Dawn of Mana

[Asheran Mojomaster]

Has anyone played this? I LOVED SECRET OF MANA, as well as Chrono Trigger and Secret of Evermore. I recently bought this game hoping for a 3D updated version of Secret of Mana. I don't know what the fuck the people making this were thinking. They took everything good about Secret of Mana, in fact they took EVERYTHING from Secret of Mana, out of the game. The only connection I can find is its the same "world" and the same "spirits" that give you magic. The game is 8 chapters, the fighting is tedious and hard. Its impossible to set the camera to follow you and the minimap sucks so you can get attacked and not even know the direction sometimes.

You start out with the only 3 weapons you use. A sword, a whip, and a slingshot. The slingshot does almost no damage but if you set it to certain modes you can use gems obtained from spirits and around the world to do special magical attacks, but its a far cry from the old mode of using the spirits to cast different level spells on whatever you are fighting. The whip can be used to grab monsters or objects which you can spin around, slam into other objects or monsters, or throw into other monsters or objects. If you throw a monster into another one, or throw an object into a monster they get afraid\confused and dont attack. You then get gems and money from hiting them. The gems give you attack, hps, mana, etc which you need to level up but if you do not use the confusion there is no way to level up.

Its annoying having to do this every time you fight any enemy. I miss being able to just run through fighting my to get experience to level. Whatever happened to that? Also, the maximum level for your sword \ whip (fighting abilities) are capped at 4 as well as slingshot\spirit. And the shittiest part? Every chapter you start back at lvl 1 in both. So that means more grinding and throwing units around until you can get strong enough to move through the level. I'm ranting I know, and I've only played the first 2 chapters, but from what I've read now I don't have much to look forward to. This game had so much potential but they completely dropped the ball.

Anyone actually played this game through? Does it ever get any more fun? Should I just sell it now and go get Secret of Mana on an emulator?