Children of Mana

Children of Mana (聖剣伝説DS チルドレン　オブ　マナ) is the latest entry in the Seiken Densetsu series, and the first in the series to be released for the Nintendo DS.

Unlike previous entries in the series, Children of Mana is predominantly a dungeon crawler where the dungeons are reached from the world map. However, the battle mechanics of Children of Mana are still essentially the same as prior entries to the series.

The eight elemental spirits from the series (barring Legend of Mana's Aura) return with an attack ability and a support ability for use in battle. However, unlike other Mana games, players are only allowed to bring one elemental into a dungeon with them at a time.

Multi-player Capabilities
Children of Mana takes advantage of the Nintendo DS's multiplayer capabilities, so up to four players can either co-operate or compete in beating a dungeon - and each other. However, the drawbacks of this is that players (except for the host player) cannot save the progress they make in the dungeon, although they do retain any items gained (in fact, some items can only be gained via multiplayer. They will return to their game at the same point that they left it, except with the improved stats and items gained while playing with friends.

The multi-player capabilites only uses local wireless and does not support Nintendo Wi-Fi capabilities.