Secrets and mana. It's all secrets and mana with those ponies. · 10:08am Mar 7th, 2016
I recently was inspired to play through Secret of Mana after hearing its beautiful soundtrack again. I'd played some of it (actually most of it) long ago, but never actually finished it. I'd forgotten most of it. I felt like I should give it a fair chance. Didn't seem that special back then, even if it did set the standards for the action-RPG genre, but at least it's very lush and pretty.
It is a flawed game. When the SNES-CD hardware got cancelled, it lost a lot of planned content and had to be reworked. The english localization was good, but heavily rushed. This is the game I most often see accused of being overrated, overhyped, etc. "Rose-tinted Nostalgia Goggles" 
Nostalgia's a dirty word these days. Just the word itself is a devastating slur, the actual practice of nostalgia is more popular than ever. We live in dissonant times. Nostalgia used to be so much better, back in the good ol' days....
However, I have no nostalgia for this, so perhaps I could see it without that kind of bias. Trust me, my friends can confirm that I'm far too critical about JRPGs. I played way too many of them and became very jaded. (serious warning, don't talk to me about your favorite. I'll probably rant about it and be mean.)
surprising result: I loved this game. it's a flawed masterpiece. not overrated.
I'm not gonna review the entire game, much as I'd like to defend it against all the neighsayers. It would take too long, and I don't want to talk about game design on a story website. Instead I'll just defend the story, and what I learned about storytelling.
Flammie's the only reason you need to love this game. It's so cute and fluffy! It's charming to imagine it circling in the clouds overhead, watching over you, ready to swoop down when it hears that toy drum. Flammie's far superior to any steam-powered airship, because it's also your friend. 
Just a joke. Flammie is indeed awesome, but not the real reason here.
The story appears very basic. Prophecies, evil threats, your destiny, etc. You soon get your 3 characters who decide to journey together in this quest. They each have a different motivation, but they don't appear to develop much. Especially the part in the story where it feels like it SHOULD. Right after acquiring Flammie (yay!) and the world opens up, the story seems to get pared back. Even the challenges and dungeons at that point are simplified, and it's a breeze to get the remaining mana seeds and rush to the endgame sequence.
As a contrast, in Final Fantasy VI, this point where the world opens up and becomes less linear is where you may resolve every character's sub-plot and complete their arcs. When every character is properly motivated to the cause, you can take them all to the final showdown. There's so much to do in the world, it's easy to forget about that final dungeon. (I don't want to talk about FF6 here much, but is it a coincidence that the intro text is almost identical to SoM's?)
Even though it certainly feels like something's missing at this part in SoM, I didn't think it was much of a flaw. The story doesn't fall apart here because it's not meant as an immersive epic storyline like most RPGs. It's better to compare SoM to the Zelda series, and nobody complains about Link to the Past not having an immersive storyline (except Jontron apparently). These are games focused on the action and exploration in a giant world. It treats games as a "cool" medium, not as a "hot" medium. You don't sit back and enjoy a story told through excessive cutscenes, you actively participate in the story by your actions. Link's mostly a blank slate, you're asked to fill his shoes. In SoM, you similarly play the role of this kid and his two friends. Optionally, you can invite your real friends to play as those in-game friends!
But then this game twisted even that around. Right at the very end, the big climax, the game reminds you that these 3 characters have unresolved arcs. And it tidily wraps up all of them during the 2 final boss battles. They joined this quest for different reasons, and these motivations remained true even right up to the end. FF6 didn't do that. You had to develop the characters first, then they all team up to save the world together as one big squad. Then they each get their curtain calls during the ending.
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This is where I stopped to write that Mouse Guard blog post first, because suddenly the lessons from that game made sense. Each character must have the same mission, but individual goals. Of course this is practical for tabletop games. If the players don't share a mission, they'll get distracted and wander off (don't split the party!!). However, if they don't have different goals, they lose individuality. What happens is one player starts directing everyone else on what to do, a brain controlling the body (this happens way too often in co-op board games). Luckily, most tabletop players are selfish enough to not become a hivemind 
but it does make the game more fun when you understand why and how they might disagree with each other even while working as a team.
But all this is generally good for storytelling too. You can think of some MLP:FiM episodes where all of the Mane 6 are together. The good ones are where they're individuals, and you can probably identify the different goals at work. The less-good ones are where they're treated like a blob that acts in unison. Same for the CMC episodes, I suppose. Hey, you can try this with your favorite movies or books too. In the original Star Wars, the heroes eventually agree on the mission of rescuing the Princess. But Luke, Han, and Chewbacca still have different goals, which leads to interesting conflicts with each other as they sneak around the Death Star.
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So, Secret of Mana holds off on developing its characters until the most important battles. They came together with different goals, and now, right when it matters most.... they have to give up on the goals. It's not a heroic climax, it's a bitter resolution. One by one, they have to accept sacrificing what they wanted most, if they choose to save the world. The story's still about them.
To further drive the point home, the final battle requires them to work together to use the Mana Sword, and they each must be actively willing to go through with this.
One more thing, the final boss looks a lot like Flammie, your awesome dragon friend. Noooooo! 
Secret of Mana turned out to be a lot more mature than I expected. Even with a lot of the planned story missing, and what remains being compressed during translation, it was heartbreaking. And I already told you how jaded I am about RPGs, there's too many well-polished ones that have nothing interesting to say. This one is smudged and fragments are missing, but it said a lot using so little. Again, this game's not perfect. But it's an amazing, unique flavor that comes once in a lifetime.
writing blog posts helps with the anxiety when I get stuck on story writing. I've been getting stuck a lot lately. 
Man, I should pick Mana back up again one of these days. When emulators first became widespread, my sister Caroline downloaded Secret of Mana and we played through the first half hour or so, but then the file got corrupted or something and we dropped it. It was too bad, as apparently she had been a massive fan of the SNES version.
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It is a fun one to revisit, and one of the few I'd still recommend. at least the art and music never feel dated.
even better if you can play it with someone else, that's the best part of it. though with emulators, sharing a keyboard for controls gets awkward.
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Well I think we always used one of those bootleg controllers... you know the ones...
i.imgbox.com/7Xs7AlsQ.jpg
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so big and unwieldy, multiple people can play on one!
I remember watching my brother play that game on the virtual console on the Wii. Can't remember if he ever beat it or not.
I can understand why some wouldn't like how you can't really grow your companions during the game or complete their arcs, but at the same time, doing so would obviously have prevented the developers from creating a punchy ending like that. I don't have much wide experience with the rpg genre, but from what I've witnessed, if anyone sacrifices anything at the end it's their life. So I really like the idea of sacrificing something very personal instead. Far more often than not that's what you find life requiring of you, so it makes the game that much more relevent.
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Oh yeah, I rarely find the heroic self-sacrifice to be very convincing. at least in games, I think that's caused by the choice of pacing that I described above, since most games ended up imitating Final Fantasy's tropes. character death means nothing at that point because the sub-plots have already been fulfilled. it's a well-earned heroic blaze of glory, not a tragic loss. appeals to the teenage fans
I might be reading too much into Secret of Mana's vague story, but it's hard to shake off that strong bittersweet tone in the ending. I still cared about the characters all the way up to the end, instead of "well I guess I'll return the world to normal so I can see the ending credits"
I may have played this game at one time. More then likely never beat it.
Lufia is the game that has always stuck in my head.
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I remember the music of Lufia more than anything else about it