Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Children of Mana/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was archived by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 05:26, 14 February 2015 (UTC) [1].

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Children of Mana

Nominator(s): PresN 19:21, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Children of Mana was an attempt by Square Enix to revitalize a series of games that had produced what many felt were some of the best RPGs ever made for the SNES- Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3. Turns out, attaching a weak plot to a complete shift in gameplay style didn't have the effect they'd hoped for, and this first of three successive titles in the Mana series got only middling reviews. As a part of my drive to get all of the articles on Mana articles up to GA+, I've recently gotten this to GA, and following in the footsteps of Secret of Mana from this past Fall I'm going to try to get it through FAC. As a Nintendo DS game, and as a lackluster part of a three-game series, it hasn't gotten as much retrospective attention by critics as other games, but I think this is a solid little article—hopefully reviewers won't find much objectionable about it. Thanks for reviewing! --PresN 19:21, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Review by Tezero

Looks interesting; maybe I've got another one for the large pile of JRPGs I still need to play. Reminds me of the Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles games and the Digimon RPGs. Anyway, a review I've promised in exchange for my billionth Sonic GAN, so here I go:

• "Each of the character options have different numerical attributes, representing their different skills with weapons or magic" - could you give an example of how this might manifest? Also, I don't know the class system or the available classes yet - is it similar to the one in Final Fantasy III or something?
• Can you go back to dungeon floors you've already been to?
• "where the boss monster lies" - is the boss always a "monster"? Is it always the same monster? If not, what monsters can it be?
• "the number of floors can increase" - to a set number? Are the dungeon floors randomly generated?
• "bow & arrow" - why the ampersand?
• "wield one or two weapons at a time" - perhaps not, but is there any reason you'd only want to wield one? Is it like the long-held (though, IIRC, untrue) idea that in Pokémon you only get STAB (an attack boost from using an attack of your Pokémon's type) if your Pokémon is single-typed? Also, can you switch between the two at will? Must they recharge? Can you perform a "generic", non-weapon attack?
• Overall, some parts of Gameplay seem a bit vague - remember, you can cite the manual, in-game text, or - as a last resort - even the game itself if you need to include some extra details for a complete understanding of the gameplay.
• "Setting" section - consider adding "and characters" or changing to "Premise"
• Didn't notice anything objectionable in Story, so I'll leave off there.

Tezero (talk) 21:44, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Responding below, in order:

• Reworked it; it's really just a rating from 1-5 on magic, weapons, HP, and MP. There's no classes, which is why the article doesn't mention classes- the only difference between the characters is their relative rankings in those four attributes.
• No, specified
• Monster; changes depending on what quest you're doing (now specified when I talk about side quests); that seems like gameguide material (they're not plot-important, and I don't see the benefit of saying "this goo-monster" or "that bird monster")
• Switched to "changed"- it's just different depending on what quest you're doing; yes, specified earlier now that floors are always randomly generated
• fixed
• Reworked this- basically, you map one weapon to X and one to A, and at any point you can change what those two weapons are. One button can be empty if you want, though that's mainly because when you start the game you only have one weapon. When you attack, it's only with one button/weapon or the other, so "wields" is a bad word to use- does what I have now make more sense?
• Is it any better now? It's not really a complicated game- more action-y and very little RPG-y than previous Mana games.
• Changed.

@Tezero: done. --PresN 23:22, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey, sorry about my inattention to this FAC; writing, schoolwork, and my own game project have occupied my already insect-like attention span lately. Right now I'm copyediting sections as I notice awkward turns of phrase - don't worry, nothing too severe. Remaining comments:

• "acclaimed anime studio" - doesn't appear to be in the source. You can provide another one if you think this is relevant information, but I personally don't. Normally I don't check references unless doing a source review; this just seemed like a detail particularly unlikely to be found in the materials, and it turned out I was right.
• "and the use of the buttons and stylus" - question: how does this make the game more action-oriented?
• "which was meant to make the game a "fun-for-all action type game"" - not requiring removal here, but isn't this a little redundant? I mean, the whole paragraph's about how this game was developed to be action-like.
• Also not found in the source when I checked: "rock and roll". It's a minor distinction and I've amended the text, but for the record (and according to Wikipedia), rock and roll is more like Elvis, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, the Rolling Stones, old bluesy stuff like that, while rock is more generic and encompasses the likes of Neil Young, Pearl Jam, Carole King, Oasis, and even the Strokes, Coldplay, Bastille, and Muse.
• Also for the record: "first 3 days" - unless dealing with statistics and such, numbers under fifteen should be written out longhand, as can higher ones if the tone is formal enough.
• Why does Reception keep repeating authors' associated publications, e.g. "Mueller of GameSpot"?
• "while giving the game a notably high score" - why is it notable?

That should be about it. Tezero (talk) 16:31, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

• Dropped
• Added a bit more from that interview to explain what the heck he meant, though after reading it three times I'm still not 100% on it.
• Replaced the earlier action game quote with that one, since it is a duplicate.
• Yeah, I guess WP makes a distinction that rock and roll is a type of rock music, guess I don't think that much about musical subgenres.
• Whoops, I knew that, but my fingers didn't
• I'm trying to find a balance- we're supposed to use the authors' names when quoting them, not the publication (GameSpot didn't write the review, Mueller did), but if I just say "Mueller said 'blah'", I generally as a reader have forgotten who Mueller is if it's been a few paragraphs since I mentioned that he wrote the GameSpot interview- especially with 7 other names flying about. Saying "Mueller of GameSpot" splits the difference. I started it at FAC for Infinity Blade on the recommendation of J Milburn last April, as well as several GANs since.
• Changed to "an especially high score" - I just meant it just to call out that they gave the game (average score: 68/100) the equivalent of a 90/100, the idea being that even the reviewers who thought the game was great still thought the gameplay was weak for a Mana game.

@Tezero: done. --PresN 19:15, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

• Support. Not sure the Mueller pattern is really necessary - plenty of articles get by fine without it - but it's just a stylistic choice and definitely not explicitly "wrong". Nice work. Tezero (talk) 19:29, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Comments from JimmyBlackwing

I probably don't have time to do a review—honestly, I didn't even plan to comment. However, while doing a little drive-by copyediting on the lead, I noticed that at least one statement is not backed up by its source. See here:

"It was designed by series creator Koichi Ishii, directed by Yoshiki Ito, and produced by Takashi Orikata and Katsuji Aoyama."

I clicked on source 10 and found no mention of Ito, Orikata or Aoyama. I'm sure this is an oversight caused by over-familiarity with the source material (I regularly made the same mistake on the Looking Glass articles), but you should definitely do a run-through to eliminate any improperly sourced passages. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 11:21, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Source 10 is actually just referencing the next statement (about Production IG); the information about the designers/directors is implicitly sourced to the game, though I can explicitly source the game's credits if necessary. --PresN 22:51, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

That could work. I'm definitely not going to have time to look over the article more thoroughly, so you can consider these comments resolved. JimmyBlackwing (talk) 20:49, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Closing comment -- sorry but after three weeks we're still quite some way from achieving sufficient commentary to declare a consensus for promotion, so I'll be archiving this shortly. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 05:26, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

• Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 05:26, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.