JRPG Journey 2020: Secret of Mana [“Seiken Densetsu 2”] (August)
July’s game: Dragon Quest
Summer Bonus Game: Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line
Welcome back as I continue my JRPG journey through August. This month I’m talking Secret of Mana (a.k.a. Seiken Densetsu 2), a game I’ve wanted to play ever since seeing the box art as a kid. It’s one of the SNES RPGs I’ve heard about the most, and heard the most varying opinions about. Generally, everyone seems to like Final Fantasy VII or TTYD or most of the games I’ve played so far this year. That’s not the case with Secret of Mana. I’ve heard everything from it’s the best game ever made, to it being an overrated, unplayable mess.
Having never owned a SNES personally and having zero casual knowledge of the game, I didn’t get the opportunity to find out for myself until Collection of Mana was released for Nintendo Switch. (Note that I did start with Final Fantasy Adventure, the first game in the series, which is coming as a bonus game later in 2020 due to its short length and lack of details to discuss.) The verdict, in short, is that I’m somewhere in between.
If you play JRPGs for the story, you might not get a lot out of Secret of Mana. Apparently, the game was planned for the unreleased SNES CD (“Nintendo PlayStation”) as a much larger experience, but content was cut by more than a third for the final release. That’s a shame, as with a more involved story and better-written characters, Secret of Mana could have been a masterpiece. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s still a great game, and I can see why it’s a classic.
Secret of Mana is about a boy who finds a sword, a girl who joins him, and an amnesic sprite they find in the woods who go on an adventure to restore the sword to its full power (since the sword is, in fact, the legendary Sword of Mana). That’s… about it. There’s not much story here, and the story we do get is a bit marred by translation issues. It’s not unintelligible or confusing, but I get the sense that there’s a lot missing in the English translation. No, story is not Secret of Mana’s strong suit — that lies in presentation.
This is one of the most beautiful SNES games I’ve played. Every locale, every frame is thriving with vibrant colors and music. Compared to Final Fantasy Adventure (which yes, I realize is a Game Boy game), playing Secret of Mana feels like I entered a 20-year futuristic time warp. The music, on the other hand, is hit-or-miss for me. I recognize that this soundtrack is beloved by many-a JRPG fan, but for every catchy track that made me jam out was another that grated on my ears after a while. Still, the good tracks are great, and the primary appeal of the music is the layers and production value, which is unmatched on the SNES, as far as I can tell. Stories of the hoops programmers had to jump through to cram music like this onto a tiny cartridge fascinate me. Even if you have no desire to play this game, listen to the soundtrack at least once. It’s a major accomplishment of the SNES era, and I’ll be seeking out the arranged version after writing this review.
More interesting than the story is the world of Secret of Mana. There are a few small hints in the game that you’re in a sort of post-apocalyptic world where a large destructive force destroyed almost everything. (Yep, it’s another nuclear bomb allegory that’s so characteristic of Japanese RPGs and Japanese media in general.) At one point in the game you enter a modern subway station to fight zombies, long forgotten by the rest of the world. In another section, you hear sounds of a modern game show emanating from a mana crystal that seems to work like a time-traveling radio. All of this is never explained or even mentioned in the plot; it’s up to the player to decide what happened, at least in English. After a bit of research I learned that this is the result of the “Mana War”, which apparently the third game in the series, Trial of Mana, addresses, so I’m looking forward to learning more once I play that one. (Final Fantasy Adventure takes place after Secret of Mana, which I only learned once I finished SoM.)
Navigation in Secret of Mana is a bit of a pain. Characters do tell you what to do next, but you’re often told only once, and not always in an obvious way. If you pay close attention to all the dialogue, you won’t have trouble, but this is one of those games where I had a guide standing by just in case. I used it a few times to figure out where to go next, but nothing here is as nebulous as, say, Dragon Quest. With that said, I was not expecting there to be a world map in this game, let alone a traversable one, so the first time Flammie flew me up into the clouds was a revelation. Maybe it’s because I’d never played a SNES RPG with a full world map before, but man, that was cool.
After having played Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana’s weapon charge system was a little tricky to get the hang of. At first, I didn’t like how weapons are essentially useless unless charged to 100%, but after a while I realized this makes the game feel more like an RPG. Combat is real-time, but the charge time works like a cooldown, make combat feel more turn-based. It doesn’t allow for hack-and-slash gameplay like the first title, but the trade off is that magic is now more useful.
Did I say more useful? I meant broken. Magic is the answer to everything in this game, making it a great change of pace from FFA, where magic felt optional (at least I rarely used it). An interesting mechanic is that magic can be performed faster by non-player party members (due to fewer animation frames), so I stuck with the boy, Randi, as my player character for my whole playthrough, and used Popoi’s magic remotely. This was incredibly effective against most bosses, which is handy because there are a ton of bosses in this game — so many, in fact, that even palette swaps didn’t bother me. They’re just so much fun to fight. Introducing new types of magic late in the game gave me a reason to grind and explore further, but this did get old after a while.
Beyond magic, you have several weapons to choose from this time, and I’m more lukewarm on this mechanic. While any character can choose from any weapon, there are only a few core weapons that are useful to the player: axe, sword, spear, and whip. These are used for clearing overworld obstacles or getting across gaps, while also being strong in combat. This leaves little reason for the player to choose any other weapon, and I rarely did. It also doesn’t matter much which weapons you give your party members, as they are mostly useless in combat anyway.
There’s also a nebulous weapon level-up system that I never quite understood. Weapons level up by being used, but leveling them up doesn’t seems to influence their damage or effectiveness in any noticeable way, so I ignored this mechanic for the most part. Leveling up spells, on the other hand, greatly increases their damage, so I focused more on that. The grind got a bit tiresome by the end, but it wasn’t too bad, so I’d say Secret of Mana is a good length.
I’m glad I played Secret of Mana, and I’m looking forward to trying the third game in the series, Trials of Mana — but that’ll have to wait until next year, ‘cause I’ve got 2020 fully booked. Join me next month as I shift away from the classics to talk about Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. I’m looking forward to finally giving that series a try.
