Mandinga - A Tale of Banzo

Uma experiência riquíssima! Apesar de ter alguns bugs, no geral, o jogo funciona muito bem. Pega-se o jeito rapidamente, e logo que passamos a dominar a mecânica dos combates, somos estimulados a fazer diferentes combinações de golpes, o que vai deixando o jogo cada vez mais estimulante. O enredo é bastante instigante: os dois personagens com os quais jogamos são escravos revoltos de origens bastante diferentes na África, e surge entre eles uma parceria e uma amizade a princípio improvável, porém necessária. A combinação entre a dinâmica de RPGs clássicos com uma narrativa ambientada no Brasil do século XIX me deixou até emocionado, por ser uma demonstração suficientemente bem sucedida da enorme potencialidade que a história do Brasil fornece como fonte de ambientação para jogos a serem desenvolvidos a partir do precedente deixado por Mandinga. Recomendadíssimo pra quem acha que seria interessante a experiência com um jogo que nos instigue sobre temas relacionados àquilo que nos faz brasileiros.

What a unique experience. I was very impressed with the mature and insightful look into the history and culture around slavery in Brazil, as well as the Mandinga and Yoruba peoples represented by the main characters. The overall narrative was strong and the characters were well written. I really enjoyed the exploration of religion (Islam and Isese), psychology, and clashing cultures between the main characters. These factors alone make the game well worth the time. That said, I feel that I should mention that the game takes an rather unflinching look at slavery -- physical and sexual abuse are both present in the game. I believe they were used appropriately, but it's something to be aware of. The moment to moment gameplay is serviceable. The battle system revolves around building sets of dice for each character and choosing the right one to use each turn. It offers a good amount of customizability given the scope of the game, and I found it to be more engaging than straight up menu based JRPG combat. Random battles are grating, but it was tolerable given the game's short run time. The pixel art for the moment to moment gameplay is just decent, but I really enjoy the more detailed illustrations that show up in some places such as character portraits, special moves in combat, and dream sequences. These really bring out the game's unique voice. There are some major QA issues here, though. I was able to walk out of bounds on a couple of occasions, some objects that looked like they should have collision didn't, and so on. The translation was a bit spotty -- the phrasing wasn't quite right and a few things here and there didn't even get translated (e.g. accept and cancel in menus). Some of the sound effects are bad samples that would have stuck out in the 90s. Luckily, none of these basic technical issues impeded my progress through the game or detracted from the overall message and story. There is one issue that did detract from the experience, though. A narrative split occurs a few hours in. Since the game only keeps a single save file, you'd have to replay the initial shared portion to check out the other side of the split. I'm not interested in doing that, but I am interested in seeing more of the details on the side I didn't choose. Not huge, since I think I could largely infer what happened, but still a bit disappointing. If you're able to look past these types of issues and the overall lack of polish, the game is absolutely worth experiencing. It'll definitely stick with me for a long time, and, at the end of the day, that's why I love indie games like Mandinga so much.