Secret of Mana's music

glennmagusharvey

Many people I've talked to about Secret of Mana (a.k.a. Seiken Densetsu 2) praise its soundtrack.

That alone would be no surprise to me.  Except...I don't really like it much.  It sounds very "meh" to me.  It sounds kinda plain and uninspired, frequently.  Well, it's decent, but it doesn't do much to pull me into the game, I guess.  Yet I've never quite figured out why it fails to appeal to me.  (Last time I thought about this was maybe a year or a few ago.)

It has a noticeably different style from, say, the soundtracks of the Final Fantasy games.  It's a bit atmospheric at times, but then again so are the FF games' music.

Maybe it's one or more of the following factors:
* generally higher-pitched instrumentation, without much bass, which leads to a lighter feel
* melodically weaker tracks (e.g. Matango)
* harmonically weaker tracks (e.g. Gaia's Navel, which is like, the same chord over and over again for most of the track)
* lack of more typical western-classical or j-pop harmonies, which I seem to emotionally respond to more strongly
* instrumentation choices lend a very light and un-serious feel (e.g. Scorpion Gang's xylophone)
* music doesn't follow the dramatic needs very well (e.g. Underground Palace track is a kinda a semi-light, not-very-emotional, not-very-prominent track to go with a very annoyingly difficult area)

There are a few tracks I like (such as the theme tune tracks, Upper Land, Game Over, , but they're definitely far fewer than, say, Final Fantasy VI.  Compared to a game like FFVI, I really feel that SoM has a much less serious vibe, which makes me feel a lot less invested in what's going on.

I guess one could say that goes with the cutesy and brightly colorful aesthetic of the graphics, but then again...well, come to think of it, why do I not mind the cutesy aesthetic of Recettear or Fortune Summoners?  Not really sure.  But those two games definitely took their narratives seriously, and delivered them much more effectively.  (Note that serious doesn't mean high drama.)

It doesn't help that SoM's backgrounds make text hard to read.  Or that the plot isn't explained well and stuff sometimes happens out of thin air.  Or that grinding weapons and magic in that game is rather tedious, and the damage/immunity mechanism is inconsistent sometimes.

Sigh, I had high hopes when I first approached the game.  It seemed intriguing.

Counterclock

It will always hold a special place in my heart at least. even if the magic system completely broke the game.

Eelektross

Eugh, tell me about it. Secret of Mana's game design was terrible as shit.

Seiken Densetsu 3 is much better, you should try that. The combat system is much easier to handle, and the Aeon Genesis translation gives a much more coherent plot than whatever was going on in Secret of Mana.

What was going on in Secret of Mana, anyways? There was this skeleton guy who was controlling this empire to do something with the Mana Seeds and I dunno what was going on.