Not what I expected of a Mana game, but good in its own way.
User Rating: 8 | Seiken Densetsu DS: Children of Mana DS
This game is no way a classic but if you can pick it up for cheap it is worth the purchase, if you like dungeon crawlers. It was not as good as it could have been because it didnt follow the original formula that Secret of Mana had, but it is still a fun game. You can pick between 4 characters each one a bit different than the others in look and strength in both magic and physical. When you complete a dungeon you fight a boss that requires a certain strategy to beat and you are given a rank at the end of each main dungeon and you pick an item, depending on how good you did is how good the item is. The magic system lets you pick between a bunch of different spirits, you can carry one at a time and each one has two different powers. I thought the magic system was lacking and playing through the game I found it much easier to hack and slash my way through bad guys then letting the spirit loose to kill them. There is 4 different weapons you get: a sword, flail, bow and hammer. You can hold two different weapons at once and use the X and A button to use them, it is easy to switch between them and you can do it in the middle of combat if you like. The main reason I like the game is the gems, gems do a variety of things: they increase attributes, level up your spirits, provide protection from poison, paralysis, etc, increase your experience gained, power up your weapons, and more. You find gems and can buy them, you can also fuse your gems to make more powerful ones. I found the gems that power up your weaponry the best, lets take the bow when you get it it shoots one arrow that hits one person, with a certain gem your bow now shoots 3 arrows at once in a shotgun manner and each arrow pierces enemies so you can hit a ton in one shot. The enemies are stupid they will walk on spikes to get to you and seem not to notice they are hurting themselves so for the most part the game is quite easy, the only time you may die is when you walk into the middle of like 6 enemies spawning. There is one thing I hate sometimes about the game is the bouncing, you hit one bad guy who goes flying into another and pretty soon they are all flying around and all taking damage, well I thought it was nice at first until they start doing it to you and you may find yourself being smacked around for a while, it gets a bit ridiculous sometimes and can be annoying. Overall the game is fun if you like dungeon crawlers it has lots of side quests the story is good but nothing special, it is very linear there is the one town and the rest is dungeons that all you do is click on to go into.
