Stupid structure really destroys the RTS in this game
User Rating: 4.8 | Seiken Densetsu: Heroes of Mana DS
I think there's a point where i definitely draw the line as to how much frustration i can tolerate from a game's flaws. there's a lot in heroes of mana really obvious from the beginnning that you play it. The main flaws come from its gameplay. Heroes' unnecessarily slow pace of troop movement and sluggish framerate caused by low DS memory can agreeably test your patience. compounding the frustration next is the AI movement, the fact that movement is based on an SRPG grid system where soldiers cannot be positioned or move within the same panel, causing most of your army to scatter about amongst themselves trying to find room when it's really not necessary kind of realism. I think this should have been more streamlined. If the AI makes bad decisions as to where to go and how to approach enemy territory, then this game souldn't have been an RTS game, but rather some sort of turn based/ RTS hybrid where the player actually had 100% control over their army. Unfortunately there a lot of action that goes on in battles in Heroes and that's sadly not a good thing. There really is no strategy to Heroes, it mostly consists of churning out your MOB or monster soldiers out of the base regardless of that monster's weaknesses or strengths. That is, if you even manage to get your forces to engage the enemy, provided most of them don't go off somewhere else. At times I found it better to exploit my harvesters and scratch my enemies to death through attrition, because they didn't cost anything to spawn and respawn them. When I really was ready to lay the smack down on my enemies that was the time to use my main force. Overall Heroes battles is just one confusing bashfest. I must say the appeal of Heroes happened to be the music, which was really well done. The graphics were decent and interesting hippy cartoon theme to it, but still subpar. The battlefield was well sometimes, they did a good job on the castles, but the textures of some like the ground and grass were really mushy looking. Well, you think this game would be good enough to reccommend but unfortunately it's just too sadistic and punishing. Overall, it feels... underdeveloped and cannot even be considered playable or mediocre. 
