Secret of Mana

 PC
User Score
7.1

Mixed or average reviews- based on 41 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 41
  3. Negative: 8 out of 41

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  1. DreamCore
    Jun 12, 2019
    0
    One of the worst games I've ever played. People saying this game is one of the best games of it's kind have no idea what they're talking about.

    The Bad: 1) Story is laughably bad. 2) Menu system is garbage and unusable 3) Friendly AI is the worst I've ever seen, they just keep dying 4) Only have enough mana for about 4 spells and the MP recovery items cost an insane amount of    One of the worst games I've ever played. People saying this game is one of the best games of it's kind have no idea what they're talking about.

    The Bad:

    1) Story is laughably bad.
    2) Menu system is garbage and unusable
    3) Friendly AI is the worst I've ever seen, they just keep dying
    4) Only have enough mana for about 4 spells and the MP recovery items cost an insane amount of money. Also spells needs to be leveled up. Good luck with that when you can only cast 4 before having to return to an in to rest.
    4) Path fidning is completely broken and both friendly and enemy AI try to run through walls and objects.
    5) Shops have no explanations of what items do and gear doesn't show any stats so you have no idea what you're buying.
    6) Countless of bugs like characters getting stuck in a sliding animation making you unable to attack, playtime when saving getting messed up showing you have played over 2000 hours, not being able to cast spells with the girl selected but it works with Randii selected even though he's not supposed to be able to cast spells.
    7) Weapon leveling system is pure garbage and you miss 90% of your attacks because your weapons wont level up.
    8) Many of the music tuns are annoying 5 second looping songs that makes your ears bleed (even original soundtrack).

    Anyone saying this is good is doing it because of pure nostalgia. With modern standards this is pure garbage. Don't waste your time on this,    … Expand
  2. Derpmeowslurp
    Feb 19, 2018
    0
    There is simply no excuse for releasing this for money. People putting 10's or 9's in the review are nostalgia critics, nothing else. They desperately do not want this game to be bad or to fail, they are ok with this steamy pile of refuse as long as they can pretend people like it.

    The facts: 1. Graphics are so bad it is shameful. I am ashamed. This is unacceptable for any    There is simply no excuse for releasing this for money. People putting 10's or 9's in the review are nostalgia critics, nothing else. They desperately do not want this game to be bad or to fail, they are ok with this steamy pile of refuse as long as they can pretend people like it.

    The facts:
    1. Graphics are so bad it is shameful. I am ashamed. This is unacceptable for any developer to put such god awful meshes and textures in their game. This is amateur hour. It looks like this remake had been shelved for 15 years and they wheeled it out to make some quick cash. This is actually a step back, Secret of Mana had decent art for its time, not the greatest, not the worst, but more than acceptable. This is 15 years out of date, and yet the price does not reflect this.

    2. Engine and animations are bad. Lighting looks like something I would have used in Max R2. No scratch that, it looks worse. The constant memory spikes, slight freeze-ups, cell transitions, cpu usage is much higher than should be expected for this program. all things point to sloppy coding. And the animations, wow. they didn't even try. I would say 'abysmal effort' but I'm not sure how much 'effort' was actually put into this.

    3. Gameplay is eerily similar. And not in a good way. It doesn't seem like they spent any time thinking about this at all. they just carbon copied everything from the snes version and called it good. That includes the bizarre quirks like invincible enemies, free hits for enemies, god awful a.i. (really bad, beyond bad), etc, etc, etc.

    4. Audio. What can be said. It must be experienced in all of its ear shredding glory. Baffling that they chose to "upgrade" that aspect.

    you know what, i'm done here. Such a disappointment. IMO they did not capture the aesthetics of the original, it looks lazy, it feels like they just didn't care. It makes me wonder why this even exists when you can easily find an emulator and play the original. This is a failure for anyone except those who really enjoy the early 2000's video game art aesthetic or phone games.    … Expand
  3. jcolin
    Apr 26, 2018
    3
    Was this really the best they could do? All the glaring defects of the original come back with a vengeance. You'd think they could keep the core experience in tact but update it to get rid of some of the flaws. 2 player mode is almost unplayable with it's super zoomed in screen. You just get constantly hit by enemies off screen, which is so much fun. In 3d it's a tad harder to aim rangeWas this really the best they could do? All the glaring defects of the original come back with a vengeance. You'd think they could keep the core experience in tact but update it to get rid of some of the flaws. 2 player mode is almost unplayable with it's super zoomed in screen. You just get constantly hit by enemies off screen, which is so much fun. In 3d it's a tad harder to aim range weapons too. The graphics are alright, but for some awful reason they didn't animate the mouths of people when they speak. Really, if I had wanted to play this game, I'd play it on an emulator. The new graphics really don't matter to me.… Expand
  4. Sepherim
    Mar 8, 2020
    3
    Secret of Mana es uno de los juegos que más felices me han hecho en mi vida, y probablemente el que más veces me he acabado. Por eso cuando supe que habían hecho un remake me alegré enormemente ante la oportunidad de regresar a este juego... y no debí hacerlo, hay cosas que deben quedarse en el recuerdo. La historia no tiene demasiado sentido, pero en general nunca la tuvo, así que por ahíSecret of Mana es uno de los juegos que más felices me han hecho en mi vida, y probablemente el que más veces me he acabado. Por eso cuando supe que habían hecho un remake me alegré enormemente ante la oportunidad de regresar a este juego... y no debí hacerlo, hay cosas que deben quedarse en el recuerdo. La historia no tiene demasiado sentido, pero en general nunca la tuvo, así que por ahí no hay demasiada crítica. Pero el problema es que quitando eso, el juego se siente viejo y desfasado. Han cambiado algunas cosas menores como algunos bosses, pero las mecánicas centrales del juego no, de modo que se siente pesado, incómodo y poco actual. El que se mantuvieran los anillos de selección tiene sentido por tradición, pero no ayuda a un juego donde además los tiempos van demasiado lentos (hay veces que, como no puedes lanzar magia mientras el personaje está animándose por un ataque, ocurre que entre que termina esa animación y hace toda la animación del hechizo que quieres, el resultado del mismo ya da igual). Esto se une a una inteligencia artificial, especialmente en los compañeros, que es absolutamente nefasta, peor yo creo que la que había en el original, y sino desde luego muy por debajo de lo que sería una IA mínimamente eficiente en estos tiempos (se quedan atras, se pierden, se olvidan de atacar...).

    A esto hay que añadir que la mejora gráfica no es tal. Cierto, ahora es un 3D, pero es un 3D muy pobre, con muy poca calidad en las texturas y unos personajes bajos en polígonos y calidad; y que ni siquiera han actualizado para que cambien de ropa segun las armaduras que les compres. El sonido si ha mejorado, especialmente porque ahora las voces están dobladas y han metido conversaciones de taberna, pero tampoco es que sea una maravilla. Y además, cosas básicas como la posibilidad de modificar la resolución del juego no existen si estamos en pantalla completa. Y que tiene una buena cantidad de bugs que hacen cosas como "pasar por pasajes estrechos" una cuestión de suerte.

    El resultado de todo ello es que, sin duda, si alguien quiere jugar al Secret of Mana, que se baje la versión original y ni se acerque a este remake fallido.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
57

Mixed or average reviews - based on 6 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 6
  2. Mixed: 4 out of 6
  3. Negative: 2 out of 6
  1. CD-Action
    Jun 5, 2018
    40
    The remake not only highlights all flaws of the original, making me wonder why I loved the 1993’s Secret of Mana in the first place, but also introduces some new problems. [05/2018, p.68]
  2. 4P.de
    Feb 23, 2018
    57
    Sorry, but no! The re-imagination of one of the most beloved JRPGs is mediocre in almost every aspect. Bugs, crashes and on top of that the visual renovation is lackluster. If you really wanna play Secret of Mana, you should think about investing in the Nintendo Classic Mini SNES.
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  3. The Overpowered Noobs
    Feb 22, 2018
    60
    Secret of Mana (2018) makes for a nice jog down memory lane, even if there were some long-forgotten design flaws that years of nostalgic memories had blocked out over time. If you remember enjoying the SNES game, Secret of Mana holds onto many of what you liked about it back then. But if you’re looking for a polished, modernized version of the game, then you will be disappointed. For better or worse, not much has changed in Secret of Mana since its initial release in 1994.
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