The Sword of Mana vs. The Fun of Mana One problem with modern society is that technology is evolving faster than the men using it. Every moment, computers are getting closer to super powered, closer to sentience. Man's time on this Earth is limited, as we have crafted our own downfall with Basic and C++. Also, we've forgotten what makes certain computer games fun, and, while that isn't as big a problem as the impending machine take over, it's still kind of a bitch. I refer you to my most beloved Game Boy game of all time, Final Fantasy Adventure, and its abysmal remake, Sword of Mana. Sword of Mana, in all honesty, isn't really that bad, but it makes every mistake that Final Fantasy Adventure, a game that predates SoM by 12 years, didn't. I was, two years ago, very excited about Sword of Mana. As previously stated, Final Fantasy Adventure is one of my all time favorite games, and narrowly edges out The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening as my favorite (original) gameboy game. I must have spent hours in the tiny gray world of Mana with its champion boy. In Japan the hero's name, in both games, is "Sumo", so I'm going to just assume that his American name is "Big McLargehuge". At any rate, Big and I quested around every little nook and cranny in that game, often stabbing little rabbit creatures into next Tuesday. When I heard that Final Fantasy Adventure was getting a remake in the graphical style of another beloved game, Secret of Mana, I was stoked. This isn't the movie industry, when something gets a remake in video game land, it's not just made more "modern" or "extreme", it's a graphically upgraded and the game play usually gets tweaked to make the whole experience more pleasant. There have been a few major game play improvements across the industry in the last couple of years, even just between Final Fantasy Adventure and Secret of Mana, so FFA's remake will be perfect. And then it all came crashing down. Final Fantasy Adventure, after a very brief legend recital, begins with "Now Fight!" And then, guess what you do, you fight! Granted, it's against the easiest boss since Wood Man, but its still action, right from the start. Then you watch your wee Willy "pass on", and its back to fighting. Immediately afterwards is a quickie establishment of the plot, and then an entire game of McLargehuge exploring caves and forests while thubbing rabites until candy comes out. It's a thing of beauty. But how does Sword of Mana begin? Well, first there's the legend, so far so good. And then it's "the past" when Big was little Big, and a whole giant story of Big attempting to protect Girl (we'll name her Lindsay Lohan) , and then his parents get killed by the Darth Vader of the game, and then Big completely fails to protect Lindsay, and, poof, it was all a recurring nightmare taking place while Big was asleep because now he's a monster gladiator, and he talks to his pals Willy and Amanda about dream interpretation and "what it all means", and then Big has to talk to the right people until an event occurs that finally allows Big to fight the easiest boss since Wood Man. In short, Final Fantasy Adventure starts with an actual game, whereas Sword of Mana starts with text box after text box. To further illustrate this point, illustrations... As you can see, Sword of Mana starts very trim on the game play and very big on the reading. It doesn't get much better. Whereas there is an awful lot of (fun) exploring and adventuring and rabite whacking, there's also a lot of very, very unnecessary dialogue. Also, oddly, not enough dialogue. As an example, there's about seventy billion times that Big laments having to kill everything in his path, despite the fact that he's been a gladiator since childhood and he's killing guys with names like Dark Lord. Big could kill Saddam and then get all weepy about it. Need I even mention that the Big off FFA has absolutely no problem with killing people who are immediately trying to kill him? I enjoy playing as a character with interesting motivations, but when the dude is getting teary eyed about killing the guy who is oppressively ruling the country, wiping out villages, and even executed his parents, well, it's a bit much. On the other side of the coin, whereas you get to hear about Big's growing need to be a hippy every ten seconds, you barely get any interaction with Lindsay Lohan. And, somehow, by the end of the game the two are madly in love. In other words, the plot kicking around this game could either use some trimming, or at the very least someone checking out whether or not all those dialogue bubbles popping up actually work toward an ending that's remotely cohesive. I am a lover of game play, and, frankly, if these guys were just constantly heiling Hitler during every dialogue, I wouldn't mind if the game was at least fun to play. And, well, it almost works. Arguably, the biggest problem is with the weapon system. Much like in Zelda, a game with which FFA shares many similarities, our hero has a variety of "tools". In this case, instead of always being equipped with a sword and then occasionally swapping your boomerang for a lantern, Big uses each of his weapons as a tool. Axes will take down trees, while the chain is used for pulling Big across gaps. Also, in both FFA and SoM, certain monsters are weak to certain weapons, and invincible to others. But this is where the games diverge. In FFA, you would rarely see a monster that was invulnerable to a weapon that you just used on the last monster. Different dungeons often required different weapons, but once you were exploring a dungeon, the only time you ever had to switch weapons was for a special puzzle room or in order to cross a gap via chain. Basically, it meant once you figured out what you were doing, the weapon menu didn't have to be accessed every five seconds. And for Sword of Mana? It's possible to be simultaneously facing three different monsters that require three different weapons. And there's no "quick" way to switch weapons, like in the Mega Man X series where L & R switch weapons immediately, no, here you must open the menus and select a new weapon every single time you see a new monster. This wouldn't be so bad if it didn't occur every three seconds, but, oh well, time to waste some time fishing out your under-used set of knuckles just because a mimic popped up. Hope you have a lot of free time when fighting in Sword of Mana. And the thing that was bound to happen, but we hoped it wouldn't: The Lester Factor. In Final Fantasy Adventure, Big was often aided by a variety of characters. Watts the dwarf, Amanda the valkrye, Lindsay Lohan the girl, Lester the douche, and Bogard the knight, to name a few. Each of these guys were completely invincible, and with good reason, they walked over spikes and into enemy creatures pretty much all the time. Had they had measurable HP, they'd be dead within five seconds. They barely helped at all, but each came with a separate "Ask" command that would generally heal Big, provide clues, or even change the background music. Big could've gone his whole quest without his buddies' help, but they added a little variety to the dungeons they were often attached to, and every once in a while they came in handy. Now there's no mistaking a single one of your partners for handy. Many of Big's same buds return, but now with limited HP and very limited AI. Lester the Douche, for instance, is my absolute favorite. Tell him to use his magic all you want, he's got MP and he's not using it. He's got a bow and arrow, and he's not aiming. And, just when you think he can't get more annoying, he repeatedly attempts to attack an inanimate trap that just kills him. And now you've got the choice between being followed by a ghost for the next hundred rooms or revive him and watch him find new ways to commit suicide. I swear that moron grabbed some Drano out of my inventory and guzzled it wholeheartedly. There's absolutely no point to keeping your allies alive, because they never do anything useful, ever. Very, very rarely Lindsay Lohan will heal Big's hurting ass, but he's got to be beaten into retardation before she'll do anything about all that bleeding. This might all actually work if, like in Secret of Mana, the producers worked out some two player mode where an actual human could control that sprite next to Big running face first into the spikes, but, no a two player mode was just too much for poor ol' Squeenix. However, there was likely a two player mode planned at some point, as it would explain why you're stuck with Lester for absolutely no reason for much of the game ("Hm, my sister is dead, so is the guy who led her to her death. Hm, may as well hang around with muscle boy for the rest of my life."). Final Fantasy Adventure made Big's allies fun, SoM turns them into walking burdens. Side quests have been added to SoM, and they mainly consist of killing the same monster over and over again until they randomly drop an item you need. The less said the better. Aside from those gigantic, titty twisting flaws, that, allow me to reiterate, didn't exist in the out-dated version, Sword of Mana is a pretty fun game. When you're actually playing and not navigating menus or text boxes, it's rather enjoyable to run around and solve super easy puzzles while trouncing rabites. The new magic system for the game is kind of interesting, if not a little useless, and the graphical updates definitely tie Sword of Mana closer to its sequels/prequels. There's a good game here, it's just hiding under a big pile of really aggravating revisions. Play Final Fantasy Adventure, play it a lot, and ignore Sword of Mana, it's likely not worth the aggravation. Technology marches on, but if it continues to ignore all that is good, well then I welcome Skynet. Final Rating: Final Fantasy Adventure receives 92% of this lovely image of the Lady of the Lake with Excalibur. Sword of Mana is stuck with 72% of Grave Digger's Excalibur album. There are no rabites at Game'in

Hey, everybody look, it's Chickfistmagnet.com's first sidebar. Woo! Maybe there'll be some information over here that is related to the article, but not exactly something that fits in with the body. We'll just have to wait and see! Final Fantasy Gaiden As many of you know, Final Fantasy Adventure is Seiken Densetsu in Japan. However, what some of you may have missed is that its full title is Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden, with Gaiden translating to "side story". Yes, that's right, while later games dropped the subtitle and allusions, Final Fantasy Adventure was basically intended as a Final Fantasy spin-off. There, now you can easily connect Jake and the Fat Man to FFA. Nowadays, everyone is either elated or complaining about Final Fantasy 7 garnering 70 spin-offs this year (Advent Children, Dirge of Cerberus, Grand Theft Auto: Midgar Mayhem, Ehrergeiz), but, as you can see, Square has been whoring Final Fantasy for years, and it was just a matter of time before it decided to focus on individual games. If you didn't notice the Final Fantasy relations in Final Fantasy Adventure, then you're marginally retarded, or at least have never played Final Fantasy I. As many will recognize, Big's spell repertoire is completely lifted from FFI (Cure, Sleep, Fire, Ice, Nuke, etc.), and while his sword and shield may be oddly close to Link, his eventual wielding of the Excalibur is very Final Fantasy. If you pay attention to the graphics, it's quite easy to notice that the red mage, white mage, black mage, and dwarf sprites are all littered about Mana Land, along with many others not seen in 8-Bit Theatre. Additionally, the four fiends from Final Fantasy I (Lich, Kary, Kraken, Tiamat) revive to bother our protagonist. Lich and Kary particularly resemble their NES counterparts, and it's rather nice to morning star them to death for all that time I had to spend in their damn caves in FFI. Fiendish bastards. Since I don't feel like doing research beyond Final Fantasy Adventure, I'll claim some other games designated as "Final Fantasy Gaiden" are: Final Fantasy Legends, Chocobo Dungeon, Chocobo Racing, Ninja Gaiden, Tobal No. 1, and Mega Man X 6. Final Fantasy spin-offs apparently have a 6% fun rate, so get ready for Final Fantasy: Aeris's Speak and Spell.

All non-copyrighted material is copyright 2005 Robert Pollack. Reproduction of most anything without Robert's express permission in whole or in part is prohibited by law. Ain't that a kick in the pants?