Heroes of Mana (Nintendo DS, 2007)

Before I got the game I couldn’t wait to start hating it because it was released under the World of Mana project. After the failed attempt at a mana game known as Dawn of Mana I was reluctant to purchase Heroes. As to my surprise Heroes proved itself as a great game. I fell in love with it and couldn’t stop playing. Yes! Third time is the charm! So let me start the drill.

The last RTS I played on the DS was Lost Magic so I didn’t think Heroes would do any better. Well wrong again. Lost Magic just sucked. So the controls in this game are fairly easy once you get the swing of it. Everything is pretty much done with the stylus. The Dpad is used to pan across the map, A and B can be used but aren’t really needed because of the stylus. L and R rotate the map. You pretty much tap the unit you want to use and the area you want it to go/attack. There is a circle thing you can tap to select multiple units. Unlike Lost Magic it stops game play long enough to do so. The game starts off a little slow but it picks up once it teaches you everything. You have your ship that is anchored to the ground. It can move but you can’t use anything unless it is anchored at an anchor spot. All units come from the ship. The ship creates or summons all your creatures. In order to summon creatures you must build the appropriate summon station, which cost Gaia shards, and have Treant berries as the cost for the creature. You will find Treant and Gaia on the map to get the funds from. Rabites are the basic gatherers pretty much the SCV in Starcraft. You have four basic unit types which are heavy, ground, missile, and flying. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. There are special units which have high attack and what not but aren’t resistant to any type of unit. After all of that you have your leaders. Leaders are the main characters such as Roget. They are strong in attack and defense. If any unit gets weak you can build a heal station and heal them at the ship. The last thing is the equipment. You can make your leaders stronger from the spoils at the end of chapters. The only drawbacks to the game play are that it’s slow paced and it has a bit of a confusing UI. It’s not a game that anyone can pick up and play right away. It takes a bit of getting use to. It’s also not something you can play while waiting for the bus (But that’s the Mana in general).

this game is a fairly interesting twist to a typical RTS. for being on the DS it was done extremely well, though if it were on the computer I would probably have to stick to the Age of Empires series.