Mana, Music, and Majesty: The Aesthetic Beauty of Secret of Mana’s Soundtrack

Secret of Mana is a controversial game. While it is often remembered for its beautiful design and gorgeous pixel art, gamers also deride its confusing combat system, poor pacing, and overall lackluster gameplay. Lying underneath these sometimes divisive elements is a key component of the game’s overall experience that never fails to pull me in: the music.

Setting the Mood

Secret of Mana’s music has been hailed and praised as some of the best in the 16-bit era (and sits near the top of the entire gaming music mountain), so there’s little need for me to wax fondly on the melodies themselves. The soundtrack is excellent, and if you haven’t heard it, find a playlist on your streaming service of choice.

Rather, I want to draw attention to the aesthetic fit of composer Hiroki Kikuta’s soundtrack and how it perfectly and poignantly sets the mood. The story comes across as a bit dry and rushed (at least in the English translation), but the music sets the tone. Secret of Mana‘s soundtrack truly performs the heavy lifting in communicating the gravitas of the serious moments and the thrills of the exciting adventures. While listening to the soundtrack in isolation is a joy in itself, experiencing the exhilarating trills and solemn drones in their contextual moments elevates the music, as Coleridge would have endorsed, from “pretty” to “sublime.”

This is Mana’s might: crafting the perfect emotional aesthetic for the moment, skillfully joining aural sensation, visual stimulus, and experiential storytelling in an impactful package that still gives me shivers today, even as I finish my fifth playthrough.

While the entire soundtrack does an excellent job of setting the mood, there are three songs and scenes I want to focus on. (Please note that this article focuses on the original 16-bit version of Secret of Mana, and does contain minor spoilers if you have yet to play the game.)

The Legend of an Old World: “Fear of the Heavens”

A prime example comes roaring out of the gates (literally) with the first song, “Fear of the Heavens.” After the otherworldly cry of an unknown beast demands the player’s attention, a slow piano melody echoes with reverb, bringing to mind a long-lost age echoing through time to the present age. The line shifts into a brighter major harmony, giving a sense of hope underpinning the text crawl explaining the legend of the game’s world.

It’s an attention grabber and a heck of a way to start off a game built around exploring an ancient legend.

The Adventure Begins: “Into the Thick of It”

The best example of mood-setting is a tune everyone remembers from Secret of Mana, “Into the Thick of It.” This is the piece that plays on the first “overworld” map of the game, immediately after the main character is banished from the first town and charged with restoring the Mana Sword. He steps into the grassy wilderness, uncertain of the journey that lies before him but full of expectation.

The musical piece opens with an ostinato pattern on a harpsichord. The repeated notes paint a scene of an ever-expanding horizon, a scene of nature that extends as far as the eye can see. The harsh metallic timbre of the harpsichord emboldens this scene with a sense of enduring age, like the everlasting steel strings in the ancient keyboard.

After a few repeated bars, the bright, whimsical melody sneaks in. The excitement in these notes is palpable, sonically describing the joy and wonder of stepping into a new world. But the airy and thin tone of the flutes feels reserved, holding back as if uncertain and trepidatious. The sudden shifts between keys feel like missteps on uneven, wild terrain; without blended modulation, the song seems to trip, then catch itself again or correct course when the path disappears beneath its feet.

The effect is one of cautious optimism, feeling untamed and uncertain about where to go, yet hopeful for the journey. This is the way Secret of Mana kicks off the adventure. This tune fills the air as players wind through serpentine paths of an unexplored wilderness.

Hauntingly Alien: “Ceremony”

For such a fantastical game, Secret of Mana holds one of the creepiest songs of any RPG. In “Ceremony,” the Indonesian gamelan lead line creates a sense of unease, its uneven intervals and microtones clashing with the Western expectation of even-tempered scales.

The eerie bowed glass underneath the melody line and an intermittent vocal howl further enhance the spine-crawling nature of the piece. The song is creepy, evoking imagery of a foul ritual foreign to this realm of existence and crawling with evil, and that feeling sticks with you even after you leave the area.

“Ceremony” first plays when the heroes discover a temple holding the brainwashed people of a nearby kingdom. The temple’s visuals are horrifying: statues of horned demons adorn the courtyard, masked mutes wander the grounds, and the foggy, dark brown interior overwhelms with a sense of foreboding and eldritch terror. The entire scene is one that pokes at the nerves like the legs of a thousand spiders and sends literal shivers along the player’s back. It’s a creepy scene enhanced by equally creepy music, and the dread stays with the player long after leaving the temple.

Conclusion: The Importance of Music to Mood Setting

Secret of Mana may not be a perfect game, but the music and moods of each scene are unparalleled in the 16-bit genre and rest at the summit of the entirety of gaming. Hiroki Kikuta’s compositions and the aesthetic each piece creates keep me coming back year after year to this tangibly emotive masterclass in mood setting.