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Reviews » Children of Mana [DS]

Hi. Have you ever played a game in the Mana series? Secret of Mana? Seiken Densetsu 3? Legend of Mana? Sword of Mana? Any of these ringing a bell? If so, all you need to know about Children of Mana is that it’s like those, but with a hub world and a watered down combat/magic system, but still totally worth it thanks to multiplayer and generally not being a bad game.

If you’re new to this whole Mana thing, you’re coming somewhat late to the party. Mana games have been churned out by Square Enix for around 15 years now, and are a line of class-based Real-Time Action-RPGs. Unlike Final Fantasy games, they take place in a relatively consistent world, steeped in magic and held together by the forces of Mana. They’re epic stories where you go out alone or with a party of three and kill a bunch of rabites and save the world. Usually they have a great combat system, a class-based character development system, a neat magic system, some form of multiplayer, and a somewhat nonlinear plot.

Children of Mana, unfortunately, has none of those things. Except Multiplayer, but Multiplayer is one-cartridge-per-player. But it’s still a pretty good game, honest.

In Children of Mana, the world is yet again in a state of peril thanks to giant monsters called “Malevodons” seemingly being led by a mysterious man to cause all kinds of chaos. You take on the role of one of four citizens of the Mana Village, a town founded at the foot of the great Mana Tree. Ferrik is your standard warrior class, Tamber is somewhat of a rogue, Poppen is a mage, and Wanderer is a large sentient rabbit man. Unfortunately, they all play roughly alike, the only difference I could find is their sprite set and the rates at which their assorted stats progress, so pick whoever you want. I went with Tamber because Tamber is a neat name.

Unlike previous Mana games, Children of Mana is woefully linear. It’s a dungeon crawler. You find whichever dungeon you’re supposed to be going to, which is pretty obvious because you look at your map and go “Where haven’t I been?”, and are presented with a level. In this level, you have to find a “Gleamdrop” (a seed/rock thing) and a “Gleamwell” (a shiny spot on the ground). When you find both, you have to take the Gleamdrop to the Gleamwell and then you go down to the next level. There are a couple conditions for finding each, they might be hidden in a pot, under a bush, they might require killing a certain enemy, or all enemies, or something completely different. Either way, it’ll feel like the same thing after you do it time after time after time.

While you go around killing things and finding gleam-stuff, you’ll find items strewn about the place. Some are consumables like gumdrops, others are gear like your assorted weapons and armor, and then there are gems, which I’ll discuss at length later. Gear is pretty straightforward, as you level, you’ll find new better weapons and armor. Some armor can only be equipped by some characters, but everyone can equip all weapons except a couple special character-specific ones. Oh but there’s a catch, you can’t equip items instantly, even if you have the level requirement to do so. You have to wait until you complete a dungeon depth divisible by 4, when you’ll be given a chance to save, alter your equipment, mess with your gems, etc, before being sent on down to the next level.

The combat system is sadly the meat of the game, since that’s what you’ll spend 90% of your time doing. You start the game with just a sword, but eventually get a flail, bow and mallet. Each weapon has its own benefits, like the sword ha s a three-hit combo, the flail can grab items, the bow has great range, and the mallet can be used to bounce enemies around. Unlike previous Mana games, you can have one weapon per class equipped at once, and can have two weapon classes at hand at any given time, one on your X button and one on your A button. Plus, even though you can’t change which weapons you have equipped while you’re in the middle of a dungeon level, you can switch which weapon classes you have on which button whenever you want. Unfortunately, despite this flexibility, there is little reason to use anything other than the sword as your primary weapon, since it has a three hit combo and can be upgraded to have a fourth ranged hit. The other weapons have their places, though. Some items are unobtainable unless you grab it with the flail, and some areas are unreachable if you don’t have the mallet to knock down obstacles.

The combat system is pretty shallow, but it does have one slightly complex addition to it. As you attack enemies you fill a fury gauge, and when it’s full you can go into a temporary fury by hitting Select. When you’re in fury mode, damage goes up, critical attacks go up, attack speed increases, and you get a new charge attack for each of your weapons. Plus, if you have a Fury Reels Gem equipped, you can add a slot-machine aspect to it, so in addition to all the boosts I described, you also get an extra bonus, like infinite HP, extra HP, or things like “Jackpot” which makes every strike against an enemy drop a bag of gold. The fury system doesn’t bring the kind of depth to the combat system that I’d like, but at least it’s something.

The other variable you’ll be playing with during combat are Gems. Gems are a new addition to the Mana series, they’re little magical crystals that alter something about your gameplay. Some of them boost stats, some give you combat abilities, some alter your magic abilities, some change your movement, and some alter your progress rate by increasing Gil drops and EXP gain. To limit your ability to go nuts using Gems, you have to put them on a “Gem Frame” to equip them, which is a grid with a set number of cells. Gems have a set size and shape, and you have to balance what Gems you want with what you can actually fit on your Gem Frame. As you progress through the game you can get upgrades to the Gem Frame, which increases its size and changes its shape, permitting more and different Gem combos. In addition to buying and finding new Gems, you can also combine existing ones at the Gem shop. Combining Gems might result in getting a completely new gem, or might upgrade and refine ones you have right now.

I was disappointed by the Gem system for two main reasons. First, it is way too easy to make yourself overpowered. For most of the game I used a 2x2 Gem that increases Exp gain by 50%. As my Gem Frame increased, I was able to boost attack by 20, and give myself extra strikes during combos. By the end of the game I had +28ATK, +10DEX, was hitting twice per swing, had souped-up fury attacks, had a fourth hit added to combos, and all HP restoratives were giving me 5x the HP they should. I was an unstoppable killing machine, and I hadn’t even gone with the character with the good STR growth rate. My second problem is that compared to previous games, the Gem Fusion system is an incredibly shallow form of equipment customization. You just pick two things, smush them together, pay a hefty fee, and go about your business.

The magic system is almost so worthless that it’s not worth talking about. You can take familiar Mana Spirits with you before heading out into dungeons, and summon them forth by holding down B. Each Mana Spirit has two spells, an enchantment and an elemental attack. If you let the Mana Spirit swoop down and leave them alone, they’ll do their elemental attack, which I’ve found does marginal damage. If you run over the point they were summoned to, you’ll generally get their enchantment, which results in things like the ability to set monsters on fire with an attack, or paralyze monsters with an attack, or disarm them with an attack, or a number of other things. Frankly, I never screwed around with Magic. There’s just no point.

As far as the organization of the game goes, there are 8 dungeons in the game. 4 take place on Illusia Isle, 4 take place elsewhere. Each dungeon an increasing number of levels, ranging from 4 to 16, but the only real difference between dungeons is the look of the level, music and enemy load-out. You’re still wandering around looking for Gleamdrops in the same ways as before. At the end of the dungeon you’ll be pitted against a huge boss, but because it’s so easy to get overpowered, I’d be surprised if you ever have problems with bosses. Once you finish that you’ll head back to town, and start the process all over again.

There’s sadly little non-dungeon content in the game. You’ve only got one small town to explore, and only a few NPC’s to talk to that have more than 3 lines of dialogue. There’s only one shop, only one place to mess with gems, etc. Apart from the eight main dungeons, there are a couple side quests. First, there’s a randomized quest shop in town run by dudbears (a race of sentient teddy bears), which will give you a quest to go back to a dungeon you’ve completed and . . do something. It might say you have to do any number of things, but really they all boil down to “kill everything”. These side quests have rewards generally of cash or a gem, but in most cases it isn’t worth it unless you’re bored. There are also eight Mana Spirit sidequests, which I apparently managed to completely miss. Go me. The only other thing I can think would add some lasting appeal to the game is the local multiplayer mode, which lets you take your SP character and team up with up to 3 other people to battle through a dungeon in Co-op. But it requires each player to have their own cart, which can be asking a bit much.

Despite all these complaints I’ve got about the game, I still found it to be really fun and worth my time. Yes, there are problems, but sometimes a little mindless dungeon crawler is just what I need to kill an hour or so. Is it going to be getting a near-permanent slot in my DS? Probably not, but I’m also not going to be running right out to trade it in, either.

Children of Mana - DS

Presentation

As expected from a Mana game, you’ve get a lush environment of handcrafted sprites, set to an above-average soundtrack.

Gameplay

I wanted more depth, but what I was given was still pretty good.

Replayability

Depends on if you have friends with the game, or can extract enjoyable play time from the randomly-generated side-quests.

Value

$35 for about 15 hours of gameplay. Not awful for a DS game, but not stellar either.

Overall

I’ve played better Mana games, but Children of Mana was still a good installment to tide me over until Dawn of Mana on the PS2.