Ouch: Dawn of Mana review

[Kupek]

http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=31 ... ec=REVIEWS

[Eric]

I'm honestly a little surprised.

But after reading various reviews it sounds like they tried to make a Kingdom Hearts 2 Clone, in a Secret of Mana setting, and failed miserabley.

[Julius Seeker]

Poor development team. Though Brownie Brown (who has the two core Seiken Densetsu trilogy developers) is working on Heroes of Mana, that one should be at least decent.

[M'k'n'zy]

I played it import. It made me very sad. Very very sad. From what I hear it bombed in Japan as well.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Poor development team.

The same dude's been directing Seiken Densetsu games since the first.

At this point, I'm certain Secret of Mana was a fluke.

[Julius Seeker]

Poor development team.

The same dude's been directing Seiken Densetsu games since the first.

At this point, I'm certain Secret of Mana was a fluke.

Ah, I didn't know that Iishi was directing the game. I couldn't find any mention of Dawn of Mana under his profiles, but plenty about Heroes of Mana coming out later this summer.

Anyway, my favourite of the series was Final Fantasy Adventure. Though I still feel the series overall is a shadow in comparison to Enix's Soul Blazer, Terranigma, and Illusion of Gaia. I actually found Secret of Mana to be a very boring game except when played multiplayer; I find this is the same issue with all Mana games with the exception of Final Fantasy Adventure and Sword of Mana (but Sword of Mana isn't nearly as good as it should have been).

[bovine]

how do these games keep coming out? Let alone out of Japan..... On a "possibly better game" note; did anyone pick up odin sphere?

[Manshoon]

The last Mana game I played was Legend of Mana, and the only good thing about that game was the soundtrack. Sad to see Squeenix drive a franchise into the ground like that, but I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise given how cheap it is to crank those games out.

[Julius Seeker]

Well, I will admit, Children of Mana is a lot of fun when played multiplayer. That is the only way it is fun though.

[Julius Seeker]

By the way, Dawn of Mana sold 9.5K units on its first week of release here in North America, placing 35th on the weekly charts, not good at all.

[Don]

Legend of Mana could have been a decent game if the entire game just contained the jeweled guys arc (I forgot what they are called, Jumis?) and the Dragon arc.

[Julius Seeker]

Well I think the Mana games have been decent, not anything special. Sword of Mana was dissapointing, but a good enough game for me to play through.

[Nev]

None of them have had any heart since the first one.

[SineSwiper]

I heard SD3 was good. Import only for the SNES, though. It was the game after Secret of Mana.

Why don't they make multiplayer games like that any more? Secret of Evermore was a good game, but it really could have had a multiplayer option. If they can't do it with this series, at least try another series to experiment with the multiplayer options in RPGs.

[Julius Seeker]

I heard SD3 was good. Import only for the SNES, though. It was the game after Secret of Mana.

Why don't they make multiplayer games like that any more? Secret of Evermore was a good game, but it really could have had a multiplayer option. If they can't do it with this series, at least try another series to experiment with the multiplayer options in RPGs.

I like Seiken Densetsu 1 still, but Seiken Densetsu 2 (Secret of Mana) I found to be hardly playable when I went back to it a few years ago before Sword of Mana came out; it has so many things wrong with it. Soul Blazer, Terranigma, and Illusion of Gaia I still like as much as ever, Secret of Evermore...... The medieval area is a lot of fun still, but the rest of the game (for the most part) just doesn't seem interesting to me anymore; I played through it a few years ago as well.

Sword of Mana, it was a remake of Seiken Densetsu 1, they pumped in a lot of new story to thicken the existing story, and improved considerably on the graphics and music quality. Though playing it back to back with Seiken Densetsu 1, I for one like the original experience better:
Magic wasn't as fun in Sword of Mana (it was just an improved version of Secret of Mana's terrible system), the story read like a fanfic based on the original game, and it just didn't feel like as grand of an adventure (even though I am sure it is about 50% to twice the length of the original). Sword of Mana: it is one of those games that if you are looking for a solid game, you have it, but if you are expecting a lot, you'll be dissapointed and yet still play through the whole thing (maybe twice).

Children of Mana is a relatively interesting game, but only if you know other people who actually have the title (I only know two others myself). It isn't at all like any other Adventure game I have ever played. I don't recommend it.

[SineSwiper]

Magic was overpowered in Secret of Mana, but you had to take the time to level it up. Evermore fixed that problem with reagents: you still could power up your magic, but it cost money to do so. I think because of that, they upped the potential of magic, so that you didn't need to go to level 9 to get good power out of your spell.

It depends on your style of play. If you're the kind of person that would stop to level-build for a bit, it was pretty fun. If you rushed through the game, yeah, magic was really going to suck, but so does your weapons. (Part of the fun of the weapons was switching to all the different ones when one weapon was built up.)

[Zeus]

I heard SD3 was good. Import only for the SNES, though. It was the game after Secret of Mana.

Why don't they make multiplayer games like that any more? Secret of Evermore was a good game, but it really could have had a multiplayer option. If they can't do it with this series, at least try another series to experiment with the multiplayer options in RPGs.

I have the translated ROM if you want it. It was one of the bigger ROM projects for a while

[Don]

I played SD3 and it is pretty much same old same old. It certainly wasn't as good as Terranigma though that's perhaps an unfair comparison.

Magic was easy to level in Secret of Mana offensively because once you get MP Absorb you can basically cast forever anywhere. The hard one to level is the defensive stuff but then you really don't need much beyond having Cure Water on a reasonable level.

As for Secret of Evermore, I don't think I ever used magic in that game besides reviving the dog since the dog is much stronger than the main character so it renders what you do mostly irrelevant.

[SineSwiper]

Magic was easy to level in Secret of Mana offensively because once you get MP Absorb you can basically cast forever anywhere. The hard one to level is the defensive stuff but then you really don't need much beyond having Cure Water on a reasonable level.

That was a late-level spell, though. I think it was more of a neccesary thing because the higher the spell level, the more you needed to cast it to level it up (100 times for level 9). So, getting that spell allowed you to level-up magic as you played through the game (just like the weapons).

As for Secret of Evermore, I don't think I ever used magic in that game besides reviving the dog since the dog is much stronger than the main character so it renders what you do mostly irrelevant.

The dog was only more powerful on the last part of the game. In the other three parts, he helped out, but the main character was the damage dealer (especially with some of the magics), and usually who you control most of the time.