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Personally, I think a full-on ASM hack would be better, but even knowing what value to change for allowing the characters, particularly the Sprite, to get out of Weapon Level 0 Heck is at least an improvement.`Having done my own balance patch for Secret of Evermore, I understand how it's important to make accessibility to charged attacks more viable because of their being a staple in the gameplay.

Although I do provide some recommendation for anybody who wants to play the game without taking the issue I will, this is still going to be why I find issue to begin with. For starters, the value is still way too low even on Zippy, which has it set to 15 instead of 9. Escaping Weapon Level 0 Heck as a result is still going to require 7 kills against higher/equal Level enemies, although that's not accounting for additional WEXP, but this won't change the Sprite's issues in being the one to score kills. You can actually still be putting up with Weapon Level 0 Heck around the time you get to Fire Gigas. I think the value should have been something more like 40, because WEXP is still going to be halved against enemies with lower Levels and also halved when the character isn't the one getting the kill.

Here's another problem to bring up, although this is actually the game's own fault: Secret of Mana's charged attacks just don't feel rewarding. The damage added is anything but incredible, and what's worse is the lack of check for making sure the attack goes through instead of being interrupted out of happening by a mere poke, so it makes the reduced mobility when doing chargeup even more grating. Contrast with Secret of Evermore removing the mobility penalty while giving the Level 3 attacks a better feeling of rewarding damage, and even having charged attacks provide pseudo-intangibility against physical attacks. While that game has a problem with arbitrary misses, even the vanilla version of Secret of Evermore handles charged attacking better than Secret of Mana does, and before anybody says the games' release time provides an excuse, Zelda: A Link to the Past handles the spin attack better too by making it outright fast to ready as well as decently safe and versatile on its use. Secret of Mana's design decisions with charged attacks are simply dated without any reason to be too lenient.

In fact, Secret of Mana's design decisions include outright headscratchers, not the least of which is the aforementioned Fire Gigas, who had me fired up in the first place to see how fair he is without having to cheese him back with magic and see if having the WEXP to be out of Level 0 Heck would help by being able to whack him with charged attacks when he would come out of his splitting into fire orbs. Here's a hint: Fire Gigas can literally chain you with spam of his Level 4 spells and kill you that way with you being unable to do anything about it due to the repeated flinching. Yeah, not cool.

At least this patch does throw about a useful effort, and I do see the author created plenty of mini-patches for the game. I'll definitely give him credit where credit is due. I'm just having to air my grievances about the design problems that I can dig up from this in the midst of seeing if this game stands the test of time.

Tested as part of the ongoing Secret of Mana Turbo Project, by Queue (with various resources provided by zhaDe as part of Secret of Mana: New Game Improvement). Latest version used.

Although the grinding in Secret of Mana is not quite so severe, as it has been in some of the Final Fantasies (such as X), we must keep in mind two things:

1. People's lives, generally, are not getting any less busy, contrary to what the dreamers of yesteryear may have been forecasting.

2. There is a far greater selection of games that people could be playing, instead of this or basically any game that feels more like work than fun.

So right there, you have all the reason to take at least some of the grinding out of games, and this does so for the Weapon System. A good start.

I would recommend combining this with Faster or Slower Spell Grinding so as give the Magic System the exact same benefit. Then, the only grinding that is really left is XP for Levels. Which isn't quite so bad, but can also be made much faster, if desired.

There is really nothing to recommend against this mod or the Spell variation, unless you are a self-proclaimed "hardcore" gamer with way more free time than most. That label does not include the vast majority of people, and the explanation for that has already been provided.

Honestly the game is long enough and eventful without having to spend Mounds of unnecessary time just to achieve high tier equipment.

Streamlining the upgrade system a bit makes this a whole lot more refined in terms of 'running the game'. No longer having to spend weeks of bloat gameplay to have a high status character. Hell my most recent playthrough of this game I used a cheat to just give me the final blue version of the Mana Sword anyway. Because I just found the upgrade system too tedious to begin with.

I used to love shallow "grinding" for hours and making characters strong through bruteforce but now in recent years I grow tired of rpg gameplay filler and would rather focus the time on just strategizing skills and equipment or exploring for new equipment or finding ways to get money quickly to buy better resources etc or progressing through events. Not just back and forth room loading and slashing shit for Numeric addition. which a lot of RPGS use to pad out gameplay. I do this with Kingdom Hearts and Borderlands as well.

In a game built around Turned based Combat, the Simplistic Recreation has to be complimented by several stat systems to accommodate the players attention and give them several dopamine progression outlets so the main gameplay and story doesnt get Redundant.

However, when trying to Crossover the style of that Turned based gameplay into an action reaction oriented environment, game devs still tend to insist on keeping as many of those numeric filler micromanagements as possible, not fully grasping that a movement based game gets a lot of its true release through the combat and input itself, and the flow of set piece events. not the stat game behind it. which makes the stat grind padding overwhelming and cumbersome if not balanced and implemented carefully. a game like secret of mana is not a game I want to stat dwell like chrono trigger or final fantasy. there can be some stat progression for sure. but it should be wayy more accessible and not time consuming.

I guess its different in an age now where you don't play just one game for months and months to a year like back when you're young. There's just so much software to engage that games don't need to be Rackingly time consuming just to be a challenging and enriching endeavor. And anyone who looks at access refinements like this and scoffs at us for being "casual" should probably get their obtuse point of view checked.

I would say apply this patch with a harder enemies patch to get a fine swift challenge curve.

I just ranted but whatever