I recently went on a Virutal Console Benge, and asked around for suggestions on games to purchase that I may have missed in the last year that I have shunned the Wii console. One game I got quite a recommendation for was Secret of Mana, a game I used to have in cartridge form a long time ago. With such good reviews and such fond memories this must be an epic game, right?

TL;DR Review: I thought Power Rangers and Barney were cool back then too.

A list of rants:

1) AI IS DUMB... when they're on my side.

Now, I know this is SNES, so I'm not expecting The Terminator or The Matrix level AI. But being that the one player game mode requires that you depend on your AI buddies (You don't become ultrabuffman by hoarding up all the EXP points... like getting Venusaur up to level 100 by the time you beat Misty in Pokemon by neglecting everyone else) it would be nice if they weren't befuddled by rocks. Or enemies standing just inside their peripheral vision.

See, the AI for your buddies only seems to update when (1) an enemy walks directly into their line of sight, or (2) you move. But if you're knocked on your butt by enemies, you're frozen in place, pixel perfectly, for a whole second... a whole second where your two teammates stand dumbfounded waiting for a nuron to strike.

I've learned to compensate a bit by circling the enemies before attacking so that my moronic allies have a chance of colliding with a baddie and dispaching it.

But four times I've been trapped in a corner by a whole hand full of baddies, constantly knocking me down so I can't move, slowly sappin' mah HP while my partners stand 30 pixels off to the side studying the Grecian artworks. THANKS GUYS.

Naturally, however, the Enemy AI runs in it's own thread or something, so it's always working despite what I'm doing, so they can move and kill while I'm frozen to the ground.

2) The bosses are overpowered, painfully.

If this was a traditional RPG, where I got to pause, sip my Mountain Dew, and plan my next attack between onslaughts from enemies, I wouldn't mind it so much. Heck, one of my favorite CRPGs is Breath of Fire, where every boss had rediculous amounts of HP, and when you drained them "The boss grins wickedly!" Which was code for "INVISIBLE HEALTH BAR". You really couldn't know how much longer it would take to finish him off.

In Secret of Mana, the bosses have the same "Wipe out the party in one hit" type of attacks...

...but they don't have to stick to turns...

...they never have to recharge...

...they can move out of range whenever you attack...

...and every time they give you a dirty look you fall on your butt and can't move (or operate the menus) while you're on the ground.

Which means if you're hit once at a bad time, you're dead.

No joke, I beat one boss by accident when it trapped me in the corner and started chewing on my character. He accidentally walked into the line of sight of one of my allies who was so pissed about being distracted from her studies of the wall decorations that she unleashed a barrage of arrows, doing 10 HP damage a hit, once every two seconds, for five minutes. FIVE MINUTES. Five minutes of me being chewed up, falling on my butt, rubbing my side, and then getting chewed again, waiting for my partner to kill the boss, with occasional eatings of candy to keep my HP up (accomplished by WTFSpamming the "Menu" key to try to get it hit during a frame when I wasn't being chewed or sitting on my butt).

D:

3) I think this ship was put togeather by monkeys!

I could count how many times I've become lodged on the sprite of an enemy, stuck, slowly being killed to death, attempting to wiggle enough to trigger the motor cortex of one of my allies to help on both hands and one and a half feet. Now, to be fair, this might be a Virtual Console glitch, not a Secret of Mana glitch, but with the high quality of the game mechanics and boss balance, I'm leaning toward failure of due dilligence from the Super Mario Club here.

I expect a few glitches, but then again, in a "Real Time Battle System", getting up close and personal with an enemy's graphic is key. Alas, as glitchy as it is, I'm afraid to do it.

4) No labels for you!

Just a warning... this is one of those CRPG's where you're expected to have the manual and a notebook nearby if you want to complete this game before the recycling of the Mayan calendar. None of the items have labels. I hope you know what a Medicinal Herb and a Farie Nut is before you go to the shop! And when it comes to armor buying time, there's no hints as to what the actual gain is for buying the armor (best guide is "most expensive"), and I hope you don't accidentally rebuy armor already equipped.

I know there are many CRPGs where armor is similarly handled; but it's become very frustrating to figure out if it's worth 400GP for the Kung Fu Dress, or if I should buy Super Wrists instead... only to find out I'd bought a round of Super Wrists already at the last shop.

To beat on this drum a bit more, Breath of Fire gives you a "Would you like to exchange?" screen when you buy armor, meaning that you know EXACTLY what kind of boost you are going to get, how much you get back from the armor you are wearing, and how much money you're going to get back, while also avoiding the menu scan to equip and unequip, and the extra chat with the salesperson to ditch the old armor, which you have absolutely no reason to carry.

Say what you will about WalMart, at least THEY buy accidentally bought goods back at face value.

Again, I know that no CRPG's armor system is perfect, but it's just another frustration for me.

Not to mention I can carry a grand total of 8 healing items for a party of three... hope you don't run into 70 goblins in a row before your next shop! (You will). And because the battle system is realtime, way too many times you don't check the itty bitty numbers at the bottom of the screen where the healtbars are until the character is dead.

5) Save points are for wimps.

* Leave the water palace.
* Walk around for a while.
* Take the cannon to Gaia's Navel.
* Ice the molten lava river.
* Fight 70 goblins while your partners examine the tapestries.
* Look at the clock as the half hour whizzes by.
* Go fight the boss.
* The boss sends a wave of attacks about spaced the same as the amount of time you spend rubbing your butt when hit, so it's pretty much a scripted cutscene. OF DEATH.
* Because you haven't seen a save point in 40 minutes, start over at the water palace.

The punishment for not being perfect when handling bosses is so high it's painful. And scary! If you get to redo 30 minutes of gameplay with this boss... what happens on the next one?!? An hour!?

6) Fanfiction.net rejected this game's script

I was a moderator for a Sonic Fanfiction website, way back in the day. If THIS game's script had shown up as an entry, I wouldn't have gone 5 pages before rejecting it and inviting the writer to take 3rd grade English again.

The game developers BOAST about how the game was translated in 30 days. About how they used a fixed width font so they had to chop the text to nubbins. They're PROUD OF IT.

Girl: Dad! You're impossible! I'll make my own decisions about my life!
Hey! It's the guy I saved! Say what? You're a swordsman?

Hero: Huh...oh, you mean this...

Girl: This is GREAT! I need your help! I helped YOU didn't I? It's your turn.
We're going to teach that witch a lesson. We're going to save Dyluck!

Hero: But... I've got to go to the Underground Palace.

Girl: later...LATER! Right. Let's go, uh...

Hero: I'm Hero.

Girl: Oh. Call me...

Please name this young lady.

(You may name this girl. I will name her Princess)

Princess: Okay! You can call me Princess!

**Princess Joined!**

(Enter Room directly North)

Elman: Princess!!

Princess: I hate you, dad!

(After leaving room)

Princess: I am not returning to this place, EVER!

Straight from the game script.

And when I say script, I mean it. The game actually displays IN SCRIPT FORMAT. Exactly as quoted.

RPGs are about the story! Tales of Symphonia made me angry, made me sad, emotionally moved me. This story makes me cringe whenever it writes text.

TL;DR

This game isn't really horribly bad. It's just little itty bitty bits of bad, all over the place. Like how a floor full of tacks isn't like a pit of lava, but you still don't want to dance a jig on them. I find myself actually yelling at the game, something I haven't done since I was 12.

The game could be fun. And the story could be awesome. But it's implemented so badly. I wonder how it even passed quality control. Was this the age before gametesters?

Breath of Fire is also translated badly. But it's walk-about map engine, and it's battlesystem are rock solid, so I don't feel like the game is punishing me when I make a mistake. Not to mention I walked right past the save point without recognizing it, died, and the game AUTOMATICALLY SAVED UPON DEATH and warped me back to the save point, kindly chiding me about having missed it earlier. I had to march back to the boss, but I didn't have to restart EVERYTHING. In other words, it's got weak points, but it's a solid game.

It's not even old school hard. I've beaten all the original Mega Man games. Those are Old School hard. You die alot, and you cuss alot, but if you get the timing down just right, you win.

Not so with Secret of Mana. Everything is either randomized, or so poorly implemented that you might as well do without. I'd prefer fighting on my own, Legend of Zelda style, than having two worthless tagalongs who fail to help me.

Yeah, I know, I could switch control when I'm being killed to one of my allies and attack, but by the time I do that, SHE's on HER butt being killed to death.

I've beaten many RPGs. I've played many hours of video games. This game is one of the few where I look at the clock when I'm done and actually think "time wasted." I've fed this game three hours I'll never get back.

Why do we have such good memories of this game, if it really sucks so bad? I gave it some thought, and this is what I came up with:

We were so used to not beating games (or at least I was), that it was nothing special that I couldn't beat this one either. The music was great, the graphics were rich, and I wasn't used to chewing through games. But then I got Pokemon. And I beat it. And then I started beating other games. And I got used to winning. I got used to winning with enough practice. Then I played this game again, and remembered a time when programmers actually enjoyed reading suicide statistics from players of their games.

If you want nostalgia, get the game. It's fun. If you're looking for a retro game on Virtual Console for $8 that you'll enjoy playing, look elsewhere.