If you are a fan of Dawn of Mana, please comment on this article immediately. We are desperately seeking someone who will defend this drivel…
Dawn of Mana
Aka Seiken Densetsu 4
2006
Playstation 2
What’s the story?
Mana is once again biting on Zelda, but this time predicting The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword by marking the earliest point in the timeline a story that starts with “centuries ago”. You can survive without ancient civilizations, fantasy writers! Anywho, at this point in Mana History/dimensions, there are six main continents, and one features humans living in harmony with the Mana Tree. But that all changed when The Ice Nation attacked the Mana Nation, and yada yada yada, a whole bunch of people are gonna die and/or turn into Grimslies. Grimslies? You’re really going with that?
Who are the baddies?
King Stroud is the obvious invading force that kicks off the plot, and, spoilers, he is the main character’s brother. Never attempt to kill a potential heir by drowning, Stroud, babies apparently float. There is also The Masked Guru, your typical ancient, corrupted hero/spirit posing as a wily vizier, and Anise, a fallen Mana Maiden who incidentally rules a dark world that transforms people into monsters. She is the final boss/Medusa, and has such a cool design, she became the Bizarro Mana Goddess in future sequels.
What is the Mana Sword?
Keldric is our hero du jour, and, before the first level is out, Kelly has a mana seed merge with his arm. This grants him an all-purpose weapon that transforms from stick to whip to some manner of rock-hurling gun. At the grand finale, a new Mana Goddess is born, and she merges with Keldo’s seed to create a sword that cleanses the world of Medusa’s taint. So, theoretically, the Mana Sword that appears in all future Mana titles is this grassy stick evolved to its iconic form. A shame everyone let it rust to nothing from that point on…
How does it play?
… Woof. Just woof. The intended appeal of Dawn of Mana is that nearly every object has its own physics, so you can toss around columns and rocks and mushroom caps and damn near everything in the world. In practice, however, those goofy physics are borderline uncontrollable, and the simple act of just wanting to toss a barrel on a baddy is nearly impossible. The idea of a fully interactable world could have been amazing, but the technology (or at least this game) is in no way up to the task.
Is it pretty?
Nope. Sorry! I would not go as far as to say this game is graphically ugly (for its time), but it certainly isn’t pretty. There are a number of attempts to transfer the 2-D characters of Secret of Mana (or even Children of Mana) into 3-D, and they all come off as disturbingly weird.
What is Magic?
The spirits are integral to the story, and they impact gameplay both through magic and “ammo” for a few sword moves. We will focus on the magic, which works remarkably quick for a Mana title, and is only limited by the horrible level up system locking spells away for the majority of the game. But other than the fact that you cannot use your magic without continually grinding, it is a big improvement over other titles!
What’s Watts?
It is established that the remaining elemental countries not directing that whole genocidal war thing all have leaders that are oblique references to previous Mana titles. Luca gets lake world, Morty Smith conquered the desert, Niccolo Cat-Rabbit is leading Wendel, and we’ve got Watts filling the last spot. He has some cool contraptions that lead to a couple of big hero rescues, so this might be the most courageous Watts across Mana.
Are there Duck Soldiers?
No ducks! Polygons were at a premium on the Playstation 2, so the minions are limited to color variations on a handful of established baddies (rabites, mushbooms, goblins, chobin hoods) or variable “golems” that are mostly just colored-in heartless. Unfortunately, it appears no one put a premium on getting duck soldiers in there, so we must go without for a game.
What makes it good?
If you are into green and purple, have I got a game for you!
What makes it bad?
So much of Dawn of Mana can be easily identified as “ill-advised”. There are eight levels, and your hard-earned experience points reset with every stage, so you are constantly fighting your way back to having something as simple as a healing spell. The physics never quite work right (watch our stream to enjoy some inanimate objects dancing), and the targeting/camera synergy will make you nauseous. And this is all for a presentation that is sub-Kingdom Hearts, but was released four years after Sora’s debut. There were plenty of options on the Playstation 2 at that point! You could have been playing anything else!
Anything else?
Immediately after the below stream, I checked to see if the final PS2 GameShark disc contained any cheats for Dawn of Mana. It does not! Dawn of Mana is completely ignored. Playboy: The Mansion has cheats on there, but not the (then) latest in the Mana franchise. The volume of this failure is immeasurable.
Even Worse Streams Presents The Mana Franchise
Night 7
Dawn of Mana
November 12, 2024
Random Notes:
- “This will at least be funnier than the other ones,” states fanboymaster. So let’s see if BEAT, Cassandralyn, and Chromes have a fun time.
- We get a brief assessment of the attempted “World of Mana” that includes today’s disaster. Naturally, we then move on to Compilation of Final Fantasy 7. That was moderately more successful!
- A thesis on Final Fantasy 16 is presented by fanboymaster in exactly a minute and thirty seconds. We know this because we timed it.
And then we discuss Final Fantasy 16 and broader Final Fantasy design choices across the franchise for, like, forty minutes.- Did you study a language in high school? A billion years ago, BEAT chose Spanish, and now he is going to work on learning it.
- Caliscrub joins while… what is happening in the game? Oh yeah, we’re in a green dungeon forever.
- BEAT officially declares this game worse than 12 oz. Mouse. Granted, he likes 12 oz. Mouse a lot. But it still hurts!
- Ample Vigour joins as we are talking shit about cats.
- Hey! It’s Fullmetal Hugger again! Kinda! He’s a corrupt crab or something. Back to 12 oz mouse!
- We beat that giant enemy crab while Ample Vigour explains child psychology, insanity, and our relationships with the world. All in service of 12 oz. Mouse, of course.
- “I thought you said tree-baiting.”
- The actual purpose of the stream is to create the Roast Beef Paradox.
- Venom of Sony’s Spider-Man Universe encourages an investigation into what other characters are allowed to appear in Sony movies.
- “It kind of sucks that Stan Lee sucks.”
- Don’t worry, we cover the beloved Marvel storyline, Trouble.
- “How are there seven Scarlet Spiders!?”
- Noting for posterity that apparently Caithness snuck in here at some point, too.
- As we battle Grim Treant, fanboymaster posits that the reason this game is bad is that no one wanted to make it. Perhaps proving some portion of this theory, I then let my hero die so we can stop playing. Say goodbye to the Dawn.
Next time on Manapiece Theatre: The Heroes’ March of the Grim Queen.
