Dawn of Mana

[Demon Cleaner]

Dawn of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 4) has been released. It got rather bad reviews, can't say anything, don't have it yet, and it's not yet available on the net (I mean illegally ).

[Harrison]

Lets hope it is better than some reviews think. I love some of the previous titles on the Mana series.

[Demon Cleaner]

Here are some excerpts from magazines:

Picture a surfer being tossed into a vicious undertow--that uncontrollable motion is how fighting through Dawn of Mana feels.

Sorry old school Mana fans, this is nothing like that gem back on the SNES. This is a pure action game with a gooey artificial RPG coating. The controls are horrible, the level design is seriously lacking, bosses can be frustratingly difficult, and not even the story will keep you playing.

Hardcore franchise fans will no doubt want to play it because the story line does fill in some interesting gaps in the Mana universe's history, but this one's a rental at best.

Dawn of Mana is a hodgepodge of ideas that range from nonsensical to decent, all smooshed together in a failure of a game.

Then there's the combat. It's messy. You'll fling ranged spells at enemies and they'll mysteriously miss, presumably due to line-of-sight issues, but it's difficult to tell. Even melee combat seems buggy at times, with monsters you can't hit even though they're stood right next to you.

But that doesn't discourage us, as we d/l the game anyway

[Harrison]

Exactly! How bad can a "free" game be?

[Submeg]

So bad it destroys your abilities to play real games?

[Demon Cleaner]

Tested yesterday. Lovely childish graphics, a bit Kingdom Hearts style, real time combat, which gets very tedious with the time. Nothing special about it.