Well, if you've ever felt an overwhelming amount of disappointment, you've probably played Children of Mana...
First off, the gameplay is boring. Movement is locked and grid-like and you'll find yourself hacking, slashing, and throwing objects clumsily at your enemies while spells act as faulty grenades and pickups. The spells of which, you can only chose one of. Not only that, but every character plays somewhat the same, given there a few ups and downs in stats. The entire game fells more like a dungeon delving arcade game, seeing as you must select a destination in the world map screen. Multiplayer is just about as shallow with everyone running around the map like robots.
Children of Mana's cutscenes feature somewhat nifty anime animations, Using both screens. Although, I think that hardly makes up for anything really. The storyline features the 4 heroes, Ferrik, Poppen, Wanderer, and Tamber. Each having different traits. After character selection, you may choose one of 4 different color pallets for the character. Aaaaaand thats about it for the features of noteworthiness.
The story features the Sword of Mana going renegade against the Mana Tree. Already this sounds strange, unusual, and probably loaded with awesome...I was wrong. For the most part, things are a bit predictable. Normal day in village, then bad omen, then bad thing happen and someone gets kidnapped, then hero goes to save the day and acquires unusual power and blah blah blah.
In the end, I was disappointed. The faulty gameplay just kills the game overall. If the gameplay was good, however, the latter cruddy features could've been brushed off. I'd say this game is not worth buying, however, if you're a fan, I'd say rent it, but that would probably be going a bit far in itself.