08/09/2022

The New Classics #18: Heroes of Mana

  


 

The Backstory: Just like Solatorobo, Heroes of Mana was part of my very first batch of DS games, and can be spotted on my logo picture. I ordered it alongside Children of Mana; but while I played the latter way back on 2012, before I even started that blog, HoM stayed untouched until now. Same sending, different destinies! And talking about destinies, will HoM join CoM to the pawn shop?

 


 

The Game: Right off the bat, I was disappointed by the atmosphere or lack thereof. The Seiken Densetsu signature graphical style was present, but not enough. Character portraits lacked sharpness and detail, colours lacked vibrancy and vividness, and the whole thing lacked that unmistakable Mana zest and zing.

 

Still, that wouldn’t have been enough to deter me from playing, had the gameplay been stellar. But again, things unravelled pretty quickly namely, the very moment I realised I was dealing with an RTS rather than with an RPG. Now, I’ve seen enough fellow gamers play RTS on PC to know that the genre is not for me; and HoM only cemented that perception. This is the very antithesis of what I love in gaming: fast-paced action, red-hot combat and sweet repetition that puts you in a trance. After watching my units crawl along the first map for 20 minutes to gather a handful of resources, I knew for sure HoM and I were not meant to roll together.    

 


 

The Verdict: No surprise here, Heroes of Mana is no New Classic of mine. At that point, I should probably ditch the series altogether; but I won’t. Instead, I’ll give every entry I own the New Classic treatment; and hopefully I’ll find something that will redeem the series in my jaded eyes.

 

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