Children of Mana

Children of Mana Box Art Click for larger view

  • Release Date: Oct. 31, 2006
  • Price: $30.00
  • Publisher: Nintendo
  • Developer: Square Enix
  • Platform(s): DS
  • Genre: RPG
  • ESRB Rating: Everyone 10 and Older
  • Language
    Mild Fantasy Violence
    Violence
  • www.esrb.org

Summary

Game Description

Children of Mana for the NIntendo DS is an action/adventure role-playing game. Players start in a "hub" town in Illusia and travel to different locations (dungeons) throughout the world. Each dungeon contains an assortment of monsters. At the end of the dungeon is a corrupted spirit "boss" they must defeat to free the pure spirit within. All battles are real-time: Players use button combos to attack with different weapons, including flails, bows, swords and mallets. Players can summon elemental spirits to attack enemies as well, or they can use the power of the spirits to enhance their weapons' attack powers.

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Average User Score

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Most Popular User Reviews

Children of Mana - DS

Not The Best, Not The Worst

Surely, this game will please fans of RPGs with it's classic "save the girl from the bad guy" storyline. This RPG will not change the genre, or bring in any new RPG fans. It's just a game to play if you're bored at the office. Sure, the whole dungeon crawling thing is nice, but every time you get to the next level in a dungeon you realize the whole damn thing is repetitive. The graphics are solid, but that doesn't mean this game is great. Basically after you beat the story, you try to find something that doesn't die easily to level you up so you can wield the strongest weapons. After you beat the story, basically you are stronger than everything so it takes a while to actually level up, and you'll be bored before you even level. Picking from one of the dainty childish anime looking characters is boring, because there is barely anything in the way of character customization. You give your character new weapons and clothes, but they always look the same. The gem system is intuitive, but it doesn't make this game worth much more than a standard RPG. Magic becomes useless later in the game, because using the gems that level them up take far too much space in your gem case to have any that boost attack power. As I said, this game is bascially your standard RPG. Not the best, not the worst. Like Jim Carrey in A Series Of Unfortunate Events.

Children of Mana - DS

Children of Mana

I think that Children of Mana was a great game in retrospect. I played it for 2 days streight, and evin after I beat it it would say you might have missed something, dont leave a stone unturned. After a while it got old and I got rid of the game. I must admit. If I never had played Sword of Mana. I probably would have loved this game. But unlike Sword. This game seems to get you to the points where everything looks the same after a while. Sword of Mana was awesome. What happend here. It starts off promsing and then turns to blah. After I beat the game I figured I'd play through another story line with another charactor like in Sword of Mana. Boy was I wrong. The same storyline with each one. What a rip off. Especialy when I think of how great the old games were. The best parts of this game were the bosses. Well at least they looked like bosses. But they were so easy to defeat. I guess the name implies it. Its so easy my nephiew could breese through it in a day. But I wont lie. I loved the game untill I beat it. Witch is about what happens with me for every game I play.

Children of Mana - DS

Love Repitition?

One of the great things about video games is that it continually trys fresh ideas, and trys to reinvite an genre, or at least take an old one and make it seem new. Children of Mana is far from that.Sure you could be swayed by its pretty graphics, but once you get many hours into it, two or more hours, you realise what this entire game is about. The concept of this game is to go into a dungeon, get the "key", and go to the "door" with the "key", and open it. You actually don't use a key, but a gleam drop, but it is interchangeable. There aren't any puzzels, just find that key, which is either in a box or dropped by an enemy, and open the well to get transported to the next room. Once you get to the next room you either have to do that same process all over agian, or do an old school boss battle where you have to figure out his weak spot and exploit it, which isn't challenging at all. The bulk of the game is you running through the dungeon and hacking away at hordes of enemies. The game is as simple as that. You are literally put into a randomly generated dungeon, and you have a mass of enemies that spawn through the ground, and you just hit one button until that mass is dead, you walk a few more steps, and more enemies spawn. This is what you get to do, and you do it a lot because you have to do the dungeon once, and end up revisting that place two to three times, with an increasing length of that dungeon by two to five floors. This is a recipe to put any gamer that likes some sort of variety in their games to sleep. Sure you can use magic, but it isn't very effective. When you cast a magic spell, it goes up into the air for a few seconds, letting the foes you wanted to use it on to walk away from it, then it is finally released on the room which will cause minimal to no damage because the magic is weak, and also the strange patterns the ice, fire, earth, ect. magic takes forms of, such as X's, or a swirl that misses all enemies. You can use a secondary function of the magics, but they have such a low duration and have little impact on battle that you will never use it. You get varity in your weapons, you get a sword, a flail, a bow, and a hammer, but in the end you will end up using the sword because it is the least clumsy out of the four. The best part of this game is the gem system. You can collect gems which imbue you character with certiam attributes. You fit these gems into a gem frame which gets expanded for more gems, or for even bigger gems. These gems can give you better strength, defence, magic power, more experience per kill, but those are the least interesting ones. You can craft gems that can give your sword a sonic shock wave, and make your sword swings more powerful, or a gem that makes you swing your flail even more. The gems are the only redeeming part of the game, and you can try to fuse gems together to make new gems and try them out in battle. But that cannot save this game from the repetitive battles.

Children of Mana - DS

Children of Mana

If you've played any mana game, you can expect similar content in this game. However, where this game truly shines is in it's multiplayer. But, let's start with how the game plays. It's for the most part a dungeon crawler. In each dungeon, you make your way through various floors. On each floor, there is a gleamdrop, and a gleamwell. You must find the gleamdrop on each floor, pick it up, bring it to the gleamwell, and voila! You're on the next floor. And don't worry, finding the gleamdrop isn't too hard, just play and usually you'll find it. If you can't find it, refer to the bottom screen of your DS, and it will tell you what the gleamdrop is hidden by, and sometimes even the gleamwell will be hidden too. As you progress through the game, you'll obtain altogether, four types of weapons. A sword, a flail, a bow, and hammer. To make your way through many of the dungeons, you may have to use your weapons. For example, a flail can hookshot to objects. So it may be necessary to hookshot your way across spikes. Not only do you need them to make your way through the dungeon, but it may proove helpful to use a specific type of weapon on a certain enemy. For example, shooting bats with your bow. The reason this game isn't "great" is because if you're playing by yourself, it could get extremely boring, and difficult. Between each dungeon you'll most likely have to level up ten or so levels before progressing. Also, this game is extremely short. It's easy to beat it within 15 hours. However, as I said earlier, where this game shines is in its multiplayer. Having a friend is great. Planning out routes in each dungeon can be fun, and if you're not up for helping each other out, you could always compete with each other. For instance, you could try to race each other to see who finds the gleamdrop and bring it to the gleamwell first. There's nothing better than picking up the gleamdrop, all excited, and making your way to the gleamwell, when all of a sudden, your friend hookshots you, takes the gleamdrop, then you shoot him with your bow, and win. If your a fan of the Mana series, you should buy this game, if you haven't played any, and don't have a friend to play it through with, it's probably not worth the money.

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Children of Mana Recent Articles

  • Oct. 30, 2006 Review: Children of Mana

    Children of Mana focuses on a set of four orphaned children, each of whom had lost their parents during a cataclysmic disaster that had occurred years ago. Peace descended over time, until things suddenly take a turn for the worse. Children of Mana for the DS is a fun romp in Square Enix's "World of Mana", but those looking for a successor to all that was great about Secret of Mana will be disappointed.