Mana Retrospective (Part 2): Secret of Mana

WARNING: This review can be a bit rambling at times. Sorry about that.

Secret of Mana is that game I wanted to get, but I wound up with Secret of Evermore instead, a game that was enjoyable in it’s own rights. It actually wasn’t until about last year that I managed to get a copy of this game and it’s one of my favorite stories to tell.

I’m in a store called Entertainmart with a friend and we’re just hanging out. We had just gone to an outdoor flea market, where we saw someone pick up a “complete in box” Earthbound. I managed to get a look at it and it was the cartridge with a cardboard insert with the game’s cover art on it, wrapped in saran wrap. “Complete”, huh? My friend and I eventually go from there to Entertainmart, where I’m explaining to my friend the difference between a complete in box and just getting the cartridge. I was essentially telling him that the guy we saw got ripped off.

He sees a game, I cannot remember which, in a clamshell case replacement and I tell him that’s not original. He then points something out to me and I turn to look. And there it was, Secret of Mana, complete in box. I ask a store clerk if I can open it and check it’s condition and he allows it. It’s in kinda rough condition and the map is actually missing, but everything else was present. I then ask for a price and the clerk tells me it’s $20. So, I bought it. I felt $20 was worth the risk of this thing being a fake.

It was real. I popped it in and, soon, I was playing Secret of Mana. I come to find out that the game had actually been mispriced because, when the manager took it in, he checked the price and accidentally used the Playstation 4’s price instead of the Super Nintendo price. And, at the time, Secret of Mana for Playstation 4 was going for $20. So the game went for the wrong price because the manager looked up the wrong product.

Oh well! Mine now!

Now, for the last two games, I played the original releases of both games. For this one, I’ll be playing that Playstation 4 remake and pointing out the differences between it and the original game. Because, while I haven’t actually beaten the original, I did get very far into the game. And I want to try to platinum the Playstation 4 release, so this retrospective gives me a convenient excuse. Also, the Playstation 4 version (hearby shortened to PS4) is also available on Steam, so if you don’t have a PS4, but have a good PC and want to play this game, it is available there for $40, as of the time I’m writing this. Also, anything I say is exclusive to the PS4 version is also in the PC version.

First thing to note is this game has a strangely told story. It revolves around the Sword of Mana, which is a mystical relic keeping the peace, an untold number of years after Final Fantasy Adventure. This relic is keeping the threat of monsters to a minimum, but the power of Mana is weakening over time and must be restored. When this power is at it’s breaking point, the sword shall call for a knight to wield it and restore order to the world.

Or, you know, it could also call for a completely untrained boy from a nearby village, who’s out searching for treasure with his friends… That works too.

The story itself, while it has an odd story telling method, is mainly about humanity creating a weapon, a flying battleship called the Mana Fortress. This angered the gods of the world, who sent great beasts to destroy the fortress. This war would engulf the entire world, until a hero appeared, wielding the mystical Mana Sword. This hero destroys the fortress, which makes the beasts back off now that the offensive fortress is gone. Mankind manages to survive this war, but as time goes by, history becomes legend, which becomes myth. And thus, there will always be those who ignore their history and repeat it. The time has come for a new hero.

This hero is Randi, though you can rename all the characters in this game, and he is joined by Primm, a girl from Pandora, and Popoi, a sprite with amnesia. Randi is your big, heavy hitter while Primm and Popoi will eventually learn magic to support you, Primm getting defensive and healing magic, with a few offensive spells, while Popoi is your offensive mage. Primm and Popoi can still fight with weapons, Primm being the better fighter between the two, making the girl more of a combat cleric while Popoi is your typical mage.

The first thing I’d like to note is that Secret of Mana gets menus right. Gone is the traditional menu system from Final Fantasy Adventure, instead using a ring system for most menus, which allows one to quickly using healing items, magic, or even change weapons on the fly. More importantly, gone is the constant switching back and forth between weapon types to exploit weaknesses. Enemies now are either vulnerable to physical attacks or magical ones, though physical critical attacks tend to ignore defenses, so a lucky crit can kill just about anything. This allows the player to choose what weapons they like and stick to them as much or as little as they like.

Weapon types have changed as well. We still have swords, axes, spears, and whips, but we also have javelins, bows, boomerangs, and gloves. Most impressively, all these weapons also feel good to use, so it really comes down to playstyle. Or just giving your characters the best weapons you have to be as effective as possible, or all ranged weapons to keep certain enemies at bay.

Now, I’d like to note something about the differences between the SNES original and the PS4 remake. This is that the PS4 remake is, in some ways, much easier. This is because the game comes with some options you can use to make it easier. The original came maxed out all items you could carry at four, which is extremely low. You could still carry a lot of different items, but you could only have four of each item. The PS4 release allows you to keep it at four, or increase it to eight or even twelve. Being able to carry 12 Candy, the most basic healing item, makes a lot of the early game fights, before you get curative magic, much more fair since you aren’t rationing your healing items to the point of madness.

Also, gone is the customization system of Final Fantasy Adventure, where you could choose what stats to increase upon leveling up. Instead, characters have pre-existing statistical growth, so Randi will always have the most health, attack, and defense, while Primm will be rather well-rounded, and Popoi is your dedicated mage.

But something they have added in is the new and improved weapon system. No longer do you have to buy a ton of weapons or find them in dungeons, where old weapons clog your inventory. Instead, you gather weapon orbs, which can be used to upgrade your weapons, increasing their power or even giving them special abilities, like confusion status being inflicted when attacking, poisoning enemies, or dealing extra damage to certain enemy families, like dragons.

Moreover, every character has a mastery bar for the weapons. And the more mastery you obtain, the more powerful attacks you can perform. These replace the Will Powers from the previous game. Moreover, these special attacks are completely under your control, as you have to charge up the attacks manually, but holding down the attack button. A bar will then fill next to your character’s portrait, with the level of the special attack next to it. For example, your first weapon is the Rusty Sword and it’s first level special attack is a jumping slash forward in the PS4 version. This attack deals increased damage. However, while charging, your speed will be decreased, so it becomes harder to evade attacks. This mastery bar is increased by killing enemies. Also, so long as your party is hitting enemies, they will get some mastery too, but the person who gets the killing blow will get the most mastery.

And weapons aren’t the only thing with this mastery system. Once you get magic, they will also feature a mastery system, which you can increase by casting spells a lot. This is just like in Secret of Evermore, except that instead of raising the levels of every spell, it’s based on elementals. For example, casting a lot of Undine spells, which is the first elemental’s spells you get, will increase the power of all Undine spells for that character. This does, however, mean you can grind spell levels by just casting the cheapest spells each elemental grants to power up all your spells, but considering the amount of grinding necessary to level up spells in the late game, I’m okay with this.

Also, you may notice at times that your weapons and magic will stop gaining mastery at times. This is because the maximum you can take your weapons and spells to increase over time. A weapon can only go as high as the number of orbs it has forged into it. For example, let’s say you’re early in the game and you defeat the first boss, getting you the second Sword Orb, giving you two Sword Orbs, so it’s max mastery level should be two, right? Not until you get the weapon reforged from the Rusty Sword into the Rapier (PS4)/Broad Sword (SNES). Then you can raise your weapon mastery on all characters to level 2 with the sword.

Spells work a little different. That is based on how many Mana Seeds you’ve sealed. Throughout the game, you will need to visit Mana Temples to get the blessing of their seed. Once you’ve visited a seed, all your spells can be increased by another level. This does, however, usually mean you also just got a new elemental, so, if you want to have the most powerful spells, means you’ll be spending some time grinding magic. Thankfully, all enemies grant the same amount of mastery to spells, so you could always spam spells on weak enemies close to a town, though it will be time consuming. If you are going to do this and have your game setup somewhere near a computer or another television, you might want to lower the volume of your game and put a movie on or watch a TV show. I found the grind to be the most boring thing ever, but having a movie on my PC or watching some anime on Crunchyroll helped to alleviate the boredom.

Another aspect to the PS4 remake I really enjoy is the stats. In the SNES version, you really couldn’t see how a lot of things affected you, like equipment. It would only tell you about changes to your Defense, but not to things like Evade or Magic Defense. You’d have to go into the Statistics screen to see those differences, both before and after changing equipment. In the PS4 remake, all that information is front and center. For example, in the SNES version, it would tell me that a Bandanna gives me +2 Defense. But I’d have to check the Statistics screen to see it also increases my Evade by +23 and my Magic Defense by +2 as well. In the PS4 version, it just shows me all the changes before I equip it. This is good because some items give a minor defense increase, but lower your Evade or Magic Defense by a lot more than you gain. Or some equipment may have status resistances to things like Poison, Confuse, or Moogle, so you might want to keep it to deal with enemies that spam status ailments. For the SNES version, you really need to look that information up while the PS4 version just tells me that information from the Equipment screen.

I mentioned before how the boy you play is not a trained warrior. This is really emphasized when the first boss fight comes and a knight, who should really be helping you fight, couches you through the first boss. I will give the game this, it has a great introduction. And just in case you’re underleveled for the first boss, you cannot actually die to the boss, as anytime you fall, the knight will revive you, as many times as it takes for you to kill the boss. It’s your one gimme in this game, so it allows you to ease yourself in. This is important because Action RPGs weren’t really a thing back on the SNES, so a game like Secret of Mana with it’s action-based combat, rather than turn-based menus, was a real treat. It was something we didn’t really see before, so it gave people room to learn how different it could be. This is a good thing.

This is also good because it also gives a theme to the game, that of Randi becoming a hero worthy of the Mana Sword. Over the course of the journey, he grows as a person, performing heroic deeds, fighting great beasts, and eventually tackling whatever empire is reviving the Mana Fortress. He, of course, has Primm and Popoi at his side, who also have their own reasons for going on this journey, such as Popoi’s search for his memories and his home and Primm’s search for the man she loves, who was kidnapped by the very people Randi is fighting against.

The problem is that a lot of this characterization is exclusive to the PS4 versions. Sure, the SNES version still hits on a lot of these points, but the PS4 version also includes little skits between characters that adds more characterization when you stay at inns. I’d stay at every inn I came across, so I usually got to see all of these skits, and it’s nice to see how the characters change bit by bit the more they travel together. Heck, I’d even go so far as to say that Primm and Randi start to form a bit of a relationship, perhaps hinting that her time away from Dyluck, the man she loves, may have allowed her to find someone she really does care for. However, this is just conjecture on my part and I could be reading romance that isn’t actually there. You might see it as them just forming a close friendship. Regardless, these skits seem to average happening every time an event happens, the first being right after meeting Luka, but before getting Primm, and the next being right after getting Primm. I didn’t check about skits without Primm in your party since I always get Primm right away, but they are probably a thing!

However, for all of this, the PS4 version also has it’s… polarizing qualities. Despite the game features voice acting, the character models have no lip-sync whatsoever, making a lot of the voices, while good, come across as unnatural on the characters, who often don’t even open their mouths in cutscenes. Considering Square Enix has made voice acting work on portable consoles long before this remake, mainly in Final Fantasy IV’s remake on the DS, which is also on Steam, it comes off as extremely lazy. Simply put, Square Enix can do better, especially on the PS4. If this were a mobile port, like on iOS, they could perhaps get away with this, but on modern consoles? I expected better.

Some people also don’t like the character models. I find them to be fine, but the one thing I will agree with people on is the soundtrack. The remake soundtrack is extremely weak. Of the music I tried listening to, it sounds a bit more synthesized than the original soundtrack, giving it a very techno feel to a lot of songs. However, it also has a problem of being very quiet and subdued, which is very odd as the original soundtrack would have heavy hitting bass and drum hits, especially in dungeon areas. It’s like trying to play ball-busting dungeon crawlers with music that would be at home in a golf game. Thankfully, you can always go into the options and change to the original SNES soundtrack, but that just tells me that even the creators thought the soundtrack was weaker in general and expected people to not enjoy it. Or, perhaps, it was a fortunate inclusion, intended as a bonus, but served as the one reason why people don’t completely rip into this game’s sound design in reviews. Only mostly, like I just did.

One little nicety I wanted to mention, because it is cute, is the little nods to Mana’s history in the PS4 version. For example, around Potos, there’s a portrait of Sumo, the main character of Final Fantasy Adventure, in the basement of the Elder’s house, though it’s his Adventures of Mana appearance. A similar portrait for the girl from the same game, Fuji, can be found in a house in Pandora. I don’t remember where the others were, but I remember seeing portraits for the main characters from Legend of Mana and I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed some. It’s a nice little nod to the series’ history and it’s fun to try and find them.

Also, you may also notice that the empire, the one you’re told about trying to bring back the Mana Fortress, is kinda, sorta, just maybe, really frigging stupid. They want to destroy the power of Mana so they can have their Mana Fortress so they can take over the world. You know, the Mana Fortress. The battleship that runs on Mana. So they want to destroy Mana so they can have their Mana Fortress. Which wouldn’t work without Mana. Which would doom the entire planet if the power of Mana were to die. Also, it’s the Vandole Empire again, so this is already a bunch of guys that got their butts kicked over this same thing. It’s like watching Robotnik/Eggman in Sonic Adventure 2, talking about destroying the Earth so he can build Eggmanland. But if he’s going to build Eggmanland, he needs an Earth to build it on, but he’s trying to destroy the Earth. These villains are so shortsighted that they don’t see the massive, glaring flaws in their plans.

Also, there’s the whole point of a great beast, created by the gods, to destroy the Mana Fortress. If you believed the Mana Fortress existed, wouldn’t you, therefore, believe the Mana Beast exists too? And then you have to consider that the Mana Sword also must exist. Across the entire game, the whole Vandole Empire comes off as extremely incompetent, like they never considered that them reviving the Mana Fortress might be, I dunno, opposed by these two forces that we know about. And, sadly, this empire, if I recall correctly, becomes a running theme in the series, the story of a bunch of idiots who’re incapable of learning but, somehow, manage to not get completely wiped out in every game.

Another thing that’s interesting about this game is that, regardless of version, events can be non-linear for a little while. As an example, you’re banished from Potos Village very early on. You actually get a choice right after. You can either walk to the Water Palace or travel by cannon. You don’t have to pay for the cannon travel at this time, so you could use that. If you do, however, once you finish things in the Water Palace, you will be grabbed by Goblins, taken to their village, and they will attempt to cook Randi as their meal. Primm, however, arrives to save you, but leaves back for Pandora. If you walk instead and visit Pandora castle before heading to the Water Palace, so you meet Primm in the castle instead, this event with the Goblins doesn’t happen, which leads to a few events either happening or not happening, though this doesn’t last long.

Upon heading to Pandora, you can find Primm fighting with her father in the castle. Now, depending on if you met her before or not, things can go a little differently. If you met her in the Goblin Village, she’ll join your party and ask you to go with her to the Haunted Forest to fight a witch, or she’ll run off if you first saw her in the castle. If she runs off, you can then only recruit her by fighting some enemies in the Haunted Forest, which can be a difficult fight at this point in the game.

Another branching event can happen if you head to Gaia’s Navel, where the dwarves live, before heading into the forest. This only occurs if you have Primm. Primm will then throw a tantrum about you not going to the forest first and leave the party, leading to the same fight I mentioned above. However, if you goto the forest first, you’ll eventually hit a point where you need an axe, where Primm will finally agree to head to Gaia’s Navel to get one. Gaia’s Navel is, like I said, where the dwarves live, who will be able to strengthen your Mana Sword, make an axe for you, and where you’ll find Popoi.

Unfortunately, while I like these branching events, they basically end here. The rest of the story is much more linear, though it is fun to notice the first few times, as you do things slightly out of order and find events you didn’t know existed, or missing events you saw before just because you did something out of order, like visiting Pandora Castle before the Water Palace.

For reference, I prefer to recruit Primm as soon as possible, as she’s more combat capable than Popoi and she’s a welcome help in Gaia’s Navel, especially with the slime enemies. Also, the forest is really difficult to tackle alone, or even with Popoi, who is, like I said, your mage, so he suffers from low defense and low HP. But it’s also memorable to suffer through these events just once, so you can see Primm in a bare knuckle brawl with two werewolves. Where she seems to be winning.

And speaking of Primm, she always struck me as a bit of a mystery. As of the original game, she always mystified me as she’s the only elf in the entire game, or whatever her race is supposed to be. All sources say she’s human, but she also features very pointy ears. Likewise, her father didn’t have them, at least until the remake, where it became more obvious there were a lot more people with such ears, like Luka and Pamaela. Even her father, Elman, now features the ears, making them look far more alike. Which, if they are elves, makes the whole “Luka is over two hundred years old” much more believable. In some games, elves being thousands of years old can be very common.

Oh, and let me save some people a little time. Often, I hear people complaining about being underpowered after an early series of events sends them to the Upper Lands. This is after a series of fights in the ruins south of Pandora. This is because, after completing the ruins, you are expected to go back to Pandora Castle, where the king will allow you into his treasury, where you will find a Sword Orb and a Spear Orb. Both of which are welcome upgrades before tackling the Upper Lands. This event, however, can be completely skipped, as Gemma, a recurring ally, tells you to head to Gaia’s Navel because someone broke into the Earth Palace. As such, you might wind up heading right to Gaia’s Navel and miss these upgrades. And you won’t feel the need for these upgrades since the Upper Lands is really the first time the game’s difficulty will jump up like this. Sure, the upgrades help in the Earth Palace, but the enemies inside are simple enough that it can be tackled relatively easily without the weapon upgrades. I just saved you an hour of backtracking. You’re welcome.

Much as I praise this game, these are some things it does that I do not like in the slightest. The haunted forest, for example, is full of Chobin Hoods who, if you haven’t been to Gaia’s Navel yet, will be more than happy to rip your party a new one as they pelt you with arrows and stay as far out of your range as possible. They will also spam arrows, causing you to take tons of damage and, in some cases, will happily stunlock you to death. Where in they will hit you over and over again until you cannot move, forcing you to watch as your health gradually drops to zero. This is even worse if you try to do the forest with just Randi. At least in Gaia’s Navel, you get some ranged weapons to fight back with.

This difficulty is one of the biggest sore spots that could overshadow the game, if it wasn’t so brief. Areas can feel incredibly difficult, but certain bosses can feel like pushovers. For example, compared to the Chobin Hoods in the Haunted Forest, Tropicallo, who you fight in the Dwarf Village before getting Popoi, is incredibly easy. But then the Haunted Forest, once properly equipped with Dwarf Village gear, starts to feel like a breeze, minus the Werewolf enemies who will happily stunlock you, but the boss, Spiky Tiger, is a nightmare. Also, when you get to the Pandora Ruins, the area itself is a cakewalk, but the boss, Wall Face, will end your run if you don’t know how to fight it.

There’s ways around this difficulty, and it is significantly lessened in the PS4 version as Spiky Tiger feels a lot weaker and like it has far less health, making for a more fun experience. But the SNES original could have really used some ironing out. An example being get used to enemies spamming attacks. Just because you have to wait until a bar charges to 100% before you can attack doesn’t mean they have to. Enemies can just spam attacks, especially any kind of archer will happily do so. This is especially aggravating in the Fire Palace, where many enemies can light you on fire with a touch, where you will become trapped in place with an engulf effect, but they can attack you while you’re engulfed to inflict even more damage and, often, re-inflict the engulf effect, which resets the timer. It’s quite easy to die to these enemies.

Even enemy placement can be bad. In some areas, you’ll start walking around and immediately get hit by a spell or hit by an enemy you either couldn’t see coming or can’t even reach without ranged attacks. Thankfully, these enemies rarely do more than bruise your ego a little, as such cheapshots typically deal very low damage early on or anything a Cure Water or Candy couldn’t fix. Until you hit the Upper Lands, where you might as well rename the Cup of Wishes reviving item to the Cup of Revive Popoi. Upper Lands is also where this game’s difficulty becomes a bit overbearing and relies on a lot of cheapshots. Silktail enemies will happily combo you to death, enemies will spam spells the moment they get on screen or even spawn in, and every screen features so many spawning enemies that the moment you kill one, you’re typically under attack by another one that just popped onto screen, making battles feel like a war of attrition.

Which brings me to the one thing that brings all of this back up. Magic. Once you get access to magic, most enemies go from being a pain in the butt to a complete cakewalk. Magic is, by far, the most powerful tool you have, so it’s worth leveling up to maximum whenever you can. Get a new elemental? Level it. Find a new Mana Seed? Level all your magic. Magic levels go up, but costs do not, so it’s always worth leveling your magic. You never get upgraded elemental spells, so Cure Water, for example, is the only curative magic you get. And if you want to improve it, you need to improve Primm’s magic levels with Undine. The higher the level, the more powerful the Undine spells she casts. The same goes for Popoi and his offensive magic. The higher the level, the more damage it deals. And if you can manage to figure out how to exploit a weakness of a boss, bosses go down in a matter of seconds.

But this is both a blessing and a curse. I said before that Primm and Popoi are your mages, but while Primm is more physically inclined, Popoi is your typical mage. This hits it’s ultimate conclusion in that Randi only has two stats lacking, being Intelligence and Wisdom, while Primm only has Intelligence as her weakspot. She’s pretty average in all other stats, but Wisdom, which is very high. Finally, there’s Popoi, whose only high stats are Agility and Intelligence. The rest, Strength, Constitution, and Wisdom, are all very low. Which gives him high evasion rate and high magical attack, sure, but everything else suffers. He suffers from low Attack, low Defense, and, even worse, the lowest Magic Defense in the party. And despite he’s a mage, his other stats don’t reflect this. His HP is the lowest in the party, as he should as a mage, but he doesn’t have higher MP than Primm. In fact, half the time, she had higher HP and MP than Popoi. So Popoi’s main strength, magic, is something you can’t even use that much of since his MP amount is very low. I write this at level 33, where Popoi has all of 25 MP, when most spells cost 2 MP per cast. Primm, at the exact same level, also has 25 MP, but she’s able to cast her Cure Water, at 2 MP, on all party members and it’s enough to bring us to max health most of the time. For Popoi, I have to cast one spell per enemy to guarantee a kill. If I have him multi-target, I only damage all enemies instead of kill them. It’s frustrating. The only upside is that in the PS4 version, leveling up fills your HP and MP both while it only fills HP in the SNES original. Combine that with the low item stacking so you can only have four Faerie Walnuts to refill MP and you’ll see why the dungeons full of enemies that can only be killed with magic are so irritating.

EDIT: Later on in the game, I hit level 39 with Primm and I noticed that with her at 39 and Popoi at level 38, Primm had 32 MP compared to Popoi’s 30 MP. It’s looking like, as they hit certain milestone levels, the two gain much larger MP boosts. Also, I’ve been using a lot more of Popoi’s magic and it’s been quite helpful, so once you get a good MP pool going, the problems with MP drop off and you can have fun with magic. Just be careful not to run out!

Another irritation is that in a lot of points, the game expects you to do things that go completely unexplained. As an example, after you finish the Pandoran Ruins, you’re expected to head to the castle, get your reward, then head back to Gaia’s Navel. If you go into the Dwarf Village proper, you’ll find Gemma and a giant hole. Go down the hole to fight another boss and get back the Water Seed, which you were never even told was stolen. Return with the seed to the Water Temple to fight the empire for the first time, THEN be told to head to the Upper Lands. Or when you get to those orbs that you need to cast magic on. Hitting them with Analyzer will tell you what Elemental to use, but it doesn’t tell you what SPELL to use. Because, on most of them, only certain spells work. An example comes early in the Fire Palace, where you find an orb in a room full of fire, where your party will complain about it being too hot. Analyzer will say Salamando magic will work on the orb, but here’s the thing; only Exploder, the most expensive offensive magic Salamando has for Popoi, will work. Fireball and Lava Wave will still hit it, but they will fail to clear the fire. Likewise, Primm’s Fire Bouquet and Blaze Wall will also fail. But they’ll happily take your MP!

The number of times I had to consult a walkthrough in this game is more than I care to admit, as I would try everything I could think of, then scream at the ceiling “Okay, NOW WHAT???” before just googling a walkthrough.

One final thing I really want to talk about is the trophies in the PS4 version. A lot of them are the basic stuff. Beat a boss, get a trophy. Many of the secret trophies are for just beating bosses. A lot of the others, however, require maddening levels of stat tracking. Get every piece of armor across three trophies (Body, helm, accessory), defeat every monster, complete the guide (essentially talk to everyone), and visiting all locations on Flammie, a dragon who can fly you around later in the game. These trophies in themselves just require you to keep spreadsheets listing every armor, every character, every monster, and every location just so you can check them off like a big checklist. The final two just involve getting all your weapons to level 9 and all magic to level 8, which I try to do anyways. Every weapon’s 9th form is great to have and, like I said, magic basically breaks the game, so you’ll want to level that anyways.

I was actually ready to give this game a high recommendation, but the further I get in this game, the more irritating it’s getting. Where Secret of Evermore had a very steady difficulty climb, this game keeps hitting me with wall after wall to climb, with ridiculously punishing enemies coming out more and more, where I’m being punished for not constantly running around with ranged weapons or with enemies with atrociously high evasion rates, making me waste more time screaming “WILL YOU JUST GET HIT?!” as enemies spam magical attacks and make certain I cannot act. And each time I get to a new area and upgrade to the best equipment on my overleveled characters, I immediately feel extremely feeble to the enemies I have to fight. I was seeing the word MISS in my sleep while playing this game. This gets most annoying with the very finicky hit detection, where if you’re on the slightest incline, enemies become impossible to hit with melee weapons, but will happily tear you a new one.

However, that doesn’t change that one of the more irritating things is how the game starts handing out magic like it’s going out of style and it leads to very obnoxious things. Like when I got level 4 magic, I started running into enemies that had level 5, 6, and even 7 magic. The game even glitched out where any enemy that casts level 7 Speed Up became completely invincible. It wasn’t like I was missing, it just ignored the hit detection entirely, but could still smack me around. The damage I take from magic may be low, but being frozen in place all the time gets very annoying very quickly.

Moreover, after the Fire Palace, the game starts to feel like it’s almost rushing to get you to advance. I’m getting orbs left and right to the point where I can’t keep up with them. Not the forging, I have more gold than I know what to do with, but as far as weapon leveling. Each dungeon is handing me something like four new orbs and I’m struggling to get a single weapon level per dungeon without grinding. I remember walking out of the Northtown Ruins with five weapon orbs, which was the most I’d seen so far. Great for when I start leveling weapons, but that’s a lot of weapons to level.

I’d like to reiterate that I do like this game. It’s a very solid title, when it isn’t being a massive pain in the butt. And I am willing to concede that a lot of issues I’m having, like the accuracy problem, is an issue that’s apparently only in the PS4 and PC version, not the SNES original. So I’m feeling like I just chose the wrong version for this review. But for all the complaining I do, I do have a lot of fun as well. When I’m hitting enemies and exploring dungeons, I have a ton of fun. And when enemies aren’t being cheap, they can be a ton of fun to fight. My favorite enemies being the drops enemies as, while a lot of people hate that they keep multiplying, I love it since they’re essentially free experience and weapon levels.

Less beloved by me are the jellyfish at the Moon Palace. You need to get Primm to the end of it with, at the least, 8 MP. Because it has one of those orbs you need a cast a spell on, which is Lucent Beam, a Lumina spell that is one of Primm’s few attack spells. The jellyfish throughout the entire dungeon love to cast Magic Absorb, which steals your MP. Moreover, these enemies have a ton of HP, high defense, and high evasion, so they will happily drain your mages dry, forcing you to use Faerie Walnuts to refill them. Again, in the SNES version, you can only carry four of these items.

Most annoying is the fact this enemy exists literally just to do this one thing. They don’t attack you otherwise and you need to cast Lucent Beam inside the Moon Palace, which isn’t even a dungeon. You go in, find the orb, cast Lucent Beam on it, and you’re rewarded with a new elemental and a mana seed. There isn’t even other enemies in the dungeon or a boss. You just walk in, cast one spell, then walk out again. Then go back through the MP drain field, then go on to the next part of the game. The section takes less than five minutes, but it’s only annoying because of Magic Absorb. The only good thing is that upon getting Luna, the elemental, grants Popoi the spell Magic Absorb, so you can get more spells out of him.

However, I do like this. For most of the middle of the game, it feels like I’ve been sidetracked in my main objective, to find the mana seeds. In this section, after you get Flammie, you obtain three elementals pretty quickly, three mana seeds, and the game is really gearing up for the finale. You only have a single elemental left to find and one more seed. All magics now max out at level 7, meaning you have some powerful magic at your disposal, and your weapons are around level 6 for all of them, minus the sword, if you’ve been finding all the orbs. You feel like you’re really moving into the finale, or at least the third act, where you’re prepared to take on the Vandole Empire.

But this also means this is one of the biggest magic grinds in the game, as you get a lot of elementals and seeds pretty rapidly. Every seed increases your maximum spell level and every elemental starts from level 0. I only really have an issue with Primm’s Lumina magic, as her spells are extremely expensive, the cheapest of which is 4 MP per cast. The problem being that the higher in spell level you get, the more casts each elemental requires to level up. It just turns into a lot of staying in the same areas, casting the same spells until they level up for an increase in effectiveness. Also the all magic at level 8 trophy.

But that’s nothing on the final grind, if you’re going for all achievements, like I did. What grind is this? The equipment grind. While a lot of the armor you can get in the game can be bought, much of it can only be gotten as drops by enemies. And some of these drops are permanently missable. A lot of enemies in the Pure Land drop rare equipment, often the best in the game, but once you enter the Pure Land, you better get those drops. Because, if you don’t get them and finish the area, the area is locked and you can never go back to the Pure Land.

More irritating is the orb grind in the Mana Fortress. Up until the Mana Fortress, you’ve gotten all your orbs from bosses, treasure chests, and the like. In the Mana Fortress, the final orbs are held by normal enemies as a rare drop. You need to collect 2 Glove and Axe Orbs and 1 for Bow, Whip, Boomerang, Javelin, and Spear. Sword doesn’t have a final orb. This grind is maddening because all of the orbs are rare drops and enemies seemed especially stingy for these drops.

With all of this in mind, Secret of Mana is a very difficult game to recommend, as the further and further I got, the more irritated I seemed to become. Between ridiculously evasive enemies, reliance on magic spam, and forced grind for the best gear and orbs, Secret of Mana is a game that became more and more of an uphill battle. That said, I’d rather play a game that doesn’t stick the landing over one that botches the dismount.

Mana Fans: High Recommendation
General Audiences: Low Recommendation