Part 7: The Mana and SaGa series get a glow up in the 16 bit era
Secret of Mana
Secret of Mana is a game that brings back many fond memories of my childhood. It is one of the first Squaresoft games I got as a birthday gift and it caused a positive impression on a young Strategist. Squaresoft of America was finally getting their heads out of their asses and were figuring out how to make appealing box art and packaging. The Secret of Mana box art sticks out in my mind as a step up from the plain packaging of previous games. On top of that, it came with a beautiful poster of the box cover art. I proudly displayed it in my room for a few years until it got misplaced. Another core memory was just playing through the game on weekends with one of my close friends. Finally, there was a Squaresoft game with multiplayer and my friend could do more than just wait for his turn to dungeon trek. Of course we would get into arguments about picking characters and weapons (my friend was always hogging the freaking boomerang), but silly fights like these were part of the fun. Seeing as it was one of the few multiplayer games I owned (besides Super Mario World and F-Zero), it would see a lot of play when I had friends over.
A complete boxed set of Secret of Mana sold on eBay. Includes the poster that came in the box plus additional promotional posters included in Nintendo Power's Secret of Mana issue.
Development History
The development history of Secret of Mana goes all the way back to 1990, after the release of Final Fantasy III for the NES. The project was originally intended to be a real time/action version of Final Fantasy IV, but that idea got scrapped and somewhere along the line the idea got repurposed into the sequel to Seiken Densetsu. It was also intended to be released on the Super Nintendo/Sony/Phillips CD-Rom add on that got canceled. That lead to 40% of the planned game needing to get scrapped. Some of the scrapped ideas made their way to the Chrono Trigger project, such as the plan for multiple endings. Hiromichi Tanaka, one of the game designers of Final Fantasy I and II, was the producer of this project. Other notable staff include Koichi Ishii, series creator, returning as director and the lead designer. Nasir Gebelli brought his technical mastery to what would be his last title in Squaresoft. Hiroki Kikuka debuted in Squaresoft as the composer of this game. Ted Woosley did the localization for the North American release, in 30 days, with one arm tied behind his back (I made up the last part).
Story
The story centers around the Tree of Mana, the plant based deity that maintains the world in balance. There’s this giant douchenozzle called Thanatos who is trying to reactivate the technology of the ancients and take the power of the Tree of Mana for himself. He goes around brainwashing villagers, sealing the powers of Mana and more douchey behavior like that. Meanwhile, the main protagonist is called by a voice that leads him to an old sword stuck on a stone near his village. He pulls the sword from the stone and some mysterious voice commands him to bring it back to the Tree of Mana. It turns out this is the legendary sword of Mana. He is banished from his village for pulling out the sword, meets with a Knight and old lady Sage and goes on an adventure to restore the power of his sword. Meanwhile his two companions have their own reasons to seek out the Tree of Mana. The girl is seeking a way to uncurse her fiancee, Dyluck, who was brainwashed by Thanatos and forced to serve in his army. The orphaned sprite is seeking a way to restore his memory and find his family. The group goes around he world, seeking the spirits of Mana, restoring each region and solving problems. The basic plot points in the story kind of fade into the background as you progress, which makes the game feel kind of empty. It would’ve been nice to have more character development scenes as the game goes along, but I suspect that was partly due to the cut content and various stop/starts of the project. I was not surprised to learn in my research that 40% of the planned story was cut from the game, it definitively feels like it.
The sword pulling sequence is kind of cool for an SNES game. Also, I noticed the waterfall sequence is a callback to Final Fantasy Adventure.
The writers tried to infuse your allies with personality, and it is especially evident when you meet them.
The girl is not a damsel in distress and rescues you from becoming dinner for goblins.
The sprite, meanwhile, is a trickster who loves pranks and scams for ridiculous sums of money.
The big bad Thanatos. He brainwashes Dyluck, the dreamboat, and the girl's bestie Phanna.
Gameplay/UI/Controls
Secret of Mana is a very robust action RPG experience unlike any game available on the SNES in late 1993. Nasir was really flexing his technical expertise in this game. The game features AI controlled party members, and the behavior of the AI can be controlled by a very intuitive UI. The ring menu was a clever visual way of accessing the inventory without jumping through a text based inventory list. Secret of Mana was one of the few games that supported 3 player coop through the SNES multitap. That was basically unheard of for an adventure RPG game in 1993. Otherwise, the game continues many of the gameplay features established in Final Fantasy Adventure, such as real time action combat and weapons that interact with the environment.
The ring menu allows for quick selection of spells or items without separate screens or text menus.
The AI controlled party members are very customizable, you can adjust their level of aggression and which abilities they use in combat.
However, the game also contains some very unfortunate design flaws that dampen the experience. The biggest flaw is in the combat mechanics. The way hitting and dodging works is very awkward. The critical hit animations tend to be overlong, and dodging happens automatically on enemies without visual feedback. If the player attacks an enemy quickly while it recovers from a critical hit, it creates the impression that the hit detection is failing. As far as I could tell it is just a delayed feedback issue, I never got the impression that my hits were not being recorded. The second flaw is the charge meter for attacks. The game encourages you to not spam your attacks by waiting about 5 seconds between attacks. If you spam attacks, they will do paltry damage to enemies. On top of that, the powerful special attacks require the player to charge the meter multiple times over. There’s a lot of standing around waiting for meters to charge in the game when in combat. The third flaw is in the progression systems. Each character has weapon skill levels and spell levels, on top of the normal character levels. In order to gain access to the most powerful charge attacks and spell effects there’s A LOT of grinding involved. Grinding for skill levels sucked in Final Fantasy II and that design still sucks in Secret of Mana.
Yes, you do need to charge the meter 8 times over to get the most powerful attacks. On the other hand, the attacks do look really cool.
Although, maybe CAPCOM might want to look into some of these special moves, they look suspiciously familiar.
Graphics and Music
The visuals for this game are top notch. The pixel art is superb, as expected from Squaresoft. The graphics capture the lighthearted children’s fantasy tale theme perfectly. They also made good use of the graphical modes of the Super Famicom/SNES. The standout graphical moments are probably the Mode 7 scenes when traveling through the cannon service or on the back of a dragon.
The flying sequences on Flammie, the dragon, were visually impressive back then and still hold up nowadays.
I do not exaggerate when I say that Secret of Mana has some of the most beautiful and ethereal soundtracks on the SNES. The newcomer, Hiroki Kikuka really brought his A game to the music and effects. The variety of instrumentation and music styles is outstanding. Folksy bawdy tunes, progressive rock songs, ethereal soundscapes, even some eerie songs. There’s heavy use of the flute, the glockenspiel and even digitized whale calls. As usual, I include some of my favorite tracks but it was near impossible to narrow it down given the many excellent options.
Remakes
There’s a 3D remake of Secret of Mana on the Vita/Playstation 4 that I haven’t played. It didn’t get reviewed particularly well, and there’s some criticism of the added voice acting being low quality. Also they remixed the soundtrack and some thought it was a downgrade over the original. Apparently, it was one of the many Square Enix rush jobs to get a quick buck off of nostalgia and they didn’t do a good enough job of polishing the gameplay. It seems like the Remake is to be avoided unless one has a preference for 3D graphics.
The SOM remake got panned, but I think it looks quite nice.
Aftermath and Legacy
Secret of Mana/Seiken Densetsu received excellent reviews by major publications. It sold about 1 million copies in Japan in 1993 alone and it would end up being a minor success in the west despite barely getting any marketing or hype. It would end up selling half a million copies outside of Japan, better than Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy II/IV. It was a building block in Squaresoft’s attempts to capture the western RPG market and gave them more confidence to continue with the Final Fantasy series overseas.
GamePro was one of the publications that went gaga over Secret of Mana.
Romancing SaGa
Unfortunately, I don't have any personal anecdotes about Romancing SaGa as it was never released in the United States. On top of that, there were no complete fan translations of this game until a few years ago. However, it is a series that interested me for a long time because of its hardcore cult fanbase. I’m taking advantage of this series to become better acquainted with the Romancing SaGa series as I believe it is a historically important part of Squaresoft's catalog. Why do I think that? Well, this game includes innovative mechanics that would influence future Final Fantasy titles and games such as Live a Live and even newer titles such as Octopath Traveler.
And on top of that, the concept art for Romancing SaGa is really good, and the characters are really, really, ridiculously good looking.
Development History
Akitoshi Kawazu had some really ambitious design ideas for the first 16 bit game in the SaGa series. His design for Romancing SaGa departed heavily from the linear structure of Final Fantasy and the SaGa Gameboy games. This was the first game in Squaresoft's catalog to incorporate the “Free Scenario” structure. The game incorporates eight different protagonists with individual stories that play out in the same world. The selected protagonist can meet and team up with the other protagonists later on in their scenario. The idea of the multiple scenarios was inspired by Japanese “Taiga” TV dramas. I have no idea what a Taiga drama is, but from what I can gather online, they are the Japanese equivalent of a show like Game of Thrones. Unfortunately, due to cartridge space and deadlines, Kawazu wasn't able to put all of his ideas or even all of the side quests he had planned for this game. The Romancing Saga sequels seem to be more fondly remembered than this particular game, probably because of the incomplete nature of it.
I'm kind of glad I don't know any Japanese, because the Taiga TV shows look kind of dope and it would just be another obsession to delve into. I have far too many of those.
Story
There are eight different characters to choose, and each one gets a unique introductory chapter in the game. In my playthrough I chose Albert, the prince of Isthmus. Albert, the young prince, is commanded to clear a castle of monsters by his parents, the King and Queen. When he returns from his quest, he celebrates and later goes to sleep. In the middle of the night, the castle is attacked by an overwhelming force of monsters. The King and Queen stay behind to fight the horde, while Albert escapes with his sister, Diana. While attempting to escape, a small group of monsters attack Albert and after choosing how to handle the situation he is separated from his sister. From there the story progresses in a non linear fashion. There are optional quests that unlock over time, depending on your choices in game, based on time elapsed and/or how many monsters you’ve fought. The player can also find the other main characters in their playthrough and have them join their party. For example, Albert finds Sif in his campaign early on and she joined the party permanently. The structure of the game is very open and free, but it necessitates that the player explore the world and pay attention to clues from villagers on where to go to find quests. I got a strong Elder Scrolls vibe from the gameplay, so if you like that type of aimless exploring, going from town to town, searching for things to do, this game might be for you.
The eight protagonists of Romancing SaGa. From top left to bottom left: Arthur, Jamil, Grey, Hawke. From top right to bottom right: Aisha, Claudia, Barbara, Sif.
Scenes from Albert's scenario. There are story choices in the game that can affect later quests and storylines.
Gameplay and Mechanics
Romancing Saga follows the turn based style of the original Final Fantasy games with a few tweaks. Battles are no longer random; enemies are visible on the map and chase the player down when he’s close. There’s an additional emphasis on positioning when in combat, which adds an additional strategic element to gameplay. Some weapons only work from the front row and some work better from the back rows, so party formation and repositioning are essential to success. The leveling system follows the Final Fantasy II style of leveling individual skills and stats through use. The player can select various builds for their protagonist at the start to make them more specialized in magic, healing or combat. Magic is also a bit different from other Squaresoft games. There are 8 schools of magic and 4 of them are opposed to each other. The player only has access to 4 schools of magic at a time. These magic schools must be leveled through use to acquire access to higher level spells. Increasing skill with weapons allows for special attack commands. The annoying part of this system is that individual weapons acquire levels, not weapon types. If you upgrade your iron sword to a steel one, you have to grind the skills levels all the way back from 0.
Enemies have no chill and will chase you down into corners. If they catch you from behind, you might need to reposition in combat if you are a melee character.
Like I mentioned in the story segment, this game has a non-linear structure, which means that after completing the introductory scenario there isn't much guidance on where to go or what to do. The player must talk with everyone they meet to find out where to go. There isn't a quest log that I could find, so the player must either trust their memory or write down clues. Sometimes the clues to solving a quest aren't very specific or helpful. I have no idea if it is intentional or due to the localization, but I'm inclined to think the original game was light on text due to the aforementioned cartridge space issues. One annoyance I noticed is that a lot of the major quests are gated behind encounter counts. The late game quests require close to 800-900 fights before they can be unlocked. I'm sure that the number goes faster than you'd think, but be prepared to fight a lot if you wish to see the end game.
This is what amounts to a quest in Romancing Saga. An NPC telling you to go somewhere without giving any directions or guidance.
Graphics and Sound
The graphics of Romancing Saga are comparable to Final Fantasy IV, maybe a little worse. The character spritework in combat is the usual high quality expected from Squaresoft, created by Final Fantasy pixel artist Kazuko Shibuya. But the game environment and world lacks the visual flair of a mainline Final Fantasy game. For a JRPG released in early 1992, I suppose it looks acceptable, just not as vibrant and colorful as a Final Fantasy game.
All this game has to offer visually is nicely animated 16 bit pixel characters and okayish spell effects. Or at least as far as I've seen in my playthrough.
The music is solid but not as remarkable as a Nobuo Uematsu soundtrack. Kenji Ito returns to the SaGa series after working on the Game Boy games and produces solid tracks that fit with a medieval drama theme. The songs fit the particular moods of the game and I particularly enjoyed the combat theme, but none of the tracks stuck with me in a major way.
Remake
Square Enix released a 3D remake of Romancing Saga with the “Minstrel Song” subtitle. The reviews are pretty rough and it sits at a 58 on Metacritic right now. The critics ripped on the art style of the characters, the music, the voice acting and the repetitious gameplay. I didn’t play Minstrel Song in much depth, but I gave it a whirl to see if it is as bad as the critics mention. And it isn’t that bad? I mean the character design is hideous, the controls are a bit wonky, but otherwise it is a decent remake of Romancing Saga. Seems like it got unfairly maligned for the flaws of its source material. And the soundtrack was definitively improved from the SNES version. I thought the combat theme got a nice upgrade in the PS2 era.
I get that they were trying to replicate the "chibi" aesthetic in 3D, but these character models are nightmare fuel.
Aftermath and Legacy
Romancing SaGa was a cult hit in Japan. It didn’t have the sales or popularity of the Final Fantasy series but the Free Scenario system was praised by Japanese reviewers for its creativity and freedom of choice for the player. This system would make its way to other titles such as Live a Live and Octopath Traveler, but its influence would also be felt in the Final Fantasy series. This game never had a chance to make it to the west, as they were afraid to release overly complicated games in that market. The RS remake did come out in the west but wasn’t received favorably overseas and was critically panned. At that point in history, there were higher expectations for JRPG games than what Minstrel Song provided. Any game that wasn't at Final Fantasy's level of polish would get critically lambasted.
As far as my take on Romancing SaGa, my opinion on the game is positive. It clearly feels like a game from early 1992 but a lot of the features are ahead of its time. I've enjoyed this type of non-linear game before, (Morrowind, Live A Live and Octopath Traveler) and there's something about that structure that appeals to me. I plan to finish my run with Arthur and am looking forward to trying the Romancing SaGa sequels.
Next article we will be discussing Final Fantasy VI, a monumental title in the growth of a young Strategist. Feel free to sound off in the comments if you have played Secret of Mana, Romancing Saga, or if you have any other related thoughts. Thanks for reading.
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