Seiken Densetsu: Children of Mana

By Katie . April 5, 2006 . 10:30am

There is a lot of potential in the shack that Square built, however, and Children of Mana shows that at long last, they are again realizing some of that potential. The game may differ in fundamental format from its predecessors by virtue of its dungeon-crawling, mission-based nature, and customarily defensive fans may be claiming that the outsourced animation work damn well cheapens the game, but as a standalone effort for the non-Mana-ical, the Children of Mana shouldn’t be left orphaned.

Purchase at Play-Asia

With its meteoric climb to numero uno on the world entertainment spending podium, gaming has gained permanence as a marketable art form formerly reserved for movies, music, and truly little else, mostly in the span of two short hardware generations (not accounting for their first quarter, of course, as the typecast domain of geeks and kids). Of the industry players who’ve ridden the elevator into the stratosphere, not many a company is more traveled than Squaresoft, known since its emergency-stop merger with longtime rival Enix by the sensible joint moniker, Square Enix. But moreover, they know said elevator goes in both directions - how it can rise, like with their 1997 release that forever changed the face of video game marketing, Final Fantasy VII, and how it can fall, as with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, a costly misstep in the ever-more calculated, ever-trendier dance for dollars. But mostly, where their other ventures have ‘failed’, their endless reliance on and tweaking of the FF mold has minted cold, hard profit.

So, while there’s no lack on the consumption front going into the gen to come, what of our appreciation of the electronic arts? Ironically, the very company that goes by that name, now best known EA and the former publisher of Squaresoft in the Americas, is a prime example how the cultural-cream does not always rise to the top. Since their glamourous PSX days publishing the Final Fantasies that felt more like gala events than games, EA has been putting out crap more quickly than they can finish it, doing so AFTER release in the form of patches. At least Square Enix, since breaking away from them and their own hectic new-FF-a-year schedule, can now take the time to put out something different… or can they?

This wind-filled case makes its point with Children of Mana, the recently-released Nintendo DS installment in the long-running World of Mana series. Recently-released, that is, as a Japanese import, whose slim chances at a domestic migration are leaving some fans incensed. It can be difficult to gauge the true fan following where franchises not named after a movie, a prime time sport, or Final Fantasy are concerned, but since its 1993 debut with Secret of Mana for the SNES (which, as we’ll come to see, was actually the second game for FF’s sake), the franchise has been a quietly-worshipped underdog with a variable localization effort - and a track record much the same.

Seiken Densetsu 3, object of mad love and madder eBaying skillz, is probably the biggest hole in the legacy - too little to localize too late in the SNES lifetime vis-a-vis Square’s cost-benefit model, Secret of Mana 3 stayed home. With Sword of Mana for the Gameboy Advance, there were complaints as to the half-finished nature of the product - namely, the promised major features that similarly played hookie. In fact, it all goes back to Sword of Mana as it appeared on the original Game Boy: as Final Fantasy Adventure, which was in actuality the first Mana ever, renamed for North America. It’s easy to see where Flagship Fantasy has diverted smaller boats into obscurity.

Phew. You still with me? That means the review is starting!

An impressively smooth, if visibly compressed and color-reduced, FMV intro kicks off Children of Mana with a bang (and if THAT exhibits the results of outsourced animation, I daresay they made the right choice). You then choose one of four character classes, one of four color palettes, and input your name before going off towards great adventure - which, being entirely in Japanese, is a little mysterious to me, but allow me an attempted explanation. Your hometown on the peaceful Island of Illusia in the center of the world is your HQ, where you’ll choose your elemental familiar, purchase gems, equipment, and quests, and train with new weapons and a sort of practice dungeon. Eventually you’ll leave this place on Flammie, a furry, mammalian dragon, and hit 8 levels, including a raging desert, a dank water cave, and more, where hefty bosses conceal the guardian spirits of the land, and other objectives await those who would return on multiple play-throughs. To arrive at a stage’s conclusion, however, you’ll have to find what we’ll call the Mana Egg, and the portal that it activates to beam you up to the next area (which are all thankfully quite straightforward in design). At the mid-way point, you’ll be evaluated on your performance, getting bonuses for the ratio of monsters killed, and be able to enter the menu to prepare yourself for the remaining half - which you must do, and carefully so.

That menu, available in town at all times, is your gateway to the immense variety of armor, weapons, accessories, and items you will acquire in CoM. Some equipment requires you to have achieved a certain level to use, but with pages upon pages of available inventory, you can hang on to those unusable upgrades ad infinitum. Also from that screen (which, on a side note, employs virtually the only option to use the touch screen aside from on the world map), you can save your game, view your stats and current quest, start up four-player multicard play, or rearrange your Gem Grid - an expandable set of slots for raw or refined stones that bestow all manner of special powers and bonuses. It’s so deeply customizable, let me tell you, that I wouldn’t even scratch the surface here if I tried!

Possibly the best part of the game comes screaming at you in that most universal of languages: pain. Yes, the combat system in Children of Mana, a play mechanic that could be lovingly dubbed ‘Chain Pain’, brings hack’n’slash to the pace of an overhead action game - which, in case you didn’t know, is a good thing for a number of reasons. Most point-and-click hackathons really, really bore me - and one of these, CoM is most certainly not. Its novelty lies in a simple, but ingenious, knock-back-and-bounce-around effect, producing something like this:

You strike your enemy. This, in turn, bounces into two other enemies. One takes a good sticking on the spiked ground, and the other, in a domino effect with that ouchy-making cactus ball, comes back to bodycheck you square in the face, and into the same hazards. The cycle then begins again - whether to your advantage or not, you decide, but it certainly ensures you pay attention where it is due to save yourself from careening backwards through half the stage.

With the items and weapons wheels, as seen in previous games, relegated to the L and R buttons, and each weapon relegated a secondary function, you can quickly recover health and status or change tactics on-the-fly, as is often required. Some weapons, like the bow and arrow, don’t produce the knock-back effect, but allow distance attacking and paralysis as its secondary fire. The sword has a deflector shield which is a MUST in the middle of a projectile party, and the harpoon can reel you in across gaps or reel unreachable goods in to you. The hammer sends objects on a high-speed collision course, but takes quite a moment to wield. In the middle of it all are status affects abounding from sources both animal and vegetable, like poison, sleep, paralysis, and spontaneous human combustion, so you’ll have to be equally as quick with

the recovery items, or bring along a healing familiar (all of which consume

Magic Points to use) if you want to stay alive.

Which brings us to those cute lil’ familiars. When charged with the B button, the familiar will fly out before you, and a second or so later unleash its offensive hell. Very good for dispersing a gaggle of goons, but should you need a beneficial effect for yourself, you can opt to touch the familiar and receive its blessing - like healing or time-release regeneration, as two of the more obvious examples. Another desperation move at your disposal comes when the FEVER gauge is filled, mostly by inflicting damage on your opposition. When the time is right, hit SELECT and you become faster, stronger, and, should you have the right stuff, capable of a charged attack with your weapon.

Returning to the issue of the farmed-out animation and, while we’re at it, the musical score, it must be said that both are beyond reproach - mostly. The music in particular speaks the second universal language of the game quite symphonically, with upbeat compositions in authentic-sounding panflute, guitar, and the rest of the typical RPG-ensemble. The background graphics are colorful and detailed in a muted, pre-rendered sort of way, while the sprites atop them are a little too pixel-drawn and crisp by comparison. And oddly, the heroes animate less than the enemies. Maybe they’re just dumbstruck by jumping, sabre-toothed, rabbit-shaped blobs, but the stock-still standing pose and two-frame walk is far from the DS standard. But when it comes to the still portraits a la Valkyrie Profile, we see the true talent of the artists responsible.

Import Friendly? Literacy Level: 4

There’s a lot of talking amongst the townsfolk, and oftentimes this is required to open up the next dungeon. That, and the finer differences amongst armaments will remain a mystery to anyone who doesn’t read much Japanese. Wait for the English port, if you know it’s coming.

US Bound?
Update: Square-Enix has Children of Mana set for a 2006 release in North America.

+ Pros: Do you like to battle the odds? Wage war on countless hordes? Brutalize the opposition, and have fun doing it? You like CoM.

- Cons: It may not be what series fans are expecting. It’s pretty, but we know how pretty Square COULD have made it, and that might be slightly damaging.

Overall: To make up for past transgressions on the Mana line, this rascally romp with some engaging combat, a fleshed-out weapons system, and off-the-beaten path quests galore are just what the West has ordered. It may not follow the formula exactly, but the gameplay is certainly intact in Children of Mana. Now if only they’d made better use of the DS’s capabilities…

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