This game is the pinnacle of RPG games on the SNES, it's what got me personally into the whole RPG genre, you take control of a hero who, whilst playing with friends on a bridge, slips and falls into the water below.. with no way out due to dense foliage the hero stumbles upon in a stone which he proceeds to pull out, after hacking his way back to town and encountering several beasts he finds out that the sword he pulled out was none other than the Mana Sword, weakened by something wrong with the flow of mana, the sword served as a protective barrier and now that it had been pulled out monsters have begun to attack everyone..
You are banished from your village and from there you set off on an epic journey to restore power to the man sword and peace to the world once again.
In the game you eventually come across 2 partners who will join you on your quest, a princess looking for her lost boyfriend, and a sprite child searching for his identity and his home, each character has different skills, the girl casts defensive magic, the sprite casts offensive magic and the main hero has no magic abiblites but the mana sword itself has the ability to be stronger than any magic once restored.
You and your party walk across the land, fighting monsters and searching through castles, looking for the 8 temples of mana to restore the sword, but it isn't that easy, odd things are happening all over the lands, the Empire has plans for the sword and mana to re-awake the mana fortress, a large weapon from fairy tales that can destroy the world, our heroes must harness the power of mana to stop them.
unlike most SNES rpgs (crono trigger) SOM doesn't use a battle screen, instead the characters have complete freedom of movement and can laucnh attacks from all sides of enemies which i find better, fighitng in real time makes for a good change compared to the FF style of turned based fighting.
SOM has 8 weapons (sword, axe, spear, glove, bow, bommerang, pole dart, whip) which can be used amongst all the characters instead of haivng a set weapon, also the more a character uses a weapon, the more skillful they become with it and can even pull off large and powerful attacks at every level reached, the same goes for magic, the more used the more powerful they become.
The style of graphics is thebest aspect of the game, nowdays it's all 3D 3D 3D!!! but these simple. colourful, 2D, anime-styled graphics are great and i wish that more games were made in this style (Golden Sun is a good exmaple of a new game with these graphics), 3D doesn't relly mean it's good which is what game developers need to understand
overall after reading this review you must know that Secret of Mana is my all time favourite game ever on any platform, i recommend this game to RPG lovers, and new time players, it's a simple game that requires not much time to master the controls of swtiching between characters and casting spells and with the right hardware this game is also a multiplayer game capable of supporting 3 people (1 per character), minor glitches with AI pathfinding but the game WAS made 10 years ago (1993), a very well put-together game that will last many more years....
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