After two (relatively) RPG-heavy Manas, Square Enix pulled a mechanical u-turn with Dawn of Mana, their most elegant production yet and a sudden departure towards level-based, 3D action-adventure. Its new systems capitalize on Children of Mana's brawler influences, resulting in combat that encourages using the environment to cause as much physics-y mayhem as possible. Alas, for the next 20 or so hours, they proceed to waste those intuitions on many (many) obnoxious levels, enemies and boss fights with equally unwieldly controls.

Reviewed on Mar 11, 2022


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