I've been replaying
Secret of Mana, and while I still think it's a very good game, I'm surprised at how many
horrible UI decisions there are. The ring system was rightly praised when it came out, but holy crap, some of the fine details...
- This game does not make good use of all the SNES buttons. The shoulder buttons go almost unused. Heck, the Start and Select buttons are mostly unused as well.
- Equipping newly bought armor is a pain, and requires far too much going in and out of menus to get to tall the characters.
- Opening the ring menu recenters the screen, which means that enemies you want to target can get shifted to the edge of the screen, where they can be seen but not targeted.
- The rings for characters have the selected option at the top, but in shops the selection is at the bottom of the ring. It's a minor inconsistency, but it means that hitting left and right to turn the ring effectively reversed. (i.e. they always spin the ring the same clockwise/counterclockwise direction, but depending on if the focus is at the top or bottom of the ring that means the direction you need to press to get to the icon left or right of what's in focus gets reversed. In a shop? If what you want is to the left of what you're focused on, hit left to get to it. If you're out in the world, and you want what's to the left of what you're focused on, hit right.
)
Better options: Instead of Run being the A button, it could have been a shoulder button. Currently X is the controlled character's menu, with Y swapping between the other two characters (with little indication of which character's menu you're in). Freeing up A would allow X to be the boy, Y to be the girl, and A to be the Sprite. More consistent, quicker access. This would have also allowed the ring to be kept centered on the screen, rather than around each character, which would have stopped the camera shifting, making targeting easier.
Also, a lot of the stats menus should have allowed L&R to cycle between characters. Things like the Stats menu, the Action grid, the Levels for weapons and magic require you to quit out of one character's menu, then re-enter another player's menu, and then navigate back to the same area. It makes checking level progression to be a chore.
More than that, this game does a lot to actively discourage fun ways to play. Early on your MP is limited, and the only way to replenish it in a dungeon is not only highly expensive, but you can only carry four doses. So this means you're best off saving your magic to fight bosses, who can be difficult to hit with melee attacks. If you want to cast buffs on your weapons, you're sacrificing the ability to heal during the boss fight. This is further compounded by magic being leveled by use, and weapon buffs lasting pitifully short amounts of time at low levels. So if you want your magic strong to use against the boss, you have to use it a lot beforehand, but if you use it to get through the dungeon, you're left with little to no MP left to use it against the boss. You're incentivized to play in a boring manner. Grinding out magic levels on pitiful enemies that are close to inns or other cheap ways to replenish your mana, and then running past as many enemies as possible in a dungeon.
That's not to say you can't play the game using spells on enemies in dungeons, buffing your weapons, and generally having a more fun time, but then you'll have a much more difficult time against the bosses, especially if you skipped grinding on easy enemies. This is almost completely opposite to how FF4 and FF6 work. While you
can grind near a town in those games, and then run from everything in a dungeon, there's no great need. It takes more knowledge of tactics and resource management, but if you fight everything you face in a dungeon, there's not much need to grind in open fields in either of those games. You can use your magic against enemies as you go, and then you'll get a save point before the boss, where you can restore your MP. This isn't the case in Secret of Mana, which sometimes throws multiple bosses in a row at you, with no way to restore MP besides the four fairy walnuts you can carry.
Putting an MP restore point before boss battles would have made a
huge difference. As would giving the player more MP (balanced by making healing and damage spells more expensive. Encourage casting buffs, thus leveling spells through fun and challenging combat, rather than just grindy basic stuff near cities). Too many games equate time with difficulty. Yeah, technically time is a very valuable resource, one that can be very difficult to sacrifice, but it's a real life resource too. Challenging a gamer's dexterity or intelligence is a completely different type of difficulty than simply testing their patience and willingness to perform simple tasks thoughtlessly.
I realize that criticizing a groundbreaking game from over two decades ago is unfair, but a lot of these same types of issues persist. Games still fail to to make their UI quick and easy to use, they still fail to encourage players to choose the most fun playstyle. I realize it's impossible to stop gamers from choosing the cheesiest tactics possible, but at the very least games shouldn't make the fun option one that's nearly detrimental to success.
