Unfortunately for Mana fans, Heroes of Mana continues to suffer from the critical flaws GameSpy initially discovered in our hands-on preview. Still, as a first-pass attempt at a real-time strategy game on the DS, it does show promise for future titles...
The Mana series has been around for decades and spawned multiple titles in that time. Here's how each title ranks up.
Alex S. from Link-Cable writes: "My quest to complete my massive backlog has been making some pretty good progress lately as a few weeks ago I wrapped up EarthBound: Beginnings and now another RPG is up with a look at Heroes of Mana from the Nintendo DS. ‘Wait… what is this? It’s not an RPG at all!’ Nope, Heroes of Mana takes the traditionally action-RPG focused series and completely changes it up to deliver a real-time strategy experience that plays more like a cross between Starcraft and Advance Wars with… pretty terrible results. I know it’s sometimes poor form to give away your full impressions of a game in the first few sentences but wow did I not like this game."
Nathan Stiles writes:
"I stated once before that I’d rather play through a train wreck than play something bland, and Heroes of Mana has proven me wrong, or at least proven that I should choose my words more carefully. Then again, Heroes of Mana is less of a train wreck and more of an entire continent sinking into the ocean."
