Review: Adventures of Mana (PSV)

Adventures of Mana is a remake of Final Fantasy Adventure (Gameboy) on the PlayStation Vita. I played the game to completion and got the platinum trophy. I spent half of my playing time on a Vita and the other half on the PlayStation TV. The game is also available on the iOS and Android.

As a remake of one of earliest entries in the Seiken Densetsu or Mana series, it’s understandable that Adventures of Mana might not have all of the bells and whistles that one would expect from the later installments. This faithfulness to not change much of the design of the game outside of the UI is both a blessing and a curse as it might be a little off-putting how simplistic the game is and yet convoluted in certain aspects that only serve to annoy the player.

You play as Sumo, whose main goal is to become a Gemma Knight, save the maiden and subsequently the world. It’s a light story that’s suitable for a portable game that you play on the Vita or on phones, but I would have liked a simple journal function or fast travel because if you were to forget your next goal it might require backtracking back to the last town that you remember to get directions. This is not an issue earlier on when your progress is more linear and gated by the need to acquire weapons that also act as methods to progress further. But once you have free reign to go anywhere you want, it becomes tedious when you have so much empty space to cover and having to reference a map that isn’t very helpful because it doesn’t show you how these areas are connected to each other.

While you’re out and about exploring, combat is done on the same world map without having to transition to a separate battle screen. A notification will pop up once you get enough experience to level up and you can choose from four classes to increase your stats. Enemies have weaknesses to certain weapons or magic spells that keeps you on your toes to change your approach against them, this would have been a worthwhile mechanic but there are times where it isn’t very clear if what you have equipped is dealing the most damage or if the same type of weapon without an additional effect will be as effective and you start to bump up against the UI.

The UI for this game is bad, the menu uses a circular wheel and buttons on the opposite side of the screen to throw away or to put a maximum of 3 items or spells into shortcuts, is unwieldy and up until the end of the game I was still making mistakes, confused about how to check items and took up a lot of time trying to throw away items when my inventory was full. It was designed for use on touchscreens but on the controller it was just a chore to use. I would have liked a more traditional menu with a list of words than the more visual oriented design. That would make weapon switching faster and you spend less time in menus and more time playing. I’ve mentioned how the map wasn’t as helpful as I would have liked and for some reason the map screen does the opposite of the regular menu and uses a list of locations that you have to scroll through one at a time instead of using a pointer that would show you the location name and put a marker.

There’s not much plot to the game outside of a few lines of exposition that serve to push you to the next area but it does so with vague directions that are meant to give you more freedom to explore. However, as progress is frequently delayed by the need to use the right weapon or finding a secret entrance amidst screens of similar looking environments make these vague directions more frustrating than fun. There’s one prime example near the end of the game where you need to find a hidden entrance somewhere in a field of crystal rocks. But to break the rocks you need to use a magic skill that takes up MP. So you are going around randomly firing at rocks that do not react in anyway until you either run out of MP or find this sole rock that has no indication that it is any way different from the rest.

In the end, I feel Adventures of Mana is a fun game with a few flaws that might turn off gamers more accustomed to better modern UI design. You see the beginnings of future Seiken Densetsu games with the NPC helpers and action RPG design and if you can overlook the outdated design and cumbersome menu system, I feel that it’s worth a weekend playthrough.

Review Score: 3/5