Secret of Mana for the SNES is widely regarded as one of the best RPGs in all of video game history. Everything about the game itself is really really good, and the only thing I’ve ever thought the game lacked was a storyline that didn’t boil down to the usual “You are a hero! YOU MUST SAVE THE WORLD.” This is not going to get too into reviewing the actual game though, because you can find that everywhere, and this is just a port of the game.  For this article, I’ll be focusing mostly on the port itself.

The game itself is an exact port of the original game. Square Enix didn’t try to change the graphics, remix the music, or do anything else. Of course, they had to change the controls up so that there would be buttons on the screen, and thats where I think the game falls short. The controls are incredibly slippery. See the pink flower in the picture below? It’s actually a monster, and it bites you if you get too close. The trick is to get close enough that you can hit it, but not too close. With these controls, I find myself running right into them almost every time. This problem did not exist with the D-Pad, but with the flat analog stick it gives you just doesn’t work.

I have an ipod touch 2nd generation. When you die in this game, the app crashes. The question isn’t whether it will crash or not, but how bad the crash will be. In most cases, the screen goes black for a few seconds and then all of a sudden you’re back to the home screen, but there’s a few times where something else happens. The game freezes up. Next, the sound gets choppy and will stop playing for a few seconds here and there before playing quickly to catch up. and to top it off, the physical buttons on the ipod stop working. The lock button and home button just don’t do anything. the 3 times this happened to me, it stayed this way for about 10 minutes before the ipod registered all my button presses and locked. If you’re playing this game, I recommend a newer ipod with a better processor.

The final thing I’m going to talk about is the price. does it cost 99 cents? a dollar? two dollars? three? 5? 7? No. This game will cost you $9. That’s really really expensive for an app, and for this reason I don’t think you should buy the app. The game is plagued with crashing on death and the bad controls, and it’s just not worth all that money.

[review pros=”the game is great, and the loading time aren’t that bad.” cons=”the game costs a lot for an app, the controls are bad, and it has some intense crashes.” score=65]