The Secret of Mana Localization Was Rushed, and the Game Shows It

The Mana Sword is stuck in a stone at the bottom of a lake outside Potos, and pulling it free is the worst thing a boy could do. Monsters pour across the countryside. The villagers banish him forever. Within ten minutes, Secret of Mana sets its terms: bright, fast, and a little cruel underneath.

Square’s 1993 action role-playing game, originally released in Japan as Seiken Densetsu 2, remains the high point of the Mana series. It earned acclaim on release for its graphics, its plot, its Ring Command menus and its real-time battle system. That reputation holds. This is an 8.5 out of 10.

Randi, Primm and Popoi

The party is three characters with distinct jobs. The hero, Randi, cannot use magic but masters weapons faster than anyone. The girl, Primm, is a healer with restorative and support spells. Popoi, the sprite, casts offensive magic that damages and impairs enemies.

The names only appeared in the Japanese manual at first, and the player can rename all three. The roles matter more than the names. You can control any character at any time, and the other two run on artificial intelligence you can customize. Critics praised those AI settings in 1993, and the reason is plain: allies who heal when you need healing are the difference between a hard fight and a wipe.

• Randi: no magic, fast weapon mastery
• Primm: healing and support spells
• Popoi: offensive magic

The Ring Command menu

Combat runs in real time, not in turns. A power bar at the bottom of the screen decides how much damage an attack lands. Wait for the bar to fill and you hit harder. Swing early and you hit soft.

Equipment, spells and status checks all run through the Ring Commands, a circular menu that hovers over the character you control. The game pauses while the ring is open. That pause is the whole trick. It lets you make decisions in the middle of a fight without stopping the fight.

Up to three players can play at once through the Super Multitap, and a second or third player can drop in or out whenever they like. The Virtual Console version supports three players through extra GameCube or Classic Controllers.

A fortress, eight seeds, and one sorcerer

The world runs on mana. An ancient civilization used it to build the Mana Fortress, a flying warship. The gods sent giant beasts to destroy them. A hero used the Mana Sword to bring the fortress down, and the world recovered.

Now an empire wants eight Mana Seeds. Unsealed, they restore mana to the world and let the empire rebuild the fortress. Randi is joined by Primm, who leaves her castle to save the warrior Dyluck, and by Popoi, a sprite with no memory of his past.

The Emperor is not the real threat. Thanatos, an ancient sorcerer, is using him. Thanatos wants a “new, peaceful world,” and his decaying body needs a host. He picks Dyluck.

What still works

Koichi Ishii directed and designed the game. Nasir Gebelli programmed it. Hiromichi Tanaka produced it. Hiroki Kikuta wrote the soundtrack, and critics singled it out then for good reason.

The top-down view holds up. So does the pacing. The game moves you from Potos to the Mana Temples without much dead time, and the trio’s pursuit by the Empire keeps a spine through the middle stretch.

The weakness is the story’s back half, where Thanatos betrays the Emperor, kills him and his henchmen, and takes the fortress for himself. It is a lot of villain turnover in a short stretch, and Dyluck’s fate lands harder than the sorcerer pulling the strings.

That is a small complaint against a game that solved problems other role-playing games had not noticed yet. Real-time combat with a power bar, a menu that pauses the action instead of the player, and cooperative play that lets a friend join mid-session — Secret of Mana did all three in 1993 and made them look easy.

action RPG · retro games · Secret of Mana · Seiken Densetsu 2 · SNES · Square