Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Children of Mana/archive2

Children of Mana

Nominator(s): Pres N 21:09, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Children of Mana was an attempt by Square Enix to revitalize a series of video games that had produced what many felt were some of the best RPGs ever made for the SNES- Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3. Turns out, attaching a weak plot to a complete shift in gameplay style didn't have the effect they'd hoped for, and this first of three successive titles in the Mana series got only middling reviews. As a part of my drive to get all of the Mana articles up to GA+, I've recently gotten this to GA, and a month ago tried to send this through FAC. The general response was... crickets, so two weeks later I'm trying again. Hopefully two times is the charm! Thanks for reviewing! --Pres N 21:09, 2 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment originally released in Japan as Seiken Densetsu DS: Children of Mana (Japanese: 聖剣伝説DS CHILDREN of MANA Hepburn: Seiken Densetsu DS: Chirudoren obu Mana?, lit. "Legend of the Sacred Sword DS: Children of Mana") is way too long an interruption to the first sentence. The lay person shouldn't have to read two lines of alternatives, translations and transliterations of the title before he finds out that this article is about a video game. You should either trim it or relegate it to a footnote. I wonder if the DS should be introduced as a handheld console?—indopug (talk) 13:08, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Indopug: That unwieldy template is standard for Japanese video games, even FAs, but I've now moved it to a footnote and I think it does work better that way. I've also added that the DS is a handheld game console. --Pres N 19:48, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support; looks to have been maintained fine since the previous FAC and a great article besides. Tezero (talk) 21:41, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note to FAC delegates- Tezero reviewed this at the last FAC, and supported there; this support is just a carry-through of that one. --Pres N 20:30, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment by JDC808

I've gone through the article and made some copy-edits where I saw necessary. Have just a few points before I'm willing to support:

In the Gameplay section, it says "The player controls the unnamed main character, chosen from one of four options." However, in the Setting and characters subsection, it says "The four major characters of Children of Mana are Ferrik, Tamber, Poppen, and Wanderer." Are those not their names?
Story subsection, "a mysterious man garbed in black appears and attempts to take the Holy Sword, which is still stuck in the ground, but finds that it is protected by a barrier. The man disappears, and the hero takes the Holy Sword,..." How did the hero get through the barrier? Did the barrier disappear when the man did?
"When the Mana Lord is about to kill the hero, a group of gems appear around him to prevent his attack." I was going to copy-edit this, but need some clarification. Do the gems appear around the hero or the Mana Lord?
"At the end of the Path, the hero finds the Mana Lord waiting. Upon his defeat, the Mana Lord..." I assume the hero and the Mana Lord battled here, but that's completely left out. --JDC808 ♫ 20:10, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Corrected (removed unnamed)
The barrier only appears to block the man when he grabs for the sword; no such barrier appears to block the hero. Reworded.
Changed to "the hero"; it shouldn't have been gender-specific anyways
Added that they fought.

@JDC808: Responded below your comments, tried to fix all four issues. --Pres N 20:22, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Made a few more copy-edits. All of my issues have been addressed. I Support this article's promotion. --JDC808 ♫ 20:50, 10 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from ProtoDrake

I have found something.

In the lead, the coding for the cover art uses of brackets and resolution for the cover art instead of using the image directly doesn't appear to be the current form. I suppose changing it is optional, but it would look both consistent and tidy.
I don't think the "Role-playing video games introduced in 2006" and "2006 video games" should be used together.

Those are the only things that jumped out. Sorry it's not any longer, but I seriously can't think of anything else that hasn't been mentioned above. --ProtoDrake (talk) 19:43, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@ProtoDrake: Adjusted both (also got rid of the Nintendo DS category in favor of the Nintendo DS RPG category, by the same logic. --Pres N 19:48, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One last thing I've noticed: The RPGamer reference is lacking its publisher. The publisher is CraveOnline, I think. --ProtoDrake (talk) 19:56, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@ProtoDrake: done. --Pres N 20:16, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@PresN:, in that case, I think I can now Support this with a clearer mind. --ProtoDrake (talk) 20:31, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment from GamerPro64

~~Planning on review this article soon. GamerPro64 20:21, 10 April 2015 (UTC)~~[reply]

Sorry this took so long to actually review this article. Any who, reading through the article, I think the article is sourced well enough and written throughly on the subject to give it that little bronze star. I can give a Support for this article. GamerPro64 04:11, 21 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from New Age Retro Hippie

AKA Image/Source review

Placeholder <3 - New Age Retro Hippie (talk) (contributions) 00:02, 11 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@New Age Retro Hippie: Hey, I suspect you forgot about this. Instead of a full review, could you do an image or source review? I think this nom needs that more. --Pres N 20:30, 7 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely did forget, haha. An image/source review would be a lot less time-consuming for me right now.

The cover image lists tru.com as a source, but I can't personally verify that it comes from there.

The second image is a-okay.

As for sources, I did some quick checks on sources used for gameplay to make sure that they match up, and that seems to be the case.

Of all the sources, I did find one archive that was broken - the 1UP.com link. - New Age Retro Hippie (talk) (contributions) 21:36, 7 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@New Age Retro Hippie: Swapped out the image source with the Amazon.com listing for the game by Nintendo, which uses an identical image; made a new webcitation archive link for that ref and verified that it worked. --Pres N 22:22, 7 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

All right, sources are fine, images are fine, and having read it, I have no problems with the content. Support. - New Age Retro Hippie (talk) (contributions) 19:25, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments from Judgesurreal777

Hey @PresN: and @ProtoDrake:! Been a while, I hope to more active this summer, glad to see you are keeping this project sprinting in a way no others seem to do. Article looks great, well written, covers all the bases, references are archived where appropriate. I Support its candidacy. One small point, and I may not be up to date with our current best practices on this, but shouldn't the plot section have references? Awesome job overall, never stop! Judgesurreal777 (talk) 13:57, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hey @Judgesurreal777, been a while! No, even when you were more active plot sections were implicitly sourced to the game itself; plot citations to game quotes are nice, but optional. I don't have a transcript of the game (I worked out the plot by skimming through lets play videos), so I don't have an easy way of getting game quotes for optional referencing. If you know of one, let me know and I'll add some. --Pres N 15:32, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, @Judgesurreal777, long time no see. Happy memories abound of our previous encounters. Hope to see more of you (well, not see exactly, but you know what I mean). --ProtoDrake (talk) 15:35, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @PresN: and @ProtoDrake:, you guys are the best! Good to know about the plot stuff, if I come across a game manual I might offer it or add it myself, but no biggie, looks Featured Article ready. I cannot wait for a Mana series Featured Topic, I always wanted to see it happen :) Judgesurreal777 (talk) 16:55, 14 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

The references are all formatted consistently and correctly, and appear to be reliable, as far as I can tell. My only question is the same as Judgesurreal777 raised above: is there no way to provide a source for the "Story" section? I'll admit I'm not too familiar with the style of video game articles, so I'm happy to be educated on that point. Have others passed FA recently with similarly uncited sections? --Coemgenus (talk) 12:16, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Coemgenus: Journey (January 2013) has no refs for story; Final Fantasy XIII-2 (June 2013) has only a sprinkling with most of story unreferenced; Thirty Flights of Loving (February 2014) no refs; Grand Theft Auto V (May 2014) almost no refs; Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (movie, February 2015) no refs. --Pres N 15:37, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that makes sense. Sources look good to me, then. Note to coordinators: I have not done spotchecks. If these are required, let me know, and I'll do some. --Coemgenus (talk) 16:50, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: New Age Retro Hippie did do spotchecks up above. --Pres N 17:53, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

How did I miss that? Well, now you have two source reviews. I'll make a note on the list so you don't end up with three! --Coemgenus (talk) 18:34, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much! --Pres N 18:37, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Well, to clarify: the "source review", which is to do with formatting/reliability of citations/sources, is something we like to see carried out on every FAC (like the image licensing review), whereas the "source spotcheck", meaning to check some of the sources for accurate use and avoidance of plagiarism or close paraphrasing, is something we generally only require for a nominator's first FAC, and then on the odd occasion subsequently -- we never discourage them though! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 21:11, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been promoted, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FAC/ar, and leave the {{featured article candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Ian Rose (talk) 12:42, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]