secret of mana is a bit of a dopey game, they clearly wanted to combine the turn based system from FF with something like zelda and the result is a clunky ass game. the messy interface doesn’t help either, which just gets worse as you need to dive into menus constantly soon enough
i keep almost bouncing right off this but it has one strong thing to its advantage (so far) in that it is super easy. also it’s pretty and sounds… okay (the snes sound chip always felt a bit ear piercing to me). the story so far seems pretty typical fantasy fare but eh. really expected something more substantial and solid after hearing so much praise over the years
Iirc I definitely wouldn’t call SoM substantial, if anything I feel like the appeal is how flaky it is and how much of it just feels like a vessel for ballet russe pageantry and special effects, visual or aural. It’s like wandering around a big frosted cake.
I found the experience of reading about enemies’ weaknesses to particular weapons in Secret of Mana in an issue of Nintendo Power far more enjoyable than actually playing the game.
I love secret of mana. Probably almost entirely because of the profoundly good promo art for the game. I’ve looked for a tree like that everywhere in the world I go.
The “gameplay mechanic” where the strategy to beat every boss is just spamming the same spell over and over again so the creature never even has a chance to move is good, actually
Yeah I found it a feast to look at and listen to so if those are lacking you are kind of already lost. It is a mechanical mess and you can literally see where they chopped pieces out to fit it on a cartridge.
The bigger question is looking at that battle system and why an American Team decided to use it. The Evermore hater has logged on.
But wow yeah if you don’t like the soundtrack stop playing.
In other news Xenogears Disc 2: lol this owns. I just read the story to nice stills and then cut around to the 17 different plot points and then fight a boss battle with no dungeon.
And the one dungeon so far was short? This is absolutely better than Disc 1.
the battle system in evermore is definitely a chunky revamp of the SoM one - feels like I have more control and less options for dumb spamming of spells. But yes, it is kind of weird.
I love Evermore so so much but objectively it’s a series of really weird decisions. Honestly SoM lives on its co-op in my mind, so removing that in Evermore is just bizarre. The writing is better though, and the music is tremendous (i say as a hock an enormous loogie into the street), and I would even argue that the game looks better if a bit dreary. It’s not as buck wild as SoM but it’s at the very least a fascinating object.
We had trouble getting our 2yo kid to accept tooth brushing so my wife decided to get the Pokemon Smile app which is an attempt to gamify brushing your teeth.
You get a snapchat filter living pokemon hat on your head while a pikachu below, in your mouth, is blasting JRPG evil purple ooze getting stuck between your teeth. Eventually a boss appears and it’s one of the OG 151 pokemon and you defeat it everytime (can’t lose) and then you throw a master ball to catch it and maybe watch them in the menus later. You get unlimited master balls you can waste on pidgeys.
This app is immensely successful and my kid is now looking forward to teeth brushing everytime despite no prior experience with pokemon whatsoever. When it turned out his favorite living pokemon hat was fucking Grimer / Muk I almost cried. That’s truly my boy………
Secret of Mana rules. This time of year has me always thinking of the Santa section.
I played through as much as it lets you with two then three players consistently originally, so it felt like an occasion to work our way through it.
The status effects are all weird and some are totally broken if I recall correctly, and some of the end game weapon upgrades sometimes just don’t appear but all that added to the mystery of the whole thing. I think having faqs that explain the odds on everything and trying to game the mechanics in your favor is a dreary way to approach something.
And someone said the music is just ok!? All that gamelan influenced material (and the final boss remix of it) is probably some of the best on the system.
secret of evermore always felt kind of like an entire game made in the spirit of that old style of NES box art where they are absolutely terrified the Western Mind cannot accept anime so they try to make it look like a sleazy paperback genre fiction book cover instead
oh in other SoM thoughts, one of my all-time Gaming White Whales is trying to figure out more of what SoM would have looked like if they were actually able to follow through on the concept of making it some kind of JRPG Ur-Game for the SNES-CD / Nintendo Playstation
(A lot of what they cut from Secret of Mana was apparently used in Chrono Trigger? Always wanted to know more about that…)
I have always loved schlocky old scifi and horror movies, especially when that game hit and Plan 9 was a recent discovery for me, but the gimmick of the protagonist bringing up fake b movies totally fell flat with me. Throwing out over the top fake bad movie titles left and right felt so hacky and not like it came from an earnest love of that vein of cinema.
Plus has anyone ever liked switching between two character to do puzzles?
