I picked up Sword of Mana
because I heard it was a remake of Final Fantasy Adventure,
the first Game Boy game I ever bought and a game that I am quite fond
of. See, Adventure for the Game Boy is actually the first
game in the Mana series, which was followed up by the great Secret
of Mana for SNES, but has more recently been known for some
pretty mediocre games. A remake of an early Game Boy game updated
for GBA that brings it more in line with the SNES graphics and
systems of later games sounds great on paper, but something just
feels wrong about the whole thing.
One thing that is retained is the basic
framework of the story and its characters, which is both a positive
and negative thing. The story of Adventure was relatively
dark for its era, starting off with with the main character as a
gladiatorial slave whose friend has just died. The writing isn't of
very high quality, probably due to bad translation, but the ideas are
there, and most importantly, it is mercifully brief. The story is
there, it leads the player along (well, most of the time) and it is
just fine.
For some reason Square Enix thought it
was important to expand upon the simple story and make it more
complex. The problem is that it isn't particularly interesting, and
while it was fine in small doses, this version drones on and on with
its rote story and typical RPG nonsense. In the beginning of
Adventure, a guy named Dark Lord is forcing people to fight
monsters to the death for his enjoyment. That's a simple way to
setup that the guy is evil and a villain. In the beginning of Sword,
the player is put in the same situation, but it goes into all this
extra detail about the situation and how it sucks to be gladiatorial
slave. That's just not necessary, because the villain is still
called DARK FUCKING LORD. Clearly he's an evil dude, I don't need to
see him give an evil speech or whatever. It's just not necessary.
If a game has to explain how someone named Dark Lord gained political
power, it's doing something wrong.
There are some nice things about the
remake. Graphically it is a great-looking 2D game, and the day/night
cycle adjusts the color to keep it continually interesting. The
music is very nice, with new versions of the original game's music
that is some of the best sounding stuff on the GBA. The ring-based
menu system from Secret of Mana works well in place of the
original's more traditional menu system, though it sometimes takes a
few more button presses to accomplish an action. I like the addition
of the choice between playing the male or female lead, and there are
stories are actually different, as they are distinct characters that
cross each others paths throughout the game.
One thing that does bug me is that
Adventure allowed the player to save anywhere, but Sword
uses save points, which seems like a stupid step backwards,
especially for a portable game. There are other little things that I
prefer about the original, like the way special attacks are charged
over time instead of by getting successive hits on enemies. This
makes combat and choosing when to attack more tactical. Not
everything is better in the original though. I don't care for the
need to stock up on disposable items like keys and mattocks, and
there are some really absurdly obtuse requirements for progression,
like walking around a couple of palm trees in certain way in order to
open a dungeon.
Sword mostly benefits from
changes of art and character design. The original world was pretty
flat and is basically a cross between the look of Final Fantasy
and the mechanics of The Legend of Zelda. It's a really fun
game, but the remake incorporates stuff from later Mana games that
makes it feel like a richer and more unique world. It's a shame that
the game lost Boco the chocobo, and by extension the later
mecha-enhanced Boco that can run on water, but overall I think the
change was good. At the very least it is fun to travel by cannon,
though it does seem a bit out of place in a darker themed game such
as this.
 |
| Yeah, I had to cut all that grass to progress the plot. Seriously. |
In the first thirty minutes of Sword
of Mana, the player does pretty much nothing, especially on the
female's side. In the first thirty seconds of Final Fantasy
Adventure, the player kills a big goddamn monster, and at the
thirty minute mark has made a decent way into the game, leveled up,
and gained a good grasp of what makes the game entertaining. Maybe I
just don't give a crap about RPG stories anymore. I still find
Adventure to be a great and fun Zelda-like game, and I would
recommend it to people looking for that type of game, but I don't
think I would recommend Sword even though it is capable. It
just doesn't draw me in. Maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia for long car
rides with my Game Boy Color and Final Fantasy Adventure.
I dunno.
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