Mana Series

Also known in Japen as Seiken Densetsu, the first game was on the Game Boy and released in the states as Final Fantasy Adventure. Secret of Mana is SD2, and SD3 was not officially released, but there's plenty of fan translated ROMs out there.

Secret of Evermore, while is uses much of the same engine as SoM, is in fact it's own separate entity and has the prestige of being the first and last game developed by Square of America.

Legend of Mana for PS1 I don't believe is technically not a main, enumerated sequel of the Mana series, but rather a sort of side-project that has a different combat system and a generally non-linear story, but it's also a damn fine game in its own right.

After LoM, the thunder never struck again, and all Mana games after that are best avoided.

Only played Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 and to be blunt, they're mediocre at best. Though if you liked Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3 is much better so there's that. There's also a PSX game, a GBA remake of the first game in the series (FF Adventure), and I think some phone games or some such.

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Legend of Mana is pretty gud, and Sword of Mana is average, but yeah I feel the rest of the series got lost in whatever they wanted to do.

>>4167781
>what the heck happened to this series?
It didn't go anywhere, but it did get kind of weird. Heroes of Mana is an RTS of all things.

Most recently there was a remake of Seiken Densetsu 1 for mobile and later Vita as Adventures of Mana, and the Seiken Densetsu Collection got released on Switch and will never get localised because SD3 wasn't translated.

Right now the series is "buy the compilation game if you don't want the franchise to die" limbo.

>>4167795
Don't forget Dawn of Mana if you wanna talk about weird, because it was a blatant Kingdom Hearts clone - and a poor one at that.

Children of Mana on DS was okay, although pretty repetitive. It's much like Secret of Mana's gameplay, but instead of an adventure RPG, it's a dungeon crawler, where you just go from small area to small area, killing all enemies and then progressing to the next floor of the dungeon.

Fun to play in multiplayer if you've got friends, but kind of boring single player.

>>4167781
I think SoM is the only really good game in the series. Many think it's the worst.

Play yourself and make up your own mind.

>>4167781

I like the Kingdom Hearts game which followed up the gameplay, but the story is kinda suck. It's fun enough if you like Final Fantasy and Disney characters.

I'd recommend Seiken Densetsu, there are three different endings. Fan translation is mediocre but good enough.

>>4167798
I wish, if it played more like Kingdom Hearts it would have been a better game, instead they were obsessed with that archaic physics engine.

>>4167781
Play the retro games (Final Fantasy Adventure on GB or Sword of Mana on GBA, Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 on SNES, and Legend of Mana on PSX) and you're good to go. Also Secret of Evermore.

>>4167781
>SOM
First JRPG I ever played. It will always have a special place in my heart. As a kid I preferred action combat to turn-based, as it felt more engaging, and I also even preferred this game to Zelda ALTTP

>SOM2 / SD3
The game that made me discover emulation. One of those rare experiences where you play a sequel to a game you love, and it's even better. Play it.

>Legend of Mana
Haven't played, but it's high on my backlog list. I was originally put off by it apparently not having a traditional epic coherent story, but I still want to play it.

>FFA / SD1 / SoM / AoM
The first game in the series is a bit basic compared to the SNES games, but I only attempted it after playing SOM1&2. I could take it or leave it.

>Evermore
Also on my backlog, but not a priority; It wasn't made by the Mana team, and has a very different theme.

>Other 'Mana' games
I wouldnt bother

>what the heck happened to this series?
The series creator Koichi Ishii has a development studio called Grezzo Games. In addition to making those 3DS Zelda remakes, they've have just recently released Ever Oasis on 3DS, which you could perhaps loosely argue is a spiritual successor of sorts to the Mana series

>>4169516
>I was originally put off by it apparently not having a traditional epic coherent story, but I still want to play it.

Well SD 1-3 all have utterly garbage stories anyways, it could honestly only get better (hopefully), so I have high hopes for Legend of Mana

>>4169635
personally i liked how they had traditional hero stories. That's probably because they were my first rpg's, so i hadn't seen anything more complex.

They're just great adventures

>>4169516
Jrpg is not a genre.

>>4169651
okay?

>>4167781
Great graphics and music. Shit gameplay/combat/level design/writing.
>what the heck happened to this series?
Squaresoft died and the creators all went on to other studios.

You should definitely play Final Fantasy Adventure/Mystic Quest, in monochrome, on a game boy. Play the remake (de-FF'd) later, sure, but the original's still a good time.

Thanks everybody. I vaguely recall seeing a picture of seiken densetsu 3 in an issue of Nintendo power but looking back it could've been a picture of legend of mana in psm. Either way, that's awesome that it's fan translated. I'll check it out for sure. Shame it's not the same composer.

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Secret of Mana was easily one of my top games growing up and still kind of is. I'm more aware of the flaws but I can look past all of that. I recently tried the sequel, Seiken Densetsu 3, and at first it seemed like it improved on everything but after a couple hours and realizing it's such a pain to avoid enemies (you go into a slow crouching/walk mode and can't run when enemies are on the screen) and the music is quite forgettable I just couldn't bring myself to finish it. I'm near the third class change portion but I have lost interest.

The only other game in the series that felt as good as Secret of Mana was Sword of Mana for the GBA and like somebody posted above me, the game for the DS is really good if you have a friend to play with but it's just a dungeon crawler. The only game I haven't tried in the series is LoM for the PS1 but I hear it's really good. Everything else was just a huge dissapointment and again I couldn't finish the games because they were just so far from the original. I really doubt we will see another game as good as Secret of Mana even though all they have to do is use the same formula but make the AI smarter (Like in Seiken Densetsu 3) and nerf the magic system.

>>4170735
>the music is quite forgettable
dude what? it has some of the best music for SNES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjxNAZjs4rQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XzYOQ-8XpA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u107vJFlFg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSkagVzxFlQ

>>4170749
I honestly don't remember these. I remember the song when you are traveling between the first couple main towns and it drove me insane because I kept walking the same long path to those towns before realizing there was a secret path I was supposed to take.

I played a lot of Secret of Mana growing up and loved the soundtrack except for the Lich King Battle and that weird dark temple music which was awful. Everything else just blew me away and I could listen to it for hours. (The OC Remixes of those songs are also quite amazing) It could just be because I played it a lot growing up and still do but SD3 was so forgettable for me, except for the absolutely beautiful visuals.

>>4171013
>Lich King Battle
wait, you mean this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCUdhcRQMC4

It's the best song in the game.

>>4171013

I still listen to Seiken Densetsu III sometimes, even though I haven't beaten the game in fifteen years. Imho it's got one of the better musical scores of all the jrpgs on the snes.

>>4167781
Only Mana games you should play are the first three because after the 3rd everything went downhill.

>>4171420
Objectively false. Legend of Mana is great, but yeah after that the series took a nosedive.

>>4171042
My ears are bleeding. Yes this is the one I'm talking about.

>>4171458

Man, I hated it at first, but after listening to it for fifteen minutes, I'm starting to kind of like it.

Sounds really industrial.

Is Sword Of Mana really WORSE than FFA?
The graphics look great to me. Surely the gameplay couldn't have gone backwards from a Game Boy game?

>>4171530

I always had the impression that the composer was maybe inspired by like Indonesian music or something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl4VNvAVeJA

Compare to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNDMGSWfVq0

The boss music anon linked above has some of the same sound, mixed with other stuff I suppose.

Anyway every Secret of Mana tune is awesome pretty much, including (maybe especially including) the weirdo ones like this

>>4171663

I barely played the Game Boy one but I can't imagine it's far superior or inferior.

Secret of Mana has some really strong points, so people sometimes adore it. Yes the graphics are pretty nice, and the music is fantastic. Cooperative multiplay is great for some people. The RPG story stuff is great for some people.

It also has kind of a terrible combat engine with some really awkward fundamental features. This doesn't make the game difficult or anything, so a lot of people don't mind it, but if you want finely tuned action or strategic challenge then you could easily find a lot to hate in this game. And the story, though charming enough, is shallow, simple, and (I think?) awkwardly translated.

>>4171663
>Is Sword Of Mana really WORSE than FFA?

As someone who loves FFA, Sword was a big letdown. It was missing a lot of the soul of the original and just felt much more generic. While FFA is also generic, it was also of a time where everything was pretty novel since there was little to compare it to.

FFA was about diving in to save the world and threw in some dark themes like Amanda, Bogard, and that ending. Sword of Mana was too busy trying to connect with the rest of the Mana games that it was bogged down and a slog to play through.

>>4172047
You misread the question

>>4167781
>Can someone pill me on the mana series?
>>>/pol/ >>>/v/

>>4172036
>The boss music anon linked above has some of the same sound, mixed with other stuff I suppose.
it's this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI6bFCd8SlM
they also used it for one KoF stage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8fdbxl9_bY

>>4172173
>He gets outraged by a stupid meme
>>>/reddit/

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>>4167781
Those pink woods in the spring forest of the Upper-Lands were maximum comfy in a game just saturated with comfiness.

>>4169635
>playing jRPGs for the story

Well, I guess you definitely wouldn't play them for their gameplay...

>>4171013
Secret of Mana has one of the most memorable soundtracks of the SNES. SD3 has a handful of good tracks, but it's not consistently good like SoM's. The composer who did SoM's OST (Kikuta?) was a one hit wonder (Koudelka's OST was awful).

>>4172036
You're probably correct. I think the guy who did SoM's and SD3's OSTs had an obsession with tribal and folk music.

SoM was mediocre at best and all the sequels sucked including SD3 and LoM.

>>4171663
The issue with Sword of Mana was it tried to bring Final Fantasy Adventure in line with SoM, SD3, and Legend of Mana, but while it certainly gives to vibes of those games, it fails to live up to any of them. It had the graphics and some of the gameplay, but it didn't have the cool magic spells or weapons upgrades of SoM, didn't have as good of a class system as SD3, and (perhaps superficially) didn't have a cool mode 7 overworld with a flammie. So instead of just being a really good remake of FFA, it just feels like a mediocre version of SoM/SD3. Sword of Mana does flesh out FFA's story and characters very well though, and the soundtrack is alright as far as Kenji Ito goes.

>>4173130
Oh, and the A.I. was braindead in Sword of Mana. I don't remember it being great in Secret of Mana, but it wasn't totally useless like Sword of Mana's was.

>>4173130
>>4173134
That said, my overall verdict is if you've never played FFA and you don't care for a "pure" FFA experience, Sword of Mana is fine if you just want an okay portable Mana game. If you want to play FFA, either emulate FFA or maybe give that new 3-D FFA remake on Android a shot.

>>4173130
>>4173134
To be fair, the ally A.I. in the original FFA was literally your partner aimlessly wandering around the screen randomly shooting attacks. The girl didn't even have an attack, yet she's the most useful partner since you can at least ask her for free cure spells.

Also the spells in Sword were trying to stay true to how they worked in FFA, including a few areas where you needed them to solve puzzles. And the magic did work in real-time for battles, which I think they did because most people seem to hate the menu based magic of Secret.