Fans of Square-Enixs Mana series have not been happy about their attempt at new gameplay formulas but with Heroes of Mana, they do it once again. Square-Enixs latest Mana title for the handheld comes in the form of an RTS, the sort of games you see a lot on the PC such as Warcraft, Command and Conquer or Starcraft. Obviously the stylus is seen as a good enough substitute for the mouse once again by developers.

The story begins with a small investigation team dispatched from the Pedan army, Roger and his friends. Rumours had reached their country that the Beast Kingdom were preparing for an assault and the teams task was to go verify if this rumour was true or not. As if in answer to their suspicions, an army from the Beast Kingdom lead by the King himself attacks them and their airship crash lands. It is only later that Roger find out that his team was just an expendable lure for a much bigger plan. The Kingdom of Pedan was planning to launch an assault upon the world under the guidance of an ominous dark mirror and the story continues from there.


The Kingdom of Pedan begins there plans to attack the world.
After a brief tutorial, you basically just jump from stage to stage killing enemies while keeping the heroes alive. If youve ever played an RTS before you should know how it all works. Its not turn based so you have to act quickly. You start off with a base and then you must create units to go out and harvest materials before you create better things to win the battle with. HoM is no different, except your base is a ship that can anchor around various points of the map and it also houses all the other facilities that you end up creating.


One conveniently packed ship for creating your MOBs.
There are basically two resources you can harvest and they are Gaia Stones for building new structures and Trent Fruit for creating new MOBs to fight with. Usually there are more than one of each but the sources dont last long. They provide enough for you to create plenty of units, though and you can have up to 25 units maximum.