The Shrine

In the past 5-10 years, Square has really pumped out a lot of Mana games out there, but my experience with some of them has been that they kinda sucked. Which ones out there were good?

None of the Above.

Sword of Mana is worth a play of those ones, but I prefer Final Fantasy Adventure. The entire Mana series can be described as flashy graphics and weak gameplay. Though I really did like Final Fantasy Adventure. Any Mana game is vastly improved with multiplayer.

None of the above here too.

Haven't played any. Never will.

There is no "none of the above" option......this is a poll, not an political election, you need to give us a chance for all options ;-)

Haven't played any Mana games...probably never will. Very few games made by Square outside of the Final Fantasy series have ever impressed me.

EsquE wrote:Haven't played any Mana games...probably never will. Very few games made by Square outside of the Final Fantasy series have ever impressed me.

Sorry, EsquE, I think you made a mistake there. You probably meant to say "....outside of the FF and Chrono series'..." :-)

The original Kingdom Hearts was a game that tried SO hard to make me hate it but I couldn't. The ridiculously re-spawning enemies and STUPID camera irritated the fuck out of me but everything else about the game was spectacular for the 8 or so hours I put into it. Super Mario RPG was a Square game all the way and it ruled. Einhander was a fun shooter.

I gotta take a look at their SNES and PSX releases again to see what they did. I know there was a cuople of others like Vagrant Story and the original Parasite Eve which were pretty solid.

Hence the "very few"...and with all the games Square has put out, the Chrono and Kingdom Hearts games would be very few.

Parasite Eve was decent. Vagrant Story is one of my favorite games ever, but I have a hard time not seeing that as a Quest game, along with FFTactics.

Xenogears is my favourite Square title outside of the Final Fantasy series, followed VERY closely by Vagrant Story and Chrono Trigger. Final Fantasy Legend 2 is one I have not played in a very long time, it used to be my favourite from Square until Final Fantasy III (SNES).

Zeus wrote:

EsquE wrote:Haven't played any Mana games...probably never will. Very few games made by Square outside of the Final Fantasy series have ever impressed me.

Sorry, EsquE, I think you made a mistake there. You probably meant to say "....outside of the FF and Chrono series'..." :-)

The original Kingdom Hearts was a game that tried SO hard to make me hate it but I couldn't. The ridiculously re-spawning enemies and STUPID camera irritated the fuck out of me but everything else about the game was spectacular for the 8 or so hours I put into it. Super Mario RPG was a Square game all the way and it ruled. Einhander was a fun shooter.

I gotta take a look at their SNES and PSX releases again to see what they did. I know there was a cuople of others like Vagrant Story and the original Parasite Eve which were pretty solid.

Yeah, I personally loved the first Kingdom Hearts, as rididculous as it was. Pity KH2 had to REALLY gay it up.

RentCavalier wrote:
Yeah, I personally loved the first Kingdom Hearts, as rididculous as it was. Pity KH2 had to REALLY gay it up.

Can't be too hard to gay up KH.

No Secret of Mana? Fuck man...

And yea yea, "Modern" mana game. But still, those all sucked.

None of the above.

I never liked Secret of Mana much. It had nice graphics, but I found the gameplay shallow, broken, and boring. Multiplayer was fun though; but that is true of all the Mana games. As a single player game, I actually found Secret of Evermore to be MUCH more fun than Secret of Mana; but the Soul Blazer trilogy demolished it.

Dutch wrote:I never liked Secret of Mana much. It had nice graphics, but I found the gameplay shallow, broken, and boring. Multiplayer was fun though; but that is true of all the Mana games. As a single player game, I actually found Secret of Evermore to be MUCH more fun than Secret of Mana; but the Soul Blazer trilogy demolished it.

Another epic fail, Seeker. SoM had excellent gameplay, especially if you managed to get 3 players playing it at once. The weapons it had some neat effects, and it was fun building them up. Also had some awesome music to it.

Though, I can't disagree that SoE wasn't a really good game, but I put SoM higher than that, and so does most gamers.

that whip.... I loved the whip in secret of mana.

Yeah, and all of them had strengths and weaknesses. For example, the whip had a great range, but it didn't work well extremely close up. The sword was just a good all-around weapon. The bow was cool, but you had to know how to aim it right. The spear just kicked all kinds of ass.

I feel Secret of Mana is one of these games where having a great soundtrack made the game seem better than it really was, but then it's not like SoM should be sorry for having one of the better composers out there. The ending in particular, is basically very dumb if you write it out in words ("Mana Beast turns into snow, and Sprite leaves forever"), but the game's music and presentation turn it into quite a good ending. Another good example would be when the Mana Tree gets blown away... again a very stupid scene if written out ("The hero found out his mom was the Mana Tree and she got blown up by the Mana Fortress"), but the game managed to present it as convincing.

I think the difficulty of SoM holds back the gameplay, though, as it is either trivial or impossible. As long as you use magic the only way to lose is if you get knocked out in one hit or you get hit by some continously incapaciating attack (Stone Saber from Master Ninjas come to mind, which can kill you at level 99 with all the best equipment in the game). Switching axe/whip around for environmental hazards gets annoying after a while.

I think Secret of Mana is a game to remember that presentation is more important than substance. Even if your underlying story is worthless/nonexistent, it's okay as long as you can present it in a good way.

Very true Don. SoM's soundtrack really helped set the mood at times for happiness/sadness, etc.

Actually, now that I can think about it, Secret of Mana is probably one of the greatest game in terms of presentation. The music is clearly excellent, and even the usual filler music sounds lively and have a purpose. When I go through the soundtrack I can usually tell you what happened at every one of the track, despite the fact that the game really doesn't have a memorable plot. If you look at the ending sequence, starting from the time you just defeat Thantos, the 3 tracks played from there up to the confrontation with the Mana Beast could all be considered as 'major event' worthy, and yet it goes through 2 of them in literally the spam of 1 minute.

It is the only game besides Chrono Trigger I can think of where major game elements are synchronized to music. In CT, Magus's theme begins exactly when he says, "Give me your best shot, if you are prepared for the void!" Of course this is because his speech has a fixed speed that you cannot speed up or slow down. Well if you look at the 3 tracks that comprise the final battle, assuming you've a normal reading speed, the climax of each track coincides with something important in the plot. The Mana Beast appears in the center of the screen at exactly when the battle music hits in the climax, and it always comes with a Wall Level 8, which is clearly the game's best showoff spell. Why does a being that is absolutely imprevious to spells need to cast Wall? Because Wall is the game's prettiest spell, and it shows off the splendor of the Mana Beast in its full glory. The game doesn't even pretend that this is supposed to be a fight that's trying to beat you. It just wants you to see the best it has to show off.

Or just look at Mana Beast's attack pattern. The first time you only see a fireball. The second time you can tell it is clearly a White Dragon. The third time, you get to see the Mana Beast in its full grandeur in the center of your screen, and that says a lot louder than any of the game's attempt to portray this struggle. Sure, the game mentioned about how the Mana Beast is only trying to save the world, and that it sucks the good guys got to kill it to prevent it from accidentally destroying humanity. But really that's your standard 'bad guys have family too' sob story that is way overused. And indeed Secret of Mana doesn't really dwell on the sob story, but rather creates the conflict via its presentation. Honestly the Mana Beast looks more good than your party of 3 random guys. In death, the Mana Beast merely turns into snow instead of your usual mega super duper explosion of doom. Again, this highlights the fact that what you did was a regrettable decision that must be done to save the planet. Terranigma is the only other game I can think of where a game is able to achieve this and make you question what you did is right without explicitly going: "Psst, maybe this is wrong!"

SineSwiper wrote:

Dutch wrote:I never liked Secret of Mana much. It had nice graphics, but I found the gameplay shallow, broken, and boring. Multiplayer was fun though; but that is true of all the Mana games. As a single player game, I actually found Secret of Evermore to be MUCH more fun than Secret of Mana; but the Soul Blazer trilogy demolished it.

Another epic fail, Seeker. SoM had excellent gameplay, especially if you managed to get 3 players playing it at once. The weapons it had some neat effects, and it was fun building them up. Also had some awesome music to it.

Actually the failure here is your ability to distinguish between single player and co-op play: if you managed to get three players at once then it would hardly be an annoying single player experience. It would be a good multiplayer experience as I said.

Single player had allies getting stuck all over the place, and many attacks didn't register or registered far too late. The charge/attack system felt broken, particularly because it wasn't registering 95% of the hits made on the high end attacks. The magic system also completely broke the game balance; you can essentially walk through anything and everything you want; and recovery is a trivial matter (unlike other games in the genre).

I also never denied that the music and game art for Secret of Mana were fantastic; I also really liked a lot of the settings. I just could not get by the unpolished and broken gameplay concepts.

Black Lotus wrote:

RentCavalier wrote:
Yeah, I personally loved the first Kingdom Hearts, as rididculous as it was. Pity KH2 had to REALLY gay it up.

Can't be too hard to gay up KH.

Yeah, I have to agree with that. I loved KH1 and KH2. The "gaying up" didn't really bother me. haha

I've never had a problem with the charge system unless you completely whiffed on a charged level 8 attack, but it's not like the enemies move around fast enough for this to happen on a regular basis.

Don Wang wrote:I've never had a problem with the charge system unless you completely whiffed on a charged level 8 attack, but it's not like the enemies move around fast enough for this to happen on a regular basis.

The only enemies where it is actually useful (bosses) are the enemies you won't be able to hit anyway (magic essentially effortlessly destroys anything though). My issue is that on a charge attack, out of what looks like 30-40 hits in the combo, only a few will actually hit at most.

Only 1 hit connects on any charged attack, even the level 8 ones that looks like you should've hit them 20 times. Most of the animation frames don't actually hurt the enemy. The only notable exception is the level 6s where you swing your weapon in a wide circle.

Yeah, usually if you get one hit in, they get the full effect. And yeah, I agree that the difficulty was kinda unbalanced with magic (which SoE fixed), but you kinda had to build up your magic to get that far. (I think the game expected you to just play the game and use magic as normal, instead of level build.)

For the record, SoE and SoM are not related.

In story, no. In gameplay, yes.

SoE gameplay becomes 'hide behind the dog' toward the end though.

Don Wang wrote:SoE gameplay becomes 'hide behind the dog' toward the end though.

SoE had a great soundtrack though. I genuinely enjoyed the game.

I just liked the big mana tree, if was very pretty.

RentCavalier wrote:SoE had a great soundtrack though. I genuinely enjoyed the game.

Oddly enough, I consider it to be Jeremy Soule's best work, even though it was his first. Lately, he does soundtracks that resemble movie scores; just not my tastes.