Secret of Mana (Square 1993)

What does an exiled young boy, a girl looking for her lost love and a sprite with an attitude problem have in common? Besides being the last hope for a world losing all its mana, they are also the stars of one of the greatest SNES Role Playing Games ever, Secret of Mana. Coming from the masters at Square it should come as no surprise that this is an excellent game, yet nothing can prepare you for how good it is until you've actually played it.

Few games can grab your attention right from the start and hold it until the ending credits scroll by. Secret of Mana does this effortlessly and the ending isn't even over yet before you start thinking about how badly you want a sequel. Not that the game is short by any means it took me four days of solid playing to crack this one. It's been a while since I played a game until four in the morning and had to tear myself away before sleep deprivation did me in.

The graphics in the game are what you expect from Square and everything's of extremely high quality. Every screen is packed with the maximum amount of color and the animations are a joy to behold. There are a multitude of towns, villages, castles, dungeons and other strange locations to visit and each one has been expertly designed. Your three characters are interesting and each has a full range of animations. Likewise, enemy designs are brilliant and there are some truly excellent foes you fight. I'm not even talking about the beyond cool boss characters. Square has also jammed in some impressive Mode 7 sequences and you even get to fly around on the back of a dragon on a huge Mode 7 map view of the entire world. The last boss also makes use of this special effect for a truly memorable battle.

The music in the game is just plain awesome and there are so many cool tunes playing it's not even funny. Most of the tunes are cheerful and funny but there are also some atmospheric and moody tunes for when the serious plot changes take place. Sadly the sound effects aren't all that great and sound pretty generic with no real "bang". Still there is the occasional cool effect and overall the audio of the game is way above average.

During your huge quest you find quite a few weapons and unlike other Role Playing Games you stick with the weapons you find and upgrade them instead of buying new ones. For this though you need weapon orbs and these can only be found by beating the various bosses. This means while you might start with a standard whip it will soon be upgraded to a Chain Whip and end up as a Giglas Flail. You also have weapons like swords, axes, pole arms, bows, boomerangs and gloves. All your characters can use any of the weapons although some are more proficient with a certain weapon than others. The only armor you have to worry about is Helmets, Armor and Gauntlets.

Although your main character cannot perform magic, your other two characters can cast effect and attack spells. Along the way you'll find and receive help from elementals like Gnome, Lumina, Dryad, Shade, Salamando, Luna and Undine. Each of your magic users gets three spells from each Elemental although finding and freeing them usually involves some puzzles and bosses. Since combat is real time, two of your characters are under CPU control while you control the main character. At any time though you can switch to any of the other characters to cast a spell or use an item. This makes combat very frantic and your constantly switching between characters castling spells and healing. The really cool thing is that a second player can jump in during combat and help you out. This can help quite a lot and makes for even more entertaining gameplay provided your friend knows what they are doing.

Your characters level up in the usual RPG style by defeating enemies but your weapons also level up while fighting. While at the start you might just perform a simple one hit attack by the end you can unleash some devastating combos if you power up your weapon. This means if your character has a level eight in Swords you have to hold in your attack button till it charges up all the way to level eight and then release the button to activate the attack. This is critical for boss battles and some serious cool looking combos can be performed. Of course, for the characters not under your control you can set their attack patterns (stay away, defend or move in) as well as what level they should attack at.

Although Secret of Mana is an excellent game there are sadly some niggles that detract from the overall experience. My main gripe with the game is the way that other party members tag along behind you. They have this irritating problem of getting stuck behind scenery and seeing as lots off the games dungeons feature complex mazes and loads of obstacles you can see how this might get annoying. It can also get you killed in combat if you try to run away and someone is stuck behind a pillar (again) while the enemy starts casting evil spells. Less problematic but also slightly annoying is the way you sometimes ping pong helplessly between enemies as they hack away at your health. Don't even get me started on enemies that can kill you in one hit and dungeons with no save points.

Don't let any of this put you off from playing one of the best RPGs for the system. This is the reason to own a SNES and not a Mega Drive if you are into your Role Playing Games. The plot is engrossing and there are some kick-ass puzzles and dungeons. The game is huge and there is never a lack of things to do or see while playing. Things can get a bit whimsical at times (at one point you meet Santa Claus) but overall the plot is quite serious with a nice storyline and great plot turns. The combat is cool and makes a nice break from all the turn based titles out there. 

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