previous bosses that were much harder.
If you know where to go, whether from a walkthrough you’re following or if you’ve played the game before, then it only takes around seven to eight hours to beat. Play through it completely blind and you’re looking at over ten hours since it is way too easy to get lost. Unfortunately, once you beat the game, there’s nothing else to do since there is no new game plus, and there’s no way to get back to where you were to continue exploring unless you have a save point. The worst part is the game doesn’t even tell you where the point of no return is, so you might not realize you cannot exit and explore the rest of the world map (not that there is much left to explore) before you’re locked into the final dungeon.
Overall, Adventures of Mana is a great remake. Don’t like the phone roots fool you, this is a well thought out remake that keeps all the gameplay mechanics untouched, while improving the graphics. Granted, there are several relics of the past that makes the game frustrating at points, such as the lack of any objective marker, too easy to get lost, and the constant and tiring trudging through the menus to change weapons in order to defeat enemies or pass through certain obstacles. However, the good outweighs the bad and this game reminds you of the simple soul and charm that games of that generation had.
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