Secret of Mana

aka: Seiken Densetsu 2
Moby ID: 6645
SNES Specs
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Description official descriptions

Long ago, people lived in harmony with the natural world and used the power of Mana to help their nations grow. But when evil forces took control of the Mana Fortress, seeking to use it to conquer the world, a terrible war began which destroyed much of civilization but brought peace to the world once more. Over the long years, the events of the past became but legends to the new generations of humans. But history repeats itself...

One day while exploring a forbidden valley near his village, a young boy finds a rusty sword stuck in a stone. He does not realize that this is the Mana sword of legend, used in the great war of the past. By drawing the sword, the boy unwittingly summons hordes of monsters, and is expelled from his village for breaking the ancient taboo. A mysterious knight Jema who is passing through the area recognizes the sword and gives him instructions for the future. First, he must repair the sword, and then, with its help, take control of the Mana seeds which can be found hidden around the world to prevent them from falling into evil hands.

Secret of Mana is an action RPG, featuring real-time hack-and-slash style combat, in which up to two computer-controlled companions can accompany you. The protagonist has a stamina gauge: the more stamina he has, the more powerful his strike is. The player also has access to a growing arsenal of spells with various effects. It is possible to upgrade weapons, armor, and magic to higher levels.

Spellings

  • č–å‰£ä¼čŖ¬ļ¼’ - Japanese spelling

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Credits (SNES version)

63 People · View all

Executive Producers
Producer, Concept / System Design, Scenario Message Data
Director, Chief Game Design, Animation / Monster Design
Battle System Design, Monster Logistics
Map System Design / Data
Map Data
Lead Programming
Monster Control Programming
Boss Monster Programming
Message Programming
"Ring" Menu Programming
Calculation Programming
Sound Programming
Demo Programming
Chief Map Graphic Design
Map Graphic Design
World Map Graphic Design
Map Design
Player Character Design
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 50 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 170 ratings with 6 reviews)

Edible at best.

The Good
Very beautiful looking.

Real-time combat is preferable over the regular turn-based systems.

Action is fast, but also has some depth to it.

Having companions is kind of nice.

The Bad
Mana sword is replaced fast.

Hits often don't register.

Multiple enemies can fuck your shit up.

Chests more often than not contain traps.

FREAKING EVERYTHING does poison damage.

The Bottom Line
Story

I have yet to play Secret of Mana completely and this is more of a first-impressions review than an actual final product, but so far I am not very impressed with the game. After we type in a name for our characters we get to see a little cut-scene showing off some of the areas we get to see in the future. Through text-boxes throughout this scene we are told that the gods gave people magic, but people abused it and made weapons out of it. The gods got angry with the Humans and created monsters to battle it out against the weapons the people created, eventually resulting in the human fortress been destroyed by a hero with a so-called ā€œMana Swordā€. Both then disappearedā€¦ until the player takes over control. As gameplay starts we find ourselves in a forest where we run into the legendary Mana Sword by pure coincidence, upon pulling it (as instructed) though, the town is besieged my monsters that the sword protected it against.

The hero, in my case ā€œSamā€, is then banished from the village because he pulled the sword. This starts an epic journey againstā€¦ I have no idea. People keep telling me that I should fight the monsters and save humanity, but if the monsters are attacking me, then arenā€™t I provoking the gods? Where is the character on the morality scale? The story doesnā€™t have much impact, especially when the legendary mana-sword gets outdated REALLY fast. You use it to kill a few rabbits, but at the very first area you are told to visit you receive a spear that does more damage and has longer range. ā€œAnd thus the mana-sword disappeared forever into the dark depths of Samā€™s backpack. Until the day Pixelspeech figures out how to sell itemsā€, doesnā€™t sound too epic to me. Itā€™s just incredibly silly and considering the rather serious tone of the game, it feels very out-of-place. There is a lot of dialogue too, which is odd for a SNES game, but I didnā€™t mind that too much. It only got annoying then they started throwing options at me, what is the point? The game is very linear, so giving me dialogue options is just for show-off.

Gameplay

ā€œBut hey, Super Nintendo games are all about the gameplay right? Just look at Super Metroid and Mario World, those have very little story and are still awesome, right?ā€ Yes, that much is certainly true, but Iā€™m not too fond of the gameplay either. Secret of Mana is a very combat-heavy game, which I personally enjoy since it balances well with the loads of text we have to read in calmer sections of the game. However, the combat is sticky at best and insanely frustrating at worst. You canā€™t just spam attacks all the time, there is a small bar at the bottom of the screen that depletes every time you hit something and then regenerates. If you land a hit when the bar is full, then you will do regular damage or critical hits, but any sooner and you do minimal damage. Itā€™s a clever system, but every single hit stuns an enemy (or you for that matter), giving you exactly the right amount of time to wait for the bar. This takes all the pacing out of the fight, but it only gets frustrating when you try to strike an enemy afterwards and the terrible hit-detection doesnā€™t register your hit. Here is a pro-tip: NEVER rush your attack, wait for an enemy to stand up and then hit him. If they are still doing their animation to stand up, then they are immune to all attacks for like two seconds.

To make matters worse: The combat is also incredibly difficult. Every single hit sends you flying, just like the enemies do. If there is more than one enemy fighting you though, then they just gang up on you and leave you with no chance to ever get up. Getting hit just once when there are two enemies or more is pretty much an instant-kill. The game is also big on traps and poison-damage, which became clear to me when I realized I had seen seven different types of enemies so far and five of them did poison damage to me. The first boss you run into also has a magic attack that you canā€™t dodge, which is already unfair when you use it for a final boss and in the first dungeon of the game you run into bats that can stun you any time they want, which is also impossible to dodge. The aforementioned traps are also ridiculous, you see, there is a random chance enemies drop chests for you to loot after killing them. Now, I complained in my review of Resident Evil 4 that there we like five boxes that throughout the entire game that contained snakes, but this is far worse. Every single chest that drops has like a 50% chance to have a trap, which can do poison damage too! I am not even exaggerating, throughout the six hours of play I have undergone so far, I have looted 6 chests with actual items inside and 9 that had traps!

Presentation

I have done a lot of complaining so far, so letā€™s focus on something more enjoyable for a while. The presentation in this game is nothing short of stunning. After the cut-scene at the start of the game we see a quick shot of the camera flying over the world map, which is quite amazing for games this old. You also get to see a similar shot every time you use one of the cannon-travelling systems, you got to love public transport sometimes. The game is also consistently very colorful and even the dark caves I ran into were at least somewhat interesting. That is mostly thanks to the cutesy design on the enemies, which I suppose is somewhat strange to see in a game that pushes the dramatic story so much, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Enemies too are very colorful and some very simple choices made even the basic enemies enjoyable. I have lost count of how many times I fought black bats, but the designers behind this game made them purpleā€¦ Thatā€™s already a bit more colorful and the color doesnā€™t deviate too much, so itā€™s still recognizably a bat and a hostile one at that.

Animation-wise the game is also quite pleasing to look at, which is due to the many different poses the enemies and characters have. Aside from just walking, the player character can also run, attack with different weapons, be knocked down, stand up again and interact with several items. For a normal person it seems like no big deal, but I personally found it a very sweet novelty. The only real problem I have is that opening chests looks very stiff, the character literally lifts it up and smashes it into the ground a few times before throwing it away. This would seem fitting for characters like Conan or Joe & Mac, but not for characters that are clearly civilized and reasonably intelligent.

Replay-value and extras

I see very little reason to replay this game after I am done with it. Unless the game takes a sudden turn for the amazing, itā€™s just a little too tedious. The combat starts to wear on you very fast and to play it for the dialogue alone is a bit silly. There are plenty of places where I find games with good presentation and since the presentation here is not by any means stellar, I might as well replay No More Heroes or DinoCity.

Since this is an RPG though, there is always the challenge of training your guys to the maximum level and collecting all the best weapons. This can soak up a lot of time, so I suppose people who like the game enough donā€™t have to restart anytime soon. Thatā€™s a pretty measly reason to keep playing though and since I am not aware of any kind of collection-quest or other 100% challenge, the extras part of this review doesnā€™t really count for much.

Verdict

Secret of Mana is one of those titles that only really grew a fan-base several years after it was released, making it a pretty big cult-classic after a while. It also comes at a pretty high price, 40 frigginā€™ euros for the cartridge alone. I had to pay an additional 25 euros for the manual and box! Was it worth it? Wellā€¦ I am kind of a collector, so any rare game is a worthy purchase for me, but for the regular person who just likes his retro-games, Iā€™d say an emulator is a better choice. The game can be entertaining and it certainly looks very promising as you play the first hour or so, but after that it really dies down and a sticky combat-system and confusing plot really get to you. I canā€™t even force me to say itā€™s worth playing for the visuals either, though it comes very close to reaching that.

Die-hard fans of JRPG-games likely disagree with me on plenty of fields, so if you count yourself among them, then donā€™t mind my rambling and go try it out, itā€™s quite unique. More western-loving gamers are likely to be turned off, but the real-time combat can win some open-minded people over.

SNES · by Asinine (957) · 2012

A real gem from Squaresoft, it's a shame it has so many technical glitchies

The Good
There is a lot of thing to say here. The game really has nice flavours in it, it is in it's whole a consistent real piece of art. It's graphics very repetitive, but very detailed too. However, the animation of the characters and monsters are really well done for a SNES game, and all the work of art they made about the monsters and so on is really good.

The soundtrack is really great, if not the greatest of the SNES platform. It's both so beautiful that it make me cry and so descriptive. I like myself hear the soundtrack of videogames (without playing to the game), and I can't hear this music without remembering all the landscapes and flavours of the game. It's really one of the most perfect soundtrack out there. There is not a single song that isn't great. Yeah, the boss music is a confusing a lot, but back in the action, it's really a great work of art. Oh, yes, the song you'll hear on the menu while loading a game/beginning a new game is stupid, but it's the only one and you won't hear it for a long time anyway.

The sound effect are, some of the best I ever heard on the SNES. Secret of Mana have digital sound effects, they're not recorded, but they're made with an extremely high precision. All samples in the game are recorded with a high quality, and all weapons, all attacks, have different sounds, and there is a LOT of them !! I liked a lot the fact that all enemies dies with a different animation and different sound effects, you can even hear the noise of the bones of your enemy fell on the ground! I learned that the guy that made those sound effects is the same guy that made most of the music into Chrono Trigger (Yasunori Mitsuda), and that IS something. Well, he did really excellent job twice.

I liked pretty much the game play system. You basically have 8 different weapon types, and 8 different magic types. You start with nothing, and get all of them during your adventure. That's really good. You have a "level", that start with 1 and grow up to 8 to each weapon and magic type, and each time you use it you'll become stronger at it. For the weapons, you also have to collect spheres in order to "reforge" them, to make yourself stronger.

In battle, you have the attack button that uses you weapon, and you can do different attack and combos a bit like in a beat 'em up. Once you did an attack, you'll have to wait some amount of time before to be able to do another efficient attack. You can still attack, but you'll do very little damage.

The Bad
The only thing I did not like was the glitches, but unfortunately there is a lot of them. The AI is terrible, your allies will get stuck and it will block the main character. In battle they often behave in a suicidal way.

You have 8 weapon types, which is great, but only 4 of them are really useful on the field.

The problem with magic, is that you have to open the famous "ring menu" to cast a spell, which is normally fine but causes problem for boss battles: When a boss have a particular elemental weakness, the battle is -> Open the "ring menu", select the boss' weakness, target if, watch the damage, open the menu, select the spell again, etc... Of course, you'll also have to cure and recover MP, but I'd like to have bosses with more action (like in a Megaman game).

The other BIG problem is the glitches. When you attack a monsters, there is a delay before it actually take its damage. If all your 3 characters attack the same monsters at the same time, it is supposed, to take 3 times damages, but not all of them at the same time, so when the first animation due to the first damage has ended, the second will begins and so on. Actually everything seems to be buffered in this game. This is good for when you heal yourself, so even if you select a healing item, you'll fist take all your "pending" damage before the actual healing, so it adds challenge. This works fairly bad in practice, when all monsters attack you at the same time, your character do only take damage and you can't open the "ring menu" to heal yourself when taking damage, so you'll sometimes get hurt, get hurt, get hurt, and die without be able to do anything. The game's buffering systems seems to get weird sometimes, so it'll happen that you use an healing item and you'll never be healed but the item will still be wasted, or you'll cast a magic, and the spell will never happen but your MP have still decreased. This also happen to enemies, so you will also be able to take advantage of this, but still, this is mid-decent for a such action-RPG, and such thing happen fairly often. Also, the SNES have it's 32 sprites per line limit, that is just similar to the much more know that the NES' 8 sprites per line limit, and Secret of Mana often have sprites that flickers, disappears, and such glitches.

Also, the font was hard to read, and the language was really poorly translated. I played the French version, and that's a good thing that it was one of the few great Square RPG that came out translated in Europe with various language (it's prequel, Final Fantasy Adventure was already released in Europe in French and German, and was even more poorly translated). I simply don't understand a word about the story. It sure is something with a giant tree, called Mana tree, but I really understood nothing else. I believe I saved the world, but I'm not sure. By the way, the ending was plain and boring, the music was good with cool effect on the bass guitar, but nothing else was interesting once the final boss is defeated. I'm sure that the game was greatly designed and had a great story, but I didn't get it exactly.

Also I didn't like the pink bandanna the "hero" of the game have on his head. Really. The game sometimes gets too much childish, but still, they exaggerated.

The Bottom Line
Secret of Mana is the second title in the "__ of Mana" series, know in japan under the title of "Seiken Densetsu". The first one was one of the best RPG for the original GameBoy, but scince only few was released for this platform as far I know, and it had a very small popularity, even if it was the first squaresoft game released in Europe apart of Rad Racer, that was a racing game made before that Square were making RPGs. So Secret of Mana was one of the first very popular work of Squaresoft and is a game that build all their success on the SNES platform, especially because they decided to export it, it was poorly translated but exported. This is a great game, for sure, but it's a shame there is so many glitches, it really turns down this particularly awesome game. It is still a great game overall and it has the best music and best sound effects of the SNES.

SNES · by Bregalad (937) · 2015

Best action -RPG Squaresoft game of this generation hands down.

The Good
- Amazing and very powerful soundtrack - Engaging combat system - Multiplayer co-op ( Multitap 3 player support )

The Bad
- None that I can think of but I might be biased.

The Bottom Line
If you haven't played this game but enjoy such classics as Chrono trigger or Terrinigma then you must try this game.

SNES · by Hobb-San · 2023

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
So what else has changed? CrankyStorming (2927) Nov 6, 2011

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The SNES version of Secret of Mana appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Development

One of the first games announced for the then-announced CD-ROM addon for the SNES. Nintendo eventually gave up trying to get the peripheral off the ground after the deal with Phillips to make the drive fell flat. Square eventually released a tooled-down version, which pushed the SNES hardware constantly (hence the slowdown and lack of multiple enemies onscreen), and overall left Square bitter for having to go through the process of downgrading its game. This probably was one of the reasons Square decided to bail on Nintendo (and its then-upcoming N64 console) and take its multimillion seller, Final Fantasy VII, with it (which was first announced for the N64).

Ironically, Square signed the deal to bring the game to the PlayStation with Sony, which was the original partner for the SNES CD drive, but was publicly stabbed in the back by Nintendo with the Phillips deal. The CD drive technology that Sony had been working on for the SNES, was then used to create the PlayStation itself.

Enemies

Due to technical limitations, only three enemies can ever be on the screen at one time. Sneaky players can use this to their advantage and keep 'easy' enemies alive to block the spawning of more powerful ones. The merchant cat Neko, is also affected by this and may not always appear during busy combat.

Killroy

In the original Japanese version, Killroy has a chainsaw when fighting him the second time. In all Western versions, he is just a re-coloured version of the first encounter.

Multiplayer

Secret of Mana is quite possibly the first RPG game to support 3 Players. It is certainly the only one on SNES that does (along with it's sequel, which was never officially translated). A multitap is required for the third player.

Slime

The Slime bosses are the trickiest enemies in the game, not because they're difficult, but because they're so buggy. When fighting one of these bosses it's possible to slow the framerate to a crawl, freeze the game or in extreme cases, wipe the contents from your saved battery backup.

Awards

  • Electronic Gaming Monthly
    • December 1993 (Issue 53) - Game of the Month* FLUX Magazine
    • Issue #4 - #40 in the "Top 100 Video Games of All-Time" list
  • Game Informer
    • August 2001 (Issue #100) - #77 in the "Top 100 Games of All Time" poll
  • GamePro
    • Vol. 6, Issue 2 - Role-Playing Game of the Year 1993
  • Retro Gamer
    • September 2004 (Issue #8) ā€“ #74 Best Game Of All Time (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by Big John WV, CaptainCanuck, PCGamer77 and WildKart

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Unicorn Lynx.

Wii U added by Michael Cassidy. iPad added by Rik Hideto. Android, iPhone added by Sciere. DoJa, BREW added by Kabushi. Wii added by gamewarrior.

Additional contributors: Satoshi Kunsai, Apogee IV, MaiZure, Alaka, Patrick Bregger, Thomas Thompson, CrankyStorming, FatherJack.

Game added June 7, 2002. Last modified February 10, 2024.