Mana Chronicles

They say a rose by any other name is still a rose (Do they? - ed). Does the same thing apply when it comes to dated button-mashing beat-‘em-ups?

Somewhere along the line, Mana Chronicles has been afforded the lofty title of 'action-RPG,' which puts it in the same Android-based company as Zenonia and Dungeon Hunter.

However, it possesses none of the open exploration or the in-depth character progression that defines its so-called contemporaries.

When Greenpeace goes bad

The first stunt Mana Chronicles attempts to pull in a bid to deceive you about its true nature is a little bit of narrative tricksiness. You start the game controlling a big bad villain (who happens to resemble a teenage girl with angelic wings) who’s been sent to cleanse the earth of us high-pollutin’ humans.

One you’ve floated through the first ugly, gaudy, low-res side-scrolling level, hammering the 'attack' button to beat anything that moves, you come across the first boss. This boss is Leon, whom you leave in a heap without too much fuss.

From the next level on you find yourself in control of a revived and powered-up (by Mars, apparently) Leon. Your first task here is to fight through to the very creature you controlled at the start. Defeating her brings her under your control as a sort of summoned special attack.

Button-bashing dressed as lamb

Sadly, in spite of all this twisty-turniness, one thing stays the same - the uninspiring slog of combat. You move along with a virtual D-pad, you mash the virtual attack button until each enemy falls over, you throw in the odd limited-use special attack when things get a bit too hectic.

I suppose that’s the 'action' part justified. The 'RPG' element is a whole lot more tenuous, as your character levels up through battlefield experience. You don’t control anything to do with this – your stats and abilities just improve in a pre-scripted fashion as you go along. Of course, so do your enemies, rendering much of the process meaningless.

Mana Chronicles’s cursory nod to RPG conventions is half-hearted at best, and smacks of a desperate grab for relevance in an age when the scrolling beat-‘em-up’s status among gamers has faded.