14 DAY TRIAL // 
I can't help noticing that this game is very much like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, because it has similar graphics and a few gameplay mechanisms that seem to have been borrowed from the best title on the Wii console. Why would Square-Enix spoil the famous Mana series by offering the fans a Zelda clone? It's like turning the latest game pertaining to the Driver series into a Grand Theft Auto lookalike... Wait, that just happened with Driver '76!
Since we're Final Fantasy fans and still waiting for another title to come out, we can forgive Square-Enix for this average title and notice the elements that make it similar to Kingdom Hearts, as they're about 50% of what's good in this game. The rest is the great atmosphere, passionate characters and a pretty neat storyline, the same stuff that Square-Enix was always good at.
Story
You'll see the game's plot unfolding through a series of cutscenes that show a couple of spirits gathered around some sort of camp fire telling the story of Keldric and Ritzia, the protagonists of the tale. The action takes place in Illusia, the land where the Tree of Mana was worshiped for its powers. This land was surrounded by five continents, each dominated by their elements. Peace reigned till the day when the King of Lorimar invaded Illusia, with his army of golems and headed towards the Tree of Mana. This is where Keldric and Ritzia step in, as "Keldy" was chosen to be the bearer of the Sword of Mana and Ritzia, the Goddess of Mana. She was the only one who could control the power of the Tree of Mana and open a portal to an a evil realm called Mavolia.
The King of Lorimar wants to use the young lady for such devilish purposes, but Keldric, who has fallen in love with Ritzia tries to protect her at any cost. The boy receives the aid of the Tree of Mana (want to hear me say Mana again?) by having a splinter of the tree sticked into his arm giving him the power to wield vines and some sort of organic sword. So, you'll control Keldy as he sets on a quest to save Ritzia and take back the Sword of Mana, before the evil Lorimarians can fulfill their master plan.
Concept
The game uses the Havok physics engine we're all familiar with from the famous Half-Life 2, allowing you to interact with the environment and I must say that you'll see quite a lot of interaction. Usually, moving objects will be used to your advantage during battles, as it's rather a matter of brains than button mashing when it comes to defeating the feeble monsters controlled by the AI. Well, "monsters" is an overstatement as they're probably the cutest foes I've ever seen in action-adventure-RPG. You'll see right from the start that you're dealing with the system you loved (or hated) in Kingdom Hearts: just keep going by using the left analog stick, rotate the camera with the right one and mash the square button. However, this time, good old Keldy can do a lot more, by using a slingshot and some sort of whip attack. All these are almost nothing when compared to what you can do by using the objects that surround you.
Since Dawn of Mana is a tale, you'll play chapters of it, 8 to be exact plus a prologue, that's used as a tutorial. After you complete each chapter, you'll get grades according to your performance, kills and the items you collected. This is where the major frustration kicks in: after the chapter's finished you'll restart the next one without the items, abilities and levels you got from the previous chapter. Each of these 8 main chapters is divided into 5 sub-levels, so to say, and there's the option to go over these again by selecting the "Replay Chapter" option from the menu. Probably the most bizarre feature in Dawn of Mana is the incapacity of storing items, as Keldy will use those instantly after getting them from his enemies. So, even if this is a half-RPG produced by Square-Enix, there's no point in leveling up and gathering tons of potions like we did in the good old Final Fantasy VII title.
Once you beat Chapter 2, you'll gain access to a cool new mode in the main menu, called Challenge Arena. This will feature a series of 32 timed battles that will pit you against a couple of enemies in order to get some more lucre (the currency of the game). There's also a shop where you can buy enhancements for Keldy, called ribbons, but they can't be used when starting a new chapter, either. The main character is not alone in his quest, as he's accompanied by a cute fairy creature called Faye, who can cast 7 spells in order to clear the path for our hero. Although the game's combat mechanics and entire system is not much, you'll surely enjoy the variety of the enemies you'll fight and the locations you'll travel to. On the downside of the game, there's the frustrating gameplay, made worse by the bad choice of camera angles and the controls.
Gameplay
Dawn of Mana features a pretty chaotic gameplay, as you'll see a bunch of enemies lurking around at all time, or just spawning out of the blue just in time to hit you. The great thing is that you can defeat them by playing smart, instead of playing tough. There's also a panic system, that will make your enemies give you tons of goodies once you've used the surrounding objects to make them enter the panic mode. You'll have to keep your eyes open for the counter above their heads, because once an enemy start panicking it will be left without defense and it will boost your stats by giving you items that raise your HP, MP or strength. If the counter reaches more than 99, you'll be awarded with greater items, but that won't matter much, as you can't keep them once you start a new chapter.
Keldy can use a variety of attacks, ranging from the normal hit with the vine-sword (by mashing the square button) to the whip attack triggered by pressing the triangle button or the slingshot attack you'll perform by pressing the circle button. Our hero can pull things towards him with the whip attack and that includes enemies, walls, bricks, barrels, boxes, fruit and God knows what else. Objects can also be thrown with the whip attack and they'll be extremely useful in the fights against bosses. Keldy's slingshot usually fires pebbles, but there are also some magical elemental shots, that can be used after meeting the spirits that were chatting in the beginning of the game. Probably the funniest of these elemental attacks is the one that freezes the enemy and makes him look like a snowman. Your little fairy can level up and use a couple of new spells, that will either raise your strength, regenerate you or increase your defense.
Everything reacts and interacts around Keldric, so if you push a boulder down the hill, you might see that you just got a couple of items, because the boulder rolled, hit a couple of rocks and trees that fell on some enemies and killed them. This high degree of interaction can be dangerous, especially when you've just hit a tree that starts throwing explosive pumpkins towards you. Dawn of Mana features a little bit of fun for everyone, since it even has some neat platforming sequences, that can become frustrating, specially because of your character's sensitive controlling system. If you hit a wall, a foe, throw a rock or do anything else, Keldy will just jump backwards like he was bitten by something. Such sensitive controls are OK in a large field, but they're annoying when you're walking on a thin wire or jumping from pole to pole. Since I've just mentioned jumping, there's a lot of it to do, and those pesky critters can make you fall more than once, so you'll have to climb up again and start hopping around. Enemies can interact with their surroundings, but they choose not to, preferring to go in a straight line towards you, charging as if there's nothing intelligent beneath that artificial character.
However, the beasts can get quite clumsy, hitting each other, setting trees and other enemies on fire, knocking over boulders and performing many other predicaments. In case you're having trouble with aiming your slingshot or whip, there's a locking on feature, but still the slingshot experience is nothing when compared to what we saw and played in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The controls are badly implemented and you can only guess where you head to when jumping from one platform to another or simply trying to reach higher ground. I wonder if the controls in Dawn of Mana would have been better if the game had been available on the Nintendo Wii console. Can the Wiimote do what the too-sensitive analog sticks failed to in Square-Enix's title?
Video
Aside from the storyline, the visual aspect is what makes this game an average one and not a failure. Having to deal with a frustrating gameplay and bad graphics would have been terrible and something unthinkable from a Square-Enix game. Remember the graphics in Kingdom Hearts II? Picture that look, multiply it by three, add a bit of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and you'll get a colorful title with fluid movements, stunning backgrounds and well-drawn characters. The protagonists have the usual childish looks, but their weapons are as fantastic as ever and Faye, the fairy is a ray of light in the gloominess triggered by the frustrating gameplay. Also, the cutscenes remind me of Final Fantasy graphics, again with a touch of Zelda, but this time they'll use the gameplay's graphical engine to show us the plot's elements. When the combat mode kicks in, you'll see sparks flying everywhere, beautiful slingshot elemental strikes, huge and creepy creatures or cute small mushrooms, all attacking our teen hero.
Sound
Square-Enix have done it again: yet another beautiful piano soundtrack to melt the gamers' hearts and become our favorite gaming OST lately. The childish voices and dialogs are decent enough to keep the fairy tale atmosphere and Faye has got to be the cutest character spawned by Square-Enix, with her tiny little voice and the habit of repeating things. There are times when the combat music can get repetitive and spoil the fun of hacking mushrooms or throwing boulders on furious Bigfoot-like beasts, but generally the background music is well-chosen. Although the enemies have a short life, they live intensely and scream, growl or howl ,with the bad habit of repeating the same line (or sound) over and over again.
Conclusion
While one would be tempted to be gentle with Dawn of Mana by saying that it's a title designed "for the kids", I say that anyone can have fun with it, if he's bold enough to face a bit of frustrating gameplay and clunky controls. At least there's a ton of objects to mess around with, deform and break, while trying to panic the enemies. This and the great atmosphere, that seems taken from The Legend of Zelda can prove to be charming in the first two hours of play, but boring and common as you play further. With the aid of a great storyline, superb graphics for an old-gen console and an emotional soundtrack Dawn of Mana manages to crawl into our hearts instead of using the front door. It has a long way to go before it reaches the status of the Kingdom Hearts series, but hope is not lost, as the Mana series will probably spawn a few more titles, that will correct every flaw of the past games.
