Well, firstly, who's played it thus far?

I rented it for the Wii the other day and have played a good few steady hours on it, though with a bit of difficulty. RPGFan wasn't kidding when they said "go for the DS one, the Wii version's broken!!!" cause it somewhat is. Well, not completely, but I feel they could've done it better. I mean, pretty much porting the DS to a big TV really doesn't seem such a feat, and just seems to limit the output of the game in some ways. It gets a bit obnoxious zooming/downsizing between the two screens, both of which never quite get big enough to read or view without some strain. Also, at least in the multiplayer sense, the controls are a little bleh as well. Trying to use the quick little chat bubbles is next to impossible in a timely fashion using the Wii-mote, which they don't even seem to use properly, at that... Everything's done with the D-Pad, which I like for the magic end, but not for the trying to speak end. It'd be easier to point and click through the menus, but I don't think they allow a mixture of D-Pad and Wiimote... I think it's one or the other, but I haven't really checked; I just started playing at, like, 11pm and didn't stop til about 5am the next morning.

So, with that last bit in mind, it still is a really fun game. The story, although seeming a little meagre, draws you in nicely, the graphics are all right, the characters are fun to play with as is the party system, even if the AI never really lives up to a character's full expectation. I also love the design work - ever so fun, that.

I had one thought, though, and let me know if you agree: is this game not what we wished Secret of Mana to become!? I mean, the more I play it, the more I'm feeling the SoM action/adventure/RPG kinda feeling that should've been what Dawn of Mana had become on the PS2, instead of that crappy excuse of a gameplay system they gave us instead. The more I wander this FFCC world, the more I hope to see a rabite or mushbloom or something cause it just seems like it would fit! Man... I wish Squarsoft would get on that bandwagon and through SoM through the FFCC engine and give us a new, wonderful world of Mana to play in!

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