Collection of Mana Review: Mixed Assortment of Action RPGs Shows Glimpses of Franchise Potential
Collection of Mana offers the first three titles in the Mana / Seiken Densetsu franchise. While Final Fantasy Adventure impresses, Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana left me incredibly frustrated and disappointed. Yet, there’s an undeniable charm that keeps me interested in later titles. // Image: Square Enix
I’ve given myself a particular mission for 2025: to knock out as many games off of my backlog as possible throughout the year. As of writing, there aren’t too many new releases this year that I find myself feeling the need to play at launch (save for games like Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and others), and as such, I feel like now is as good of a time as ever to tackle the many games that have been lying in my backlog for years. I intend on chronicling much of my journey going through my deep backlog on this blog, so consider this the first in a series where I present my thoughts on the games I tackle within my backlogged library of games. First on the docket is actually a collection of titles in the acclaimed Mana franchise - a series that I’ve wanted to dive into for nearly half my life.
Indeed, I’ve never touched the Mana series (also known as the Seiken Densetsu series), one of Square Enix’s middle-size franchises, yet I’m deeply familiar with the franchise’s legacy. Ever since I immersed myself in the JRPG landscape as a young teenager, I became quickly familiar with the many great JRPGs that played a role in building the genre’s legacy and notoriety throughout the ‘90s. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), also known as the Super Famicom in Japan, was a pivotal system in the genre’s rise to prominence. Among the heavy hitters of the era including Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Dragon Quest V were Secret of Mana and its Japan-exclusive sequel Seiken Densetsu 3, later renamed in English as Trials of Mana. While turn-based RPGs were more prevalent throughout the genre during the ‘80s and ‘90s, some RPGs were willing to experiment with more action-oriented combat. Early entries in Falcom’s legendary Ys franchise proved that combining RPG mechanics with real-time action combat was doable even on limited hardware. Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana stand out from most of Square’s output on Nintendo’s 16-bit console due to their very focus on action and their remarkable, charming visual style.
Many of the fondly remembered JRPGs of this era have aged with mixed levels of grace. Some games like EarthBound show their age through clunky menus and poor inventory management while games like Final Fantasy VI show commendable polish and refinement that hold up well. Haven played most of the heavy hitters of this era, I was curious to see how the earliest Mana games holds up among their contemporaries and how they’ve aged relative to their respective competitors. The means through which I investigated these games’ quality was through the Collection of Mana, a compilation that includes the first three titles in the Mana / Seiken Densetsu franchise released in Japan in 2017 and in the West in 2019. This collection holds additional value as it includes the first Western release of Trials of Mana, complete with a modern, official localization. Released in the West only a year before the 2020 remake of Trials of Mana, Collection of Mana gave players an opportunity to catch up with the series before the Trials remake breathed new life into the series. Thanks to strong sales and reception, the success of the Trials remake paved the way for a brand new title to be developed. This new game took the form of 2024’s Visions of Mana, the first new non-mobile Mana title in over 15 years.
All this is to say that Collection of Mana clearly served its purpose in building anticipation for the Trials of Mana remake, and can be seen as the first step towards the Mana franchise getting a new lease on life from Square Enix. This is the context that I brought with me when picking up Collection of Mana earlier this year. This, in conjunction with the word-of-mouth praise that I’ve heard over the years regarding Secret and Trials gave me high expectations for my time with this collection. Unfortunately, I ultimately walked away quite disappointed and frustrated by Collection of Mana. Despite that frustration, though, I ostensibly see something with this series. There’s a certain style that’s undeniable throughout each of the titles in this collection, and despite not entirely enjoying my time with the games in this collection, I still find myself oddly curious to see how later titles in this franchise improve upon the promising formula established in these titles. Let’s discuss why that is.
Despite its English title, Final Fantasy Adventure is the beginning of the Mana franchise and is an incredibly impressive Action RPG that makes for an excellent adventure, especially given the limitations of the Game Boy’s hardware. // Image: Square Enix
I’ve framed my overall thoughts on this collection in a negative light, but let it be known that this impression is primarily based on the latter two games of this collection. Collection of Mana’s first title, Final Fantasy Adventure is a remarkably fun action RPG that delivers a surprisingly ambitious adventure on the original Game Boy. Despite the weak hardware and the game’s original 1991 release date, the ideas presented within this first Mana title immediately convinced me of the promise that this series delivers.
Final Fantasy Adventure is essentially the video game equivalent of a backdoor pilot. While being marketed and named in both Japan and the West as a Final Fantasy spinoff that uses some staples of that series such as chocobos and moogles, Final Fantasy Adventure, known as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan, is ostensibly its own thing that establishes the design philosophy and monster designs that will become staples of a new franchise altogether. Aside from being able to ride a chocobo, complete with an arrangement of the classic song that plays when on the mount) and a status condition that turns the playable character into a moogle, there’s not much that ties this first game to the Final Fantasy franchise, furthering that “backdoor pilot” feel to this game.
If there’s any logical comparison to make to another game with Final Fantasy Adventure, it’s not Final Fantasy - it’s The Legend of Zelda. From the way the protagonist stabs their sword straight in front of them not unlike how Link attacks to the way that the player needs to use tools made available to navigate the game’s world to the numerous dungeons that feature grid-based maps, there’s a lot of similarities to be made between the first Mana entry and 1986’s The Legend of Zelda. The implementation of an overworld with a not-so-useful map is the quickest giveaway of the game’s primary inspiration, but Final Fantasy Adventure manages to build upon aspects of The Legend of Zelda’s formula through traditional RPG mechanics and weapons that also serve as navigational tools.
The game contains four stats that the player increases through garnering experience points and leveling up. Upon each level increase, the player is given an opportunity to select one particular stat to invest in. These options include Stamina, a resource that increases the player’s maximum pool of health points, Power, increasing the player’s strength of attacks against enemies, Wisdom, which performs the same role as Power but for magic spells in addition to increasing the player’s maximum pool of magic points, and finally Will, which increases the rate at which the meter at the bottom of the screen fills, which, when filled, allows the player to perform stronger attacks. Ultimately, these RPG mechanics don’t tread new ground for RPGs, but their implementation creates a satisfying adventure where the player can create a build unique to them. Another idea that Final Fantasy Adventure invests in is the use of various weapons to navigate its world. While the player starts with a basic sword, the player will gradually gain access to other types of weapons like a whip or an axe. These weapons are more than just stat increases and different attack animations, though - they allow the player to access new parts of the game’s world. Whips can be used to grapple designated points that allow the player to cross chasms. Likewise, the axe can be used to chop down trees to navigate through otherwise inaccessible areas. Like with its RPG mechanics, these navigational tools aren’t revolutionary bits of game design, but they significantly help in making Final Fantasy Adventure feel like, well, an adventure!
The Zelda-like dungeons blend a healthy mix of puzzle-solving and combat, complete with optional routes that reward the player with new weapons or items. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy Adventure borrows an issue from The Legend of Zelda when it comes to its reliance on destroyable walls in dungeons. Due to such a mechanic being so prevalent throughout the many dungeons within the game, players will often find themselves dashing their weapon against the walls in each cardinal direction of every room to see if they get an audio cue that confirms that the wall is destroyable. This is the only way to tell whether a wall is solid or destructible, creating a bit of clunkiness to pacing within dungeons. Moreover, some of the puzzles can lead to frustration. Magic spells are mostly used for healing and offense, but the Ice spell is specifically used in numerous switch puzzles in the game. The Ice spell turns enemies into a snowman, which can then be pushed around like items. Final Fantasy Adventure throws players into situations where they need to press multiple switches simultaneously to open a way forward, and the only way to create items that can be placed onto these switches is through the Ice spell. With the game’s limited grid-based movement, turning an enemy into a snowman in a position where they can be pushed onto a switch is a situation that requires more finesse and trial-and-error than one may initially expect. Whenever this puzzle type rears its head, it’s never to the player’s enjoyment.
Aside from that, Final Fantasy Adventure is a genuinely impressive journey with a challenging but not overwhelming difficulty curve in its dungeons and combat encounters. The game incentivizes and rewards exploration quite consistently, making treks through different parts of the world feel engaging and rewarding. Moreover, the game features a surprisingly large amount of content to get through, making for a 6-10 hour journey - a runtime well above average for the platform it was developed for. Even the plot featured here, while certainly simple, is paced in such a way that the player is consistently given incentives to push forward. The only issue in relation to Final Fantasy Adventure’s writing is that the game inconsistently gives the player specific instructions on what to do next. While the game does a solid job at conveying what needs to be done, there are just enough instances where the game doesn’t properly convey where players’ next objective is, warranting a feeling of frustration among players that will likely result in players pulling up a guide. Given that the Game Boy’s memory and screen space limitations prevent lots of information being conveyed through text, this is a somewhat forgivable issue that thankfully doesn’t tank the game’s overall quality.
Final Fantasy Adventure gave me a very strong first impression of the Mana series. With its simple but rewarding combat and exploration, the game punches well above its weight for an early Game Boy title. Moreover, the game’s energetic soundtrack and charming visuals for its characters and monsters makes for a memorable presentation that will stick with players. Much of the style presented in Final Fantasy Adventure would be preserved and built upon in future Mana entries, making me genuinely excited to see where the series was destined to go from here. Knowing that I would be jumping from the Game Boy to the SNES for the remainder of this collection of games, I found myself greatly looking forward to seeing where Square would take these series, now in hand with more powerful hardware to create potentially greater experiences.
Secret of Mana is often talked about with high regard and is considered one of the stronger JRPGs available on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, a platform known for great JRPGs. In truth, however, Secret of Mana fails to stand alongside its contemporaries thanks to its slow, clunky, and shallow gameplay. // Image: Square Enix
Unfortunately, that’s just not what happened in the transition from the 8-bit handheld to the 16-bit console. Secret of Mana is in many ways a shift to a different style of game. While Final Fantasy Adventure depicted an action RPG experience with a single playable character featuring responsive if simple combat with an emphasis on personalizing character growth, Secret of Mana opts to introduce a party system that gives the player more options for spellcasting and a more linear progression system that entirely automatically improves character stats upon gaining levels. What once was a single character that could do everything the player needed to do has now been split across three party members in Secret of Mana - each having their own strengths and weaknesses. Randi the hero is an entirely physical fighter, Primm the girl is primarily focused and defensive and supportive spellcasting to keep the party alive, and Popoi the sprite specializes in offensive magic. This change isn’t inherently a bad thing - a party structure can help create more dynamic situations in combat where players have to consider what they want each party member’s function in combat to be. Unfortunately, Secret of Mana utilizes horrendous AI that makes party members not directly controlled by the player seldom do what you want them to. In addition to this, AI party members often get stuck on level geometry, and since party members cannot go off-screen, this creates clunky movement throughout the game’s world. I often found myself having to run towards party members running into a tree or wall just to redirect them away from it so that I could move forward.
Secret of Mana theoretically compensates for its poor AI with the ability to play the game in co-op. However, since the SNES can only have two controllers connected to it without external accessories, most co-op players will still inevitably have one party member controlled by AI. This is somewhat mitigated in the age of the game’s digital rereleases (and its 2018 remake) including this very collection, where controllers can wirelessly connect and create more likely three-player co-op scenarios, but there still remain instances where the game will only have one or two party members present at a time during certain story sections.
Though, I’m hesitant to claim that Secret of Mana would feel better in a co-op setting because of the game’s horrendously paced combat. Final Fantasy Adventure featured simple combat, but such simple combat was responsive. There was immediate visual and auditory feedback confirming that the player was hitting the enemies that they were attacking. It becomes immediately apparent that hitting enemies in Secret of Mana doesn’t feel nearly as good as in its predecessor because of the game’s poor hit detection and decidedly slow pace. Secret of Mana introduces damage numbers to confirm how much damage players inflict onto enemies, though this increase of information presented to the player make it clearly apparent when the player isn’t hitting enemies.
And in Secret of Mana, there are lots of instances where the player will not hit enemies they are attacking when they clearly should be. The cause for this is twofold. The first is just plain bad hit detection, falsely determining connected attacks as missed and vice versa. The second is enemy recoil and attack cooldown. In a mechanic that feels incongruous with the very idea of developing an action RPG, Secret of Mana features enemy recoil where they will be taken aback by a connected attack and briefly be invincible from additional damage. In addition to this, there is a percentage meter that fills after completing an attack. While the player can mash the attack button for minimal damage, players will only get optimal damage when attacking by waiting for their attack to complete a cooldown period after attacking. When at 100%, the player can attack at full strength again.
What enemy recoil and this cooldown mechanic truly introduce in Secret of Mana’s combat system is down time. Lots of down time. Fights ultimately turn into spats where the player attacks an enemy, waits about two seconds, then attacks again - and so on until the enemy dies. Compounding this issue is the stop-and-go feel of combat thanks to the decision to give all spells detailed animations. Animations for powerful moments in combat aren’t inherently a bad thing, but it’s an awful pairing with the very method through which players have to improve their spellcasting strength.
Backing up for a second, there are additional means of growing stronger in Secret of Mana beyond just garnering experience points to level up. Like in Final Fantasy Adventure, the player acquires various weapons, some of which are still used for navigational purposes. Regardless of their navigational applications, though, weapons can individually be levelled up per character by killing a certain number of enemies with that particular weapon. Kill X number of enemies with a sword as Randi and Randi will eventually level up his sword capability, giving way to stronger attacks and greater chargeable super attacks. Magic can be levelled up as well, but instead of getting stronger through killing enemies, every element used for spellcasting gets levelled up by casting that element numerous times. This means that, to increase characters’ magical strength, the player needs to effectively spam magic spells as much as their MP pools will allow them to. This means having to watch the same long spellcasting animations numerous times just to level up a single element for one character.
If levelling up magic creates such a stop-and-go feeling to the game’s overall pacing, then why bother levelling up magic at all? Couldn’t you just go for an all-physical build and sidestep this entire issue? I found myself thinking this very thing not long into my playthrough of Secret of Mana. Unfortunately, such a playstyle is an inherently unviable one throughout the game. Put simply, Magic does overwhelming damage when levelled up, dwarfing the amount of damage done by physical attacks. Magical attacks are simply necessary to get through boss fights in a timely manner while still having enough resources to stay fully healed throughout a fight. But some bosses, such as the Wall Face boss, simply force the player to use levelled-up magic, as this particular boss fight’s second phase puts the player into a time limit that’ll result in a game over if the player doesn’t defeat the boss in time. Relying on physical attacks for this phase of the fight, unless ludicrously over-levelled, will spell imminent doom for players. Simply put, having high-level magic is required for this fight, meaning that the player is going to have to spam spells to increase their magical strength throughout the game, giving way to tons of fights that stop in their tracks consistently just for a spellcasting animation to play out.
This creates an exhausting combat loop that saps the player’s energy and time. Unfortunately for Secret of Mana, combat is really all this game has going for it. The story depicted here is just as simple, if not more so, than its predecessor - and with a longer runtime, the story here just isn’t enough to incentivize players to continue their journey. While the game continues using some of its weapons for brief bits of navigation, the overall presence of puzzles is significantly reduced to the point where navigating the many dungeons in this game feels remarkably vanilla. Dungeons in Secret of Mana primarily revolve around walking down corridors and walking into the occasional bonus room. Exploration and puzzle design have a significantly downplayed presence here when compared to Final Fantasy Adventure, and the fragmented design of the game’s world doesn’t help in making the game feel disjointed as an overall adventure.
Secret of Mana is slow, clunky, and needlessly frustrating - ultimately feeling like a massive step back from Final Fantasy Adventure’s quality. Getting through this part of the collection was genuinely a slog and quickly soured the good faith towards this franchise that Final Fantasy Adventure instilled in me. Put simply, I can’t see how Secret of Mana can be put in the same ballpark as some of the best JRPGs on the SNES. It simply feels too dated, too sporadically paced, and too regressive compared to its predecessor to represent the best of what the genre has to offer on the console. As an action RPG, Secret of Mana fails to create exciting combat situations, an interesting story and world, and compelling challenges to overcome - all things that are practically necessary for any action RPG to stand a chance at resonating with players.
If it isn’t clear already, I found Secret of Mana to be a deeply disappointing game. That said, I still see…something with this game. There’s a certain charm to the character and monster designs here. The returning monsters from Final Fantasy Adventure look great on the SNES thanks to the bold use of colors and expressive animations. As much as I hate having to look at the spellcasting animations so much throughout the game, they sure do look pretty. Lastly, the soundtrack is undoubtedly the best part of the game, with much of the game’s music featuring a whimsical, adventurous style to it that gives an overall jubilant tone to the game’s world. That presentation isn’t enough to make Secret of Mana a compelling game in its own right, but…I’d be lying if I said I didn’t see the potential that this game’s style has. With more thoughtful game design and focused direction, I can still see the potential that future entries in this series could realize. While the next game would evidently disappoint me on that front, I still find myself holding true to that idea.
On its surface, Trials of Mana improves upon a lot of the issues in Secret of Mana, including more responsive and faster combat. However, the lack of combat depth and the excessive need for grinding makes for an experience that is neither fun nor rewarding. // Image: Square Enix
Officially released in the West for the very first time as part of this collection, Trials of Mana employs a modern localization that perhaps clashes with the limited quality of the localizations of the other games in this collection. Indeed, Trials of Mana features a more involved script thanks to a more advanced localization process, but something that certainly justifies the greater script is that there’s simply more narrative content to chew on in this game. In fact, Trials of Mana immediately posits itself as an ideal sequel to Secret of Mana through an initial focus on deeper storytelling. It addresses some of its predecessors’ weaknesses by integrating a more involved story at its onset through featuring a cast of six playable characters that each have their own story that motivates their reasons for adventuring into the world. Some story setups carry a tragic and desperate tone, while others are more playful, but all do a great job at setting up stakes and motivation throughout the game. At the beginning of the game, players can even select their desired party from a pool of the six available characters, giving players the opportunity to hand-select their party build and the specific story they watch unfold, which incentivizes further replays.
The unfortunate reality, however, is that Trials of Mana’s more involved narrative is very front-loaded. Once the game lays out its primary structure - that which sees the player retrieve elements in different areas of the game’s world, then return to each of these areas in the game’s second half -, the narrative takes a backseat for the majority of the game. Of course, an action RPG like this doesn’t need a more involved narrative to continue to be engaging so long as the gameplay, world, and RPG mechanics help guide the player through an entertaining journey. Unfortunately, Trials of Mana severely underdelivers in its combat depth, pacing, and overall fun factor.
What makes this additionally frustrating to see is that Trials of Mana genuinely improves a lot of Secret of Mana’s shortcomings. The combat here, for example, feels a lot quicker and more responsive. Character progression returns to Final Fantasy Adventure’s style of stat growth, where players get to determine what stats they want to invest in and thus determine their own build. This is further developed through the game’s class system, which allows players to upgrade character classes that grant them new abilities and higher stat ceilings. However, these improvements bring with them caveats that work together to turn Trials of Mana into an even greater slog to get through than its predecessor. The oddly slow-moving, clunky menus don’t help in this regard.
Like with its narrative, Trials of Mana gives a misleading representation of how classes work early on in the game. Throughout the game, each character will get to have two class changes. The first can occur once the player reaches the required level for a character to make a class change and from there, the player can decide between a Light Class and Dark Class that give each character different attributes and build potential. The second time that players are eligible to change their class, just going about the same method isn’t enough - they need to use the “??? Seed” item in an inn to produce another item that will allow for one of six overall choices that characters have to change their class.
The problem? The “??? Seed” is an exceptionally rare drop that players will have to grind certain enemies for to even get a chance at acquiring. And put simply, the challenge presented by some of the later bosses in the game practically necessitate advancing to these highest-level classes. That means that the player is practically required to grind for rare drops from enemies to advance in the late game - a death sentence to any game’s pacing. This compounds another one of Trials of Mana’s greatest issues - its incredibly grindy nature. While combat itself moves at a faster pace, the rate at which characters level up has been vastly slowed down, making gaining levels take a longer period of time compared to previous Mana titles. As previously mentioned, the late game bosses become incredibly strong damage sponges that practically necessitate the highest-level classes - but beyond that, players will still need the higher stats afforded to them by gaining levels to stand much of a chance against the last few bosses in the game.
The player simply needs to buff up their numbers because Trials of Mana’s simple combat ultimately works against its attempt at making challenging boss fights. Like with Secret of Mana, spellcasting animations pause all action and deal unavoidable damage to one, two, or all party members. In addition to this, many bosses employ physical attacks that similarly pause all action and deal unblockable damage to party members, creating purely “stat-check” situations where bosses will decimate party members’ health in quick succession. In multiple instances, I found myself getting hit by either spells or physical attacks that hit all my party members, all of which had the best possible equipment available to me at the time. Since these spells pause all action, I was unable to heal myself between these attacks hitting all of my party members - causing me to effectively get stun-locked by bosses. Having to deal with this isn’t a fun situation - it just results in frustration and wishing I could be playing literally anything else.
To get around this, I would have to grind experience points to level up over time. As an overall JRPG fan, I have nothing particularly against grinding so long as the overall experience can still be fun or relaxing in and of itself. If a game employs a consistently engaging battle system where I still need to make choices to optimize the rate at which I gain experience points and levels, then there can be genuine fun to be found in the process of grinding. The issue with Trials of Mana is that its combat really doesn’t have much to it. Unless players want to participate in stop-and-go-paced combat through casting spells or performing plenty of special physical attacks, Trials of Mana’s combat is effectively just pressing a button in front of enemies to attack them. There’s not much room to think about positioning or movement - Trials of Mana simply lacks any strategy or depth in its combat. This isn’t inherently an issue for games that don’t focus on their combat too much, but in Trials of Mana’s case, after a certain point in the story, combat effectively becomes all the game has to offer.
That’s admittedly a bit of hyperbole. The story, while minimal, does rear its head after each major location. Dungeons return and offer more avenues for exploration, but the presence of puzzles has been further reduced from Secret of Mana, including the omission of weapon-specific navigational quirks. A lot of dungeons offer some very light puzzle-solving and navigational challenges, but are ultimately even more vanilla than its predecessors. There are other elements of the game, sure, but combat ultimately becomes one of the only driving factors of the overall gameplay loop, and as is, it’s just too simple for its own good. If a game wants to focus this much on combat, it needs to employ thoughtful, engaging, and fun mechanics to make fights consistently interesting. Trials of Mana simply doesn’t do that.
Trials of Mana requires players to grind so much with a strategically vapid combat system. This ultimately degrades the overall experience to become a game that, while improving on certain aspects of its predecessor, makes it feel the worst to play out of all the games in this collection. Like with its predecessor, there’s a shame in that, because I genuinely see the charming style of this series through this third entry. Music, I feel, is even better than Secret of Mana, there’s an ambitious day-night cycle that changes enemy spawn rates and behavior, and the more involved script leads to a lot of fun character moments (perhaps in thanks to the game’s more well-rounded localization compared to the first two titles). There’s undeniable potential with this series, but Trials of Mana flounders nearly all of its opportunities through creating a gameplay loop dependent on grinding without a combat system that can make such grinding an enjoyable experience.
My first impression of the Mana series through this collection is…conflicting, to say the least. While I found myself genuinely impressed by the ambition, variety, and strong pacing of Final Fantasy Adventure, especially considering the limitations of its original hardware, the game’s two follow-ups on the SNES fumble the great potential I truly feel that this series holds. Secret and Trials introduce a dire stop-and-go feel to combat while creating overall grindy experiences that annihilate any fun factor or momentum that the games could have otherwise had. The presentation, writing, and charm throughout these games have convinced me (perhaps naively) that there’s a great future for this series if these severe issues with the SNES titles are addressed and vastly improved upon.
From what I can take away from the series’ modern entries, I can’t help but feel that there are potentially brighter days in store for the Mana franchise. The 2020 remake of Trials of Mana seems to employ far more involved combat thanks to being a fully 3D remake with more of an emphasis on movement and avoiding MMO-esque red areas that indicate where bosses and enemies are going to attack. Visions of Mana seems to take the series in an even more expansive direction.
I’m simultaneously glad and contrite that I introduced myself to the Mana franchise through Collection of Mana. The trilogy of games on display here are consistent in showing the potential of ideas and presentation that this series undeniably holds. There’s consistent charm to be found in each of these games that makes them feel distinct from anything else in Square Enix’s portfolio. While Final Fantasy Adventure holds up as a strong Game Boy Action RPG, Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana undermine their incredible charm and presentation through employing horrendous pacing and combat that is too simple to make the grinding necessary for progression ever feel like an engaging experience. As an overall package, Collection of Mana is a tough sell, given that two of its three games are disappointing messes in my mind. However, I do find it to be worthwhile peek into the series, especially for new fans introduced through the series’ more modern titles. In light of the frustration that I shouldered throughout my time with Secret and Trials of Mana, the optimist within me sees the potential that his collection occasionally gives players glimpses of.
While I severely disagree with any assertion that Secret of Mana or its sequel are anywhere close to the best RPGs that the SNES has to offer, I do admittedly see glimpses of what people like. Through further iteration and refinement, I could see this series going to far greater heights. If anything, Collection of Mana captures the spirit of the series and informs players of the lows of the Mana franchise, which hopefully informs how far this series may go in the future.
Final Grade: D
Thank you very much for reading! What are your thoughts on the Mana series? What are some of the best games in this franchise? How does it compare to other Action RPG franchises? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Bluesky @DerekExMachina.com.
