Secret of Mana

Secret of Mana
Overall: 2.2
Gameplay: 2
Setting: 3.5
Narrative: 1.0

            Another game that's supposed to be among the best RPGs ever made has succeeded in disappointing me greatly. Everything that is "revolutionary" in Secret of Mana has been lost on me because all I see is a Zelda clone in an RPG outfit. Secret of Mana is disappointing for many reasons, but it is not a horrible game. In fact, I feel if I had played it multiplayer I would have found myself enjoying the game more and more while I built a kinship with the fellow gamer who was unlucky enough to spend that many hours with me in the same room. Still, single player needs to live up to standards too and the issues with this game can be applied to both the single player and multiplayer. Before I prattle on I want to make clear that I did not finish the game in full. Why? Well, because it was so infuriating to play. I can play through horrible dialogue and tough bosses, but when gameplay feels sloppy and sporadic I just don't want to waste my time. I went ahead and read the story on Wikipedia and to no surprise it went exactly as I predicted. Not like the story matters, the game makes it clear that narrative means nothing in this world in the first five minutes, but I'll get to that when I talk about it in the next paragraph.
         So, narrative, or the lack thereof. The game begins with you naming your character, sending a message to the player that this is a representation of themselves in the game. This is awesome at first, until you realize the name is about all the ownership you will get over your character. Immediately your character is given an orphan back story and he stumbles upon a sword he wasn't supposed to touch. Turns out that sword has been keeping the world in check, so he's banished for being an idiot. A knight happens to be passing through the town while you're being banished and tells you that you need to charge the master I mean "mana sword" to oppose the evil Ganon I mean Thantos. Sounds familiar? Well, this wouldn't bother me except for the fact that from the beginning I have no motivation to charge the damn sword. I was just banished and claimed to be the chosen one. Truthfully, it felt more as if they were lazy and just waited for the first idiot to pull the sword to do some monster housekeeping. You might be retorting back with: wait Raymond, that's the exact same plot as Legend of Zelda; are you saying when playing as link you're unmotivated? No. And I'll explain why in a list: Zelda, Tetra, little sister, Saria, Illia, Midna etc. These are all the people you need to save or help during the game that motivates you to continue with the narrative. The beginning of Secret of Mana has you go it alone for almost 20 minutes. Not to mention when you do come into contact with your team of flunkies, the game ensures you feel little sympathy for any of them.
        I did not get kidnapped by goblins. I don't know why? Maybe I wasn't good enough for their kidnapping standards. But alas, I skipped the whole girl tagging along thing, going right to the sprite and killing tropicollo (or whatever his name is). The sprite is an asshole who tries to guilt you into giving him money. Then after he has guilt you out of money, they ask you to take him with you to find his lost memories. What? No. I don't want him with me he's an asshole. To make matters worse after you do the initial request (take him to the sunk temple or something) and get some of his memories, he asks you to escort him somewhere else and phrases it as if he's doing you a favor. Again, asshole. The girl isn't any better. She's all love driven over some guy who has been kidnapped. She joins you, but won't stop whining about the guy. Also, I understand why the sprite might be suitable for this kind of adventure (being a mythical creature and all), but a random love struck girl? It truthfully makes no sense. But then again, my character was just some random guy too and it's not like the game doesn't remind you you're nothing special with the requirement of tons of grind hours just to beat the next boss. Continuing along.
        I mentioned in the first paragraph that the game in the first 5 minutes lets me know that the narrative doesn't matter. How does it do that? By making my character talk. This is the first RPG where the character I named talks on my behalf. You might find this to be an improvement, but it isn't, it's just weird. That's because you're projecting yourself into the game through this character. When he says something, unless it's exactly like something you'd say, it feels as if the game is putting words in your mouth. This destroys immersion and makes me disconnected from the character, which is a huge driving point for me not to play. I don't care what happens to my character because he clearly isn't me and the plot that surrounds him is boring and uninteresting. Just because the world needs saving doesn't mean you instantly care. In fact, I wonder why my character even believes these jokers concerning the state of the world. All that happened when I pulled out the sword was that there was a monster whose shit I wrecked immediately. What about that encounter is supposed to make me believe the world is in dire straits? Chrono Trigger ensures player commitment from the beginning, making the first portion of the plot about saving Marle, transitioning into a future of Lavos, create the theme of getting stronger to beat Lavos for the entire rest of the game. In Secret of Mana, you don't know why you're doing anything. It's only because someone told you. Ahh, clearly you can tell I disliked this game's story so let's get to game controls.
       The controls as mentioned in another post are unintuitive. This becomes even more true when you get party members in single player. The action grid, which is never mentioned to you in the game, is the main way to tell your party members to do things. Except I don't know what the purpose of it is because all I told my party members to do was attack on sight. I can tell them what level to charge their weapons up, but this is an annoying and trivial detail. Different enemies require different levels of charging of weapons, so the frustration of constantly changing the level of charge is pointless and destroys the purpose of a real time action rpg. Seriously, it's as if the game developers used little to no common sense making this system. This is the conversation they should have had at some point:

Developer #1: Let's make the game real time to snub all those turn based games out there
Developer #2: Yes! But let's also make it so that magic can only be used by pressing the menu button, ensuring that any excitement that could be derived from the real time system is lost by the incessant need to click the menu for things.
Developer #1: That makes tons of sense, also let's not tell the writers about this they don't matter to the game making process anyways.

End scene
  Seriously, this game just seems misguided at every turn. The narrative is bad and the gameplay is clunky. I haven't even gotten through all the nitpicks I found. There are three main refutes I see coming. First the argument for multiplayer, which I'll accept, but argue that doesn't change the above criticism I gave. Second, the fact that the story "gets better". Even if that's true, that doesn't change the fact that the player has no motivation to get to that point. Third, the gameplay is actually good and I suck. That might be the case. But then again I found myself easing through: FF, Chrono Trigger, Super Mario. etc so if this is the only game I "suck at" then I'll live.