Ok so you’re blasting through a bunch of enemies getting all kinds of items that power you up, you level up a couple times, and then boom you’re done with a chapter. Well guess what. All of your gains that you’ve made in that chapter you’ve just completed are gone. Yep, every time you start a new chapter in the game it’s back to level one. You can find and unlock things called emblems which you can enable before a chapter and which augment your abilities but everything else goes kaput. This whole mechanic is evil and I hate it and you will too.


The art is extremely beautiful.
As you slash your way through the boring, frustrating, and confusing depths of the many chapters of Dawn of Mana you’ll occasionally come across a save point. This usually means a boss or some difficulty task is right around the corner. Most of the bosses can be extremely simple if you find the weak spot and exploit it well but thanks to the terrible controls this isn’t too easy. I personally found most bosses to be extremely hard and take a large amount of time to defeat just because the controls were so fidgety.

But of course the bosses all look amazing. As do all the characters, the cutscenes, and the environments. Yes the high point of most every Square Enix game is the graphics and DoM is definitely one of the best examples of that. Everything looks and feels like it belongs together and animates in a fun way. It’s just too bad that the overly lengthy cutscenes tell are horribly contrived and incoherent storyline. It’s also bad if you have to play it on a Playstation 3 as the PS2 emulation is awful at this time. On the audio side of things the soundtrack is absolutely amazing. Much of the beginning of the game made me feel like I was listening to a revamped version of Phantasy Star Online’s music. Add on the well tracked sound effects and voices and you’ve got some great audio.


"But, this game is so crappy!"
Sorry old school Mana fans, this is nothing like that gem back on the SNES. This is a pure action game with a gooey artificial RPG coating. The controls are horrible, the level design is seriously lacking, bosses can be frustratingly difficult, and not even the story will keep you playing. If you buy this game in any form and beat it on one or more difficulty settings you enjoy pain and suffering.


You’ll miss the story and won’t be able to read what the emblems do.

• Beautiful graphics
  
• Great soundtrack

• Horrible camera
  
• Awful lock-on system
  
• Boring gameplay
  
• Later level design is broken in many spots
  
• Bosses can be extremely frustrating
  
• Emblems are ridiculously hard to unlock
  
• You start every chapter at level 1
  
• There are chapters
  
• No multiplayer