A fantastic tale of three heroes filled with fast paced action, monsters, dungeons and magic!

Story

A young boy accidentally finds a strange, rusty sword buried in a rock not far from his home village. Curious as he is, he picks up the blade by the hilt – and thus released its power. Ancient history tells that a mighty hero once wielded the Sword of Mana and destroyed evil forces that used the Mana to influence and fight the gods of the world. As the young boy now has found the Sword of Mana, he is chosen by the gods to embark on a holy quest. The eight Mana seeds, protected by magic seals have been found by evil demons. The demons seek to seize the power of Mana, and thus ravage all life and beauty of the world. The young boy must now travel far and wide to fight the evil force that threatens the world and restore the eight Mana seeds, before the seals are broken.

The Game

Secret of Mana is without doubt one of the most epic games released to the SNES by the acclaimed RPG-makers Square. The game features an innovative action-oriented combat system never before seen in the JRPG genre, an epic story, gorgeous 2D graphics and a solid soundtrack.

As the game begins and you take control of the young boy who is referred to as “the hero” by the gods. Your adventure begins right there in your home village, and you will be introduced to the different characters in the world and the game mechanics in a natural and logical way. The game has a friendly tone that reminds of a fairy tale and despite the stressful story laden with doom and despair, you are allowed to take your time and let yourself sink into the magical realm of Mana in your own time and pace. If you take your time and explore all the locations thoroughly, you’ll be facing a 70 hour adventure filled with magic, wonder and evil creatures.

Controls

The game appears very simple in its presentation, but beneath that surface lies a pretty complex system for most everything. The controls are quite easy to get into – there is one attack button, and with only a single button you can perform a number of different things; If you tap the button rapidly, your attacks will be weak and nothing more than a poke to the enemy. If you are less trigger happy and take some time between swings you will deliver the more damaging attacks. This works as such; After each attack, your attack percentage begins to count up from 0%, and to perform your most powerful standard attack you must let it max out at 100%. This happens in a matter of a second. This in turn means that your attack power and attack speed are variable, and the control for this couldn’t be more simple.

Furthermore you can do charge attacks by pressing and holding the attack button for a few seconds. This will fill up a special attack gauge, and when released you’ll perform your most damaging melee attack.

Content

In Secret of Mana you basically set out from the town into the wilderness, fight monsters, explore a dungeon, slaughter a boss monster, and move on to the next town to restock items, upgrade weapons and repeat. This works particularly well in Secret of Mana because you are free to backtrack anytime you want to a previous location, and sometimes the story even takes you to places you have been to before. This way both familiar and exotic places are mixed up to make the story take place in a believable world.

During your quest, you will meet two other adventurers that will join you in your attempt to save the world – a young energetic sprite and a strong-willed girl. Both have their own reasons and background stories that you will discover when playing the game. Having three party members in this game is a joy – they follow you and fight beside you automatically. You can whenever you want push the Select button to switch between which character you want to control. This allows for some strategy in battles, and also gives you control over all three characters’ unique skills and magical powers. If you have a friend or two, you can let them join the game anytime by pressing the Start button on their respective controllers. Thanks to the fact that game is rather heavy on the fighting, this is a very welcomed and awesome feature – this game is a total blast with three people playing at the same time. Either way, the challenges in the game requires the three to work closely together as they all have different magical abilities, strengths and weaknesses.

Further into your quest you will discover eight different Mana weapons that you will be able to attain and use in your battles. The different weapons are; sword, gloves, axe, pole arm, whip, bow and arrows, boomerang and throwing spear. Each character has different preferences and skill when it comes to weapons, and you also need to select the weapon that best suits your needs at any given moment. For each Mana seed that you restore, you will be able to upgrade the Mana weapons (and also gain new magical abilities with your characters, such as healing and attack magic). These upgrades are major and often changes the appearance of the weapon. For example, your whip could be upgraded from being a chain whip to becoming a flail and then a morning star. Each such upgrade also gives your charge-up attacks a new level, which in turn will unlock new attack moves, and vastly increase the amount of damage you can deal.

Later in the adventure you will gain access to a flying mount that you can use to fly around in the world searching for clues and adventure. This gives the game a feel of being open-ended, but it really is not. There is only one way you can go to progress the adventure, but it is nice nonetheless to be able to travel around and explore the world. Typically you will be exploring palaces and underground cave complexes and fighting various monsters.

Apart from weapons and various items, you’ll also be using various pieces of armor and the magic system is worth a mention too. The sprite and the girl will learn different magic abilities for each Mana seed that you restore – each Mana seed represents an element of the earth, like Wind, Water, Fire and so on. The sprite tends to learn attack magic while the girl typically learns support and healing magic for each element. You’ll discover spells like “Moon Energy” that raises the number of critical hits done and “Speed Down” that will cause vines to grow around those you cast it upon to slow them down.

Like mentioned above if you play the game alone, your party members will be controlled by an AI. It is not the most intelligent AI, but it gets the job done most of the time. You can also set how aggressive or defensive you want the AI controlled party members to act. Even with this option, you will be in charge of seeing to that everyone is kept alive with healing items and magic. It can also be frustrating in critical boss fights if your AI controlled party members aren’t careful or aggressive enough – managing all three characters at the same time can in that case become quite a chore.

The plot in the game could be seen as cliché, but it has a few surprising twists here and there. It’s not the most brilliant and deep game in this aspect as it tends to become a little too predictable down the line, but it does have some interesting characters, mysteries and puzzles to keep things going. It seems this game has a bigger emphasis on the action rather than telling the most complex story – everything between towns is basically a battle field, and that is quite alright because fighting in this game is great fun and well done.

Secret of Mana really only has one flaw, and that is its difficulty level. If you play alone, the game can feel overly hard because your AI controlled party members are acting stupid. On the other hand if you have two friends to back you up and utilize more sophisticated strategies in battle, the game can feel very easy and almost a pushover. The best balance between these two would perhaps be to only play with two players. The boss fights can however require a few tries before you have them figured out – and that is a challenge not to be overseen or underestimated.

Graphics

The game is very visual with nice over-the-top anime style animations and damage numbers bouncing up from the enemies that indicates how much damage you deal with each attack. The game maintains a cheery fantasy theme and does it well with colorful and fantastic depictions of the scenery and characters. The enemies you fight are often cute, resembling bunnies, mushrooms and bees. This in combination with a lush magical world outlines a style that is unique to the Secret of Mana game series. During big battles, there is a lot going on at the same time and it all looks great. When a spell is being cast, the game is paused which can interrupt you in your ace moment, but it also allows you to quickly rethink some strategy that you find is not working.

Sound

The music is nothing less than pure magic. It is a perfect combination of typical cheery Japanese roleplaying music, heartbreaking sad piano songs and mystic, enchanting tunes from a far away land. I can’t stress enough how good and fitting the music is – it really conjures an unforgettable atmosphere. The sound effects are appropriate and even though you’ll be hearing the same few sounds in the battles for many hours in a row, it doesn’t really grow old.

Summary

Secret of Mana is easily one of the best games for the Super Nintendo. Thanks to the quick action oriented battle system, great graphics and fun multiplayer Secret of Mana stands out among other similar games. Square has successfully combined a rather advanced set of game mechanics with controls that are easy to grasp and approach. This leads to an interesting game that is easy to pick up, learn and really sink into. The adventure is long and the game as a whole is an experience that is sure to make a deep impression that will cling on to you for a long time, even after beating the game.

Developed By: Square
Published By: Square
Version Reviewed: Super Nintendo
Genre: Action Roleplaying
Players: 1-3
Also Available On: Windows PC, Playstation 4
Released: 1994-11-24