Children of mana will charm the kid inside you
At first everyone will love the cute caracters. The game let you choose from four caracter (each hold different attribute to follow the kind of play you use). alot of the old mana theme is used in this game... the spirits are here and most of the enemy creatures uses all the classics from previous mana game.
Children of mana (CoM) is a dungeon crawling game witch sometimes gets a little repetitive. After each dungeon you are brought back to the village, where you can change your fellow spirit or buy sell items and even do alot of side quest.
The multipayer is awsome in CoM. each player can bring their own pre-made caracter (witch can be use both online and offline). the first player that will log in will invite other friends and so they will be following the quest of the first player... So using this feature means that if you are stuck you can invite a high level friend to help you. Or you can be invited in a high level dungeon so you can level up quickly.
graphic- comparable to the Super Nintendo alot of bright colors and a charming environment.
Sound-Pretty repetitive but most theme song will get in your head
gameplay- comparable to the gameplay in sword of mana and in secret of mana... for people who never played any Mana games, it is comparable to zelda on the Snes.
-Conclusion-
Ithink Com is a great buy for any mana fan and definatly a rent for whom who never played any Mana games. The only con is that the dungeon crawling can repetitive, except that if you can go thru with it you can expect a great finaly( the last 4hours or so reveals alot about all the World of Mana
For referenses:
A list of every mana game (Seiken Densetsu in japan)
Main serie:
Final Fantasy Adventure (in Jp released as Seiken Densetsu)
Secret of Mana (in Jp released as Seiken Densetsu 2)
Seiken Densetsu 3 (Never released in North-America)
Dawn of Mana (in Jp released as Seiken Densetsu 4)
Remake:
Sword of Mana* (in jp released as Shinyaku Seiken Densetsu)
Other:
Legend of Mana (in jp released as Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana)
Children of Mana (in jp released as Seiken Densetsu: Children of Mana)
Heroes of Mana (in jp released as Seiken Densetsu: Heroes of Mana)
*Sword of mana is a remake of final fantasy adventure (Seiken Densetsu)