New stuff is failure.

CoM = I liked it, to tell you the truth I loved it. Lots of people and crits hated it.

HoM = Wow they didn't pass kindergarten.

Man, I hate it that gaming has in a way gone so far so that it's almost not about the games any longer. They better up the graphics and controls, but that's all (in most cases). My favourite console of all time is SNES, and is it because of the graphics and control? No, it's because of the GAMES.

But still, I understand that the game developers just want money, but couldn't the ones actually working on the game try to make a good game? Don't they have any desire to make a good game? Sometimes I'm wondering if they're just blindly making a game because of how bad it can turn out.

My version of how it all went down;

We got Secret of Evermore instead of Seken Dunsetsu 3.

For all the nay-saying that it wasn't the case, what we can see is that we got a poorly exicuted game with a dumbass plot (which, it has to be noted, is worse than minimal plot, as was the case with SoM) and did not get the supieror game, that being SD3. The cake, my friends, was a lie.

From there, to be curt, it all went south.

I thought SoE stayed much more true to the gameplay of SoM and looking back on the two of them, I actually enjoyed playing SoE a lot. My biggest wish is that it had two player.

SoM, good times. I remember I, and my best friend playing that endlessly.

I am somewhat surprised no remakes have come out, let alone remakes/releases of SD3. They sure did it for FF3, so how SoM/SD was not remade is beyond me. Add in the fact that it would truly be awesome to play it wirelessly on the DS (although I could just see it NOT having wireless as disappointments occur almost daily video-game wise anymore), and there you go. Heck, if somehow they could build something that connects SD2 with SD3 (stats, items, etc), they could use that, along with a new Mana game, and call it the Universe of Mana system that somehow puts it all together online.

Ok, so I am dreaming now...it won't happen.

I feel that the developers keep trying to become innovative that they lost the idea of the Mana series. But it happens with game titles. Soon, it becomes "We gotta freshen it up or else people won't buy it" mentality that results in what is the Mana series.

The series is a complete and utter joke now. It's dead to me.

Play Magazine said the same thing. They prefaced their Dawn of Mana review with "The Mana series is dead..." and gave it a 5/10. Their Heroes of Mana review a few months later was a respectable 8/10, though. I'm not convinced it's over yet, not unless they really mess up Secret of Mana in some way; a bad port or something. Even if the series has to live on in re-releases of the first three games, maybe it won't be so bad.

That'd be nice. Still waiting for a virtual console version of SoM and SD3 with online multi-player support or DS versions with Wi-fi, myself.

I've played both, and I found Secret of Evermore to be the superior game. Neither was as good as Secret of Mana, but Evermore was closer to the source. SD3 is where the series went downhill, and it's revered more than it deserves to be simply because of its mythical status of Never Released In The US.

Sure, SD3 was pretty and had a lot of style, but the game felt lacking, gameplay-wise. The character choices weren't a good replacement for the multiple weapons of SoM, especially since all the characters tended to be really quirky, like the werewolf guy. It's hard to put into words, but the game felt a little too stiff as compared to Evermore, which was built off the SoM engine. Square didn't learn, though, which is why Legend of Mana was even worse.

The plot was lousy to boot, if you're going to bring that point up. It's equally minimal and cliched, and continues with the series' annoying trend of having a bright, cheery world hosting a story that just makes you want to cut yourself. I at least cared about going from place to place in Evermore - in SD3 I hated moving on because it meant that once again the good guys were going to fail with more emo than you can shake a Kingdom Hearts cosplayer at.

Plus, Evermore featured pre-burnout Jeremy Soule.

I stand by my "Evermore is an american game trying to be a japanese one" comment.

The music is attrocious, the multiplayer from SOM is gone, the cameos are so hamfisted to hell, Changodog makes for a lowsey partner and the story is a total pisstake and had realy bad writing.

At the very lest with SD3, I could play it and go "Yes, I see where this evolves from SOM" in terms of Story, Gameplay (Will admit that the numbr of Human Playable Chracters went from 3 to 2), mechanics from SOM (the Treasure Wheel).

Evermore is a weeaboo game, it marked the begining of Mana's suck, that's where I'm going with it.

There actually is a patch for the ROM to allow someone else to control the dog. I net-played through the whole game that way last year with a friend.

I liked Evermore, but I have a hard time saying it was really a Mana game since an entirely different team created it and it essentially just copied the game mechanics straight from SoM but reduced the main character count -1. Still awesome, though.

Oh damn, I'd love to have that patch. I'd totally go and play Evermore with a friend that way.

Wasn't sure if the site had it or not but it does. :x

You say that like it's a bad thing. Updates to game mechanics shouldn't and don't have to be sweeping new systems of gadgets and gimmicks, I feel.

god I would kill for a game to basically lift SoM's gameplay wholesale...

Oh yeah, how could I forget about Secret of Evermore? I guess since I haven't really regarded it as a Seiken Densetsu game, because it really isn't right? Anyways, I thought it was a really good game, not as good as SoM but still it was good although different. The alchemy ability or whatever it was called was very cool, maybe a bit lacking in some aspects but still very cool.

And I really don't think SD3 was boring and stiff as someone stated, maybe it was not as flexible in the same way as SoM with the changing of weapons, but I just simply LOVED the good/evil class system. I just can't get enough out of it! I have played the game so many times, and it's still fun because I just create another kind of party setup, with different characters and different classes. And I actually thought the story was really great, it was nice that you got different endgame scenarios and bosses from different lead characters, which rose the replayability factor even more. I just can't get enough of this game! I feel like playing it right now in fact :D

Seiken Densetsu 3 was fun for me because I played it right after the first English patch came out. Back then you could actually say there was something of an SD3 community, with boards lighting up across the net with people discovering things about a Super Nintendo game that came out like six years earlier. It was really something. The plot may not have been as cohesive as Secret of Mana, but it did have more replay value with all the different class and character combinations you could experiment with. The music was good too, Kikuta came back to write the score and it turned out really great. A little less light and fluttery than SoM's soundtrack, but enjoyable nonetheless.

That's what the Mana series needs, more Hiroki Kikuta.

I think a large part of the problem is a problem that many franchises also have to deal with. The gaming community is much bigger then it was back in the NES and SNES days. There weren't as many people so the games actually HAD to be good to get people to buy it. Now there are so many gamers that just about any developer can pump out a piece of crap and still break even as long as the game has the right look/name.

Oh and just for the record. I saw Legend of Mana at a friend's house and have never looked at the series since. I loved Secret of Mana and I wanted to play the sequel that was never released over here. But none of the games since then seemed to really look worth the time.

I also played SD3 after the translation patch came out and at the time, it was a BIG deal. I did enjoy the game but in retrospect, it doesn't come anywhere close to SoM. The game mechanics just don't hold up for me. I love how fluid and quick the characters are in SoM but in SD3, it always feels like you're crawling towards the enemy.

LoM continued that pattern, introduced a bunch of incredibly irritating characters and mostly dispensed with a plot altogether (which probably isn't a bad thing considering past attempts). I didn't care for the game but compared to later games in the series, it's a freaking masterpiece.

OUt of curosity, do people play SoM online (with emulators multiplayer features)? I am a bit surprised I have yet to see one person mention something like that in this thread, and wondering if for some reason it wasn't possible.

Actually I mentioned a patch for Evermore to do that very thing for that game, so of course I've done it for Secret of Mana. I assume the people who acted interested in the patch have probably done it at some point too.