Mana fans have been waiting a long time for a true sequel to that once great title Secret of Mana. Yet since that title came out in 1993, there have been several games carrying the Mana name, yet sadly, case after case, they’ve all gone astray from the SoM formula and ended up being disappointments. Now cut to March 2006, and suddenly we have another title in the Mana saga: Children of Mana. Did the game return the series to its former glory?
The Secret of Mana
SoM had something special that none of the Mana games since have been able to capture. Something about the combination of a wonderful (and colorful) world that players could immerse themselves in and a great story that took them through dungeons over all sorts of interesting locations. It had gorgeous visuals, unforgettable tunes, and most of all a fun battle system. Children of Mana has some of this, which does make it enjoyable to play, but it’s also missing a lot of what made SoM tick.

The main difference between CoM and the SNES classic is that CoM is not really an action-rpg, but rather it’s a dungeon crawler more akin to Diablo. Between story segments, players warp between a few areas and enter into the next dungeon. At that point, the game becomes a floor based dungeon crawler where players frantically search for the randomly placed mana eggs while also searching for a randomly placed exit to the floor (though floors themselves aren’t randomly generated). Rather than exploring through exotic colorful worlds, in CoM players find themselves dropped in plain looking dungeons where every floor looks exactly the same.

There are also other small differences such as not being able to equip armor on the fly (you have to until a dungeon has been cleared to equip it), and gems that upgrade various stats (4 can be held at a time).