Children of Mana (Nintendo DS) Second Opinion Review

Something that has never failed to amaze gamers throughout the years is the graphical output from Square Enix. The company has always poured extreme amounts of pure joy into our octal-lobes and Children of Mana is straight away the prettiest game to have been created on the Nintendo DS so far. Okay, there are no 3D effects, but the hand-drawn two-dimensional characters and locations are so beautiful, all dripping in rich colours and full of such emotion and personality that you can hardly fail to be overly charmed by it all, especially thanks to the lack of slowdown that plagued Sword of Mana on the GBA, perfectly animated movements and weapon actions and stunning boss characters that face you along the way.

And it is not purely on a visual level that Square Enix delivers its high-class work, because once again this iteration of the Mana series is an absolute wonder in terms of musical quality. The original game on the crusty old GB had a stellar soundtrack considering its basic sound chip, then on the Super Nintendo both Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 delivered tunes that touched the hearts of gamers around the world, and even the PSone outing Legend of Mana had a marvellous set of orchestrated musical pieces to please the ears. Thankfully Children of Mana is NOT the black sheep of the family, and each of the themes from deep caverns to wandering around villages and fighting gruesome bosses prove to be extremely memorable and distinctively lovely to the point of leaving you wanting to get your hands on a CD release and just listen to it whilst relaxing on your sofa!

Considering the fact that Children of Mana is the rebirth of the action role-playing series under the mantel of 'World of Mana', with Square Enix championing the Mana games in the hope of them becoming as prominent as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, it may come as a major surprise to you all to find that this is actually not like the terrific Secret of Mana that eventually scraped its way over to Europe on the Super Nintendo over a decade ago and still regularly features in many 'All Time Top X Games' lists. However, there are many similarities between the two in the form of presentation stakes, with a compendium of characters, enemies and locations that will be familiar to those who have played the SNES classic and the PSone update, Legend of Mana. Since that Sony version never made it to Europe, lots of the enemies that accompany the bouncing yellow Rabites and crazy green-helmeted ducks will appear new, yet they are in fact 'lifted' from that edition and mixed with other new enemies, such as pesky snakes and armoured skeletons. They all have their different attack patterns and defence mechanisms, with wasps firing off stinging needles, whilst green, chubby frogs shoot a beam of strong light at you. All quite lethal if not careful! And then there are the bosses, which prove to be extremely graphically impressive, as well as a real pain in the neck at times. An early example is one that Zelda III fans will feel sounds quite recognisable; the boss has surrounded itself with many smaller floating creatures that must be plucked away with your flail and beaten down separately, before the main boss is exposed enough to lunge in. The game really does throw lots of challenging situations at you and they are all great fun to battle through.

You start off with the choice of a male or female character, then you can assign yourself one of either different elemental spirits to help you fight for your cause...and off you go. The old favourite items are back, with little sweets providing a small health recovery, chocolate bars giving a larger boost and large walnuts topping up your magic points. Weapons are also back in the same fashion, with the early choice a sword (slash like crazy), then flail (drag yourself across gaps, open chests from a distance and collect items, kill many enemies in one spin), bow and arrow (to kill those out-of-reach foes), as well as a great, powerful hammer (DESTROY!!). There is a slight difference in terms of each one's special power, as previously you would have to hold down attack whilst a meter filled up. Now, doing that with the sword brings up a shield, the bow and arrow sends out musical notes towards your enemies, and so on. Instead, now there is a 'Fever' gauge that fills up the more things you hit. Once full, a simple press of 'select' sets you loose on a crazy rampage...the flail, for instance, increases its range and spins in a deadly way and charging the sword makes you lunge forward with force to take out several enemies at once.

...And that can prove to be extremely useful as there is a plentiful supply of enemies ready to sap your health. The game plays like a very good mixture of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Shining Soul II (the better sequel, since the original SS was sub-par), the latter of which was actually developed for Sega by Next Entertainment, the team that did this for Square Enix. What I mean by this is that the aim is to work your way through various dungeons, finding a special crystal to progress and then moving on to the next level. Yet it is nowhere near as limited or boring as that may sound. As you wander around a dungeon floor, enemies begin to appear around you at a sometimes alarming rate and they must all be despatched in order to 1.) Level-up your character; 2.) Find the crystal. Yes, the only way to the next level is by uncovering a hidden crystal on each floor and carrying it to the shiny portal normally located at the end of your long path. This brings in an element of strategy, switching between carrying it quickly toward the exit and then hastily having to drop it to you can fend off the on-coming swarm of beasties.

Amidst this gameplay style is a levelling up aspect for your attacking and defence capabilities. As you go along you will be able to pick up more powerful versions of the weapons you already have, as well as armour and magical items. However, rather than simply being able to stick them on to become all-powerful, they have level restrictions. So, you might get a piece of armour that looks fantastic, but at only a lowly Level 5 status, you can only equip it once you reach something like Level 20. It gives you sufficient reason to despatch the enemies around you, instead of just dodging them, finding the warp crystal and running through to the final boss. But, thankfully the game is not too unfair in that there is a crystal strength side to it, where you collect various different stones that can be equipped in various patterns to increase certain sectors of your character. This definitely helps to balance out the level restrictions and is just another example of how well-balanced Children of Mana is, despite not actually being a true Mana game. Very impressive work and the Western release will uncover much more of the story to make this an even better purchase!

Some people have bemoaned the fact that Children of Mana is not true to its heritage because of its linear, enemy-filled, dungeon-crawling nature. But whatever your final opinion on that matter, it does change the fact that there is a LOT of value for money to be found in the final package. Sometimes it can be quite confusing in terms of what to do or where exactly to go, but a little bit of patience and determination definitely pays off and when back on the adventure road it turns out to be an extremely fulfilling journey that last a long time and throws many extras at you, such as side-quests, which extend CoM much more than expected.