World of Mana: What Happened?

[WulfeLuer]

NOTE: The subject in question may really belong in the Modern Gaming folder, since a lot of it is PS2 and beyond. This thread can be moved if deemed appropriate.

Anyway, it's no great secret that I love the Mana series (or World of Mana as its called now). I played Secret of Mana back the storied days of yore and loved it. The friend that showed me Secret also introduced to me to Legend of Mana when it came out and I was totally hooked. I freely admit that the game has lots of faults, but I still have a great deal of fondness for it. Sword of Mana came out for the GBA and I kinda liked it, but something about the scope and the sheer foregone tragedy turned me off after a while. Then somebody showed me the wonders of emulation and I played the fan-translation of Seiken Densetsu 3. It was awesome.

Just something about it really appeals to me; the lush landscapes and toy-like creatures juxtaposed with themes of sacrifice, scorned love, and the growing bleakness of human tragedy, along with wonderful romps and interesting magic, combat, and later crafting can make for a helluva ride.

Then Dawn of Mana happened. I wasn't expecting sunshine and rainbows (except for y'know for backgrounds) especially since Squeenix was getting ever more awkward, emo, and just plain obtuse with its games. But Dawn...Dawn just felt like they wanted to beat you over the head with how depressing the Mana World was, and threw in some nasty mechanic choices for fun. Mana always had this theme of growth and change, but now we have a bag of spilling for every level, samey awkward platforming, collect-a-thons that didn't end, and hey-look-you-like-these-people-screw-you-and-them angst fests.

Dawn of Mana stands as a failed campaign; a game I couldn't make myself play, and may well never even get a spot in the Backlog of Glory. After that, I kept hearing snippets of how this Mana game had crappy controls and no story, that Mana game made no sense and was a Strategy game for no reason. I never heard one nice thing about a Mana game after Dawn except for Adventure (and that's a remake of a remake).

Have things really gotten that bad for Mana? Why? Or is it just more grumpy gamer syndrome and the games are at least OK?

[SparTonberry]

Yeah, the Mana strategy game (for the DS, Heroes of Mana?) is one I've had sitting around (since getting it for cheap sealed, late in the DS' lifespan) but hadn't gotten to playing.

[celerystalker]

Actually, and you personally won't like this, WulfeLuer... it's pretty well Legend of Mana's fault. I worked at FuncoLand when it came out, and it had a TON of excitement behind it. However, with its lack of structure compared to the prior Mana games, people hated it. I had four copies traded in during its launch week. It was a game that alienated the vast majority of fans at the time, and destroyed the faith of its fanbase. The series has been on eggshells ever since.

[WulfeLuer]

I'm not gonna hide behind butthurt nostalgia; Legend really was meh at best. The plot is incoherent, the characters tended to be either grumpy douchebags or a psychiatrist's dream come true (or both), the monsters (except for the bosses) couldn't even be bothered with palette swaps. Add in a breathtakingly horrible guide (especially for BradyGames of the time) for fun. I can very well see how this could be considered the harbinger of gamer rage for Mana.

But I love Legend of Mana anyway. I find it to be just plain fun. I like just slapping down the artifacts and the locations flashing out of nowhere with arcane flashiness. I like just wandering around smacking critters in all the pretty locales, followed by my faithful pet Polter Box. I like the tremendously over-the-top animations for the spells and killer moves. I like the hilarious crafting system, where you can make a sword out of cotton and beat things with it.

I know it's flawed, very flawed. But then Dawn came out and we went from bad to worse.

[Aussie2B]

I feel like whatever Legend of Mana lost in terms of established fans who were put off by it not being like Secret of Mana, it gained in brand new fans who never played a Mana game before, didn't have any particular expectations, and ended up loving it. It seems like I come across quite a few people who were introduced to the series with Legend of Mana. That said, it was the beginning of the trend in which they were all over the place with the Mana series, constantly going in new directions to see what would stick (which turned out to be basically nothing besides the earliest games). It's not that people necessarily wanted total rehashes, but I think Square was going a bit too far with the experimentation, forgetting what it was that made people Mana fans in the first place.

[WulfeLuer]

Aussie2B does make some good points. I disagree somewhat with the "lose the old fans, but gain new ones" feeling that LoM wound up with a net loss of fans overall, even though it did bring in some fresh blood. I agree that the experimentation also really took hold here in LoM, and while it wasn't the most visible or most drastic retool for Square's PS1 lineup (see: Chrono Cross), it can be considered symptomatic (or emblematic depending on opinion) of post-FF7 Square trying to be both big-league money-maker developer and quirky/artsy RPG developer.

I didn't know that LoM had such a negative reception either, especially the immediate trade-ins reported by Celery. I accidentally ruined my first copy, and it took half of forever to find another one at all; if I recall correctly, I wound up buying another NiB while any used copies were only something like $5 less and hard to come by. Local word-of-mouth was pretty positive.

Has there been anything at least close to well-liked from DoM onward?

[Exhuminator]

Has there been anything at least close to well-liked from DoM onward?

Adventures of Mana has been well received:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventures_of_Mana

It is a remake of the original Mana game (what USA knew as Final Fantasy Adventure). It was designed for Android and iOS. Here's the Android version:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.square_enix.adventures&hl=en