I don't know what has possessed me to give this game shot after shot over the years. I think I was just convinced on some level that I must be playing the game wrong, because so many people I've trusted have told me how this is one of Square's best games, but every time I play it I get frustrated with the combat design and fall off after a couple hours.
This time around I was determined to finally understand Secret of Mana and engage with it completely on its own terms. I read guides, learned every little perfunctory mechanic, grinded to make sure I was on level with the content I was engaging with, and surprise surprise it still sucks. I see the bones here of an action RPG that aspires to play more like a turn based RPG than the other action RPGs of the time (Zelda, Ys, etc.), and I think that is a really phenomenal idea to take the menu driven JRPG systems of Final Fantasy and put them in an action context. In the last couple of decades we've seen the birth of the Kingdom Hearts franchise as well as Final Fantasy VII Remake which both prove that this idea has merit, and when executed on by masters of their craft can make for some of the best video games ever made. Secret of Mana was not executed even a quarter as well as the worst Kingdom Hearts game. I think a huge portion of this comes down to what I originally billed as poor hit detection, but have come to realize is a hit%/dodge% stat built into the game that seems to serve no other purpose than to make the game feel like shit. I see the idea behind carrying over those stats from traditional RPGs into your action system, but in an era of the snappy swordplay of Link to the Past it just comes off as sluggish at best and at worst extremely frustrating. This is without even getting into how the charge system slows the combat down to a crawl or how the game is so extraordinary balanced in favor of magic that at a certain point it feels like one of your party members is just tagging along for the ride.
I truly hope that the unbelievably gorgeous cover art by Hiroo Isono never honeypots me into giving this one another shot. This is one of the few cases where I went against my gut on a game time and time again and I should've just trusted my 7 year old self bouncing off of this.
This time around I was determined to finally understand Secret of Mana and engage with it completely on its own terms. I read guides, learned every little perfunctory mechanic, grinded to make sure I was on level with the content I was engaging with, and surprise surprise it still sucks. I see the bones here of an action RPG that aspires to play more like a turn based RPG than the other action RPGs of the time (Zelda, Ys, etc.), and I think that is a really phenomenal idea to take the menu driven JRPG systems of Final Fantasy and put them in an action context. In the last couple of decades we've seen the birth of the Kingdom Hearts franchise as well as Final Fantasy VII Remake which both prove that this idea has merit, and when executed on by masters of their craft can make for some of the best video games ever made. Secret of Mana was not executed even a quarter as well as the worst Kingdom Hearts game. I think a huge portion of this comes down to what I originally billed as poor hit detection, but have come to realize is a hit%/dodge% stat built into the game that seems to serve no other purpose than to make the game feel like shit. I see the idea behind carrying over those stats from traditional RPGs into your action system, but in an era of the snappy swordplay of Link to the Past it just comes off as sluggish at best and at worst extremely frustrating. This is without even getting into how the charge system slows the combat down to a crawl or how the game is so extraordinary balanced in favor of magic that at a certain point it feels like one of your party members is just tagging along for the ride.
I truly hope that the unbelievably gorgeous cover art by Hiroo Isono never honeypots me into giving this one another shot. This is one of the few cases where I went against my gut on a game time and time again and I should've just trusted my 7 year old self bouncing off of this.