Once i finshed my internship, i had in mind to play this rom online with Zach for the fun of it, but let's just say that although it's perfectly possible to play a fast paced FPS with a friend that lives an ocean away, it's still impossible to play a fucking simple SNES rom properly with that same friend.
Zach played with me up until the 2nd or 3rd mana spirit i think, and then we got desynced so god damned often and quickly that i had to carry on on my own.
aka "Secret of Mana 2"
Intro
"Seiken Densetsu 3" is the sequel to "Seiken Densetsu 2" (obviously) which is also known as "Secret of Mana", so logically this game would b "Secret of Mana 2" and is generally accepted as such. However, the events in this game happen a millennium or so before SoM.
I own the original SoM, and i loved that RPG a lot, it flows well battle wise and traveling isn't that much a a pain in the ass. they give u a lot of crap to do but it's a fairly fun game that I've beat several times on my SNES. for what feels like 15 years (let's see, this came out in 1995... we're in 2009... close enough.) I've known about the sequel, and a couple of years ago even tried it out but never actually beat it. As a spriter i always admired it, but now i wonder if i was right in doing so.
I was gonna go with the "God Hand" for myself, but it seems that it's a terrible class to play as.
SoM has cool features that the first game didn't have, such as, u can select 3 from 6 characters as ur party, and there's 3 possible paths your adventure can take depending on who the main character is. So this is the party Zach and me made.
As u can tell, i cheated on the exp and maxed the characters, that's cause this game is a huge dick and i kept getting 1 shot killed. but more on that later.
Story
It's a squaresoft game, do i really need to tell u the story? fine, as i mentioned there's multiple possible story paths depending on the main hero, however, those are just plot devices to set that character into the main story.
The gist of it is that Mana is dying, The Mana fairies venture off the Mana holyland and into the normal world (?) to look for a poor idiot that will b forced to save the world.
Holy fucking shading and contrast issues batman!
I'm just dying to get on this right away. This game has issues, lots of them, but something i surprisingly didn't like was the spriting style.
The style is almost entirely without any sort of outlines, and the background style is very similar if not the same as the character style, EVERYTHING is fucking hard to see!
example:
Don't get me wrong that's a fucking amazingly well done work there, but u barely notice the vine thing at the bottom right, it fuses perfectly with the pumpkin in the back quite fucking well. and it's hard to tell the background from the enemies in many occasions. the thing is, this game is TOO detailed, there's way too much stuff on the screen to look at and nothing actually gets your focus. I'm not saying it's unplayable, far from that, but everything looks grainy and contrast is so damn low. on this aspect i actually think the original game is FAR better and cleaner, the sprites and backgrounds are more enjoyable for that reason.
Also, be aware that this game has day night cycles, and at night it's far far worse.
But yea, on many many occasions, i ended up preferring the simpler sprites of the first game over these. I think a good reference would b the Mana spirits:
Back when i was a spriter and helped people with sprites, a big NO was to go fucking crazy on the palette and use like 32+ colors on a sprite that weren't even noticeable for the viewer and actually killed the contrast. Another was to add way more details on the sprite that it should be possible to.
SoM1 --------------------------- SoM2
For the most part, i prefer the sprites from SoM, they're cleaner and easy to see, i especially like the Undine, Gnome, Lumina and Dryad from SoM1, the only spirit i like from SoM2 is shade, that rendition is clean and nice surprisingly, but that's probably cause shade in the original was fucked up for some reason. Luna seems equally nice on either game.
This game is a dick!
Ok so like, in SoM1, u had to get the 8 Mana spirits, activate the seal of 8 mana seeds (which u usually did about the same time u got the spirit if no very soon after), then in a plot device that to this day i still fail to understand, the seals beak, you go through 2 fairly big dungeons, fight the Mana beast, and your done.
However, this game, is an asshole.
Darkness god beast(s)
Having a flying dragon proves to be surprisingly useless in this game because you'll still be forced to walk everywhere! I'm sorry but i don't get the logic in that!
Bee gals are kinda cute
A fight system that'll make u quit!
By far, the worse thing about this game is the fights, specifically when there's any magic involved.
in the first game, u had to access your wheel menu, select a magic, and the game flow resumed except for the caster and the target of the magic. in this game, everything stops at all times. It's fucking rediculous, whenever anyone cast anything on anything, all the characters and enemies have to wait until that magic animation is done to start moving again, but it gets worse, if enemies chain magics, u will have to wait until all of them are done before u can even move again giving you no chance in hell to even heal, and that includes using healing items and B attacks.
Zach is my witness that i often yelled and screamed for like 2 mins at a time begging the game to let me have control of anything. it's unbelievable... After a short while, u quickly start dreading magic, it makes everything take for fucking ever, they way magic is handled in this game is completely failed.
mandatory giant enemy crab
Zach played with me up until the 2nd or 3rd mana spirit i think, and then we got desynced so god damned often and quickly that i had to carry on on my own.
aka "Secret of Mana 2"
Intro
"Seiken Densetsu 3" is the sequel to "Seiken Densetsu 2" (obviously) which is also known as "Secret of Mana", so logically this game would b "Secret of Mana 2" and is generally accepted as such. However, the events in this game happen a millennium or so before SoM.
I own the original SoM, and i loved that RPG a lot, it flows well battle wise and traveling isn't that much a a pain in the ass. they give u a lot of crap to do but it's a fairly fun game that I've beat several times on my SNES. for what feels like 15 years (let's see, this came out in 1995... we're in 2009... close enough.) I've known about the sequel, and a couple of years ago even tried it out but never actually beat it. As a spriter i always admired it, but now i wonder if i was right in doing so.
I was gonna go with the "God Hand" for myself, but it seems that it's a terrible class to play as.
SoM has cool features that the first game didn't have, such as, u can select 3 from 6 characters as ur party, and there's 3 possible paths your adventure can take depending on who the main character is. So this is the party Zach and me made.
As u can tell, i cheated on the exp and maxed the characters, that's cause this game is a huge dick and i kept getting 1 shot killed. but more on that later.
Story
It's a squaresoft game, do i really need to tell u the story? fine, as i mentioned there's multiple possible story paths depending on the main hero, however, those are just plot devices to set that character into the main story.
The gist of it is that Mana is dying, The Mana fairies venture off the Mana holyland and into the normal world (?) to look for a poor idiot that will b forced to save the world.
Holy fucking shading and contrast issues batman!
I'm just dying to get on this right away. This game has issues, lots of them, but something i surprisingly didn't like was the spriting style.
The style is almost entirely without any sort of outlines, and the background style is very similar if not the same as the character style, EVERYTHING is fucking hard to see!
example:
Don't get me wrong that's a fucking amazingly well done work there, but u barely notice the vine thing at the bottom right, it fuses perfectly with the pumpkin in the back quite fucking well. and it's hard to tell the background from the enemies in many occasions. the thing is, this game is TOO detailed, there's way too much stuff on the screen to look at and nothing actually gets your focus. I'm not saying it's unplayable, far from that, but everything looks grainy and contrast is so damn low. on this aspect i actually think the original game is FAR better and cleaner, the sprites and backgrounds are more enjoyable for that reason.
Also, be aware that this game has day night cycles, and at night it's far far worse.
But yea, on many many occasions, i ended up preferring the simpler sprites of the first game over these. I think a good reference would b the Mana spirits:
Back when i was a spriter and helped people with sprites, a big NO was to go fucking crazy on the palette and use like 32+ colors on a sprite that weren't even noticeable for the viewer and actually killed the contrast. Another was to add way more details on the sprite that it should be possible to.
SoM1 --------------------------- SoM2
For the most part, i prefer the sprites from SoM, they're cleaner and easy to see, i especially like the Undine, Gnome, Lumina and Dryad from SoM1, the only spirit i like from SoM2 is shade, that rendition is clean and nice surprisingly, but that's probably cause shade in the original was fucked up for some reason. Luna seems equally nice on either game.
This game is a dick!
Ok so like, in SoM1, u had to get the 8 Mana spirits, activate the seal of 8 mana seeds (which u usually did about the same time u got the spirit if no very soon after), then in a plot device that to this day i still fail to understand, the seals beak, you go through 2 fairly big dungeons, fight the Mana beast, and your done.
However, this game, is an asshole.
- Adventure begins, u get fairy in your head, she makes u go get the 8 mana spirits not because they're useful, but for the sake of getting them. This take for fucking ever cause transportation in this game is god damned awful. on the way to do these, u have to do bullshit quests which just made me rage, those are usually related to the character from your party and even the characters that u didn't pick. You fucking have to advance stories that aren't even related to yours!
- So 10 hours later, when u got the 8 spirits and open the gate to the Mana holyland, EVERYONE AND THEIR GRAMMA flies into it! i am not fucking kidding, even beastmen grabbin unto fucking birds go in! everyone goes inside it, EXCEPT YOU! Why was everyone prepared for that except your party i'll never know, and you have a fucking fairy in your head for the damn holyland that could had let u know about that beforehand! So now, we're dragon hunting!
- Finally 1 hour later, u're into the holyland, we get there only to find out that... u know what? i dunno what was the point of that, u go get the sword of mana (which u never ever use in the entire game), and leave. Meanwhile in the normal world, the mana stones all broke, and released 8 God beasts. So guess what? u know the bullshit u endured getting the 8 spirits earlier in the game? that was nothing! The game makes a big deal about the Darkness Mana stone being missing, and then it's instantly hinted where it is and u find it right away.
Darkness god beast(s)
- So 5 hours later, after what felt like replaying the game all over but in hard mode, u find a secret palace in the jungle/forest, to proceed deeper into the palace, u have to light up 8 fucking orbs, and to light them up u have to complete random ass tasks that go from killing a boss, to opening a chest.
- 2 hours later, you'll get to proceed into a fucking puzzle castle, that if u're smart, u'll go check GameFAQs right away, fight tons of bosses and then ur done with that shit.
- If like me you weren't smart enough to check GameFAQs and wasted 2 more hours on something that didn't make sense, i think you're just about ready to go into the Mana holyland again to have your final fight, which should last like 30 mins or something, and then grats, u beat this damn game.
Having a flying dragon proves to be surprisingly useless in this game because you'll still be forced to walk everywhere! I'm sorry but i don't get the logic in that!
Bee gals are kinda cute
A fight system that'll make u quit!
By far, the worse thing about this game is the fights, specifically when there's any magic involved.
in the first game, u had to access your wheel menu, select a magic, and the game flow resumed except for the caster and the target of the magic. in this game, everything stops at all times. It's fucking rediculous, whenever anyone cast anything on anything, all the characters and enemies have to wait until that magic animation is done to start moving again, but it gets worse, if enemies chain magics, u will have to wait until all of them are done before u can even move again giving you no chance in hell to even heal, and that includes using healing items and B attacks.
Zach is my witness that i often yelled and screamed for like 2 mins at a time begging the game to let me have control of anything. it's unbelievable... After a short while, u quickly start dreading magic, it makes everything take for fucking ever, they way magic is handled in this game is completely failed.
mandatory giant enemy crab
Other aspects?
All menus in this game are slow and suck balls. equipped items always took at least 3 mins cause the menus are so damn slow and needlessly complicated. For some bizarre reason, your characters equipment isn't shared, they all have their individual bags, and there's situations where my character got a weapon that only the cleric could use, but it was in his bag so the game made me take the item and put it on her bag so that she could access it! why??? my character couldn't use that item even if he wanted! was it so hard to put that item in the bag of the character it's meant to?
Equally retarded, all armor and weapons are character specific, and i do mean specific, 1 weapon or armor will work only with 1 character and that's it! good lord, the first game was so much better in that aspect.
Also didn't like how character where stuck using only 1 type of weapon.
The sprites, even though i bitched about them, are fucking amazing none the less. but the reason i bitched about them is because the style simply didn't feel appropriate for the game. But they're still amazingly details masterpieces.
If u exclude the magic, fight system was actually pretty fluid and nice, sure u could die really fast without noticing it sometimes, but u just need to pay more than in SoM. Also, i like how characters don't "die", their health drops to 0, and if u clear all enemies, they get up again with 1 health.
Verdict
I gotta say, after all the pain this game gave me, and how little the payoff feels, i'm awfully tempted to rate it as "Do not want!", but... i don't want to.
Maybe out of compassion for the original game, and because i looked forward to play this game for so long, i feel it's not an horrible game. it does things that u don't see often around (multiple path character evolution, multiple storyline, multiple character/party choices). it had potential to b awesome, but didn't.
It's not a horrible game, but it's not a good one either. Just gonna go with a "Sort of want" on this one.
- Cons
All menus in this game are slow and suck balls. equipped items always took at least 3 mins cause the menus are so damn slow and needlessly complicated. For some bizarre reason, your characters equipment isn't shared, they all have their individual bags, and there's situations where my character got a weapon that only the cleric could use, but it was in his bag so the game made me take the item and put it on her bag so that she could access it! why??? my character couldn't use that item even if he wanted! was it so hard to put that item in the bag of the character it's meant to?
Equally retarded, all armor and weapons are character specific, and i do mean specific, 1 weapon or armor will work only with 1 character and that's it! good lord, the first game was so much better in that aspect.
Also didn't like how character where stuck using only 1 type of weapon.
- Pros
The sprites, even though i bitched about them, are fucking amazing none the less. but the reason i bitched about them is because the style simply didn't feel appropriate for the game. But they're still amazingly details masterpieces.
If u exclude the magic, fight system was actually pretty fluid and nice, sure u could die really fast without noticing it sometimes, but u just need to pay more than in SoM. Also, i like how characters don't "die", their health drops to 0, and if u clear all enemies, they get up again with 1 health.
Verdict
I gotta say, after all the pain this game gave me, and how little the payoff feels, i'm awfully tempted to rate it as "Do not want!", but... i don't want to.
Maybe out of compassion for the original game, and because i looked forward to play this game for so long, i feel it's not an horrible game. it does things that u don't see often around (multiple path character evolution, multiple storyline, multiple character/party choices). it had potential to b awesome, but didn't.It's not a horrible game, but it's not a good one either. Just gonna go with a "Sort of want" on this one.
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