The first thing i liked about SoM (Sword of Mana is SwoM from hereon) was that it plucked the heart strings early and effectively. Maybe this was due to my adolescence when i first played the game, and it might not have the same effectiveness if one were a more mature gamer their first time playing it, but who can’t help but feel a little bit of anger at the apparent injustice dealt to the protagonist in the very beginning of the game?

Secondly, this was one of the first games i’d played where the main character actually talks, as opposed to the first Final Fantasy or any Zelda game where the hero stands silent while people telepathically read his thoughts.

Third, the characters have animations during dialog. Not many, not often, but they are there. And sometimes funny.

There are a few fork options early on in the game that help with the replay value, but only early on. You can effectively solo quite a bit before any secondary characters are thrust upon you, and when they are, you can choose who you party with first and when.

The weapon and armor system was nice. You only buy armor, and you only upgrade weapons. The upgrades were predictable: kill a boss, steal it’s weapon orb, go to the blacksmith, upgrade weapon. The weapons changed their appearance some with each upgrade, as did their special bonuses.

Sometimes a weapon might do well against werewolves, then you upgrade it and find it works better against aquatic monsters instead. Usually these changes happened around the area where that monster would be the most, but the choice to upgrade the weapon was always yours.

Out of 8 weapons, only 4 were really useful, (Sword, Axe, Whip, and Boomerang) so you really didn’t have to waste time training with the ones you weren’t going to use, or the money on the upgrades. It all depends on your play style.

The graphics were pretty nice compared to Final Fantasy or Zelda at the time, though a bit candy coated. I really feel that SwoM changed the pallet some, and it kinda nauseates me to look at.

The elemental magic strength and immunity was borrowed from Final Fantasy to be sure. Fire Gigas gets hurt by normal damage, super hurt by ice, and healed by fire. It’s simple and intuitive. The area you are in or the name of the creature will sometimes be an indicator of what the monsters’ weaknesses will be. (If you’re in the temple of darkness, use Lumina)

Running low on mana? Cast an elemental saber spell on the party’s weapons, it will save your mana in the long run. The nice thing is that, while this isn’t as time efficient as Materia, the spells can be cast again and again when they run out, which helps level up the element you are using, and if there are enemies with different weaknesses in the same area, all you have to do is cast a different element on the weapons and you’re good to go.

Otherwise, there is a scanner spell which shows any monster’s stats, from health and mana to their weaknesses. This spell also works on treasure chests to help avoid traps. We’ve always noticed when playing that if you scan a chest it never seems to be trapped, almost as if the scanner spell disarms it.

The quick and dirty action (as opposed to text menu and turn based combat) was amped by a 3 player option (that’s right, not just 2, but 3 players!)

SoM borrows the weapon charge meter from Mystic Quest, the meter getting bigger based on the level of the weapon and your skill with it. The longer you hold your attack button the more powerful your attack will be.

Music was always a big part of the game for me. I used to turn on the game and fly to a certain part of the world just so i could listen to the music while i studied in my room.

Boss battles were strategic rather than a matter of attrition. They had to be, you could only carry 4 of any kind of item at a time. Knowing where to stand at a given time, learning the boss’ pattern, taking advantage of the obstacles to keep out of melee range when the boss goes on the offensive, fine tuning the ally’s AI so they don’t act any more stupid than need be, or smashing the critter with a living person sitting next to you, are all what made the game great.

Does it live up to the hype? I dunno, i’ve never read the hype. I got this game along with the SNES from my uncle when his boys moved on to N64, and i’ve been loving it ever since.

The other thing i liked about SoM was its plot based advancement of the game. Something i hate about MMOs is their almost entirely quest based advancement. It sorta kills the immediacy when you go to town, get a quest, go to the field or dungeon, complete the quest, go back to town, turn in the quest, rinse and repeat. Even Zelda does this a little. Link to the Past was really bad on the last 2/3 of the game. After you get the sword and you think it’s done, there’s a whole 2/3s of the game to complete, with very little dialog, very little npc interaction. The plot is advanced by rescuing nameless people who all look the same, not through interactions with unique characters.

Secret of Mana has you going from town to town, and there’s something to do in each town, your quest is somehow related to each town in some way, or there’s a side quest to divert your attention, loads of npcs to talk to, and multiple reasons for doing what you do.

Boy: restore the Mana Sword, find mother.
Girl: find best friend and boyfriend, save them from a soul stealing, mind controlling freak.
Sprite: restore memory, find homeland.

Every character has at least one or two personal investments in the quest that goes beyond “kill the dragon, steal it’s treasure, save the world”.

I played SoM first, then SD3, then FFA, then LoM, then SwoM, then DoM. And i have to say, of all these, i liked SoM best. No offense to Final Fantasy Adventure/Mystic Quest, but it just didn’t touch me emotionally or imaginatively as SoM did.

And if you don’t like Sword of Mana, don’t play Legend of Mana. It’s got many of the same faults, but exacerbated. Really, SwoM is a culmination of Secret of Mana, Legend of Mana, and Seiken Densetsu 3, which probably explains why it’s so bad. They just took too many ideas from each game.

Oh, and Dawn of Mana is nothing like the rest. It plays like an arcade game. Seriously, who makes an action RPG where you lose levels every time you complete a chapter?

So, Secret of Mana. Multiplayer. Simple. Fun. Challenging. Straightforward. Interesting. Plot based.

Oh, and if anyone tells you that the Sprite is a girl, tell them to play the earth temple again. Sprite’s a dude, and the Girl is his wife.

And let’s be clear that this isn’t some kind of unlock that you gain in the regular course of the game. As I remember correctly, the requirements are to buy the 251 purchases in a shop in one go but. So each time you make a purchase, you need to exit and re-enter the purchase screen and buy another item. And you need to do that 251 times. This is what I would classify as a “cheat” or an “easter egg” an not part of the regular gaming experience.

As for immunities. Yes, the game has immunities. Like in many other JRPGs. I don’t think it’s a good system. It requires players to either have clairvoyant abilities to predict what enemies they will face in the future or simply exposes them to frustrating backtracking (the kind of backracking where you need to cancel a dungeon because you realize that you weapons are useless). Personally, I agree with GuyLone: I found the system not transparent enough, over-used, and simply annoying. The best you can ever hope for in that system is to be prepared and being able to kill the mosters. That’s not depth.

Again, Mystic Quest had also monsters with immunities but they were rare, came up only in special dungeons and because getting new weapons was straight-forward preparing for them was not that big of a deal.

But I see you are an enthusiast of the genre, I suggest you give the original a try.

Another feature was potential status that could be inflicted with different material methods. Some materials caused snowman, some caused silence, some caused sleep. Sword of Mana allowed you to choose which of these effects you might like to have. The armour was similar in that different materials created different resistances and stats in areas.

My final point is Niccolo’s best material he sells was Orihalcum for attk pwr but Mithril Silver was a more balanced all element dmg type with a bonus to magic dmg so I always preferred to use that. It wasn’t Crystal weapons but that’s like the equivalent of ultimate weapons, no-one needs weapons that powerful.

The biggest mistake was making Niccolo’s secret menu a secret and hard to figure out (but with the internet most people can easily read about it).

I never bothered with fruits. I had plenty of seeds from fighting monsters so growing them wasn’t too difficult if I cared to. I just wasn’t bothered to create some ultimate weapon when I already found Mithril Silver was easily accessible and overpowered anyway.

I must admit I haven’t played Secret of Mana for too long. It seems to have a strong following but I have the feeling you might be right. The reasons why people enjoy Secret of Mana are very different from the reasons why I (and obviously you) enjoy Final Fantasy Adventure.

Personally I prefer FF: Adventure as it more closely resembles Zelda than later Mana games. Sometimes I think if I could understand why people like Secret of Mana so much, I might be able to understand why someone would like Sword of Mana (which shares many of its characteristics). Not that Secret of Mana is bad, it just seems more like Super Paper Mario in the sense that it tries to combine two genres but fails to represent the strengths in either.

(Typo: there choices > their)

Kind regards

I’m currently playing Children of Mana (NDS) and it seems like they listened to your critique.

The world design is still branching, but instead of the linear progression throughout the game a quest based system is introduced. Sort of like an MMORPG – take the quest you like, or take the main story quest if progress through the game.

The equipment system is simplified – we are back to four categories now. And the customization system is a bit like the materia system from FFVII – a “gem frame” is used to improve your skills. Fill in different gems for different effects.

The starvation vs. abundance of positive feedback is not totally fixed though. You can’t equip new stuff during quests, but at least you have an idea about what the item you receive is worth.

Recently, I played some Secret of Mana and I agree – it doesn’t live up to the expectations. However, it’s not as bad as Sword of Mana. And hey, it even had Co-Op. You got to give kudos for that.

The amazing thing is that Mystic Quest is SOO excellent! It seems like Seiken Densetsu gets worse with every sequel.

Even the much praised Secret of Mana didn’t left an impression on me. Actually I forgot why, but possibly because of the bad attack sounds (hits sound like light slaps, not meaty slashes) and poor animations (FF came away with it, but SoM is a ACTION-RPG, dammit!).

Big and colorful sprites x too few frames of animation = floating billboards. Yeah I mean you too, Guilty Gear.