Secret of Mana

Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2 (聖剣伝説2^?, lit. "Holy Sword Legend 2") is anaction role-playing game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System developed and published by Square in 1993. Taken directly from wikipedia links and all.

SoM is probably one of my favorite games of all time. It had a beautiful graphics set for the SNES console, and offered real-time (for the most part) combat, which not many rpgs at this time had. It broke up the turn-based system from previous rpgs or even the ATB system that titles such as FF3 (6) offered. The audio was even good, with the uplifting tracks used from the dwarfs in Gaia's Navel to the dark tones of Thanatos and even provoked a bit of sadness while in the Crystal Forest. 

So the game starts out, as I'm sure most of you are aware, on a fallen tree that acts as a bridge by a waterfall. Playfully, your friends knock you off and you're forced to find your own way back into your home village. Using what you can, and lucky for you at the time, you find a sword which sends you into sort of an "oh shit spiral now you're forced to save the world." From there you visit the rest of the Secret of Mana world.

Throughout the game you acquire two companions, The Sprite Child and the Girl, neither of which are named so usually Stupid and Bitch worked out just fine. The Sprite Child is your offensive caster and the Girl is your defensive/healing caster. Both of which are basically useless as melee damage and should be used to spam the hell out of your magic (which gives an added bonus!). The "main" character, the Boy, is basically your melee tank.

The bonus I mentioned, every time you do anything offensive/defensive you get "points" which build whatever you're using. So, using a spear over and over will raise the charge level of that weapon. So, you've found a bunch of orbs and upgraded your spear to level 4. Using that spear over and over will upgrade it and you can hold that charge longer and longer to do bigger and harder hitting attacks on enemies. Same idea for spells but it raises the effect and chance for a critical on the cast. Which I can't seem to find a video of... but I assure you they exist.

Combat works like this: Real-time! Playing as the boy you run up and slash everything you can see, occasionally charging your weapons up. The girl and the sprite child cast, as mentioned before. Here is one of three beefs with the game. When you want to cast something it pauses the action, brings up a radial menu, where you select what spell you want to use and then casts it. Playing the game solo this isn't that big of a problem, but you can play with two friends so it starts to become annoying as hell when you are just spamming the hell out magic. Beef 2: While an enemy is being cast on no one else can do anything to it. So say you're fighting one of the biker bosses and just throwing wind blasts (or whatever) on him, the player (if there is one, which there should be, because who likes that bitchy girl) who is on the boy just kinda fingers his own ass since he's probably going to blow his 7th level charged up sword attack since the boss is still under the effect of the cast.

Beef 3: The AI for when you're not using a character. There is a grid system that basically gives you four options, close up aggressive, close up defensive, ranged aggressive, ranged defensive. <--- Good idea. Unfortunately, the AI is just plain awful and you can never get that right mix of get in there and attack and holy shit your health is almost gone GTFO! Luckily, 9 times out of 10 you're not playing the girl so you can just set her to go sit in a corner and just call up her menu when you need a refresh on your wind weapon buff or a quick heal here and there.

All in all, SoM is a great solo game, and a great multiplayer game. In my eyes it will live throughout the ages and every few years I find myself coming back to all its glory. I honestly think its still in the top 100 greatest games of all time.

One more thing, an added beef, finding that last gauntlet orb, in all my years of playing SoM I have never once gotten that last orb. Not sure if its from something missing in the port from J to US or if Square just sorta left it out but it still frustrates the hell out of me.