As you might expect, you'll be facing lots of smaller, non-bossy enemies too. The combat controls are quite easy to grasp, with A and X being your attack buttons, B controlling magic, and Y acting as an item-use trigger. You have up to four different weapons, two of which can be used at a time. You can also equip special gems that grant you status boosts and other interesting special effects for combat. Despite all this, combat becomes very boring very fast. Fighting just feels mindless much of the time, with repeated button-mashing until something dies. Bosses tend to be a bit trickier, but once you figure out how and when they're vulnerable, they don't provide much of a challenge.

But it's not just the battle system that drags down the game. Many gameplay elements either don't make sense or seem designed with the express purpose of annoying the player. That's not to say that it's all bad. Sometimes you'll encounter a particularly interesting stage layout, enemy, or obstacle, or you'll find a gem that gives you a unique and fun new special ability. It's just that for every enjoyable thing about Children of Mana, there are five other little things that will drive you varying levels of crazy.


Take the bizarre physics system, for example. Certain strikes will send enemies and objects bouncing across the room like the walls are made of rubber. This can be useful for taking out large groups of monsters and dealing extra damage, and it's also fun to whack an enemy into a larger group and watch them all go flying. But the direction you'll hit things is difficult to control, and will oftentimes collide with you, which can send you careening into areas you don't want to go.

Other supposed nuances to the combat end up with strange side effects. Holding down and releasing the attack button results in unsatisfying, useless auxiliary effects that rarely cause any damage. The only instance where these attacks are useful is in Fury mode, where they provide charged attacks that deal more damage. These powerful special attacks deliver a lot of damage to enemies, but you can only enter the mode when the Fury meter in the bottom right corner of the screen is full. The meter takes an eternity to charge fully, and never seems to be available when you really need it. Certain gems let you alter the effects and duration of Fury, but the system still never seems to gel.

The magic system is difficult to use and terribly inefficient. You can only take one elemental spirit with you into an area at a time, and you summon them by pressing and holding down the B button for a few seconds. Whether they perform an attack spell or give you a support effect depends on if you touch them or not. It's easy to touch them by accident, giving you a support spell when you might not want it. But you'll eventually figure out that magic is mostly useless anyway, so why even bother? It's easier -- and generally more satisfying -- to just charge into a group of enemies and thwack away.