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Another Mana Game Takes a Dive

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 28 / 32
Date: May 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It's hard to write a review for a Mana game and not talk about Secret of Mana. A game hailed as not only one of the greatest SNES RPGs out there, but also as one of the greatest RPGs of all time. Over the years, however, the Mana series has gotten progressively worse while other franchises from Square-Enix continue to be strong. Dawn of Mana is no exception as it is without a doubt one of the worst Mana games ever. It seems there will never be another Mana game to hold a candle up to the legacy set by Secret. It's really sad because Dawn of Mana, like the other Mana games to drop the ball, had a lot of potential to be good. The developers just didn't do things right.

Dawn of Mana centers on a guy named Keldric who is out to save someone named Ritzia from an evil King who has kidnapped Ritzia so that he can call forth the power of the Mana tree and plunge the world into Darkness. It's a pretty basic story. The good news is that the story is presented really well. The voice acting is top notch and the cutscenes are absolutely gorgeous to look at. Unfortunately that's about where the compliments to the game end. The gameplay, for as simple as it is, is rather frustrating.

Firstly, the game is fairly action/adventure oriented and has a dungeon crawl like feel to it. Keldric has what's called a "Vine Sword" that he can use to take on his enemies. He can use it to swing enemies into other enemies as well, but the real treat with this weapon is using his Panic attack which causes enemies to drop items. This is really the only way to get items from enemies. They don't just drop them normally. Keldric is also not alone. He's got an ally named Faye there to help him out and she's there to cast some supportive magic on him. Unfortunately unlike other Mana games, Dawn of Mana has no multi-player. It's all really simple stuff until you throw in the games other mechanics.

The targeting system in and of itself is incredibly flawed. When battling enemies you can lock on to them. However, for some odd reason, the game always locks on to an enemy in the distance... never the obvious threat that's taking you on. You can also lock on to other objects, but again, it's never the one you want or one that's close by. And if there are multiple enemies or objects the game has to cycle through them, and again it becomes tedious to wait for the game to get to the enemy or object you want. You're better off going at it on your own and not wasting any time with the flawed targeting system.

Another major flaw to the design of the game is the level up system. At the start it seems all fine and dandy to level up and get your abilities, but the moment you complete a chapter you lose it all! That means after you've gone through Chapter 1, leveled up Keldric and Faye to take on enemies, gotten them some pretty useful abilities and the like, you'll lose it all once you begin Chapter 2 and have to get them all over again. All your work will pretty much go to waste. The game tries to compensate by giving you Emblems which have abilities on them.

Getting Emblems is a task in and of itself. As you go through the chapters the game will rank you. An S ranking is the highest you can get. If you get a good ranking you'll be rewarded with an Emblem. There's an Emblem rewarded for each difficulty level as well. Completing Chapter 1 on Normal and getting the best rank will yield you a different Emblem than if you were to complete Chapter 1 on Hard mode with the best rank. Your rank is determined by things like how fast yo complete the chapter, how many enemies you killed etc. Yet even the Emblem system has its own flaws. You can only select to equip them before the chapter starts. You cannot change up Emblems in the middle of a chapter. Instead you'll have to complete it. A little more freedom would've been nice. Also, getting Emblems is just all out difficult. It's almost not even worth it to try.

As you go through the game, there's also a radar in the upper corner to help you out. It doesn't really provide that much help, though. There's a yellow box which represents your goal and then there are blue and red boxes for your enemies. Blue just simply means that the enemy has an item. Although, for some reason, you'll run into enemies on the map that are marked red on your radar that will drop items while some of the blue monsters give you nothing. Chances are yo won't really need the radar, but one has to wonder how Square-Enix managed to screw up something as simple as a radar system. Especially since they've done these sorts of things in plenty of other games flawlessly. The radar isn't scaled properly anyway. There are moments when it'll appear an enemy should be right next to you, and you discover they're actually a little ways away. Again, it's not too big, but it's such a simple concept that the fact that it wasn't done right is rather questionable.

The last major flaw in the gameplay department: The camera. It's a pain to mess around with. Especially when in battle and it swivels on you while you're taking on an enemy. It's controlled via the right analog stick, which makes things a little easier, but it's the fact that you'll spend a lot of time fighting with it to readjust because it positioned itself behind an object so you can't see yourself, or because the angle just isn't good. You'll spend quite some time fighting with the camera, and it's just annoying. The fact that there's no button to fix the camera right behind you is also sad.

To the game's credit, though, it looks and sounds really good. If anything, we can say that. Square-Enix is known for making some gorgeous games and despite Dawn of Mana's flawed gameplay it's true here. The look and feel of the game is absolutely fantastic. The voice acting is also pretty good. But the best part of Dawn of Mana is its soundtrack. The music in the game is nothing short of brilliant. On a technical level, Dawn of Mana is fantastic. But pretty graphics don't make a game fun, and that's also true of Dawn of Mana.

Dawn of Mana isn't a horrible game, it's just a very flawed one. The part of the game that matters most--gameplay--suffers from things that a game in this day and age shouldn't suffer from. It's especially disappointing considering what's flawed in this game are aspects that Square-Enix knows how to do well and have demonstrated they know how to do them well time and time again. It'll be hard for Mana fans to look past the flaws in this one. Another Mana game takes a dive.

Pros:

+Good graphics
+Good Soundtrack
+Well done voice acting

Cons:

-Horrible targeting system
-Bad Camera
-You start each new chapter at level 1, losing all the work you did in the last chapter
-Getting Emblems is a pain, and you can't change them in the middle of a chapter, they can only be equipped at the beginning of one
-The radar is virtually useless

Very disappointing

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: June 01, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The Mana series goes back a ways, which helped Dawn of Mana achieve a certain amount of hype prior to it's release. Sadly though, Dawn of Mana is a very disappointing platformer/RPG hybrid that doesn't do much of anything right in any department. The story of Dawn of Mana is pretty interesting and longtime fans will get enjoyment out of it to be pure, but that's about it. The game is more an action/platformer than an RPG, as you fling monsters around and into each other. While this is entertaining for a while, it becomes boring quickly, and the sloppy and sluggish controls don't help matters much when it comes to targeting. The sloppy controls also supremely hurt the platforming elements peppered throughout Dawn of Mana, and the game's schizoid camera doesn't help matters much either in this department. The only real pluses of Dawn of Mana are the game's nicely rendered graphics and a decent list of spells to work with, but other than that, this game is a dud. All in all, Dawn of Mana is a very disappointing game that could have been so much better than what we get here. This edition of Dawn of Mana includes the game's soundtrack bundled with the game. The soundtrack itself is one of the better video game soundtracks you'll come across, and it worth checking out on it's own if you like video game music. That aside, if you want to check out a good action/RPG game, check out Odin Sphere instead.

battle sequence

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The battle sequence iss quite uniqe. I have never seen anything like it before. It is really fun, but the only thing that I personally dont like about it is that you have to start all over with experience everytime you start a new part in your adventure.

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