Design Review: Children of Mana

About the Game
In Children of Mana, you play as one of four characters - Ferrick, Tamber, Poppen, or Wanderer - chosen by the Sword of Mana to save the world from a villain who would would unleash the power of mana in the service of evil.

You must fight your way through monsters on five different continents in order to secure the precious Mana Stones and defeat the 'malevodons' which guard them. The people of Illusia are counting on you to protect the village, the Mana Tree, and the newborn goddess herself.

Introduction
Outside of the Mana Village, you will spend most of your time hacking and slashing through a random assortment of small maps themed after the five continents. Both the main quest and subquests rely on the same process: travel to one of the five continents and complete 4-12 randomly selected maps. During the main quest, you will typically fight a boss at the end of this process. During subquests, you will never fight a boss.

To travel to these continents, you simply exit the Mana Village to the World Map and click on the proper continent. Each continent is really no more than a button that initiates a small bit of dialogue followed by a sequence of random maps. There are no villages besides the Mana Village, and there are no natural connections between the maps you will explore on each continent.

To complete these maps, you need to find the hidden Gleamdrop and place it within the Gleamwell (also hidden). Each map is enclosed and continuous, meaning that there are no exits other than the Gleamwell. Every map therefore has the same objective - uncover the Gleamdrop and take it to the Gleamwell. Combining the two will teleport you to the next random map. You must complete maps in groups of 4, after which point you will be given a break to save and change equipment. Typically, you will fight through a total of 8 maps before the quest is over.

As you fight your way through each map, you'll open up chests with weapons, armor, items, and gems. Weapons and armor are linear upgrades - they are associated with a single stat, so you will always know an upgrade by its higher number. You are limited in the number of usable items you can carry, but the healing items are critical to surviving in combat. However, gems are the most valuable loot you will come across, because they can significantly alter your statistics, abilities, and attack power. Later in the game, finding gems will become the most compelling reason to continue playing, as there are 180 gems to collect in all.

What Works
First and foremost, the production values for this game are fantastic, living up to the high standards set by previous titles in the Mana series. The sound and music are nice, but the 2D artwork is colorful, nuanced, and beautifully-rendered. The character designs in particular are both expressive and memorable, which really helps to draw out the player's sympathy.

The controls are another high point. Movement and combat feel very tight, and the 2D physics are novel and well-implemented. Monsters don't just reel from blows, they knock into other monsters, causing chain reactions. This eases the monotony of combat somewhat, since the physical result of your attack varies depending upon your immediate surroundings and the number of enemies you are fighting at once. This also adds tactical depth to combat, because a poorly-timed attack can cause enemies to bounce back and throw you off balance.

The collectible gems are probably the most interesting new feature of Children of Mana, as they provide the player with the customization options that weapons and armor lack. You are able to synthesize gems in town, unlocking more powerful ability bonuses with various caveats (larger size or stat penalties). In theory, this would flesh out the rather static abilities of the four playable characters, but in practice, only a small handful of gems are truly worth using.

What Doesn't Work
Weapons.
There are four types of weapons in the game: the sword, the flail, the hammer, and the bow.

SWORD: The sword provides your bread and butter damage. It's has a good range, allows for rapid attacks, and generally does a lot more damage than the other weapons. Holding down the attack button will generate a shield which deflects arrows and ranged attacks.

FLAIL: The flail has two uses. You can either swing it around in a large arc, doing decent damage to anything within a certain area, or you can use it to catch and pull items or enemies toward you. In some instances, you can use it as a grappling hook to pull yourself past traps.

HAMMER: The hammer should be a powerful weapon, but in effect, it does much less damage than the sword, because of its slow speed. You must use the hammer to break certain objects on the map which block your way, and using the hammer on an enemies is like shooting billiards - they reel and bounce for several seconds.

BOW: The bow is the weakest weapon in the game. In theory, its range would keep you out of harms way, but in practice you get hit a lot more because you can't dodge or shield against attacks while trying to aim. The bow is also very slow firing and does mediocre damage.

The game allows you to equip two weapons at once, each assigned to its own button. This allows you to perform some interesting combos like grappling an enemy with your flail and then smacking him with your hammer. However, nothing - and I mean nothing - is going to be as effective as just slashing the holy heck out of enemies with your sword.

You will only ever use the other weapons when you are confronted with a pittance of scenarios - traps or breakable rocks. Rather than spicing up combat, these things feel like interruptions to the flow of gameplay, and you will quickly become annoyed at having to switch weapons every minute just to get past the same obstacles scattered throughout every map.

Legend of Mana offered many more weapons than four and managed to balance them by varying accuracy, damage, and speed. Children of Mana tries to simplify the weapons into four essential tools, but the result is that the player is forced to select the same tool every time he is confronted by a particular type of obstacle. Choosing a weapon therefore requires no strategic or creative forethought - it is merely a chore.

Magic.
The magic system in Children of Mana is utterly broken; ironic for a game with 'mana' in the title. Before you leave town, you have the option of selecting only one of eight elemental spirits to accompany you. In combat, you can summon this spirit to the playfield by holding down the B button. Once summoned, you can either leave the spirit alone or approach it. Approaching it will provide a beneficial effect such as healing you or enchanting your weapon. Leaving it alone will cause it to cast an area-effect attack spell in a geometric pattern specific to each spirit.

Unfortunately, the healing effects are weak compared to healing items, and weapon enchantment is too short in duration to ever make a difference. Furthermore, the area-effect attack spells are far less damaging than simply flicking your flail around, even when the element you've chosen is in opposition to the monster's element. This is partially due to the silly geometric patterns which more often miss enemies than hit them. In the amount of time it takes to summon your spirit and wait for its spell to take effect, you can easily dispatch any monsters in range with your sword. Combined with the caveat that you can only take one spirit with you at a time and that bosses are unphased by spells, magic is too severely limited to ever be useful.

Equipment.
Equipment is another aspect of the game that should have been interesting but instead feels like a nuisance. Armor pieces are no more than linear upgrades, increasing a single stat by slightly more than the previous piece. Because each armor piece is tied to only one stat, there is no room for choice or customization. After a few hours playing the game, acquiring new armor becomes more annoying than exciting, because it means navigating the UI and changing out your old piece. Since there is no room for customization and no drawback to upgrading, why not handle this automatically rather than burdening the player with the responsibility?

Quests.
Aside from the main story, there are two types of sidequests available to you in Mana Village. The first type is assigned to you by the colorful characters around town. Talking to them at various points in the game, you will be enlisted to solve their (actually quite interesting) problems. The stories prefacing these quests are usually very unique and well-written, so it's a shame that completing them is an exercise in repetition. This entails hacking your way through 4 to 8 random maps and then returning to town. You will never fight a boss or have a special objective on these quests - mindlessly slashing your way through hundreds of Rabbites just magically solves everyone's problems.

The second type of quest are those assigned by a contracting company run by Dudbears in the village. This is perhaps the most tacked-on, untested feature in the game. Upon completion, 'jobs' reward you with special items, which are specified at the outset. The trouble is that you have to pay the Dudbears in order to take a job. And not just a small fee; we're talking about parting with very large quantities of cash, just so you can slash your way through a bunch of random maps and be rewarded with a mediocre item. Not only that, but these jobs are some of the longest quests in the game - meaning 8 to 12 random maps full of tough enemies. And like all sidequests, you will never actually resolve the story objective specified - no bosses, no cutscenes. When you return to the village, the Dudbears will give you a one-line thank you note from the client who posted the job. Usually, it's something along the lines of, "Thanks!"

Fix this Game in Five Steps
So how can this game's design do justice to its production values?
Read on!

1. Balance the Weapons - Include a larger variety of weapons, ala Legend of Mana, and vary their usefulness by altering damage, accuracy, speed, and range. Remove the annoying weapon-specific obstacles and traps littered throughout the game, thereby allowing the player the freedom to use his favorite weapon consistently.


2. Diversify Equipment - Include a larger variety of equipment, and make each piece affect multiple stats rather than just one, thus introducing advantages and drawbacks to upgrading. Accommodate diverse styles of play by providing multiple paths of statistic upgrades for armor, accessories, and weapons.


3. Make the Spells Powerful - Lift the tactical burden from magic-users by making all magic attacks full-screen or auto-targeted, ala Seiken Densetsu 3. Improve the effectiveness of elemental magic vs. enemies of opposing elements. Extend enchantment duration to 5+ minutes. Allow the player to use any mana spirit at any time.


4. Lose the Random Maps - Build a discrete, continuous landmass for each continent, composed of several dozen branching, organic, interconnected maps. Provide the player with an explorable map for each continent, and pinpoint active quests and dungeon markers on this map. Generate themed randomized dungeons from a multitude of small room templates, connected by physical doorways. Generate enemy encounters from randomized templates suitable to the theme of the dungeon or play area.


5. Cohesive Side Quests; Boss Fights - Create discrete paths for side quests, entailing checkpoints and a final destination on the world map. Create a templated boss fight at the final destination of the quest, or in lieu of a boss fight, create some conversation on the field to provide some closure. Reward the player amply.

Conclusion
The Mana series has long gotten away with couching formulaic game mechanics within a bed of high production values and epic storytelling. Children of Mana attempts to defy this convention, but instead of moving forward, Square-Enix opts to simplify gameplay to the point that the player becomes redundant. This just proves that you should be very careful when trying to break down an already simple formula into something more essential. Even in a hand-held game, players don't want you holding their hands.