Hello GBATemp, is been awhile since I wrote a blog. Might be out of practice but I'll try anyway. So what is this blog about? Well a personal struggle with Roleplaying games. More specifically, how I feel about them, the kinds I like and maybe don't like... or more about the problems I have with them. I don't want to make this long but since I'm writing as I think, it could be.
To start, I will talk about only three games. Last year, I reviewed Secret Of Mana... on Super Nintendo. (Since there is a remake I don't want to confuse with) You can view it here by clicking this link. Without trying to self promote the review, I just want to point out that I gave it a 8 of 10 score with most of the praise being the graphics, sound and gameplay. I like how colorful and detailed things look, I like the music and sound effects, and I like the action of the game from the more strategic turn based system. That was all listed as pro, but one con that I will draw attention and the reason behind why I'm writing this... the challenge or frustrating test of patience.
Let me explain what is a RPG is... or what it means to me. It is commonly a game that features characters with dedicated roles to play among a party of cast members. Mage, knight, thief, etc. Not every games has these classes specifically but they are defined in unique ways but still very fundamental. Anyway, the common thing "RPG" games have is how characters grow in strength. The usual thing for the player to do is gain exp to obtain higher levels. When you level up, your stats improve making you stronger by various ways. (It varies from each game) You can also buy and equip items and other such things, you explore and progress by defeating various bosses that block your path through the game's story. This is what it means to me.
Another common thing about them is probably the turn based battle system. This is where secret of mana comes in. This game was praised for dropping the turn based system games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest has, in favor of more involved player interaction. This allows the player who prefers the fun of having more control over character actions, or just feeling more active instead of watching things happen after player input. With that said, it has evolved over the years with different games. But secret of mana... is one of them that feels.... bad in it's execution.
For those who don't know, Secret Of Mana can be considered an action RPG game. It doesn't have random encounters, and attacking is as simple as walking up to a enemy and pressing the attack button. It does not feature huge menus of context for commands and or moderating characters. It has a "Ring Command" system which shows pictures of items and icons that gives a balance of traditional menu systems but not to break flow of game by loading another screen. Most of this is true and extends to the sequel game, Trials of Mana. These aren't really what I feel the game does right personally, but it is what appealed to me when deciding to play this game. For the record, both games was recently released in the collection of mana available now on Nintendo Switch.
Now to talk about what's wrong with it. The battle system is bad. It's buggy, glitchy, or just plain frustrating. Each game has is quirks so I'll start with secret of mana first, but where to begin?
First, as I said that being a action game, it should mean the game is more active, not turn based. But it still manages to be turn based without outright saying is not. Characters have a... stamina gauge? Is a number that appears at the bottom of the hud after the character performs an attack. It quickly refills after each attack. You can attack before it reaches maximum, but it means your attack deals less damage, or more likely to miss. Yes there is missing what should be confirmed attacks in a action rpg game. Not only does can you attack, but also run too. You can only run in a straight line and after you stop, your stamina must recharge to run again. Don't say anything, let me put a emote here that should express what your thinking.
Some other quick things are that I should also point out, this allows for three players to play at the same time. So you share a screen with other party members. The reason why this is bad, especially for single player mode is two things. The AI of the party members is to blame for both. One is the fact that the screen is shared, everyone must travel together. Sometimes the CPU gets stuck and you have to manipulate them to follow or the screen won't move. The other, is them fighting the enemies. So far I mentioned just control of the characters, but the real frustration is fighting enemies. That's when things are horrendous.
Fighting enemies is a pain. This is the buggy, glitch problems I have. Remember the stamina gauge I mentioned when attacking? Well it's only limited to you and your party. That means enemies have none. The other thing I want to point out is that when you attack or been attacked, you get knocked down, and either party or enemy can perform what I call a "buffered-or-queued attack". To explain, is basically possible to perform two hits in a row on a single person. The first hit knocks them down and the second one is processed as soon as they recovered from being knocked down. It's possible for both player and enemies to do, but remember, ONLY YOU have the stamina situation, ENEMIES DO NOT. It's possible that if too many enemies fight you at once, they can spam attacks and "infinite combo" you to death with no chance of redemption. This happens a lot and it sucks. It's one of the worst things to happen in this game.
Well I said a lot about Secret of Mana, but what about it's sequel? Well there is some notable changes which is good and bad. First the good. There is no screen locking, so party members don't have to travel together and won't screen lock if stuck. Running doesn't use stamina and you don't only run in one direction. Also, while not mentioned yet, you can choose different characters to control by pressing a button in both games, but in this one, holding L & R can be used as shortcuts to quickly manipulate characters if you need quick access to them. Last, I don't know how important this feature is, but during combat, you can hold the attack button to activate auto battle where your character will automatically walk to the nearest enemy and attack until is released or defeated.
Now the bad changes. In secret of mana, anytime you're in a place where monsters exist, your weapons are in hand and in battle stance. In Trails of Mana, you have to approach enemies to enter "battle mode" and during this time you can't perform run action. So you move at walking speed as long as your character enters battle mode. You can still run by choice in the other game. Treasures are dropped only when every enemy in the area is defeated instead of by each monster like in the other game. During level ups, you must choose which stat you want to increase, and some level ups will not allow you to choose the previously increased stat.
So far, the same things I said about Secret of Mana glitchy buggy battle is existing here too. Other things I forgot to mention was stuff like magic. Magic can be used and you probably should as often as you can. It attacks enemies from anywhere on screen and never misses. Combined with the way attacks can be stacked or queued, it's fully abused on me when I play and lose to enemies doing that. No joke I spent over a minute with ONE HP being smacked around by a wolf boss duo spamming attacks on me when I was already dead. That's cause even if you should have died, your HP goes to one and you have to recover from being knocked down before the game confirms your death. (In Trails of Mana anyway)
To end this from being too long, these two games have been a frustrating game to play through. As much as I agree the gameplay idea is appealing, the graphics and music is also good highlights, the clunky way combat handles is why I find it... to quote what I wrote as a con in my review "Challenging gameplay that can test your patience". I had wish that this could be fixed, but so far, no. There is no fan rom hack mod patch to fix it, and I don't even know if they did fix it in the Secret of Mana remake that came out last year. If they did, I would like to know, cause I held off on buying it fearing this may be so. My only reason for this was to share and express some struggles I have with RPG games, and hope the Trails of Mana remake does something about these problems. I didn't speak much on other games, but maybe I will next time. I said enough for one blog post and I'm drained writing this for three hours, probably have so many typos. So leave a comment if you have anything to say regarding your thoughts on the battle system with these games. I'll spell check when I get the chance.
If you want my opinion on how a good action RPG plays on Super Nintendo, try Terraingma, I also reviewed that game here on GBATemp. Is not a fair comparison considering it doesn't feature a party system, but it plays like a game with action and RPG elements that is well incorporated. Next time I'll talk about the one game series that spoiled me for RPG games.
To start, I will talk about only three games. Last year, I reviewed Secret Of Mana... on Super Nintendo. (Since there is a remake I don't want to confuse with) You can view it here by clicking this link. Without trying to self promote the review, I just want to point out that I gave it a 8 of 10 score with most of the praise being the graphics, sound and gameplay. I like how colorful and detailed things look, I like the music and sound effects, and I like the action of the game from the more strategic turn based system. That was all listed as pro, but one con that I will draw attention and the reason behind why I'm writing this... the challenge or frustrating test of patience.
What is a RPG, or how I come to know what they consist of?
Another common thing about them is probably the turn based battle system. This is where secret of mana comes in. This game was praised for dropping the turn based system games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest has, in favor of more involved player interaction. This allows the player who prefers the fun of having more control over character actions, or just feeling more active instead of watching things happen after player input. With that said, it has evolved over the years with different games. But secret of mana... is one of them that feels.... bad in it's execution.
What Secret/Trials of Mana does right.
For those who don't know, Secret Of Mana can be considered an action RPG game. It doesn't have random encounters, and attacking is as simple as walking up to a enemy and pressing the attack button. It does not feature huge menus of context for commands and or moderating characters. It has a "Ring Command" system which shows pictures of items and icons that gives a balance of traditional menu systems but not to break flow of game by loading another screen. Most of this is true and extends to the sequel game, Trials of Mana. These aren't really what I feel the game does right personally, but it is what appealed to me when deciding to play this game. For the record, both games was recently released in the collection of mana available now on Nintendo Switch.
The problems that they have.
Now to talk about what's wrong with it. The battle system is bad. It's buggy, glitchy, or just plain frustrating. Each game has is quirks so I'll start with secret of mana first, but where to begin?
First, as I said that being a action game, it should mean the game is more active, not turn based. But it still manages to be turn based without outright saying is not. Characters have a... stamina gauge? Is a number that appears at the bottom of the hud after the character performs an attack. It quickly refills after each attack. You can attack before it reaches maximum, but it means your attack deals less damage, or more likely to miss. Yes there is missing what should be confirmed attacks in a action rpg game. Not only does can you attack, but also run too. You can only run in a straight line and after you stop, your stamina must recharge to run again. Don't say anything, let me put a emote here that should express what your thinking.
Some other quick things are that I should also point out, this allows for three players to play at the same time. So you share a screen with other party members. The reason why this is bad, especially for single player mode is two things. The AI of the party members is to blame for both. One is the fact that the screen is shared, everyone must travel together. Sometimes the CPU gets stuck and you have to manipulate them to follow or the screen won't move. The other, is them fighting the enemies. So far I mentioned just control of the characters, but the real frustration is fighting enemies. That's when things are horrendous.
Fighting enemies is a pain. This is the buggy, glitch problems I have. Remember the stamina gauge I mentioned when attacking? Well it's only limited to you and your party. That means enemies have none. The other thing I want to point out is that when you attack or been attacked, you get knocked down, and either party or enemy can perform what I call a "buffered-or-queued attack". To explain, is basically possible to perform two hits in a row on a single person. The first hit knocks them down and the second one is processed as soon as they recovered from being knocked down. It's possible for both player and enemies to do, but remember, ONLY YOU have the stamina situation, ENEMIES DO NOT. It's possible that if too many enemies fight you at once, they can spam attacks and "infinite combo" you to death with no chance of redemption. This happens a lot and it sucks. It's one of the worst things to happen in this game.
More about Trails of Mana?
Well I said a lot about Secret of Mana, but what about it's sequel? Well there is some notable changes which is good and bad. First the good. There is no screen locking, so party members don't have to travel together and won't screen lock if stuck. Running doesn't use stamina and you don't only run in one direction. Also, while not mentioned yet, you can choose different characters to control by pressing a button in both games, but in this one, holding L & R can be used as shortcuts to quickly manipulate characters if you need quick access to them. Last, I don't know how important this feature is, but during combat, you can hold the attack button to activate auto battle where your character will automatically walk to the nearest enemy and attack until is released or defeated.
Now the bad changes. In secret of mana, anytime you're in a place where monsters exist, your weapons are in hand and in battle stance. In Trails of Mana, you have to approach enemies to enter "battle mode" and during this time you can't perform run action. So you move at walking speed as long as your character enters battle mode. You can still run by choice in the other game. Treasures are dropped only when every enemy in the area is defeated instead of by each monster like in the other game. During level ups, you must choose which stat you want to increase, and some level ups will not allow you to choose the previously increased stat.
So far, the same things I said about Secret of Mana glitchy buggy battle is existing here too. Other things I forgot to mention was stuff like magic. Magic can be used and you probably should as often as you can. It attacks enemies from anywhere on screen and never misses. Combined with the way attacks can be stacked or queued, it's fully abused on me when I play and lose to enemies doing that. No joke I spent over a minute with ONE HP being smacked around by a wolf boss duo spamming attacks on me when I was already dead. That's cause even if you should have died, your HP goes to one and you have to recover from being knocked down before the game confirms your death. (In Trails of Mana anyway)
Conclusion
To end this from being too long, these two games have been a frustrating game to play through. As much as I agree the gameplay idea is appealing, the graphics and music is also good highlights, the clunky way combat handles is why I find it... to quote what I wrote as a con in my review "Challenging gameplay that can test your patience". I had wish that this could be fixed, but so far, no. There is no fan rom hack mod patch to fix it, and I don't even know if they did fix it in the Secret of Mana remake that came out last year. If they did, I would like to know, cause I held off on buying it fearing this may be so. My only reason for this was to share and express some struggles I have with RPG games, and hope the Trails of Mana remake does something about these problems. I didn't speak much on other games, but maybe I will next time. I said enough for one blog post and I'm drained writing this for three hours, probably have so many typos. So leave a comment if you have anything to say regarding your thoughts on the battle system with these games. I'll spell check when I get the chance.
If you want my opinion on how a good action RPG plays on Super Nintendo, try Terraingma, I also reviewed that game here on GBATemp. Is not a fair comparison considering it doesn't feature a party system, but it plays like a game with action and RPG elements that is well incorporated. Next time I'll talk about the one game series that spoiled me for RPG games.
