Secret of Mana

have to agree with most in this comment box - the visuals are stellar, music is quite good, but the combat and gameplay just feel awful. Honestly prefer Final Fantasy Adventure to this one quite a bit.

A lot of the acclaim I think this first had was that RPGs were a fucking hard sell in the West. Most people were not playing RPGs on the NES there and surely most people weren't getting RPGs to run on their PCs

So for a lot of people, this was their first step into this kind of territory. Not unlike how the N64, GoldenEye was among the first shooters people played.

I really like the music in this game, but all the nostalgia in the world can't really make me love it forever.

Most cathartic score on this entire site.

Idk combat is just ok, it's not the main appeal for me anyway

The score alone takes this to a 4. The story, vibe, and yes, the combat, makes it a 5 for me.

This game is about the art style, the score, and story. They tried their best with the mechanics but we can all agree they did a bad job in that department.

Still, though, I've been chasing the high of playing this as a 10 year old in 1993 ever since.

That Japanese box art gotta be up there with RE4 EU version. Just beautiful.

I love this on a vibes level (Into the Thick of It is one of my favorite video game songs ever) but goddamn you guys weren't lying about the combat being ass. Zelda 2 still gets way more hate but I think it was a much better take on the "action JRPG" thing.