Secret of Mana/YMMV


 * Nightmare Fuel: A few kinds. Audio, in the form of The Curse (and Ceremony quickly turns into this given whom it becomes associated with over time); plot-wise, in the form of Geshtar the MechRider just what that entails and what actually took place in the process of this isn't detailed, but leaving it up to the player's imagination makes it so much worse; more plot with regard to  - for a super colourful, adorable NES game, Secret of Mana is almost startlingly creepy when you think on it for a while.
 * Awesome Music/Hiroki Kikuta: Widely considered as one of the best soundtracks ever.
 * 'What the Forest Taught Me', 'Dark Star', 'Ceremony', 'Prophecy', 'The Second Truth from the Left' and 'The Oracle' topping the list.
 * Has an excellent Final Boss song, "Meridian Dance".
 * "Fear of the Heavens", the opening theme. But suffice to say - there's a reason that the composer was the second credit given, immediately after the programmer.
 * Give Love Its Rightful Time
 * Complete Monster: Thanatos is considered by many to be one of the most vile villains in the entire Mana series.
 * Game Breaker: Casting the right offensive spells on a boss not only inflicts far more damage than any of your physical attacks, doing so also stuns it until the spell is finished casting, during which time you can cast another spell and so on until the fight's over. It's telling that That One Boss is the last one you fight without magic.
 * This works the same way when enemies cast spells on the player characters. Except the baddies don't do it every other second...
 * If you're lucky. The penultimate boss likes to SPAM YOU.
 * The iPhone port increased the aggression levels of all enemies and won't hesitate to combo and spam spells on you.
 * This gets taken Up to Eleven once you get Luna's magic: Not only can the Sprite spam-cast anything s/he wants, you can then drain the MP from the surrounding enemies to completely refill your reserves. Even the ones you just obliterated, if you're fast enough.
 * Goddamned Bats: Drops, especially fire and ice ones.
 * Good Bad Bugs: Using the Moogle Belt or the Imp Hammer causes you to remove or receive that condition, yes. That's not the bug, this is the bug: in between the three seconds it takes for the item to take it's effect you're invincible. Like, to, let us say,
 * Hell Is That Noise: It has some of the creepiest music ever heard on a 16-bit game.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Thanatos. Period. What happens to Geshtar cemented it for this troper. When you do something that freaks out your henchwoman you KNOW you're a bastard.
 * The man has some truly dick lines in the original-flavoured game - for example,
 * Player Punch:
 * Coupled with a PLAYER BSoD in some cases.
 * Transformation Trauma was involved, probably, given how Maidens become Mana Trees in other series.
 * Randi's face is very akin to the face the player is wearing at the time of that reveal. Gotta love expressive sprites.
 * Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Where to begin? First there's the unprecedented stunning visuals, the music, and the fact that a fair chunk of the game's plot was recycled by Final Fantasy VI, the fact that it pushed the hardware of the SNES to it's absolute limit... Let's just say everything that made this game great was quickly forgotten.
 * The "Action Grid" lets you program the combat AI of your party members. One of the first games to let you do this.
 * That One Boss: Varies from player to player.
 * This troper's best friend referred to that phenomenon as
 * Also? Goddamn Spikey Tiger. Spikey was a serious pain, as it could cause immense damage, moved very quickly, and most of its attacks knocked you unconscious, leaving you unable to attack. It could also cast fire magic, against which there is no defence. And since you don't have magic yet, you can only fight with your physical attacks.
 * Lime Slime. It's friggin' huge, taking up most of the screen, and touching it hurt you; also, it had a pretty high magic defense, so your favored strategy of spell-spamming wouldn't be very effective.
 * The Untwist: After learning that Randi removed the Mana Sword from the stone, Jema informs him that only The Chosen One should be able to do that. Jema tells you that since Randi is so young, it must be a mistake, and he was only able to remove the sword because the power of Mana had weakened. Guess what? Randi is the Chosen One ! Never saw that one coming!
 * Viewer Gender Confusion: The gender of the Sprite is a fiercely debated topic to this day. The English version says he's male, but it's less clear in the original.
 * In the German translation, the Sprite is actually female and is referred to as "the little kobold girl" (die kleine Koboldin).
 * The JP version is - well, Japan has a lot of gender-neutral pronouns. The sprite uses 'oira' as a personal pronoun, and that one's usually used by guys... but tomboyish girl characters will use it as well so - yeah.
 * Popoie has no official gender in the original game, period. The JP guidebook lists the kid's gender as unknown.
 * Woolseyism: Understandable, since the poor guy had a month - or less - to translate the game and the programmers utterly refused to change the text's width or just couldn't, leaving him with not a lot of time and even less space.
 * Woolseyism: Understandable, since the poor guy had a month - or less - to translate the game and the programmers utterly refused to change the text's width or just couldn't, leaving him with not a lot of time and even less space.