After 7 hours playing Dawn of Mana, I loose my mood to continue the game 🙁 I feel kinda regret importing this game (since it might not get published in PAL).

Disappointed!

Secret of Mana 2 and 3 are my favorite SNES games and I was really excited when Square Enix announced Secret of Mana 4 for PS2 last year. But now, it’s all over with a disappointment 😥 The only things that I love from this game are their character designs and beautiful game world, just like the Secret of Mana series. The game play is really annoying, not so fun for character leveling. As usual, the voice acting is not so good (and they don’t include the Japanese one). Maybe I’ve played too much RPG games, but the story about a-boy-who-saves-the-world-using-legendary-power-or-weapon does not attract me anymore. I never skip game story but this time I have no other choices 😥

“I don’t know why but WE have to save the world!”

But the biggest mistake of this game is the overuse of Physics Engine. FYI, Japanese game developers rarely use any middleware like Quake 3D graphics engine or physics engine like Havok. They usually build their own engine instead of buying/licensing one. Maybe Square Enix is the first Japanese game company which uses Havok engine for their game’s physics.

However, this game feels like that the developers are too much playing with physics engine. Maybe they’re still new to this kind of things, too excited, and decided to use physic engine for everything, just like a kid with his new toy. In the game, you can grab an item or an enemy (using a whip) from your environment, throw it into a bunch of enemies, everything gets hits, and bounces realistically. The idea is really cool, I love it. You can throw things to hit the enemies or just to make them panic. But everything is too realistic which makes them hard to control 😕 The aiming system for item-throwing is very bad. The developer was too excited with the physics engine and they forget the easiness of control 🙁

Poor little bird..

This reminds me of myself 3 weeks ago when I was still thinking whether I am going to use physics engine for my next game. I thought using physics engine on my game demo could fascinate my future employer. It’s just like saying “hey, my game is cool because it is 3D and it uses physics engine”. Just like 3 years ago, when everybody started putting XML on their portfolio for job applications in IT. XML is good, but you don’t have to use it if a simple text file is enough. It depends what application you’re making. You don’t have to kill a fly using a bazooka 😎

In the end, I decided not to use any physics engine, although it might be good for Drill-Milky-Punch type of game. First it takes a lot of effort to use physics engine. Time is money. Second, I found a very good discussion on Irrlicht forum why you don’t have to use physics engine (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=21494).

Quoting CuteAlien from the forum: “You’ll only get realistic physics with a physics engine but you can get great games with mind blowing effects (better than life) without a physics engine. It’s up to you what you prefer.”

I think Japanese developer should stop using middleware just for the sake of state-of-the-art or technology. They should focus on the thing they’re really good in: creativity.