Legend of Mana (PSX) - Guest Post

Rpg fan Ocean returns with another post about a classic rpg, as is his way.

Now for Legend of Mana! I admit I have a soft spot for the early Mana series. Final Fantasy Adventure is the game I have replayed most out of all the games I ever played, Secret of Mana is wonderful and has a brilliant soundtrack, Seiken Densetsu 3 is a massively huge game making and graphical influence on me. So now, what about Legend of Mana?

Here it is, Legend of Mana, for the PS1.

I'll choose the girl. I don't know if anything is different if you pick the guy, because I always play as the girl. If there's a statistical difference, it doesn't make an actual in game difference. You can initially pick what weapon you want, but you can buy/find/make whatever weapon type you want later. Spears are nice, they can stun an enemy. Including bosses. More on that later.

You pick which part of the world you want to be in. It affects what areas you are and are not able to place areas of land in, but other than that there's no difference. The areas you set down will be the same.

You can place areas down anywhere in the map. You get artifacts (such as books, mailboxes, wheels and whatever) to use to place in the world. The areas level (enemies/items/equipment) depends on how far away you are from the home and your current level when you set it down... I THINK. It wasn't explained in game.

This sort of sets the tone for the rest of the game. It's not like there's no conflicts (there are, 3 major storylines in fact), but it seems like a peaceful world overall. No one feels the effects of what's happening outside, it's like the world is actually better off without Mana.

Chillin' at home. Even she doesn't really feel a pressure to save the world.

I really don't like this guy. He is very rude to Pearl, who is just a very lost and shy girl. Anyway, you have team members join and leave you on a fairly constant basis. They tend to just join up for a quest then go away. Late in major storylines, they'll actually stay with you for longer. Oh yeah, I guess it's a good time as any to mention it's non linear. As with what I said before, it's a pretty relaxed world so you rarely feel pressured into doing some quest right after another. If you want to go in the jungles then hang out on the ship... feel free.

You have stats. I never pay attention to them, you never really need to. In fact, I've replayed this game at least 4 times, and only now did I actually figure out what any of these icons stood for. Synchro Effect shows you what effect the others get (or what you get) when you're near them. Some allies give some nicer synchro effects.... like healing faster or something.

Off to fighting we go! It's an action RPG, but it's a really easy game. Enemy AI is not smart (they can really only beat you if you play on No Future mode or if they consistently stun you), and the spear has the ability to stun enemies including bosses. Which is nice but not even needed. You can't run from battles though which is a pain. You'll want to because they're too easy, not because you're low on health. Besides, you recover full health after a battle.

Sometimes candy drops but I feel it's a waste because you recover after battle anyway. The candy even takes the place of something like an item drop or EXP/Money so it's even worse. You can't save candies.

Oh look it's the big bad boss! Oh no, I haven't grinded!

But it's okay because you don't need to. Those gems are experience points, you can share them by having the other player (if you play 2 players) grab some of the crystals. They do disappear like other pickups if you wait too long.

You have special attacks. I rarely use them but they're there. Mostly I just like watching them sometimes. You can learn more by having certain abilities equipped or learned. To use, just attack until the blue bar under your HP is full, then press the key corresponding to it. R1, L1, R2 or L2. You can set magic to it too if you want, I never use them seriously though.

You have a list of abilities so you can equip 2 in battle and after fighting a certain amount of battles or using them a certain amount of times (I don't remember how it works), you get new abilities. Crouch and Defend together give you Counter Attack. You can get even more too, which will help you to learn new special attacks. Crouch is useful, the rest is just whatever you want to play around with.

So I wandered off and found a beast egg! You play a minigame here where you can drop some items and have the beast egg eat it so you can go behind it and capture it before it sees you. Then you can keep it and raise it.

And it becomes a creature! You can get things from crabs, to rabites, to dragons or knights even. You can even find some creatures willing to help you... but that's a harder thing to do that I won't get into. Let's just say some are really hard to get unless you have a walkthrough.

My workshop, has nothing at the moment. Later on people will (without your permission, but it's okay) make a workshop part for you so you can either make new weapons, instruments, or Golems.

These are really well drawn. In fact, that's probably one of the biggest draws for me in this game. You rarely get quest rewards other than an artifact for a new area, but then the new area is also different and beautiful in its own way so it feels like enough of a reward. I have tons of screens of this game.

Time to plant some seeds in this tree.

Depending on what seeds you give it and what day it is (and maybe other factors), you get certain vegetables OR fruits. Unless you look up charts or whatever online, I doubt you'll know what you'll get. So just go, plant some seeds, walk around the map, come back, get your fruit/vegetable, repeat.

You see the spirits down there? That shows the mana level of each spirit in that area. Putting areas around it affects the mana level, and certain quests/monsters may only appear in certain mana levels. Meaning if you are a completionist, you will hate this game. Or use a walkthrough. The major quests don't require that so at least you can beat the game without knowing how it works.

Here's an example. Say the Forest has a big dryad spirit level, you put it next to Domina, and Domina gains a boost in dryad spirit level. It's something like that!

You can buy materials in town, you'll need them for forging later. If you want to forge, that is.

Here we go, it's all upgraded.

Choose a weapon first, then choose a material. Same deal goes for armor. It never really tells you how it'll affect the weapon though, so it's sort of a mystery until you use it. More expensive materials are generally better though. Like Ishe Platinum and Lorimar Iron is better than Menos Bronze and Wendel Silver.

You can temper weapons or alter armor too. It... gets weird from here.

Mostly because, what does this do. You have billions of items, what do any of them do? Even if you figure out what one items effect has, it's more complex than that. Because the game never tells you, but actually you can have multiple effects on a weapon.

You can alter stuff and cards can enter (with the right item combination) to give it a new effect. Or you can add elemental properties or add damage to it. Or temper in a certain item to increase the amount of effects a weapon/armor can have. Done correctly, you can actually make weapons with over 500 attack power (while your regular weapon used to have 50 attack power).

Not that any of that is even needed. I'm sure the game is easy enough that you can never alter anything and still beat it just fine.

You can make instruments in here. What are instruments for? Two reasons: First, and most importantly, to help lure spirits that you find in some dead ends in maps so you can get elemental coins from them if they like your music. And secondly, to cast magic.

Like so. If enemies get in that colored range, they'll get hit once you release it. They're not powerful at all but they have no cost.

You can create Golems! Like monsters, they can follow you around. They take up the space of a monster though so it's either a Golem or a monster. I tried a golem once, sometimes their attacks fail. I forgot to mention, I got a new creature following me!

This guy. His synchro attack is making my attacks Dark elemental. Not especially useful, but come on, it's a Dark Knight! With the help of a walkthrough, I actually got a Succubus.

The most annoying segment of the game. You have to learn the dudbear language and use it to communicate with them to sell items. It's actually an interesting idea, but really annoying to do. I like the look of the town though.

There are all these silly little details in the game world. The amount of crabs you step on could actually lead to a quest later on!

I love the graphics in this game so much.

OK, dropping out now!

The story, there is one. There are three actually. I didn't really mention much of it because again, the sidequests are really the main draw of the game. If you like linear story/cutscene heavy games, this is not for you. If you like games with challenge, this is not for you (with the exception of fighting Tropicallo on No future mode). The stories are interesting and though seemingly unconnected, they are tied together by the same theme: Love. I'd go more into it but I don't want to spoil it for you.

I found it to be an interesting game, and despite it not being as solid a game to play as the previous ones, I still enjoyed it. I think one of the biggest things this game needs to improve in is simply just telling the player things. I got lost a lot in one quest because I was looking for this one character in the wrong place. Or some quests you could never know about on a casual playthrough. Look up a walkthrough and don't feel ashamed to do so for this game.