It may surprise some people to learn that I went about 4 years without touching a Game Boy at all. In the time that stretched between the beginnings of high school until the early months of college, I didn’t bother with the Game Boy at all, and only started again because I needed some gaming while visiting my father during winter break. I gambled on one game (which proved to be a life-turning choice: Pokemon Blue), but had to go with a safety choice, a game I knew was solid: Final Fantasy Adventure.
Now, years later, I’ve found out that Square Enix has decided that the game, one of the best for the first incarnation of the Game Boy, needs a total update for the Game Boy Advance, this time called Sword of Mana. For the curious, a quick history lesson. Square made the first game, Seiken Densetsu, and called it Final Fantasy Adventure because they didn’t think anyone would buy one of their games if it wasn’t called Final Fantasy. The second game was a Super Nintendo game, and Square decided to chance it with the title Secret of Mana. That set up a new franchise, and Square Enix now wants to have the game fit squarely within that franchise.
Well, the game begins slightly differently than before. This time, you have to choose whether or not you guide the hero or the heroine of the game’s story; before, you could only control the hero. Admittedly, it is nice to see that both are put on equal footing for this game, although I sensed trouble immediately. Given that the heroine spent a great chunk of the game’s first incarnation kidnapped, they would have to significantly overhaul the game’s story in order to account for her being ready and able for the game’s length.
But did the changes have to go as far as they did? Each back story is bad in its own way. The heroine remembers her youth spent running from the Dark Lord because she is the last of the Mana Clan. And, of course, the woman who she called mother isn’t really her mother and she has to seek her real mother (who couldn’t possibly be important, right?). And she was helped out in her youth by the young hero. It’s not enough that he was a simple slave before – this time he has to be the son of royalty, and now there’s some destiny that he has to fulfill. So, if you follow the heroine’s story, you get spoilers for the game’s story almost right off the bat. Or you can follow the hero’s story, which has been corrupted into every other video game story.
The story was pretty simple before, but at least it kept surprises for you even as it unfolded. This time, they beat you over the head with potential plot twists. You’ll hear about the Vandole Empire, the ones that abused the power of Mana ages ago. And gee, isn’t that Julius freaky and different than everyone else? Other plot points are similarly thrown in your face, and you’d have to be lobotomized to miss what they mean. Square Enix took a game that had surprises in a fairly standard story and ruined them all with a level of foreshadowing that would be less obvious if it was in neon.
I guess to compensate for this (or to show off their writers, whichever), Square Enix also decided that the characters should be more than the one-dimensional archetypes from the original game. Well, the hero’s interactions with Amanda, an NPC with a small but poignant role, and vice versa, did show some pathos and range in the original, and those are thankfully kept. But the attempts added to this game are particularly ham-handed. The hero and heroine, when reunited, don’t recognize each other from their childhood encounter (in which the hero let himself be captured by Dark Lord for her sake) and of course bicker like they’re in the middle of a “Friends” episode, not in the middle of a life-or-death situation. Other reactions are similarly stilted, but Sword of Mana hits its low point when you finally fight Dark Lord. Let’s say that there has never been such a terribly scripted deathbed scene in history. I’m not talking about in the history of video games. I’m talking in all of recorded and unrecorded history. To be blunt, Square Enix could not have butchered this rewrite worse if they just replaced all of the dialogue with that of “Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.”
But putting the story out of mind for the time being (please, let it stay out), Square did make sure to update the game play considerably. The game play, right down to the menus, is now just like it was in the other Mana games. Granted, making the menus into rings instead of boring text menus wasn’t much of a switch, but making the maps spread out more and more textured (the original stole maps shamelessly from The Legend of Zelda) means that the game’s action/RPG control scheme feels more natural. Moreover, the controls have been improved much since the original game, which had typical RPG control back then. Some areas do require some jabbing at the controller to get at, but for the most part, the control is completely solid.
Part of the reason for that is that Square Enix did overhaul everything in the action sequences that needed it. Magic is the most obvious example. Before, there were only two spells that were useful on a regular basis, but now the spell list has been expanded from 8 to 16, and all 16 spells are useful at one point or another. Moreover, attack spells vary in form depending on what weapon you have equipped, so you no longer have certain spells being a pain to use, like the old Ice spell, while others like the old Fire spell are simplicity itself.
One major shift is how the helper character assists you. Before, the helper character was a non-entity in terms of attacks from enemies; it would attack them, and could help you with the Ask command, but was immortal until the story removed them. This time, though, they are another character just like you, and you can even shift to controlling them. Given how easy the game could be with the old helpers (particularly the heroine, who would continually heal you for free before), it is relieving that they made the game a little more challenging.
At the same time, they took out one major source of frustration from the previous version. Previously, you had to walk around with keys for locked doors and mattocks (think pickaxes) to bust down walks in dungeons. And if you ran out, you couldn’t progress in the dungeon. It is actually possible to be stuck in the final level of Final Fantasy Adventure with no way to progress to the final boss, which was one of the game’s greatest failings. However, they took out the need for such wastes of money in this game, meaning that you don’t have to remember to plunk down pocket change and fill your inventory with items that just waste space, really, in order to beat it.
One last change that was made was in terms of leveling. As in Final Fantasy Adventure, you could choose what stats you could boost when you gained a level, this time by pushing you towards classes. This time, though, enough levels give you an actual class, which grants abilities to certain spells or equipped weapons. Moreover, weapons and spells have levels in this game, which affect how powerful they are and how quickly you can build up a power attack with your weapon (which comes after so many enemies felled). In short, the battle system of the game was vastly cleaned up.
The graphics… well, to be honest, if you want to compare graphics of Sword of Mana to Final Fantasy Adventure, you’re comparing crayon scribbling to Van Gogh. The original version was an 8-bit game on a monochrome system, and in fact had so few sprites available to it that attack sprites were duplicated all over the place. In fact, the sprite for the hero getting damaged was reused as a projectile attack sprite in the first game. Comparatively, this game is quite lush, using a graphical style reminiscent of Seiken Densetsu 3 (the game of the series never released here, which naturally was the most solid one). The colors are mostly bright and easy to discern, although the overworld at night can get a bit difficult to look at in poor light. The animation is solid and smooth, although they do skimp at times with some enemy animations. Most of those will actually look quite familiar to fans of Secret of Mana – they were recycled wholesale from that game in many cases.
The sound is really only something you can judge on the Gameboy Player, seeing as the GBA still has the lousiest speaker this side of Radio Shack. In this case, oddly enough, the sound isn’t as solid as the previous game. While the sound quality is certainly much better, and both games use roughly the same tunes, Final Fantasy Adventure made sure to put more energy into each theme, particularly the main theme. For some reason, the music sounds more subdued in Sword of Mana, perhaps because they tried to add too many layers to the already solid soundtrack. I will grant that it is a cut above your standard portable game’s soundtrack, but it still fails to quite capture what the first game had.
I guess it’s difficult for me to really consider how to rate this game. On one hand, the play control itself is vastly improved over the original. It’s easier on the eyes, and much easier on the thumbs. At the same time, it has become more challenging in all of the right ways, and I’m appreciating this on an intellectual level. On the other hand, I see the absolute desecration that was done to one of the best stories in portable gaming, and my ears weep as the tunes are but a hollow shell of what they once were. I’m sure that people who didn’t have fond memories of the old game will enjoy this much more than I did. Further, people who value the gameplay will eagerly jump at this release. But given how much I loved the old story, and how well it fit together and how well it unfolded, I can’t bring myself to really enjoy this game. To boil it down, if you want a game with solid action/RPG gameplay, pick this up. But if you’re willing to take a bit of a downgrade in control and gamble with a bit of frustration in exchange for a terrifically paced story that unfolds in just the right way, just skip this and find Sunsoft’s re-release of Final Fantasy Adventure. The lesson here is simple: in the rush to make a good game better, don’t abandon what made the game great in the first place.
