Heroes of Mana Hands-On

Square Enix and developer Brownie Brown have faithfully re-created real-time strategy on the Nintendo DS with Heroes of Mana, an early version of which we've been putting through its paces recently. The game is set in the same whimsical universe as the classic action role-playing Mana games stretching all the way back to the Super Nintendo, though Dawn of Mana on the PlayStation 2 and the DS's own Children of Mana are more recent examples of this popular fantasy franchise. Heroes of Mana is the series' first real foray into strategy, though, and so far we've been impressed that Brownie Brown not only has preserved the genre's basic tenets on the diminutive DS, but has packed a good amount of depth in here, as well.

As we've mentioned before, you'll play as a ragtag group of fighters (including the rapscallion Roget) who are sent on a secret mission by the kingdom of Pedda to infiltrate the beastmen's neighboring kingdom of Ferolia. While there, however, Roget's band learns that Pedda has begun to ruthlessly conquer the Ferolians, causing them to question their allegiances and ultimately join up with the oppressed beastpeople to fight off their attackers. The gameplay follows a formula RTS aficionados will be intimately familiar with. You start out with a sparse home base, gather resources to construct new structures, and then start pumping out units so you can fight your enemies. There are two types of resources, stones and berries, and you'll use stones to build your structures and berries to produce troops. Mission objectives vary, but they all tend toward typical RTS objectives such as "kill all the enemies" or "move important guy to point X on the map."

Thanks to the dual screens and touch-based interface, Heroes' gameplay has worked smoothly for us so far. Commanding a unit is as simple as tapping it to select it, then tapping its target to perform the appropriate, context-sensitive action. Tap the ground and the unit will walk; tap an enemy and it will attack. To select multiple units, you can hit an icon that will pause the action and allow you to draw a loop around all the characters you want to select, then the game will resume automatically. You can rotate the camera 90 degrees with the shoulder buttons and move it around with the D pad, although both actions can be accomplished easily with the touch controls as well.

In fact, the developer has done a good job of using both screens and the stylus to make it easier for you to issue commands and absorb information. You'll be able to swap the images on the top and bottom screens at almost any time, so even though only one of the DS's screens is touch-capable, you can essentially control everything by touch simply by bringing the top screen's contents down to the bottom. For instance, rather than using the D pad to manually move the camera across the map, you can simply bring the map display (which defaults to the top screen) down to the bottom screen and then tap the point on the map you want to move to. This works within missions, while you're browsing through topics in the game's extensive knowledge base on gameplay concepts and story points, and on the characters' equipment screens.

Speaking of equipment, you'll be able to outfit your characters in full RPG-style regalia. Each map will be littered with special gear that you'll automatically pick up if one of your characters wanders over the right spot. Furthermore, you'll be ranked at the end of each mission based on your speed, casualties, and so on, and your ranking will determine the quality of bonus equipment you receive. The gear confers typical RPG upgrades, such as extra hit points or bonuses to speed, range, or attack power. Some gear actually carries a mixture of pros and cons, such as one that might give you extra speed but subtract 40 hit points at the same time. If nothing else, this should provide an impetus to play each mission as well as you can, so you get the best items possible as a reward.

Presumably due to hardware constraints, the battles in Heroes of Mana aren't of the same scale you'd see in a strategy game like, say, Starcraft. There aren't scores of troops running around at the same time; at least in the early missions, you'll typically be controlling only a handful of offensive units, along with two or three resource gatherers. But even if the battles are smaller, Brownie Brown hasn't skimped on the typical checks-and-balances sort of strategic depth you'd find in "larger" RTS games. There are four basic classes of units--ground, air, ranged, and heavy--and the game's tutorial mission will give you a nice flow chart that shows which classes are stronger or weaker against certain other classes.

On top of that, you'll have some special units and leader units--similar to hero units in some other RTSs--that are exempt from these specific rules. The leaders in particular are the same story characters you'll see jawing about the plotline's political strife in the cutscenes between missions. Just like your basic units, your leaders have varying abilities (some are melee fighters, while others attack from range, for instance), so you'll want to tailor your gear distribution to their basic properties. Leaders also have area-of-effect skills that will come into play at various times in battles.

Heroes of Mana is due to hit the DS in the middle of August. We like what we've seen in the first couple of hours of the game; stay tuned for a review around the time of release to find out if the strategy gameplay on offer here can hold up throughout the entire storyline.