Most Sundays my brother and I go to a friend's place and I get some SNES gaming in. For the last few weeks, I've been playing Secret of Mana, which I haven't cleared since many years ago. Now I LOVED Secret of Mana, I had always considered it a masterpiece. The graphics are brilliantly colored and vibrant, the soundtrack is beyond compare and the fact that you control the action in real-time was always something that set it apart from the menu-based battles of other RPGs.
Having said that, holy shit does the game have some flaws that make it really difficult to play today!
- Those ring-based menus are AWFUL. Press Y for your character's menu, X for your teammate's menu, X again for your other teammate's menu, and Y twice to back out of your teammates' menus. While the menu is open, press up or down to switch between weapons, armor, items, magic, and options (and it always seems like I'm pressing the maximum number of buttons to get to the menu I want). So let's say I'm playing the main character and the girl's weapon level goes up. I want to see what weapon to equip her with next, so I press X, find the options ring, select "Weapon/Magic Level", and select each weapon to see if there is one where her level of mastery is less than the number of orbs. Then I have to make sure another character isn't using the weapon I want her to have. If someone is, I have to check to see if they have mastered that weapon yet themselves. It's a cumbersome, awkward process that never gets comfortable.
- Shops don't tell you whether the equipment they sell is stronger or weaker than what you've already got equipped. I guess that wasn't the standard yet but man does it seem archaic to go without it now.
- The only way to power up your weapons and magic is by excessive grinding. This is especially a pain for magic, where you have to spam spells repeatedly until you're out of MP, go back to town to rest at an inn then repeat again and again.
- Powering up your weapons allows you to charge your strikes multiple levels. However, charging is a lengthy process that limits your mobility and rarely seems worth it because...
- You miss repeatedly and never really know why. Was it because the enemy dodged your attack? Was it because you didn't line yourself up with the enemy sprite properly? Was it because the enemy was still temporarily invulnerable after the last time he was struck? In an action game based on your timing and placement, you need clear visual feedback of what's going on and that's often not there.
- Your teammates suck and usually just get in the way. Even if you set their behavior to stay away from enemies and play defensively, they often mess up your attacks by striking an enemy first, and they can easily get stuck on environmental hazards.
- The overworld is confusing as fuck. I've spent hours in the same few areas and still regularly get lost. I can never remember, for instance, how to get back to the blacksmith. It seems like every area has multiple entrances and exits that lead to other areas, making the layout a tangled knot of frustration. Maybe it's just me, but this drives me crazy.
- You can lose a lot of progress by dying, since in many cases you can only save at a town and may have to do an entire dungeon and its boss in one go. I died several times at the Wall Face boss, for instance, but on my way to him I fought several Tomato Men who are most efficiently killed with the Sprite's magic. This left me with no MP, unable to use magic against the boss. Simple solution: Stock up on Faerie Walnuts (which restore MP), right? Except the nearby town doesn't stock them. Nor does the other town. Or the dwarf town. Nope, I had to find Neko's shop, which due to my previous point was time-consuming and maddening. Ironically, by the time I got back to the boss I had run past the Tomato Men and didn't even end up needing to use a Faerie Walnut after all.
In my youth I was a lot more forgiving of all that stuff. Heck, a lot of my complaints are based on modern game conventions that simply didn't exist at the time, so it's a little unfair to judge SOM by today's standards. Plus, I'm usually a few beers in by the time I play it, which may very well add to the difficulty. SOM does do some things very well, and I have every intention of continuing to play it bit by bit every week. In a way, having to put up with its flaws makes it all the more satisfying when I do make progress and, as previously mentioned, the graphics and sound are still an absolute joy. It's just interesting to see how some games feel a lot different than they used to, you know?