Sword of Mana

Story

You may choose to play as a hero or heroine. Whichever you choose, the journey involves taking revenge on the Dark Lord, who has committed an unspeakable act. Only the game’s namesake, the Sword of Mana, is powerful enough to defeat this imposing adversary. The player journeys with many different allies, depending on plot progress. Short and sweet cut scenes and NPC interactive reminders keep the player on the straight and narrow path, constantly providing alerts on what to do next. Expect more than one surprise as the plot twists in many unexpected directions.

Character development requires many critical choices mold your character in the image you wish. Typical RPG leveling from combat presents the player with 5 basic classes to increase in level by 1. The player must pick which of the 5 following basic character classes is to be raised in level: Warrior, Monk, Magician, Sage, or Thief. (A nebulous Random class turns character development into a crap shoot.) By concentrating on elevating certain classes, your character can change to a more powerful and versatile class several times during the game. For example, as my starter Monk leveled, he converted to a Grappler, then a Warrior Monk, and ended up as a Dervish. This puts a thoughtful player in charge of their champion’s destiny. Allies level as well.

The 8 elemental magic classes are instilled in a player’s repertoire by obtaining spirits. Some spirits are hard to come by, entailing the solving of a difficult part of the quest. Each magic spirit can perform 2 spells, one involving defense or healing, and the other a special attack. The spirits, and consequently their spells, grow stronger with usage and leveling. Even better, more than one of the same spirit can be acquired. This multiplies the potency of that type of magic by the number of identical spirits.

If you wish, during combat, you may switch and play the ally. Early in the game when healing items are scarce, I decided to switch to the ally with the power to heal. After that, I generally stayed with playing the hero. There is a screen to set the combat tactics of an ally.

Monsters frequently drop chests after defeat. Many can be opened without fear of a trap. When you try to open others, a “Wheel of Fortune” spins, then slows on a button press, and eventually stops. The chest always opens and the prize received. However, to keep you on your toes, half the wheel contains “OK” slots, while the other half contains nasty traps, like arrows or spikes.

Criticisms

Sword of Mana does have the following frustrating faults:

• The only available map is a barebones world map (none for indoors) that contains nothing more than dots for locations against a plain, colorless background. At some game junctures, I wished for a helpful map.
• There appears to be no way to turn off the party’s combat readiness. Because of this, it was impossible to read informative signs posted in many places where combats occurred. This state of affairs would only appeal to those who find pleasure in swinging a sword or flinging arrows at an inanimate object with no results!
• For the first time in ages, I had to take notes during gameplay. Though there is a Hot House mouthpiece that tracks your progress as you complete key plot elements, a log chronicling the main and side quests, when initially received, would have been beneficial.
• Except for opening chests after combat victories, speaking to the world’s denizens, and reading signs, there is utterly no interaction with the environs. No little niches in which to find goodies, wells to explore, or containers and dressers to open or unlock. I missed this aspect during game exploration.
• Deep nesting within the Ring Menu of frequently-needed items, like those for recovery, called for multiple key presses for each use. When you need to take several healing items one after the other, this can become a bother. Similarly, once deep into the Ring Menu’s options, it took as many as 4 presses of the Back button to return to the game.
• Allies’ combat tactics appeared to be headlong rushes to directly confront foes resulting in inevitable death.
• Real-time targeting and casting of magic spells during combat was very difficult.
• For some odd reason, when your progress causes another entry into the Hot House Cactus’ Diary, you are thrown out of the Hot House before you can read the new entry. Though rebuilding the Hot House takes a few seconds, it makes no sense to force the player to leave and return.

Final Grade: 85%