Back when I was a youngun', I played a wonderful, magical game called the Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo, and I loved it more than my own parents (sorry guys!). [Keep your pants on PTA, it was nothing a hefty allowance raise couldn't take care of - ed.]. A wondrous Action-RPG, the Secret of Mana allowed me to explore a gorgeous fantasy world filled with colorful, violent creatures and cute little elementals that could be used to cast devastating magical spells. Before Mana I would have never touched a "talkie" game with somebody else's thumbs (despite a healthy supply of them in my basement freezer), but this game was so good it sold me on the entire genre of Japanese RPGs. Now they're perhaps my favorite genre of all (next to maybe those naughty Japanese dating sims). Ever since then I have purchased every Mana game to be released in the states in the hope of reliving those glory days of yore. Unfortunately, none of them have even come close to measuring up. Legend of Mana was fairly fun but lacked a cohesive narrative. Sword of Mana, with its indecipherable translation and mediocre combat, was only okay. And Children of Mana? Imagine, if you will, an obese man with a gastrointestinal problem defecating inside a woolen mitten and then striking you in the head with it. That sort of sums it up.

It's all down hill from here.

   After you've witnessed Mana's bright but unfortunate opening (unfortunate because you are that much closer to making contact with the aforementioned sh*t-filled mitten) you have to choose one of four characters to be your hero: a well-balanced, sword-swinging kid, a magic using toddler, some kind of sultry temptress, or the Easter Bunny, who apparently can really bust some heads in melee combat. Strange how my own personal hero, Andre the Giant, didn't make the list.

   In past Mana games you would pick your player at the beginning, but he would be joined off and on by an eclectic group of warriors who usually helped to balance out the team. Not this time, though. Unless you link up with other Children of Mana lovers (good luck finding those), you and your fecal matter are flying solo. In fact, even the other three heroes that you don't select simply shuffle back and forth endlessly in the game's one central village. I assume they have a pre-existing agreement with the player's hero that they'll tackle the next global cataclysm that crops up.

   Speaking of which, the story is pretty standard RPG fare. You're a youngster living in a quiet village [kid is probably a crack dealer, if you ask me - ed.], perhaps one of the few remaining after some kind of disaster devastated the world a few decades ago. But history, much like prime-time television, tends to repeat itself, so when the village leaders ask their magic eight ball if another cataclysm is brewing, all signs point to yes. The only way to save the world, apparently, is to fight hundreds, and hundreds of monsters in an extremely unexciting fashion across dozens of random, boring dungeon floors.

And then the fun starts... right?

I've got blisters on my fingers!

   Now, if at least the fighting wasn't a big pile of crap then it might have actually been some fun to plow through the hordes of beasties that come pouring out of every corner of most dungeon floors. But sadly, it is. A big pile of crap, I mean. [So big and steamy it is, in fact, that if you are real, real quiet you can even hear it starting to eat through the casing of your DS - ed.] Anyway, depending on what button you have your weapon set to, tapping said button will perform a standard melee attack, and depending on what kind of weapon you're packing, said attack will either be a single powerful blow or a lighter stroke that can be strung together with others of its ilk to perform a simple combo. And that's it. Therefore, pretty much every one of your thousands of clashes with Children of Mana's monsters will revolve around you doing a three-hit combo to a monster (or group of monsters if they're all clustered together), the last blow of which will knock them all a short distance away, and then you waiting for them to get up and shuffle over to you with their pants down so you can combo them again. So basically you're just pounding away on a single button. Sounds riveting, huh? It's even worse if you're carrying something like a war hammer or a scythe, a single hit of which will smash your enemy halfway into next week. I mean, you can speed things up a little bit by running over to your fallen foe, but you still have to wait for him to get back up (how sporting of the game!), and considering that you're usually getting swarmed by monsters, you won't usually have the luxury of hunting down individuals to finish them off in an expedient manner.

Genie, I wish to be a Gear of War!

   The game does give you some magic too, but considering how paltry it is, you've got to wonder why they even bothered. Right from the first dungeon you'll have access to the eight elemental spirits of the Mana world (water, fire, wind, earth, light, dark, moon, and plant), but you can only take one of them into any given dungeon. [Just a sec there, did you say "plant"? A plant like a soy bean plant? I am sorry, what the hell kind of power does a freaking SOY BEAN PLANT pack?!!! - ed.] To strip things down even further each elemental can only cast two spells, an attack spell and an assist spell [hey, I say for a soy bean plant that's not half bad! - ed.]. Moreover, unless you're an idiot or high on drugs [or a soy bean plant - ed.] you're going to want to have a healing spell at your disposal, so that means you and the light elemental are going to be best buddies, while the other seven spirits hang out in the village with the three non-selected heroes, presumably waiting to assist them with fixing that next disaster. While this healing spell can be kind of useful, you'll usually have plenty of delicious candy to fulfill your healing (and diabetes-developing) needs, and the attack spell isn't much more effective than a string of combos. So much for magic.

   And don't expect the boss battles to really spice things up either. While they might look larger and more exciting than the cannon fodder you've been tearing new poop-shoots for, you're still doing pretty much the same combo over and over again, although sometimes you'll want to dodge some of their powerful but very predictable attacks or eat some candy to heal up.

Why does the god of video games hate us?

   Most of the rest of the game feels just as half-assed as the fighting. [I am thinking an upgrade to a full "three-quarter-assed" might be in order here - ed.] In pretty much every other dungeon-crawl-style game when battle starts to get a little tedious players can usually at least divert themselves by tweaking their character's stats and playing around with their equipment. Not Children of Mana, though. Oh no. Your character has no skills or abilities beyond physical attacks and a paltry smattering of magic, so all leveling up does is earn you a few computer-assigned stat increases and the right to make comments like, "Well, you might get tons of action from supermodels and pull down a huge salary, but my karate-master Easter Bunny just made level fifteen. So eat it!" Yeah, THAT one will score you some chicks for sure.

   And you haven't experienced true paralyzing dullness until you've experienced Children of Mana's equipment system. Apart from the fact that every piece of equipment looks the same and functions identically (weapons increase strength, armor increases defense, and rings increase magic - no need for an "et cetera" here!), there are also arbitrary level requirements for every piece of gear. But you'd figure, at least, that if you've been lugging around a sword you can't equip until you're level fifteen, once you kill that last monster and reach level fifteen you'd be able to equip the sword, right? Guess again! For some bizarre reason equipment can only be swapped in town or at the sparse save points in dungeons. Oh, and more good luck to you equipping it even when you're in one of those locations, as the equipment menu is buried under, like, a billion others. And there I thought the whole point of those ring menus was to make things like this quick and easy. A village idiot once again, me.

They won't be your friends after this.

   One of the huge draws of Secret of Mana was that you could have up to three people playing at the same time. While Children presents the possibility of up to four friends getting their action/RPG on by connecting wirelessly, I really can't see it enriching the experience. [Enriched dog sh*t, $3.99, get it while it's hot! - ed.] You're still doing the same boring activities in the same boring dungeons, except now you've dragged your friends into it too. I'm sure they'll appreciate it.

   The only reason this game netted even the miserable score that it did is because it's visuals and sound possess that wonderful Mana charm that has helped the series to survive a number of mediocre games. All of the characters and monsters (and even some of the locations) are bursting with colorful, cartoony personality that makes them leap out at you saying, "Aren't we pleasant looking? Our game can't be that bad. Put in a few more hours and I'm sure things will get better." Oh, how often I fell victim to that siren's song... The sound, too, fleshes out the experience and tries its damndest to convince you that playing the game is much better than colon cancer. Sadly, it's a hopeless struggle.

   With an ever-growing number of quality RPGs already available for the DS, and countless more for the Gameboy Advance, there's really no reason to put up with crap like this. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be over in the corner weeping, pining for my lost weekends...

       ... Mike Zeller