Children of Mana

Children of Mana is an action role-playing game released in 2006 for the Nintendo DS. It was developed by Square Enix and Nex Entertainment, and published by Square Enix alongside Nintendo. As a spin-off of the Mana series, it also serves as the first installment in the World of Mana subseries. Set in a high fantasy world, the story follows one of four young heroes who fight against a monster invasion while uncovering the truth behind the catastrophic event that claimed their families. The game retains the real-time combat of earlier Mana titles but places a stronger emphasis on accessibility. Unlike its predecessors, Children of Mana is a heavily action-oriented dungeon crawler. Players progress by completing randomly generated levels, with both the main storyline and side-quests requiring them to fight through dungeons, defeat boss monsters, and return to the central hub of Mana Village. A local cooperative multiplayer mode for up to four players is included, a feature common to many games in the series. The game was designed by series creator Koichi Ishii, directed by Yoshiki Ito, and produced by Takashi Orikata and Katsuji Aoyama. Commercially, it performed moderately well, selling 100,000 copies in its first week and over 280,000 units in Japan by the end of 2006. Critics praised its graphics and music as beautiful and distinctive, but found the combat simplistic and repetitive, and the story lacking in substance. Like earlier Mana games, Children of Mana uses a top-down perspective where characters navigate terrain and fight enemies. Each character has ratings for magic damage, attack speed, health, and mana. The gameplay remains largely the same regardless of which character is chosen, except for a few character-specific quests. Unlike previous entries, the main character typically travels alone, though up to four players can join via local Wi-Fi, with progress saved only on the host’s machine. Children of Mana is a dungeon crawler, meaning most gameplay occurs in selected locations rather than on an open world map. Players choose areas from a world map to enter. The main goal in each location is to clear the dungeon of monsters. Each dungeon consists of randomly generated floors. To move between floors, the player must find a Gleamdrop and carry it to a Gleamwell—a pillar of light.