Oceans Dream

I made 7 posts on the various mana games I have played. I gave each of them 30 minutes. Basically, I wanted to see how each of them did their introductions, how far I could get in 30 minutes, how strong you can get and how spaced out items/spells/equipment/characters are. If you don’t follow the Mana series (You would likely at least heard of them I think): This chart goes from oldest to newest. With the exception of Heroes of Mana (and Dawn of Mana, which is the only one I have not played), they are all action RPGs.

I set up a chart and put it up as a pdf:

Mana Comparison (PDF)

It’s not necessarily that a game with the most story in the beginning or longest gaming time without cutscenes is the “best”. Although, that’s how it worked out here. Seiken Densetsu 3 and Final Fantasy adventure are the highest rated Mana games. The one I liked least there is Sword of Mana. The problem is not even that “There is a lot of dialogue” or a lot to read. I want something INTERESTING to read.

Also, added Triptychs blog to the recommended blog list. You should follow him on twitter too. He links lots of interesting articles/sites/blogs to read, so it would definitely be worth a look!

There is an update on Marys blog as well, on remaking her old game.

My guest post is up at Super adventures in gaming! This one is about an old PC RPG called Might and Magic VI. I didn’t really do an in depth look this time. I seem to be playing a bunch of non linear RPGs nowadays. Oh well!

I might need to trim the blog list again though and possibly hide inactive ones. I want them to be interesting to people in some way, not just dead blogs that haven’t been updated in a while. Perhaps I’ll separate it into different types, like game article focused, or game project update focused. Would be more problematic with those like mine who are generally both. I will post some of my own game progress here one of these days!

Why do I not have Gamasutra on the recommended links? It is added!

Now for an Ocean event! I played through all of the Mana games (except Dawn of Mana as I don’t own it) for only 30 minutes, and wrote up some stuff to compare it. I will go by first game to last, rather than the order I played. I did not take many screens as this is not a full walkthrough of that part, but rather a comparison.

Children of Mana is one of the later Mana games, available for the DS. I am a big fan of the early Mana series, from Final Fantasy adventure up to Legend of Mana. I enjoyed each of those. However, the newer Mana games were shaky, ranging from dull dialogue to flawed gameplay. They still had their strong points, and I think they could have done well with some changes.  The graphics were never a downside in the mana games. They are all very colorful and is probably the strongest area of the game. I have done a short playthrough again recently, which you can find here.

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