Some okay ideas, but it all feels as if it was slapped together by a team who've never played a Mana game in their life!
Since that time the Mana series (or rather "The World of Mana" as it is now known) has been handed off once again to another development team. And as soon as I'd heard the game's announcement I mulled over the available screenshots, (as any series fanboy does) in anticipation for more from one of my favorite video game series. Unfortunately the excellent looking screenshots were a wolf in sheep's clothing, and nothing could have prepared me for this... Children of Mana. Which at best seems to a love letter to fans of the last two games who wanted less story and more mindnumbing dungeon crawling with minimal rewards.
Gameplay: While very reminicent of the previous game Sword of Mana, the execution is immediately flawed by the fact that the much of the incentive for playing the Mana games has been forcably and inexplicably removed. No longer do you travel the country-side of Mana to discover interesting new towns, new characters and new scenerios. No longer do you spend time fighting enemies with various weapons and magic spells in efforts to learn new attacks and power-up your skills. And no longer are you treated to interesting and well designed dungeons to explore and solve puzzles in to advance further in your quest. No, when you're not out wondering what you're fighting for, you are forced to remain in one town, (with apparently no more than 16 other people living in the entire world most also trapped in the town) almost never meeting anyone new, and never encountering anything out of the ordinary in this World of Mana (which for all I can venture seems to take place somewhere in the Legend of Mana side story). Your weapons while comfortably familiar never develop new skills, even when you upgrade to new ones. And not only does your magic never become any stronger, but now you are only allowed to carry one Mana spirit at a time. And while it's nice to see them again, their healing powers are minimal and their attacks take about 30 seconds to cast and fully implement and still and all do very little damge to anyone but the weakest enemies. The dungeon exploration has been nullified the the mindless kill the baddies, find the item, move on to the next floor routine... every time. Forget about changing your weapons when finding a new one, you have to be at a specific level to upgrade to the more powerful weapons, and even then you can only equip them when in town, or after four floors of a dungeon. In fact much of the game seems to exist only to level up your character to stand a chance against the next batch of bad guys. But again unlike previous games in the series, your only reward for leveling up is a minor number's boost. Once again taking away from one of the customizations of leveling up certain catagories of your status that the series was beloved for. And while you do run into a boss character or two, they are either way overpowered for you or go down in a few lucky well placed hits.
The only thing to replace all these omissions is dual weapon wielding, (which is about as basic as it sounds) and gem stat customization feature. The premise is finding or creating gems and placing them on a chart to increase your stats and/or add special effects to your attacks. However the idea is heavily flawed by the fact that initially you can only add 4 gems to your chart no matter how many you find. And even though the chart grows larger as you play, there doesn't seem to be much motivation for experimenting with this idea other than not dying in the dungeons. True you can create new gems, but the actual cost of doing so seems more trouble than it's worth. Especially if the gem you create covers up most of the chart.
Graphics: One of the things done correctly for this game are the visuals which mostly are on par with the previously mentioned Legend of Mana for PS1. Occasionally you'll also run into some very beautiful and fluid anime sequences in the game, however they are few and far between and never add much depth to the proceedings. Also regarding the character sprites and the backgrounds in the dungeons, it seems as though the graphics were downgraded to accomodate the multi-player aspects and numerous enemies and special effects of the game. Yet since their is no longer a party or helper character in the single player mode, this reigning in on the system's power reflects more as a lack of effort.
Sound: While often the Nintendo DS seems to limit it's technology regarding sound output, Children of Mana does manage to squeeze out some nice memorable music melodies, 9although the twon music is about as generic as it gets). And while they certainly are not on par with either the exotic themes of the SNES games nor the gorgeous landscaping done with Legend of Mana, Children's music only adds to the delight of the experience... what little there is to be had. It's even kind of nice to hear characters sometimes yell and grunt when they attack, although it's very low in the mix and often goes unheard at all.
Control: Like many DS games, the touch screen functionality is used only as a means to an end. For Children of Mana, it isn't even necessary. At it's most interesting it will get things done a little faster if you even bother to pick up your stylus. Still the menus don't seem very user friendly, for instance when training to learn new weapons it's easy to get confused on how to advance the menu without attacking or vice versa. However it's hard to complain about the control scheme, because it is in this area that the game excells. In fact if you consider that all other Mana games only allowed attack in four directions, (except for Legend of Mana, which was strangely limited to merely two) you are now permitted attacking in all eight directions of the D-pad. This is of little consolation however as some of the weapons, (such as the flail and the hammer) are rather intentionally clumsy in execution.
Summary: Whenever I turn this game on, I feel like I'm doing the Mana team a favor by trudging through their wasted efforts in trying to make the premise seem at least somewhat enjoyable. Basically it bores me, like few other games of series quality do. However, a Mana game which seems content to writhe in it's own mediocrity is hardly a Mana game at all. And it's certainly not on par with the once very high standard that Square used to hold to their franchises. But I always thought Mana games to be underappreciated in the grand scheme of things, even the more questionable games prior to the invention of the phrase "World of Mana" always had some redeeming quality that allowed you to look past it's flaws very easily and enjoy the games for their intent. But for Children of Mana, this is not the case. I dare suggest that even the most diehard Mana fans stay away, far away. There is a reason why this game wasn't numbered in Japan, (Seiken Densetsu 1 for Gameboy, 2 and 3 for the Super Famicom) so at least there's no reason to complain of it's exclusion in the story's canon. This is a bad Mana game and it is a bad video game Square-Enix, let it be known. Now Mana fans should be wary and apprehensive of the upcoming Dawn of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 4 for PS2) and Heroes of Mana (Nintendo DS action/strategy). Be afraid...