Sword of Mana (Brownie Brown - GBA - 2003)

Requested by @managodess

Sword of Mana | Square Enix

Game Boy Advance | 2003

Today I beat Final Fatnasy Adventure, AKA Adventure of Mana, AKA Sword of Mana, AKA Seiken Densetsu.

I thought this game just had Final Fantasy slapped onto the name to sell more copies in the west but no, it shares a little DNA in that the main character is basically just the fighter from Final Fantasy 1, with other FF classes making guest appearances, there's a status ailment that turns you into a Moogle that takes damage very easily, and you get a Chocobo friend in the game... I actually missed him unfortunately, he's required to progress the game so they have a random Chocobo you never met scoop you up after you take a fall.

This game shares a lot of it's DNA with another game as well. It really wants to be Square's answer to the Legend of Zelda. And it's a pretty good amalgamation of Zelda 1 and Link's Awakening, though it's still very much it's own thing. I very much appreciated this style of game. Especially on the Game Boy, there's just something about top down adventure/RPG games with Game Boy Aesthetics that I love so much that isn't really the same on the NES and I can't quite put my finger on it.

This game wasn't perfect though. Enemies often don't take any knockback... they do Knockback SOMETIMES but not always. And sometimes depending on your weapon, you pull them toward you, and you take damage... Also many enemies are immune to your weapons and you have to switch between them to deal any damage to them. This would be fine if it were a handful of enemies but there were so many, and I could not remember which enemies were immune to what, so often times when an enemy didn't take damage, I would just walk past them instead of switching weapons. There were practically no situations where I was required to kill all enemies so there was no incentive to bother with some of them.

Also, this game's door lock system is dog shit. You buy keys... specific enemies can drop keys but only in the early game, if you run out of keys, you have to leave to buy more...and guess what... Doors re-lock themselves when you leave. Sometiems they re-lock while you're still in the dungeon. It was absolute bullshit.

None of the flaws were deal breakers though. I had a great time with this game. I am definitely more inclined to start up Secret of Mana, I started that game on my SNES Classic Edition since it came on the stock console, but I never got around to finishing it. I think i'll look for a decent QOL patch though. As for my next big Game Boy game, I don't know. Maybe back to DK with either DK94 or DK Land 2... or something else.

Today in "I forgot these even existed" - Lenticular Promotional postcards from the 2003 Square Enix release Sword of Mana.

Remember Max Racks?

Sumo - Sword of Mana

day 12

now..theres multiple vers of the sword so i just combined  them

Sword Of Mana FINALE [Orange You Done For, Julius?]

Funniest crap I ever seen

Fighting the urge to make a blog for every one of my hyperfixations- hssjdjdjdjjdfjfjfjh- I'm replaying sword of mana and part of me wants to make an art au where it's me and my bf in the roles of elena/heroine and sumo/hero where i make art of important parts of the storyline but with me and him in their roles but knowing me I'd lose motivation randomly or my hyperfixation would shift to something different again- shdhdhrhhr aaaaaaaaaaa-

... it's been a wild two months (so far).

anyways love my boys very much- ^^

Finally...

I've had this on my to-do list for a very, very long time. I didn't play many game boy games because frankly I just don't think most game boy games are very good. But I was still riding a Donkey Kong high after finishing the SNES trilogy and figured, welp, might as well.

I actually bought DK Land when it hit the 3DS E-shops and I just... well I was really put off by how different it controlled. Mostly it's the jumps that bother me. That and of course it has screen crunch, because why make small compact sprites like Super Mario Land 1 when graphics are what wow people instead of the game being pocket sized and portable. Because of that I didn't finish it. I got an everdrive for my GBC and intended to play it there, but I think my rom was corrupted or something, idk the graphics were kind of glitchy, and I just got interested in other GB games. But I prefer playing on a TV anyway, so now that my SNES can play all Gameboy games, I figured this would be how I would finish DK Land.

So this one is without a doubt my least favorite of the mainline Donkey Kong platformers so far... but I don't hate it. I do think it has some good platforming, some interesting stuff that wasn't done in any of the Super Nintendo games like cloud worlds and urban cities, my personal favorite level trope, and some decent musical tunes too. I'm very glad I played this and finished it. I do intend to play the other two DK Land games. Hopefully they'll be a bit better to control. But for now, i'm gonna focus on a different gameboy game, which will lead to me picking an SNES game that came on the SNES Mini back up... Final Fantasy Adventure, AKA Seiken Densetsu... or the first game in the Mana trilogy, whatever you want to call it. Feels like this is a series I've missed out on. I couldn't get into the SNES game but I want to give it another chance, maybe with a few QOL patches or a retranslation. Already enjoying the Zelda like feel of this one.

Did I mention there's romhacks of Super Gameboy too? Check out my cool border. Someone made a tool that lets you adjust settings of SGB. So default control scheme will be A, like it should have been, and I have my own color pallets as well. You can also insert custom borders if you can make them but idk how and I can't find any archives of user made borders sadly. Wish there was a hack that let you play Gameboy Color on this thing, but alas, it seems that'd be impossible since SNES isn't strong enough somehow to display GBC games. So I guess i'll either have to use the GB everdrive stupidly I paid good money for and rarely use, or start playing on my Wii.

DOKI DOKI PRECURE LIGHT NOVEL CONTINUATION HAS BEEN ANNOUNCED TODAY HOLY FUCK

These are my Love Nikki Dress ups of the DokiDoki Precure.