April 6, 2007 - To accompany our recent hands-on multiplayer preview of Heroes of Mana for the Nintendo DS, Square-Enix gave us the opportunity to sit down with the creator of the World of Mana series, and lead producer on Heroes of Mana Koichi Ishii. Along with an overall breakdown of the real-time strategy elements in Heroes of Mana, we had a chance to chat with the series creator about his vision for the franchise's future, the ups and downs of DS development, and the importance of his vision for the Mana world.

Enjoy.



IGN: Please take us through the basic gameplay for Heroes of Mana. Is this a full RTS experience? What type of units and gameplay strategy is implemented?

Ishii: The basic way that you move through the game is that you clear each battle field to progress through your campaign. Normally in real-time strategy games you'd be building structures on the main battlefield and summoning units from there. In Heroes of Mana, you build all your structures inside your ship - The Nightswan - and units come out when they're finished. Resource gathering is an important part as well, as you'll gather both materials from the Gia Stone, as well as berries and food from the treants. Once you've gathered more recourses you can use them to build other buildings or spawn more units, just like a conventional RTS game.

IGN: When you were designing the overall RTS feel of the game for Heroes of Mana, how much emphasis was put on making this game fit for both hardcore and casual gamers? With other Square franchises such as Rocket Slime and Chocobo tales there's an obvious appeal to the younger, casual crowd. Is that the same here?

Ishii: The main purpose of this project was to create an RTS game that casual gamers can really enjoy. We feel that Nintendo DS users enjoy more casual games. We want this to be a game that casual players can pick up and experience a full RTS experience.

IGN: When dealing with the game's design, how much of the project was created from Square's side, and how much freedom was given to developer Brownie Brown?

Ishii: The basic design was done entirely by myself, and I would decide what I want to do with the game, and Brownie Brown would then take that and map out the full design. The staff members of Brownie Brown were actually working directly under me throughout the project.

IGN: How important is it for you personally to get your hand directly in to the game's development? Obviously this franchise was created by you, so you must have some attachment to the world.

Ishii: I definitely check everything in the development process, yes. I feel that it wouldn't be a true "Mana World" without having it directly overseen by me, so I stay very involved in the process.

IGN: The DS seems like it's a perfect platform for real-time strategy games. It's odd though, as we haven't seen too many of them so far, and none of them have been particularly impressive. Were there factors in development that were particularly difficult? In your opinion, is this a genre that's being underplayed on the system?

Ishii: Setting aside the fact that it was coming specifically to DS, it was even difficult to bring the RTS style of gameplay to the Japanese market, since they're not very familiar with the genre as a whole. It was actually kind of difficult to even explain what type of game it was.

I hope this will open up the door for other Japanese development studios to bring RTS titles to Japan, and of course to America in the process.

IGN: How has the DS hardware been for creating an RTS game? Has it been a pretty flawless development, or were there struggles in bringing the genre to the system?

Ishii: It was actually quite difficult at times. Though I can't go into specifics, we actually had to start the entire development over from scratch at one point.

IGN: Obviously the Mana series has become very popular around the world. We get this question a lot, so it's time to pass it on to you...

Ishii: (laughs) Ok.

IGN: On GBA/DS it seems like the franchise is moving in a very different direction from its original action/RPG roots. Why is that?

Ishii: Well, the reason why we decided to bring this type of play over to the DS is that the system's multiplayer is very popular, so we thought it'd be a perfect fit for the system. Also, the dual screen and touch screen are perfect. We really like the idea of touching the game as we play it, so it's a perfect fit this time around.

IGN: In relation to previous Mana games, Sword of Mana, Children of Mana, and now Heroes of Mana, is the action/RPG phase of the series over at this point then? Is this an alternate take on the world, or is this the next true progression for the Mana series?

Ishii: The Mana titles have always been on different platforms and using different styles, so we may go back to the previous Sword of Mana or Children of Mana style, or we may move on to something different. We want to use the Mana world to create many different styles of gameplay, not just one specific type of game.