The Mana franchise means more to me than it probably does to most people. Back in the early days of the original Game Boy, I remember playing to completion the first game in the series, Final Fantasy Adventure (for those not in the know, it received a name change when it came to the States) at a time when RPGs were still fairly new to me.

Secret of Mana remains one of my favorite SNES titles, as it does with many gamers who grew up in that era. Even Legend of Mana on the PlayStation, often dismissed by series fans for its stale, repetitive combat system, meticulously obsessive game systems and often nonsensical plot, still holds a warm place in my heart for it’s beautiful and unique storybook presentation and wonderful soundtrack, if nothing else (not to mention the fact that both my sister and my girlfriend still play it to this day).

With that being the case, it’s really hard for me to resist the series’ latest offering, Dawn of Mana. Square Enix even went so far as to put in some references to earlier games in the series, such as a title screen and music from Secret of Mana, and some character designs that seem right out of Legend of Mana. However, while Dawn of Mana seems to want to call back to those earlier games, at the same time it bears little in common with any of those games beyond a few superficial details. While this may be little surprise, considering how unique each installment of the series is, Dawn of Mana is sadly all the worse for abandoning the gameplay of its predecessors.

Dawn of Mana is the first game in the series to be done completely in 3D, and while this loses some of the charm of the hand-drawn storybook style of Legend of Mana, it is nevertheless a beauty to behold. Character designs are detailed, the levels are good-looking and finely decorated, magic effects all have an appropriate flair to them, and more than anything the game makes use of a beautifully brilliant color palette to make the graphics jump off the screen. While it may lack the technical brilliance of games like Metal Gear Solid 3, God of War 2 or Resident Evil 4, it is nevertheless one of the best-looking games on the platform.

However, while the developers of Dawn of Mana seem to be experts at making a 3D game looks pretty, they fail miserably at making it playable. The game’s camera is horrendous and often renders the game nearly unplayable, not only forcing the player to constantly babysit it with the right analog stick and shoulder buttons, but often wrestling them for control. This is one of those pathetically crippled games where you’ll often find yourself blindly attacking foes off-screen.

This problem is exacerbated by a game engine built around the Havok physics engine, emphasizing you to knock objects into enemies before attacking them, a necessity if you want to get a stat boost. Unfortunately, the unruly camera and imprecise aim means you’ll often knock these objects the wrong direction.

The camera also combines with a stiff and unforgiving jumping mechanic to make for some truly infuriating platforming sections, which the game insists on throwing at you at a fairly regular basis, often with swarms of enemies attacking you while you try to make jumps that would be simple in other games, yet require multiple attempts in this one.

As if things couldn’t get any worse, all the hard work and effort increasing your stats feels wasted once you reach the end of a “chapter”, and your stats reset to where you began. This effectively removes any sense of progress and accomplishment you may have gotten upon successfully wrestling with the broken gameplay, and gives you little incentive to actually fight monsters save for when you are forced to or when you need to train up for a boss.

These problems essentially make the game a chore to play, and devoid of satisfaction, and while it is a beauty to look at, that beauty truly is only skin-deep. To say that this game is a disappointment to series fans is an understatement. Dawn of Mana is, in many various ways, a failure as a game to deliver anything resembling fun.

Originally from DigNews