Heroes of Mana (DS)

The Mana series of games is best known for its fantasy role-playing adventures, but as part of a company-wide initiative to diversify the systems and genres its popular series covered, Square Enix put together Heroes of Mana. A real-time strategy game, the Nintendo DS likely seemed like a natural fit for the genre, the touch screen opening up the opportunity to quickly command groups of troops and so all that was seemingly needed was having such action feature familiar elements and creatures from the Mana series. Unfortunately, it seems like the touch screen controls were only accommodating in theory, because while Heroes of Mana can put together a fantasy epic, it fails miserably at executing the fundamentals of commanding troops in battle.

During a typical chapter of Heroes of Mana you’ll need to gather resources to produce creatures who will serve as your armies to fight against the forces of an enemy that is already entrenched in the area you’re pushing into. Some battles will have a set amount of enemies to take out, others they’ll be trying to gather the same resources to bolster their ranks, and a few have unique goals like needing to reach certain areas of the map or destroy specific objects. A few missions even have your own units restricted, the player only able to utilize the troops they’re provided with at the start so any loss could conceivably have disastrous consequences in the broader battle. Unfortunately, unit management is an oddly sloppy affair. You can tap individual units to instruct them, draw a circle around a group to command them, or press an icon that makes all creatures or characters of a certain role perform whatever instructions you have for them. Unfortunately, commanding even a single unit can sometimes encounter incredibly unusual issues, mostly because pretty much every troop in the game is prone to fits of stupidity that arise from some rather odd path-finding problems.

The action for Heroes of Mana takes place on a grid, and the characters are incredibly rigid in wanting to obey the limits of it. This means if you command a group of troops to move forward and even for a second they notice something is in the square before them (even if it’s a fellow member of the group) they will attempt to adjust their route rather than perhaps waiting a second or allowing for any sort of overlap. Sometimes this manifests as just walking a little to the side and then finding their way to that square, other times that troop might decide the only way to reach their intended location is now to walk the entire perimeter of the map, sometimes throwing themselves into the hands of an enemy or worse. Heroes of Mana will not have every enemy on the battlefield to start at times, and once you reach certain parts of the map, you will trigger an event that can lead to more foes appearing as reinforcements. This would already make it hard to play strategically since you can’t anticipate that suddenly a squadron of dragons will happen to appear from the battlefield’s borders, but if a meandering unit happens to enter an area that triggers such an event, you can be blindsided even further. You might then try and consider only commanding small groups you can manage effectively so you can redirect any stragglers to follow a smarter path, but there can often be battles on multiple fronts or ones that demand more immediate attention. Certain troops such as your workers used to gather resources are designed to be sent on persistent tasks like gathering the Gaia rocks and Treant berries needed to build unit-making structures and then pay for the creation of those units respectively. However, this automatic process is easily disrupted and the workers might go bumble off and trigger issues elsewhere all because they tried to do their job but ever so briefly a light impediment stood in their way.

These issues continue beyond just the simple movement of your troops as well. When you want your units to attack a target they can similarly struggle to figure out how to line up and attack an enemy. Many foes like boss characters or tougher monsters will require aggression from a whole group attacking from multiple angles and charging in with a little army all at once is key to overwhelming the foe to avoid things like devastatingly strong attacks or the foe retreating to where they can heal with impunity. However, units can often seem unable to figure out how to press in close to attack because again they fail to comprehend a proper way to approach their destination. One unit will likely enter a space near the foe and start attacking, but that will require every other member of your army to adjust their paths, sometimes again taking a full tour of the level to try and get there or just walking back and forth as if they expect a space to open up. Open areas can exist to the sides or behind the target and yet your units will decide to take circuitous routes to reach these spots rather than just walking to the nearest opening, and while they’re having their issues they’ll be left open to attack and refuse to retaliate until they find the exact position they desire. Moving characters are inconsistent in other ways, the player sometimes completely unable to hit moving targets for unclear reasons while their own units are fair pickings and at other times, even a fragile resource gathering troop who isn’t really meant for battle will stop its task to throw out an attack just so it can get killed. You can’t tell troops to guard an area so if anything comes near while they’re idling they’ll chase after it, except if it’s perhaps a foe with a projectile attack who will instead bombard them from afar while the unit dumbly stands in place and takes it.

The constant incompetence of your army is a frequent thorn in the side of any mission in the game’s story, but rarely, you can see glimmers of what the game could have been like. Out of the 27 chapters on offer, chapter 22 particularly shines with a map that boxes in your troops enough they won’t often have room to bumble off and you can frequently make forward pushes with your group reliably. You can start to see where the troops would shine if they worked properly, archers able to find battlements to stand on and snipe from, your heavy units able to block routes and defend them, and flying units can slip around obstructions to catch enemy units by surprise. There is some thought put into the ways your different units can benefit your team, all of them having weaknesses and resistances that influence how much damage they take or deal based on what they’re up against. Archers can deal heavy damage to fliers but fliers can resist the slow and sturdy heavy units’ attacks. There are some special units that exist outside the system, and the titular Heroes of Mana actually refer to a small group of story characters you can bring to battles. You can equip the heroes with new gear to make them tougher, give them guardian spirits that allow them to activate a special ability in a fight (although the button to do so can constantly disappear and reappear as the game seems to struggle to tell when it’s eligible to use), and they are available at the start of a mission so they can repel enemy forces or even complete a few early chapters on their own. Most battles will require you to first gather resources and then attempt strategic pushes with the units you created and you can even get the ability to unleash powerful magical creatures to attack the whole battlefield later in the adventure, there certainly being room for strategic battles but you’ll only find these rarely because of how often your own units will ruin your plans just by wandering off.

The story of Heroes of Mana is one of a world at war. The starting band of heroes were sent on a scouting mission to the beastman kingdom of Ferolia, but it appears your home nation of Pedda had no interest in the results of your work as they already begin to attack it. Pedda is a small island nation that doesn’t seem to have the power to begin a global conquest, but they begin installing a set of dark mirrors in each nation they conquer and are able to ally with specific groups like the dragon clan and a nomadic desert tribe to allow them to continue their work. This ruthless conquest disgusts the game’s main character Roget and his allies and while at first they try to warn other nations, soon their efforts instead turn to seeking out Mana crystals so they can acquire the power to properly repel Pedda’s forces to try and restore peace to the world. There are a few recurring enemy characters who lead Pedda’s armies and allies, and unfortunately the game has you routinely beat them and have them at your mercy only for your heroes to literally stand by and let them walk away after a cutscene so they can continue to cause trouble, rarely making any effort to justify why they were let go. You’ll meet other characters from the nations you’re trying to help who join your cause and thus can be selected as part of your batch of heroes to utilize in battle, some having unique powers such as a healing hero. Healing is a rare commodity, although at the same time it can be a bit guaranteed with a condition in the form of your mobile base, the Nightswan.

The Nightswan airship is where your structures are built, all your unit producing facilities, magical creature shrines, and helpful structures like a healing house all operating from within the Nightswan. The Nightswan is mobile and can be moved to different anchor points around a map to allow for unit production to happen closer to the frontlines, but at the same time, the Nightswan’s movement is prone to unusual path-finding choices. It can be destroyed and some missions actually have you destroy the enemy’s equivalent airship base. A bigger annoyance though comes from how having all your structures in one spot leads to units making some poor decisions. Newly made troops all have to come out on the anchor chain and ones delivering resources for construction efforts also have to climb up that chain, so traffic jams are not uncommon and of course any time such a thing occurs you can never be confident your units will make smart decisions. What’s more, when you produce a batch of troops they will all come out standing in a cluster, and efforts to move them away from the Nightswan anchor can be difficult because they have little room to maneuver and more chances to invent circuitous routes. It is nice to have a mobile base and again, in levels like the castle siege of chapter 22 it can come together beautifully because a confluence of limitations prevent the usual problems from arising, but it is also no doubt an exacerbating factor since it leads to inevitable unit crowds that strain this game’s poor path-finding features.

Completing missions in story mode will unlock equivalent bonus missions where maps are repurposed with new objectives and enemies, but by the time you complete the story you will likely want nothing to do with a more difficult and thus more volatile set of missions. Story chapters give you a score based on how well it perceives you did, your equipment often a reward based on that letter grade and if you happened to find invisible pick ups around the map during play. The rankings can sometimes seem quite generous, although it’s likely because your victory might come from learning some exploit to beat the mission with fewer units than expected or far faster than the game anticipated. This can arise from things like having an enemy instead have the pathing errors that means they stand in place and let your troops attack them as they can’t reach their desired destination, or it can instead arise from the game’s generous save system. You have three save files to work with and you can save the exact battle state of a level at any time. This does allow for you to potentially have a good checkpoint if you’re worried enemies might suddenly appear all around the map once you trigger and event, and if you do lose you can do a full mission restart so you won’t be stuck if you saved after the battle was basically lost anyway. It is a weak bandage, but this is at least a way to accommodate the movement problems and you can even start planning around future knowledge of the battle, doing things like stationing units right beside where you know enemies might spawn. This does mean some maps the strategy is to lose first and then abuse foreknowledge on the second attempt, but at least that’s an option available to you. It is a shame some nice artistic direction and some fun if mostly simple characters were wasted on this flawed RTS, but the problems become too numerous to ignore despite how aesthetic touches or accommodating factors try to ease the impact.

THE VERDICT: There is a good game to be found in Heroes of Mana but so rarely will you get a glimpse of it as it is crushed under an abundance of fundamental flaws. A decent story of war, a nice look and music, and the rare mission that actually lets you strategize and command your troops properly show the game Heroes of Mana could have been, but this real-time strategy game crumples under the constant issues with making your units behave as intended. Their constant movement problems can trigger events your group isn’t prepared for, or they’ll leave themselves open as they refuse to attack unless they’re standing just right, and the mobile base just leads to further crowding problems that inevitably triggers more undesired meandering around a battlefield where heading into the wrong area can spell death for them and maybe your entire army. Heroes of Mana is always an agonizing balancing act of hoping units do as instructed instead of inexplicably concocting baffling plans of approach in a game that is supposed to be about careful and smart strategy.

And so, I give Heroes of Mana for Nintendo DS…

A TERRIBLE rating. The war plot could have been a simple framework for the action even if it’s lacking in deep ideas or characters, the battlefields feel like they’re constructed well for real-time strategy play as shown when they do actually work, and the game does concoct a few different mission types to shake things up and demand new tactical approaches… but it doesn’t really matter. The real battle will always be with trying to keep your units competent enough to stay on task, this effort feeling like herding particularly flighty sheep. The grid-based movement system is a particularly poor fit for this style of action, the idea that characters occupy a full square even when in movement leading to the many woes when a character’s path is ever so briefly impeded and they seem to believe that unit will be a stationary roadblock they need to move around. If the units had a small degree of patience to see if their route is truly impeded or perhaps flags in the code to indicate whatever is blocking them is in motion things could be smoother, although eliminating the grid entirely might have been better and then characters could wind around things in their way rather than trying to draw rigid lines to their destination. The save file system is certainly a godsend though, it allowing for some degree of offsetting the baffling decisions your troops will make so you can retry a moment that was ruined by artificial stupidity. There was even a late-game boss character I defeated by utilizing the exact same tactic after a reload because the units just decided to be more reasonable at the second attempt. The game deciding to have events that are triggered by where your units are present is a particularly bad fit for a game where movement is a constant problem, but again another system could have been put in place like a time pause feature so you won’t have hop across a battlefield to find a lost troop to set them right, potentially abandoning units in the midst of them fighting a battle where they might need immediate orders. Just being able to quickly correct the paths of a few units and then get back to work would help a great deal, although there could have also been any number of features to make management easier like having behavioral commands like units standing their ground or retreating when attacked.

If not for the save files, Heroes of Mana would be at real risk of being an utterly miserable game. A few early missions are too simple to be bugged by and rarely a chapter will come together because it naturally restricts the ability for your units to screw things up despite your orders being sound, but if you had to redo missions again and again and just hope things would come together the next time, Heroes of Mana would be almost irredeemable. As mentioned earlier though, Heroes of Mana could have been a good RTS if it functioned properly, not every idea solid but you can often quite easily see how a mission was meant to be enjoyed even if your units will do their best to ensure you don’t. A lot of the blame does seemingly fall on what looks like a minuscule programming team, I only found three listed names under “Program” and even then some of the people are listed specifically for things not tied to the movement like “Menu Program”. Likely they were overburdened and thus unable to realize the concept, and in a genre where strategy is key to its appeal, just hoping things will hang together well is not a wise approach to take. Heroes of Mana embodies the danger of sending an established series into another genre just for the sake of it, the game’s creators not seeming to have a good idea on how to comfortably execute a game concept outside their usual niche.