Rise of Mana

If you didn’t love Secret of Mana on the Super Nintendo, I don’t know what to tell you. The Boy, the Girl, the sprite, the dragon, the tree, that weird fluffy thing—all those secrets waiting to be found, wonders tucked into every corner, the golden city somewhere beyond the horizon. It was the kind of game you don’t forget. The sequel never officially came out in Germany, which never particularly bothered me until now, because there’s a new Secret of Mana game sitting there for free, and I’m suddenly paying attention.

Square-Enix put out Rise of Mana on iOS in Japan this week. It’s free-to-play, which means the expected microtransactions, but it exists in the same world as the original—those blob creatures, the weird angry chests, the whole strange cast of characters. Android version comes in the summer. Europe might get it eventually.

I watched the announcement video and walked out more confused than I went in. It’s this aggressively colorful mobile game, which is fine in itself, but what I actually wanted was the original game with modern production: same 2D art, real RPG depth, dialogue that actually reads like it was written by humans, a world big enough to get genuinely lost in. Instead it looks like a gacha game wearing Mana costumes. Could be incredible, I guess. Most things could be incredible in theory. I’m skeptical though. When it actually comes out I might end up playing it obsessively for months, or I might open it once and never think about it again. Either way is possible.