Secret of Mana was always bad and age made it worse.

[GrimoireA]

I'm sorry but the "SoM Vets" need a reality check.

Secret of Mana, while graphically ahead of its time and a great soundtrack too, has never been harder to play these days. There is janky, and then there is borderline unplayable. Essentially the game follows this one specific idea: Stunlock or be stunlocked. There is no balance between. It encourages you to use cheese strats to conquer the harder enemies who will overwhelm you if you try to play normally. The only reason you like the game today is because either,

A: Less games around back then so you had to make due and just accepted whatever you saw and cling to the idea it was peak.

B: You played co-op and the idea of an action rpg with another human being is way more fun than playing with a A.I controlled character (I felt this way when I got into the tales of games)

C: Stockholm Syndrome.

Trials of Mana, or Seiken Densetsu 3 was always the superior game, however it is not your fault for realizing sooner since the game was never released outside of J.P. While it too was janky and buggy it does almost everything better than Secret of Mana, I say almost because the only thing I like about SoM is that characters can equip different weapons. Regardless, once options because available or you waited until the collection of mana released people got to finally experience how amazing Trials of Mana truly was, and it carried over to the 2020 remake.

You pretenders can try to deny this, but this 'imaginative' world where Visions of Mana will never live up to Secret of Mana is built on a foundation of delusions. Whether or not VoM is good we'll see later this month, but frankly considering how terrible Secret of Mana truly is I'd say that's a low bar to cross. The truly impassable bar is Trials of Mana.

Edit: Liking Secret of Mana is fine despite its flaws. The main thing I wanted to drive home are the people who call themselves 'hardcore mana fans' are SoM exclusive fans that will try to compare every other game in the series to their idolized game, not realizing just how flawed it truly is.

Edit 2: Ignore Night4 he is trying to troll and derail the topic.

[Kyschoo]

I'm getting the popcorn ready, because what happens next is going to be entertaining.

[Nihil]

clown farmer detected

[bullet4hater]

i liked the game

[Amaterasu]

Originally posted by Nihil:

clown farmer detected

Them having a different opinion doesn't make them a clown farmer. I for one agree that Secret of Mana is deeply flawed.

[Melodia]

I never liked SoM.

[GrimoireA]

Originally posted by Amaterasu:

Originally posted by Nihil:

clown farmer detected

Them having a different opinion doesn't make them a clown farmer. I for one agree that Secret of Mana is deeply flawed.

Thank you, I do think nostalgia has a lot to do with it.

Though I will edit my post stating its ok to like the game despite its horrific flaws. I like Zelda II Adventure of Link and that game is infamous in its own right. This topic is mainly about the pretend fans who believe SoM is the only good mana game.

[Xixott]

I don't think Secret of Mana is actually that bad of a game. It comes from an era of significant experimentation. I agree there were a lot of issues with the game, but it is not nearly as bad as you make it sound. I also agree that SD3 is a far superior game, and is in fact my favorite of the series as of this posting. The thing is that without the things they did in Secret of Mana (which is the second game in the series), and Final Fantasy Adventure (the first one), we would not have seen Trials of Mana.

[darth.crevette]

I recently completed it, and I agree with everything you said.

The AI was terrible. Thank the Goddess for coop.
People complain about the combat in VoM being clunky and slow? Either they didn't play Secret, or they need to take off their nostalgia glasses. Charged attacks in particular were a somewhat good idea on paper but they slow the pace way too much - and unless you have reliable party member to cover for you (so, not AI) you'll never pull them off in a real fight.
Grinding, be it for magic, weapon levels, or for the end-game orbs and gear, is worse than in a random Korean mmorpg.
Magic is completely broken. Either you didn't bother leveling your spirits and it's broken useless, or you did and it'll win every boss fight for you.

Music was... so-so. The only really good tracks were at the very end, like the Mana Fortress, the Dark Lich, and the Mana Beast, rest was nice but very forgettable.

[Flesh Stick]

Games have become ♥♥♥♥ within just the past 8 years alone. I'm just gonna sell my pc, laptop, and all my consoles and be a homeless drug addict from now on. Can't wait to have brain dead adventures while horizontal on the sidewalk

[GrimoireA]

Originally posted by Xixott:

I don't think Secret of Mana is actually that bad of a game. It comes from an era of significant experimentation. I agree there were a lot of issues with the game, but it is not nearly as bad as you make it sound. I also agree that SD3 is a far superior game, and is in fact my favorite of the series as of this posting. :ToM_Kevin: The thing is that without the things they did in Secret of Mana (which is the second game in the series), and Final Fantasy Adventure (the first one), we would not have seen Trials of Mana.

From what I recall Secret of Mana was originally planned to be a CD game on a supposed SNES CD add on, but following the poor reception of Sega CD+budget issues it was canned and Secret of Mana had to be converted to a SNES cartridge, or something like that. I remember reading about it or watching a video regarding something about SoM having a strange development.

Regardless, I do agree that if secret of mana was not successful or popular Trials of Mana may not have existed. The same could be said for the final fantasy series. FF6 is one of my all-time favorite games but as many know it is FF7 which is the most popular, and while I do like FF7 there are many fans who do not appreciate the older games despite their success allowing FF7 to exist in the first place.

[Melodia]

IIRC it was more a fallout between Sony and Nintendo that led to the thing being canceled (and lead Sony to create the Playstation from its remnants).


And yeah, SoM's AI was so bad I always wonder if a lot of people who have such fond memories of it played co-op. Trials of Mana was much much better overall (and has much better music to boot).

[SaulD]

SoM was incredible when it came out but it is certainly a product of its time. Mind you, there wasn't anything quite like that in 1993. While it admittedly didn't age as gracefully as Seiken 3, looking at it through the lenses of modern gaming doesn't do justice to its cultural impact. If only it got a remake half as good as Trials, fixing some of its core issues like the overbearing magic system, I'm pretty sure OP would be singing another tune.

[Amaterasu]

Originally posted by SaulD:

SoM was incredible when it came out but it is certainly a product of its time. Mind you, there wasn't anything quite like that in 1993. While it admittedly didn't age as gracefully as Seiken 3, looking at it through the lenses of modern gaming doesn't do justice to its cultural impact. If only it got a remake half as good as Trials, fixing some of its core issues like the overbearing magic system, I'm pretty sure OP would be singing another tune.

What cultural impact? Everyone keeps saying it had a cultural impact, but in reality... I don't see it. Multiplayer RPGs didn't catch on because of it as far as I know(I also can't think of a single one outside the Mana series, the MMORPG Genre, or any that aren't based off Dungeons and Dragons). It didn't popularize or legitimize JRPGs in the west(That would happen four years later with Final Fantasy 7, plus Secret of Mana is an ARPG). It didn't popularize ARPGs in the west, that's been a popular genre for a while(Its prequel, Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden was a ARPG and quite popular on the Gameboy).

The only reason why I see for it to have the popularity it has is really because of Nostalgia and the fact that there were no other games like it at the time(Except Secret of Evermore, which is better, despite the abysmal sales and lack of exposure and I will die on this hill). So people kept their SNESes and played this one game for years upon years until they wound up meeting up on the internet and finding each other.

Before anyone tries to say, "You had to have been there to understand". I was there in the early 90s, the SNES is one of my favorite consoles and generations of all times. I own the mana collection on Switch and I've beaten Seiken 1 and Seiken 3 and love them both. The game I bounced off hard from because I couldn't enjoy the remake that fixed a lot of the issues I had with the original(I also beat the remake by the way)? Seiken Densetsu 2... also known as... Secret of Mana.

It is not the cultural masterpiece that people say it is. It did not have a cultural impact. What it did have was a bunch of people who never got another game like it in their early life, so they didn't have anything to compare it to before the glasses they wore gained rose-tinted lenses. It's not something on the level of Super Mario Bros or Final Fantasy 7. Not even close.

[Drake]

A hack & slash (becasue that's what this game is) on SNES was a new thing. Diablo wasn't even on the development radar in 1993, most topdown stuff was either turn based or simple arcade games, and almost none were multiplayer. the whole RPG genre was either turn based JRPG, first person dungeon crawlers (99% of all western rpgs) or zelda.

Secret of mana came where there was nothing. A JRPG hack & slash, no transition in battle, real time, multiplayer and the most important part, good artistic direction (we will haveto wait for chrono trigger, SD3 and tales of phantasia to actually get a real step up).
While SD3 adn legend of mana are gameplay wise the best of pretty much all of the mana games, the story and level design of SoM really made an impact.

While if you discover it now, you won't understand much about the appeal, if you take into account that it's a 1993 SNES game, it was one of the best games that got out this year, so much that people still remember it.

[Amaterasu]

Originally posted by Drake:

A hack & slash (becasue that's what this game is) on SNES was a new thing. Diablo wasn't even on the development radar in 1993, most topdown stuff was either turn based or simple arcade games, and almost none were multiplayer. the whole RPG genre was either turn based JRPG, first person dungeon crawlers (99% of all western rpgs) or zelda.

Secret of mana came where there was nothing. A JRPG hack & slash, no transition in battle, real time, multiplayer and the most important part, good artistic direction (we will haveto wait for chrono trigger, SD3 and tales of phantasia to actually get a real step up).
While SD3 adn legend of mana are gameplay wise the best of pretty much all of the mana games, the story and level design of SoM really made an impact.

While if you discover it now, you won't understand much about the appeal, if you take into account that it's a 1993 SNES game, it was one of the best games that got out this year, so much that people still remember it.

On the SNES Ultima 6 was a thing before SoM. Hack and Slash RPGs were a thing since Xanadu and were a thing in D&D based games for a while.

I will concede that SoM has a beautiful art direction.