Breaking Dawn
Dawn of Mana is an interesting experiment into a physics-based adventure game, but suffers from bigger issues than the combat.
Published: June 11, 2007
Apparently most of the enemies in Illusia are big, fat wussies, because they can be scared just by something big falling near them. This of course opens up a whole realm of possibility in terms of how you can put the fear of... um... Keldy into 'em; do you use your whip to snag that support beam and bring all the stuff down on top of them, or do you grab a lesser enemy and try to chuck them at the beam, or do you just run in there and push it out of the way with your sword. I get that Square Enix was basically trying to develop some open-ended, vaguely sandboxy moments, and after a good hour or so of practice, it works -- for the most part.
Two things hamper the efforts: the camera system, which is fine in open areas but as a matter of practice starts getting fudged up when in narrow areas, offers a simple lock-on feature for enemies and objects with the L2 and R2 buttons. The problem is that the targeting system is often worse than that in Grand Theft Auto, picking far-off targets instead of the one right in front of you, and it usually takes a couple of tries to get it to properly lock in at all -- and that's before futzing with the broken right analog stick switching mechanism. In the end, it's smarter to ignore the lock-on and hope that using the whip to move stuff around will work, and usually it does quite nicely.
For a series that for many was their introduction to a more RPG-focused adventure game in the vein of The Legend of Zelda, the decision to augment (some would say lop out entirely) the RPG elements might be considered sacrilege, but it's not quite as bad as you may think. At the start of each of the game's eight chapters, both Keldy and Faye's levels are reset to zero. The only things that carry over between levels are ribbons that you choose before jumping into the next chapter plus any money you've pocketed along the way.
On the one hand, it can make re-leveling a tedious (but ultimately necessary) process. On the other, it can make for a nice sense of progression as new abilities are unlocked. Leveling up is tied into the whole Panic system; the more stuff you make go bump around (or into) enemies, the more they freak out and start flailing around. While having a conniption a countdown timer basically lets you know when they'll snap back into defending themselves (for bigger enemies, attacking drains this faster), but if you can bump it all the way up to 100, they'll be "crowned" and effectively stay locked into panic far longer. They'll also cough up the most valuable medals, which is how the progression system works.
Medals do everything from increasing attack to improving hit points and magic points, but they're only coughed up if you hit enemies while they're in panic mode, and the higher the number, the better the rewards. It's an interesting system to be sure, but it does start to feel tedious by the time you've gotten to the fifth or so stage and have to spend time effectively leveling up. Fortunately, as you gain red and blue medals, you increase the base level of both Keldy and Faye, respectively.
Faye's default skills include healing and some buffs, but I honestly was more concerned with getting Keldy's levels up, since it tied directly into his whip ability (though obviously it's good to get the life and magic bars out as far as possible). See, leveling up the whip meant bigger objects could be used and with each successive level, more moves like spinning objects or flinging them all over the level open up. By the time you hit Level 4 (the highest for both Keldy and Faye), you can toy with most enemies endlessly by flinging them all over the place.
