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EW - Don't Buy

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 11
Date: December 03, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I was looking forward to this game, but I was bored within a couple of hours. It is VERY repetitive - all you do is hack and slash your way through dungeons. The story is very vague, and the characters have no depth. I'm selling it. Save your money.

Horrible for RPG vets. Good for younger, less experienced RPGers

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 10, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I warily bought this game after having had a bad experience with the last "Mana" series game that I played, and, unfortunately, I was rightfully wary. This game is incredibly boring. I tried to give it a chance, but the repetative nature of the dungeons, terribly underdeveloped characters, paper-thin storyline and just all around lack of variety turned me off really quickly. The use of two weapons at once is nice, but not enough to make the game more fun, and the magic system is disappointing and awkward. I think that the game would work well for younger players who are just breaking the ice with RPGs, but anyone who's played and enjoyed an in-depth RPG will be very dissatisfied with this title.

A Few Things About Children of Mana...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: June 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It kinda sucks writing reviews about games that have already been reviewed by a bunch of people. For one, less people are likely to read another review about the same game, just to hear the same story blah blah blah ...

So the sum of the reviews is that Children of Mana is a mediocre game, and that is no lie. I can't say much about the Mana series, because the only other Mana I've played was Secret of Mana, and I absolutely loved it. Then again, I loved every single RPG on the SNES.

Children of Mana is addictive in the beginning, but only in the way that most character developing games are addicting; you want to level up you character. Something in your gaming soul drives you to want to level up your character, in the same inane way you want to "Catch Them All!" or level up your Pokemon for hours upon hours for no apparent reason whatsoever. To which you'll soon discover the horrible redundancy of this game.

Children of Mana is a dungeon crawler, and a horribly made one at that. Simply put, the title "Pinball of Mana" would have been more befitting than Children of Mana. Hitting monsters causes the monster to bounce back into some other object in the dungeon which in turn begins to bounce around, and at some point in this pinball-like movement, you get hit and you start bouncing around until you finally hit something and stop bouncing. Then you repeat the process all over again.

I was extremely disappointed, since I had taken such a long hiatus from gaming and was looking forward to my first Mana title since Secret. The main story is drabby, and chock full of long boring dungeon crawling. The side quests, which make the game infinitely longer, are more boring, more elongated dungeon crawling. It seems like there's no end to the redundancy.

Still, some people like that, and it could consume hours upon hours of brainless hacking and chopping and bouncing around. If that's what you're into, this game was made especially for you. But please, don't buy it for the retail $29.99.

Hopefully Heroes of Mana will redeem the Mana series... I've heard some disappointing remarks about the other Mana titles, and would love to see a great followup to the legendary RPGs of the SNES...

Yes, I am calling for a DS Chrono title, or a Gaia title, Lufia title .. ANYTHING! Hell, give me a followup to the Secret of Evermore, I don't care. I would really like to see a Chrono Trigger DS..... OOOOOHHH wouldn't that be sweet?

hack-n-slash

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: January 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

i bought this game at my local gamestop and the cashier reassured me with a "good choice!"

after playing for a few stages and quests, i discovered that the game is rather repetitive and all you do is hack-n-slash monsters to no end.

booooring

Get this cheap

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

While I admite I'm a compleat Legend of Mana junkie. This game wasn't all that great. It had a few good points. such as needing to use certain weapons to kill off bosses. but Square really didn't care about the fans when they slapped this together. I got it as a gift so I wasn't out anything. but to be honest it's not all that good. if you have to have it get it as cheap as you can. or rent it. you will be much happier trust me.

Dungeon Crawl with Little Reward, Creativity

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Children of Mana is the latest Squenix addition to a long line of Mana RPG/adventure games that have moved into the Nintendo handheld world - this one being a game for the DS. And out of all the mana games I've played, it is by far the worst, and possibly one of the worst RPG games I've played. From story to game mechanics, this is almost a complete lemon, so if you dislike negative reviews, just skip this. I'll try and summarize the paragraphs so you can get my main points without having to read my entire tirade.

Complete lack of utilization for the DS hardware.
The first thing I noticed about the game is the complete lack of stylus play, and the poor utilization of the dual-screen system. There's all this fantastic hardware for DS, and most of the games I've played have used it to some good effect, but CoM almost completely ignores it, opting to use one screen for maps/status when in most cases, your maps and status aren't really needed. After the opening screen, the stylus is not used at all. In fact, I have to wonder why they even put that one touch-screen in there.

Complete lack of character story.
Even in the last GBA handheld installment of the series, the story had depth. Your characters had a history, and a reason why they met. And the supporting characters had some really touching material. In CoM, the village priestess is kidnapped, and all the village elders and warriors get together to discuss what must be done. Your character, who seems to have no real station in the village, voulenteers him/herself to go, and everyone is just like "bai. the potions shop is to your right on your way out of the village." Not even a "no, it's too dangerous!" or "let me teach you how to fight before you go." And that's only the first of many such oddities. Either the localization team has completely butchered and removed whatever insightful dialog existed, or it just never did.

Complete lack of story
Sort of ties in with my last point. At the end of each zone, you fight a boss monster, and someone comes out to tell you "good job" and give you the tiniest scrap of explanation and some artifact that allows you to access a new area of the game. You go back to the village, speak with the veteran, and he asks you to go scope out another crisis. Of the handful of zones I've been to, that's been the extent of it. Sidequests are available through a shop, but you never meet who you're helping, and the fun of discovering the sidequest is eliminated because they're just handed to you. So far (though I'm assuming this changes later), there are no towns to explore, and no benefits to talking to people.

Weak character development
And by character development, I mean level progression and the like. Most of your development happens through the aquisition of new weapons and armor, and the equipping of various gems you find. You can fuse gems together to create new gems with special powers. But that's pretty much it - no points to spend of any kind. All of your weapons and armor can be purchased from the shop, so questing for special weapons and armor is pointless. Furthermore, all wares have a level requirement, so apart from gems, there's no good way to max out a particular stat.

Shallow and frustrating gameplay elements
Your 8 espers exist, but you can only take one of them into a dungeon with you, as opposed to previous games, where you do work to find the mana, and then its unique powers are available to you through the rest of the game. You cannot access the weapons, armor, or gems you pick up while you're still in the dungeon, or swap out your esper, until you've reached a save point. Each dungeon has multiple levels, and if you leave or die, you have to start the dungeon over again (or simply restart your game from your save point if you reached one while in-dungeon). The new gameplay mechanics are not always explained in the best way, such that I had to actually look up how to use and switch my espers.

The only positives...
There are four weapons that allow you to complete some puzzle-aspects in the dungeon, and you have the ability to dual-wield so you don't have to keep switching weapons, which is nice. The graphics are cute - the whole game definitely looks just like a mana game, and there are even a few anime-style cutscenes. Your performance in each dungeon section is scored off how many monsters you kill, how many chests you find, and how fast you do it in - and from this, you can get special rewards. There's a multiplayer option, which is new and supposed to be pretty fun.

The lowdown
I was surprised to find this used so quickly, considering it only came out a short while ago, but now I see why. By itself, any one of these flaws wouldn't be enough to ruin the game, but this many annoyances and shortage of RP aspects together make it an almost worthless pursuit. It's fine for a dungeon crawl, but with so little rewards, why not just replay a more compelling dungeon crawl game? I recommend D2 for solo play, and Gauntlet, Zelda Four Swords, or FF Crystal Chronicles for really fantastic multi-player dungeoncrawl. And, if you're interested in how the Mana series is done well on a handheld, pick up Sword of Mana.

Repetitive & Dull

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: February 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I originally started playing games in the Mana series with the classic SNES game "Secret of Mana", and picked up this game hoping it would be a similar experience.

Unfortunately this game is insanely repetitive, forcing you to return to the same handful of levels over and over again with slightly different enemies and slightly different goals. In addition there is almost no DS functionality at all in this game, and it feels like it was originally meant to be a Game Boy Advance game that was clumsily ported over to the DS.

If you can find it used or at a discount it's worth a few dollars, but for anyone other than the most hardcore RPG fanatic this game will be boring and frustrating.

Really not that good

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 12
Date: December 30, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I got this because I loved Sword of Mana on the old gameboy. There are many problems with this game but the main problem is that it really is a repetitive dungeon crawl. For example you can get jobs/quests but it sends you back to the same dungeon over and over, to kill all of monster X this time and monster Y this time...in reality you kill all of both each time to get more money anyway, so this is pointless. I was very disappointed with this game, and got rid of it after less than a week.

pretty much a complete and total disappointment

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: November 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought it mostly feeling nostalgic for Secret of Mana and its sequel, which were both fantastic games, as well as Legend of Mana, which was a very good game.

This is neither fantastic nor very good. It's pretty repetitive, not especially fun, and not really easy to recommend. It makes me sigh pretty heavily, if that's an indicator of anything.

Another Mana game to drop the ball.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: March 20, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There's really not a lot to say about this game because there isn't much to it. Pick a character, engage in a brief plot point, and then go slay some monsters. The story is minimal and a pretty standard spin on the "Save the Princess" plot found too often in RPGs. This isn't necesarilly a bad thing because it makes this game very pickup and play friendly. I haven't played this game in well over a month but I know I could pop it in right now and not be lost in the least.

The gameplay is very reminiscent to the Shining Soul 2 on the GBA, only with a certain added depth that SquareEnix is good for. You get these little crystatls that you can equip and combine to boost your character's abilities which is both neat and adds a decent collection factor to the game but that's where the ingenuity of this game ends. After that it's straight up hacking and slashing with a very restrictive magic system that in my opinion isn't even worth paying attention to. You do earn various weapons as you progress through the game but they're more situational than anything, you will most likely pick a favorite and stick with it until you are forced to use another weapon for 2 seconds of its usefulness. You can take missions for rewards, but guess what, they're just more of the same crap the story line presents you with and really aren't much more than a clever way to disguise level grinding.

A true sequal to the Seiken Densetsu series this game is not, it may even be a step back from the GBA Mana installment, Sword of Mana. At best it's only a sub-par dugeon crawler. Only pick this one up if you are pining to play a Mana game or suffer from severe ADD and boredom.

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