Secret of Mana

Released on August 6, 1993 for the Super Nintendo by Square, Secret of Mana is a vast action-RPG featuring both single and multiplayer gameplay.

Secret of Mana and I have circled around each other for 26 years. I first started seeing the game at parties because, instead of alcohol and sex, the parties I attended included Sunkist and video games. I remember the game featured beautiful music and incredible graphics, wind blowing the grass in a field, as two players fought monsters with a sword and axe in what looked like essentially a multiplayer The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Every now and then I'd get a turn in, but never for more than 10 or 15 minutes at a time. I knew the production values felt high, that, without even seeing the opening menu, Secret of Mana had to be a Squaresoft game, but I never got deep enough into it to form a full impression...until, for some reason, now, 26 years later.

OK, now that I've finally seen the menu, I've got to say, this font has got it GOING ON.

This game is as beautiful as I remembered. While the graphics aren't quite as tight as A Link to the Past's, they're bright, colorful, and more highly detailed, with well-animated sprites. Secret of Mana takes place in your basic Squaresoft fantasy world of 16-bit anime'ish-styled human characters, along with a bunch mostly humanoid monsters, just like in Chrono Trigger, or a Final Fantasy game. Secret of Mana features plenty of huge, very nicely designed bosses for our three heroes to fight, and some great Super Nintendo style explosions engulf those bosses when they're defeated. Speaking of, there are also some great 16-bit rivers and waterfalls--plenty of beautifully animated environments.

Looks pretty much exactly like where I live, minus all the smog, concrete, cars, metal, and crushing depression.

Wait, did I say three heroes? Yes, Secret of Mana features three protagonists. You can only start with one, but the second and third are obtained early on in the game. From that point, if you're playing solo, you can switch between the characters at will with the press of a button, and the computer AI will take control of the other two. If you've got a buddy, they can take control of one of the other characters. If you've got two buddies, and a Super Multitap accessory, all three of you can play at once. But what exactly will you be doing?

Whatever it is, it looks kinky.

Secret of Mana is an action-RPG in the vein of A Link to the Past, but with heavier RPG elements. You begin the game as a male character (you can name him whatever you want) who lives in a small, rural village. Your character falls in a lake, finds a mysterious sword jammed into a stone (sounds familiar...), and pulls it out. Before you can say, "Put it back! Put it back!" monsters are everywhere. Seems, this sword is the Mana sword, and...
Honestly, plot isn't Secret of Mana's strong suit. You've got to find Mana Seeds, and eventually reach a Mana Fortress, and there's an evil Emperor, and really it's all just an excuse to exercise the basic RPG formula of go to village, stock up on supplies, learn about village's problem, visit nearby dungeon, fight through enemies, grow more powerful, defeat dungeon's boss, which fixes village's problem, move through an overworld until you reach the next village. This is the bread-and-butter of RPG mechanics...then again, it's one that's proven for years not to be broken. Why fix it?
Your characters have their choice of weapons, all of which can be upgraded throughout the game. Some, like the whip, feature longer range, while others, like the axe, allow you to cut through rocky obstructions in your path. Unlike A Link to the Past, you can't just hammer away at enemies. Every time you swing at an enemy (in realtime--no turn-based fighting here), your attack meter goes to zero, then quickly charges back up to 100%--giving you maybe a two or three-second pause between attacks. This encourages you and your friends to work on timing your attacks out in multiplayer. Or, of course, if you're playing alone, this encourages you to quickly tap through your characters so that you can hit, switch, hit, switch, hit.

Also, if you play by yourself, you won't have to get in a fistfight with anyone over who gets to control the dragon.

A little ways into Secret of Mana, two of your characters learn magical moves, including attacks and healing spells. As you make your way through the game, you earn new elemental magics, like fire, ice, and earth, giving you a diverse move-set, and creating even more opportunities for strategy, as certain enemies are more vulnerable to certain elements than others.

It only took me three hours to figure out that this ice dragon was vulnerable to fire.

That's gonna leave a mark! No? Burn, baby, burn! No? The heat is...on! No? Fire in the hole! No? That's a spicy meatball! No? No to "That's a spicy meatball?" Really?

Of course, to go with your health meter, you've got a magic meter that depletes with each move you perform. Both can be refilled by items, though you also learn refilling magics late in the game. As for items, you can only carry four of each at a time...leading to even more necessary strategizing. And then, you'll want to buy the best armor in each village (defeated enemies drop cash), so that your defense goes up. And you're going to want to fight and grind as much as possible because Secret of Mana takes the "RPG" in action-RPG seriously, and your characters' many stats can be leveled up frequently throughout the game as you accumulate enough victories in battle. Your spells even level up with frequent use.
All of this adds up to a deep, fast-paced, action-packed game, that's a blast with friends, or alone on a long and lonely night. But unlike those two top-tier games I've name-dropped in this review, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana features several flaws that pull it below that top tier of hallowed Super Nintendo perfection.

You could almost say, there are a few things about this game I do not Lich.

You'll feel these issues right way as you try to navigate Secret of Mana's menu's. Your weapons, items, and options are selected and toggled through in a circular on-screen pop-up you've got to navigate While this at first seems original, it quickly proves to be unintuitive and frustrating. Eventually, you'll get used to it, but it's just a bit too loose, and should have been tightened up a bit. However, this, what I am generously calling "looseness," and should really be calling, "lack of polish," starts to show its ugly head in other areas of the game. For instance, you'll start to notice that sometimes when you swing at and hit an enemy, you inexplicably won't make contact, or contact will inexplicably be delayed for a second or two. Late in Secret of Mana, fast-travel, most definitely a modern convenience and a step-forward in 1994 gaming, becomes accessible, but the game's overworld map is clunky, and loads up like it's booting from a floppy disc. However, these are just minor annoyances.

It's like waiting for a dial-up JPEG of a...um...erm...uh...of a skyscraper to finish loading. That's definitely the kind of pictures I was looking at in high school with my dial-up Internet. Fine architecture. Hey, something had to fill the void between all the Sunkist and video game parties!

What's more frustrating is how loose the game is with telling you where to go and what to do. Secret of Mana is nearly obtuse at moments. However, even this is forgivable in light of the game's most frustrating sin.
Secret of Mana's final dungeon is very long and contains multiple bosses and zero save points. On first try, the final dungeon could feasibly take someone three hours to complete. The final boss fight at the end of this dungeon requires that a specific duo of your characters have both leveled up one specific element of their magic. This climactic boss fight also requires that the third specific character has leveled up their skill with one of the game's weapons, in particular. I haven't mentioned it yet, but any character can use any of the weapons in this game, varying from sword, to whip, to bow, to spear, to axe, and more. The more a particular character uses a particular weapon, the more that particular, specific character levels up their skill with that particular weapon. Secret of Mana never once tells or even hints that the player needs to level up these specific skills and this one specific weapon with this one specific character in order to take down its final boss, and if you haven't, you can't even damage it. That means you can fight through the final dungeon for three hours, meet the final boss with full health and a fully stocked inventory, and then inexorably watch your characters die as you fail to do even one point of damage to the foe in the final battle.

Dammit, that sounds exactly like adulthood! Here's some nice, soothing pink trees to calm me down.

Even worse, after I furiously googled what I was supposed to do to be able to damage the final boss, furiously grinded with my characters until I had leveled up the correct spells and weapon, and then rushed through the final dungeon in an hour or so to face him, the final boos randomly pulled out some massive attack that killed my entire party 30 seconds in. No warning, and he had never done this the first time through, in the grueling 30 minute fight where I literally unloaded everything single thing I had on him to no effect. The third time was the charm, after casting a million defensive protection spells to protect my party against randomly getting wiped out again, but by then I was so frustrated, I had nearly forgotten the hours upon hours of joy Secret of Mana had given me.

Any 16-bit game that features a mountain-view with some moons in the background gets bonus points from me!

And it had given me hours of joy. Secret of Mana is a very long game. Secret of Mana has no play-time counter like some of its contemporaries have, but I feel like I at least put a good 40 hours of time into the game. I enjoyed most of those 40 hours. I particularly enjoyed what I heard in the background. Secret of Mana features a classic 16-bit soundtrack. While it the music does fall prey to the same "looseness" as the rest of the game (I'll get to what I mean by this in a moment), much of Secret of Mana's music is stunning. The best tracks, particularly when you're traveling the overworld, or deep-diving into a dungeon, are sweeping and full, transporting your imagination into fantasy. However, in a silly glitch, if you attack multiple enemies, or there are just too many sound effects happening, a channel or multiple channels of music are cut, meaning maybe a guitar lead line or the percussion or both might just fall away mid-song...sometimes even leading to silence. At first I thought there was something wrong with my game, until research proved there's just something wrong with the game. There are also a few poppy, percussion-heavy tracks that lean a little too hard into cheese, but overall, especially if you stand completely still, this is a great soundtrack.

DOUBLE-BONUS!!!

Really, Secret of Mana's soundtrack is emblematic of the entire game: absolutely phenomenal for most of its runtime, but with some very frustrating quirks and flaws. The last 26 years of my life have been...the opposite of that?

Graphics: 9.5/10.0

Sound: 9.0/10.0

Gameplay: 8.2/10.0

Lasting Value: 8.5/10.0


Overall: 8.6/10.0