Sword of Mana (Nintendo Game Boy Advance, 2003)

Sword of Mana was originally released as Final Fantasy Adventure for the original GameBoy. I purchased FFA 10 years ago, and when I heard of the whole "Final Fantasy name sells better" thing, I decided on buying Sword of Mana.
Sword of Mana is an adventure game were you take control of either a boy or a girl and try to save the world from an evil that wants the power of the mana tree. The boy part is the real remake of the original FFA, the girl part is just a little bit different.
The graphics are the best part of the game. There are many fluid movements that left me really amazed like the battle animations, and even when you plant your first cactus house. Another cool part is that when you talk to almost all of the people in the game you get a small portrait of him/her/it next to the dialog box. A total facelift from FFA.
The sound is ok. The game has a lot of sound Fx that flesh out the circumstances, but some of the songs get a little repetitive. Don't get me wrong, these aren't crappy songs.
The controls were very easy to understand, but the shortcuts were confusing at first.
The gameplay is great, but there is very little replay value once you've beaten both the Boy and the Girl scenarios.
The game is overall a good addition to anyone's GBA library. I really liked this game because it makes me remember when I used to take my GB pocket to school and play FFA.

Final Fantasy Adventure was my favorite game for the original GameBoy when I was a kid. When I heard that Sword of Mana for GameBoy Advance was in reality a remake of FF Adventure, I knew I had to have it. So far the experience has been excellent. The graphics and sound are top-notch (for a GBA game) and the overall story progression is solid. It's great hearing the original songs again only improved for the GBA. The storyline is very similar to before, but there are some changes. Also the weapons upgrade system and character level customization have been given more depth to give the player more RPG type options. Some of the changes took some getting used to, but I like them overall. The only things I don't like are the removal of the puzzle elements in the dungeons that were soooooo good in the original version. Also, the responsiveness of the controls seems a bit slower than the original, but doesn't inhibit the gameplay much. Overall, a must have for the GBA.

As usual for this series it's simply a rework with a similar beginning, slightly modified story, and a few new names, it's not horribly exciting, but it's a passable RPG with some minorly challenging combat scenes. What it lacks in depth it attempts to make up for in moderately amusing dialog, and it tries a bit too hard. You're better off picking up one of the console titles from this series rather than one of the portables as they have some really good content to most of them.

While this is not Seiken Densetsu 3 or Secret of Mana, Square still hit it right with this one. It's almost as if keeping the game similar to the games fans want works... This is a remake of an old Gameboy game called Final Fantasy Adventure(which i loved, unfortunately i deleted my awesome save file and never got around to beating it again) Final Fantasy Adventure/Sword of Mana is really the first Seiken Densetsu game then followed by the fan favorite Secret of Mana. This game remains pretty true to Final Fantasy Adventure in terms of story and gameplay, it also adds in elements of Secret of Mana such as the ring commands and they made the overdrive/limit break/whatever system similar to Seiken Densetsu 3. Not much has been changed and if you are a fan of Final Fantasy Adventure or the Mana series you will feel right at home with this game.

This is an excellent game.

I have put about 80 hours into this game and still love it.

You have many different skills that you can level up, and also many different spirits, that can heal you, power you up, and attack.

This is another great game from Square Enix and one of the best in the Sword of series.

This game is worth every penny, you can play as either a girl or a boy, and both have different storylines, and they join together in the end.

I recommend this game 100%. You won't be disappointed!

The music in this game is very good too, what you can expect from the Japanese Game Developers, good gameplay and good music. Sword of Mana.