Secret of Mana

Ahh yes. A timeless classic by Squaresoft. This is a game about a boy who pulls the Mystical sword out of the clumpy stone. Now that I think about it, everytime I've played this game, I should have named the main character Arthur. I mean, pull a sword out of the stone, become the king of England, smite evil isn't a very far stretch from pull the sword out of the stone, become the hero of Mana, smite evil.

Any hero worth his while doesn't travel alone. In Secret of Mana, you're joined by a fiesty girl and a mischievous sprite, both of which you name. This is one of the rare times you will find an RPG that is multiplayer. With the multi-tap (which is packaged with Super Bomberman) you can play with up to two friends (assuming you have any!).

Each character has their own strengths. The boy is the strongest weapon user. The girl uses healing magic. The sprite uses damaging magic. You find the weapons from defeating bosses or finding them, you get your magic by rescuing spirits.

Game play for this game is your typical Zelda like overhead hack and slash with RPG elements (skill up weapons/magic, level up characters). The higher your weapon's level, the higher you can charge it. Charged attacks look fancy and do more damage. Same thing goes with magic. The higher your skill is in that particular magic, the more damage it will do.

For all of the things this game does well, great game play, great story, great music, it does have a few faults. For one, there's no real reason to level any more than one weapon per character. Sure, you sometimes have to break out the whip to travel across gaps, or break out the sword or axe to cut down some poles or something, but you can just equip them on the sprite and girl and switch to them when needed. Because if you're using anything other than the spear on the boy, you're an idiot. Personally, I used the spear on the boy, whip on the girl, and the javelin on the sprite. Switched to the axe or sword as needed.

Another thing while nice and convenient was very annoying is that you can kill most bosses before they can get one attack in. Once the sprite has his first spell, you can pretty much spell lock anything. If you're playing three player at a boss fight, whoever is the sprite should log out. The another person take control via the X menu. Cast your spell. As soon as the elemental disappears, hit X again. If you did it right, the sprite menu should come up in color. If it's greyed out, you didn't hit it fast enough. Select your next spell, and repeat. Pretty much, each spell will hit in succession and the damage will add up. Stop when you think you've killed it. If you haven't, repeat.

With this previous fault in mind, it leads the last one. If you can kill bosses in one hit, there's no real reason to level the girl's magic aside from the one that has the spells that heal you. There's no reason to level up her other magic, because quite frankly, you really only need to use it on bosses, and they're dead with one hit. On the same note, there's no real reason to charge up your weapons to anything past 100%. It takes time to do it, and you walk slow while you're charging and when it's charged. You'd pretty much also use this on boss fights. I do admit, there's a few times I would use it in the last area, but after I levelled up a bit, there was no reason to do so.

Do these faults break the game? Hell no! This is easily one of my five favorite games on the SNES, and top 10 overall. If you really think about it, the flaws really aren't flaws at all. You can actually play around them. My last play through, I worked around them with the exception of the one hit kills. I didn't feel like subjecting myself to long battles that can be easily finished in under a minute. Overall, get this game if you can. Highly recommended.