He claimed there is "no break from the monotony of dungeon clearing", while Rob Fahey of Eurogamer said the game is repetitive and uninspiring. GamePro concluded that "the downfall of Children of Mana is its repetitiveness," and Chandran felt most players would be sick of the gameplay before finishing half of the game. The reviewers from the Japanese Shūkan Famitsū magazine, while giving the game an especially high score, noted that the gameplay could be considered insufficient compared to prior titles in the series. Bozon, while giving the game a more positive review than many others, felt the thinness of the gameplay was bolstered by the multiplayer component, saying that "the game's entertainment value goes up in leaps and bounds during multiplayer," a point with which Fahey agreed to a lesser extent. In addition to the general dungeon-clearing gameplay, the combat itself was criticized by reviewers like Padilla, who said that "the weapon use is the most disappointing facet of this game." Both Fahey and Mueller felt the combat, while initially fun, quickly became boring due to the simplicity. Chandran added that magic spells were too slow to be useful in combat, further reducing the complexity of the gameplay. Chandran and GamePro both criticized the "sparse and slow" story, while Fahey dismissed it as "a gossamer-thin layer which tries and fails miserably to hold everything together" and nothing more than several role-playing game clichés stuck together. Padilla concluded that while the game had several good elements, it ultimately failed to live up to its potential as a Mana game. Notes References External links 2006 video games Action role-playing video games Cooperative video games Japanese role-playing video games Mana (series) video games Multiplayer and single-player video games Nex Entertainment games Nintendo games Nintendo DS-only games Nintendo DS games Production I.G Role-playing video games Video games developed in Japan Video games scored by Kenji Ito Video games scored by Masaharu Iwata Video games using procedural generation