Legend of Mana review.

I’ve been sitting on this one for a few weeks now, and I finally got to it. The verdict: Good; just as I remembered it.


I know I’m in the minority as usual, but I don’t like Square-Enix’s Seiken Densetsu series (known as the ‘Mana’ series here). Certainly, the first game - Final Fantasy Adventure (if you don’t believe me, look it up) - was a refreshing alternative to Zelda games in its time, but still not better or worse. After that, all the games have been mediocre or worse for a variety of reasons. The only other game in the series besides the first one that I enjoy is the one I’m reviewing right now - Legend of Mana - which turns the whole series upside down.

Legend of Mana is not about a single character, but the focus is more on the world in which the game takes place. At the beginning of the game, you choose your main character’s gender, and their name (The game defaults your name as YOU in huge capital letters; I think they were trying to imply that the character should be an extension of yourself, but I took them literally and named the character “YOU.”). Afterwards, YOU goes to various places in the world, Observing the events of other peoples’ lives and being an active participant in their adventures. There are three main story arcs to follow, with several other smaller ones.

Instead of a normal world map, you create the world map: After completing certain events, you get ‘artefacts’. You can them place them on the world map to create new locations to visit. Each place has some sort of inherent elemental quality, and it will affect the elemental qualities of the locations next to it.

The story of Legend of Mana is broken up into ‘events’ - if you do certain things - usually just talking to a certain character - an Event will begin. From that point, you complete a small section of a story arc. As soon as it’s done, you’re taken back to the World Map, allowed to explore the world for more Events to complete. As a result, you can complete any story arc at your own pace. ‘Beating’ the game is not even really part of the story; you can go to the last dungeon after completing one of the three main story arcs, so long as you’ve completed enough events. So, obviously, you don’t have to complete all of the story arcs to complete the game.

So, what’s the incentive for completing the game early, anyways? For one, you can change the difficulty of the game after you complete it once. Legend of Mana’s big downfall in its gameplay is that it’s stupidly easy (more on that later), so it’s useful to at least try to make it harder. Also, the game has a few events that are complicated to trigger, either by way of having to view several conversations first, or by needing to trigger them after ‘event x’ but before ‘event y’, or even by way of needing a certain place to have maxed out elemental levels. It’s all really complicated, and it can be annoying to try and complete all events in one go without a walkthrough, and may cause the game to feel tiresome. As such, the game is more enjoyable if done in the same way it’s laid out for you - in bite-sized chunks.

As for the story itself, the actual stories are kind of lame. The stories are usually strangely complicated and hard to follow, given how little time it takes to complete an entire story arc; how did they make the stories so complicated in such a small amount of time? Either way, that’s not so important, because Legend of Mana’s main theme rings loud and clear. You see, most RPGs like to talk about how powerful some abstract force called ‘humanity’ is, and how if all human beings come together, we can do all kinds of cool stuff. That’s true in theory, but it’s a little hard to swallow for the cynic who doesn’t believe in people’s ability to actually unite and work together altruistically in most cases. It also likes to show its characters change from flawed people to perfect people over time, usually as a result of seeing this mysterious ‘power of humanity’. No, Legend of Mana’s theme is more like “Changes to the way people live can be made, but it takes a strong-willed person, willing to make real sacrifices, to achieve their goals and bring them about.” This is easier to stomach than the idea of millions of otherwise weak-spirited people uniting to become some ultra-powerful force that can overcome anything. Legend of Mana, despite its absolutely crazy aesthetic, is a very realistic game in that regard.

Speaking of its aesthetic, the graphics are absolutely wonderful. Everything is beautifully and extravagantly colored and pastel-ish. One of my artist friends told me “Everything in this game looks like a wonderfully-decorated cake.” The character designs are equally unique, sporting characters from normal humans, to fat bunny merchats, to cat martial artists, to a pirate crew made up of a walrus and penguins - even mythical creatures like sirens and mermaids. The music, composed by Yoko Shimomura (Street Fighter 2, Kingdom Hearts), is excellently done, and adds a lot of character to the game.

So, I guess the last thing to talk about is the gameplay, huh? For the most part, Legend of Mana is your typical action RPG. You’ll explore dungeons, find monsters, and hit them with a variety of weapons. You actually choose your starting weapon at the beginning of the game, but you’re not restricted to it; it just starts you out with on special skill for your weapon. Speaking of which, the way combat works is as follows: You have one button for your ‘quick attacks’, which you can press three times for a short combo; a power attack, which is just as it says, one powerful attack; and a variety of other attacks performed by holding certain directions on the D-Pad while doing power attacks (for example, double-tapping towards an enemy before pushing the power attack will result in a dashing stab for swords). Besides that, you can equip four weapon skills that you can use any time your special meter is full (fills up by hitting enemies), and you can equip two ‘abilities’, which are just a variety of handy manuvers, like jumping, dashing, blocking, and other cool actions.

You won’t be going it alone, though. You can have two additional characters fighting with you. The second character slot is reserved for important NPCs or the 2nd player (oh yeah, the game supports two players), while the third is for your pet monster or golem (robot) to accompany you! Which brings up another set of neat things about the game: After completing certain events, characters you’ve met will add on cool new things to your house (your home base of sorts). By the end of the game, you’ll have an orchard for growing fruit, a ranch for raising monsters to accompany you on your journey, and even workshops for making equipment and golems (robots)!

So, that’s pretty much everything important about the gameplay. Unfortunately, for as many cool things you can do in Legend of Mana, it’s all kind of pointless, because Legend of Mana is pathetically easy, even if you change the difficulty. You can kill like 95% of all enemies by simply staggering the quick attack combo in such a way that you can make it an infinite loop combo that most enemies can’t escape. Bosses can escape by performing their special attacks, but you’ll never get hit by them, because, just like your own special attacks, it causes them to sit there for a few seconds before AND after executing them. So, just move out of the way, and use the recovery time to get back in position and continue infinite comboing them into oblivion.

It really feels like whoever designed this game has no idea how to balance an action RPG properly. When a game is such a breeze, why would you bother making cool death robots and swords of super-ultra death and destruction? You can beat the game easily by yourself with equipment you bought at a store! This sucks for me to say because I think that, in many ways, Legend of Mana has all the elements needed for exceptional gameplay in an action RPG. It’s just broken as all hell.

What else? You can finish this game in about 14-15 hours if you beat it as quickly as possible. Completing every event in one run will probly get you 25 hours of game time. Also, as I mentioned, there’s a two-player function in this game. Unfortunately, it was TERRIBLY integrated into the game; When you import your friend’s character from a memory card, they can’t learn/change any skills, abilities, or change their equipment, On top of that, trying to play with your friend’s character is pointless, because if a storyline NPC has to accompany you, it boots your friend’s character out of the party and forces the second player to use the NPC! Why they couldn’t have possibly rectified this, I have no idea. As the coup de grace for the two-player mode, any time the 1st player returns home, all NPCs - including the one controlled by player 2 - leaves the party. So, imagine how obnoxious it is to have to go back to the main town to have your friend load their character, only to be possibly ejected from the party in the next event. Totally lame.

Unfortunately, no one else that worked on the ‘mana’ series saw any potential in this game, because beyond the character designs, absolutely no ideas from this game survived in the new games of the series. Was this a bad idea? Who knows? Legend of Mana did well in Japan and got really good reviews here, despite most fans thinking that it was the worst game in the series. On the other hand, all the games in the series after this deemed mediocre or worse by critics and fans alike. Food for thought. If you want to see an interesting take on what action RPGs could do if they don’t adhere to the usual standards, check this game out.

One thing I never liked about the game was the utter lack of information on how things worked. Tempering is still a nightmare to accomplish unless you have the GameFAQ’s Compendium sitting in your lap. For instants the first time I played through it I acquired a ring call the Forbidden Ring which I tampered with as soon as I could. Unfortunately I had no idea that a) the ring had a special effect of splitting acquired experience by the wearer with the rest of the party (very useful for raising monsters) b) that tempering with it causes it to loose it’s powers and c) that there was no (known?) way I could restore it meaning I had to go through the game again to replace it with another one.

Originally Posted by Skankin’ Garbage
So, what’s the incentive for completing the game early, anyways? For one, you can change the difficulty of the game after you complete it once. Legend of Mana’s big downfall in its gameplay is that it’s stupidly easy (more on that later), so it’s useful to at least try to make it harder.

There were in fact two ways to control the difficulty of the game. The first is as you said with the Forbidden Tome to change the difficulty. The second was in how you placed your artifacts (i.e. how you built your map). Areas that were further away from your Home had higher level enemies occupying the region than if you placed them closer to your Home. You could in fact build enemies up to level 99 in Normal mode by placing your Home in one corner of your area map and string the other regions together towards the other corner of the map (while this is explained early in the game it’s still another example of lacking information).

By the way have you played through Nightmare and No Future modes yet? They aren’t simply hard as just plain broken with Lv 99 enemies clocking in with tens of thousands of HP apiece (Nightmare not so much as it being the level it should’ve been). With no mapping feature and enemies respawning after passing a couple of scenes (like four or something) and no way to teleport out of a dungeon it can get tedious in a hurry. Fortunately Bosses don’t gain the ten hundred million HP that regular enemies get in Nightmare or No Future modes (though a few like Tropicallo will serve to redefine pain).

Unfortunately, no one else that worked on the ‘mana’ series saw any potential in this game, because beyond the character designs, absolutely no ideas from this game survived in the new games of the series.

Not entirely true. Sword of Mana used the Orchard again as well as a Hot House which was a base of operations that allowed you to forge and temper your equipment. Several characters also returned like Lil’ Cactus, Niccolo, The Dub Bears, and the Seven Wisdoms. In fact Sword pulled elements from all the games in the series prior to itself. Too bad that really shitty implementation screwed the game over big time.

Although you’re right, I saw no need to mention this, since the superfluously easy difficulty circumvented any need to use the workshops to begin with.

There were in fact two ways to control the difficulty of the game. The first is as you said with the Forbidden Tome to change the difficulty. The second was in how you placed your artifacts (i.e. how you built your map). Areas that were further away from your Home had higher level enemies occupying the region than if you placed them closer to your Home. You could in fact build enemies up to level 99 in Normal mode by placing your Home in one corner of your area map and string the other regions together towards the other corner of the map (while this is explained early in the game it’s still another example of lacking information).

I know about that. Doesn’t really make the game much harder.

By the way have you played through Nightmare and No Future modes yet? They aren’t simply hard as just plain broken with Lv 99 enemies clocking in with tens of thousands of HP apiece (Nightmare not so much as it being the level it should’ve been). With no mapping feature and enemies respawning after passing a couple of scenes (like four or something) and no way to teleport out of a dungeon it can get tedious in a hurry. Fortunately Bosses don’t gain the ten hundred million HP that regular enemies get in Nightmare or No Future modes (though a few like Tropicallo will serve to redefine pain).

It won’t matter if I can still infinite them.

Not entirely true. Sword of Mana used the Orchard again as well as a Hot House which was a base of operations that allowed you to forge and temper your equipment. Several characters also returned like Lil’ Cactus, Niccolo, The Dub Bears, and the Seven Wisdoms. In fact Sword pulled elements from all the games in the series prior to itself. Too bad that really shitty implementation screwed the game over big time.

Guh, didn’t play that one…but thanks. I’ll have to edit that part.

I definitely think LoM wasn’t the worst in the series, because the series went severely downhill from there. But I think it wasn’t as good as numbers 2 and 3. I agree that the worst part is how little the game told you about how it works. I found trying to trigger events supremely frustrating; there was simply no hint about where to go for the next event. Admittedly the three main quests weren’t too bad, but all the dozens of side quests had inane requirements no one could ever “stumble” across.

Heh, yeah. Most ‘Mana’ fans I know like to tear this game a new one when they hear about it. I don’t really get it - all the games afterwards were much worse.

And yeah, some events are just obnoxious to trigger. The fortune teller in Domina helps out some, but it’s annoying to go back to her so frequently.

Uh, what? An LoM review with only one line about the music? From SG the Musician?

You’re, uh… you’re doing it wrong…

I’m gonna wager you didn’t like Saga Frontier.

I mainly loved LoM for the story, and how much you could do, even if you didn’t have to. Maybe all one needs to beat the game is quick combo spamming, but moonsaulting and counter-striking all over the place is pretty fun, and there’s something satisfying about the long process of material-finding, tempering, instrument-making, and programming to make a truly ridiculous golem, or even just an axe that does maximum damage. I have a lot of nostalgia for the game, too, which doesn’t hurt.

I agree fully, 100% on pretty much everything. I thought the dialogue was kind of hard to follow in the main story arcs, though (I remember reading the ending of the Daena/Escad storyline, and thinking “What, that’s it? That was the end?” And I really loved all the things you could do in the game. The only thing LoM really lacked that could have taken it from slightly above-average to phenomenal was a bit of a challenge. Gameplay-wise, I really love absolutely everything about it, and if I were to ever theoretically make an action RPG, it would be almost a complete ripoff of this game.

I’m gonna wager you didn’t like Saga Frontier.

HELL no. 8p

I do agree that the music is sublime, though it does tend to repeat a little too quickly.

I think the challenge is more in stuff like figuring out how to find all the quests and temper and how to place your map to get better items. What I loved about it was how every detail matters.

The Irwin plotline had a weirdly unsatisfying ending, just because it was one of the few that ended absolutely unhappily. I still really liked it, from a perspective of just how tragic the whole arc is. The dialogue was never a big problem for me to follow in any of the main arcs, personally.

I enjoy stuff like that to an extent, but for me, it’s not quite as fun to do it if you know that it’s mostly superfluous.

The Irwin plotline had a weirdly unsatisfying ending, just because it was one of the few that ended absolutely unhappily. I still really liked it, from a perspective of just how tragic the whole arc is. The dialogue was never a big problem for me to follow in any of the main arcs, personally.

For the Irwin plotline, what I was mostly talking about was how The very final conversation in the ending, between Irwin and Matilda, seemed to end totally abruptly. It was almost as if the conversation between them didn’t actually end. I wish I remembered more about it now that I’m trying to recall it.

For the Larc and Sierra storyline, I feel like it never explains exactly what happened to Larc in the end. It seems to say in the ending that he’s gone and won’t ever return from the underworld, but then the ending narration implies that he does. I just didn’t get it.

As for the Jumi storyline, a big part of the problem was the use of all the Jumi jargon before you could actually find out what it meant. For that reason, I felt like some of the earlier scenarios were unclear. Also, Sandra’s motives seemed kind of unclear; I already forgot exactly what her purpose was for getting Jewels to the Jewel master guy, or why it was important.

For the story, I tended to just enjoy the underlying themes better. I think you can get away with having a mostly mediocre story if the point that it’s getting to is excellent. That’s kinda how I felt about Legend of Mana’s stories - only good enough to get its point across. I was fine with that, though.

I LOVED LoM for the reasons described here. I also loved the story. I loved how open ended some of the things were and I also found some of the situations rather touching. City of Flickering Destruction is one of my fav tracks of all time. Yoko Shimomura is a genius and the beauty of this soundtrack is only paralleled by the beauty of the graphics. The only thing I can hold against it is that I wish the battle system had been further developed. I liked it a lot , but having something akin to the maneuvrability seen in portrait of ruin would’ve been amazing. I also would’ve liked the item manufacturing system to be more obvious.

I just downloaded City of Flickering Destruction, and it’s a formidable track… but I totally couldn’t see it being one of your favourites :stuck_out_tongue:

Man, you know what song I LOVE? Fiery Castle.

And while we’re on the topic of awesome songs with fire in their name… I’m just gonna mention Knight of Fire from XG :smiley:

I think the story had a lot of strong points, but could have used a lot more fleshing out in pretty much all cases. I think I once described it as having a lot of depth but not much breadth - the opposite problem of most RPG stories.

City of Flickering Destruction/Sparkling Ruin is an awesome song (The translation I have for it is sparkling ruin, which I’m betting is more accurate, given how appropriate it is). Also, I don’t think Knight of Fire is TERRIBLE, but way overrated. In general, I think Mitsuda is pretty awful at writing battle themes. I admit that I personally enjoy Gale (mostly because it does complicated things with its meter that I can geek out on), but I’ll admit that it’s a terrible song. It just happens to be a terrible song that does complex meter, like 4/4+5/4, 9/8, and accenting 2 patterns in compound meter. Knight of Fire is just…dull.

Steering the subject back onto LoM, one of my recent favorites is Lucemia. The song is really compelling and intense, and it fits; I’ve always found something intense about Lucemia as the stage for the climax of a story.

I can agree with this. With the exception of the Larc and Sierra story, which benefits from being short in my opinion, the other two main story arcs could have been excellent if it gave you enough time to really grow attached to the characters. It certainly would have made something like the inevitable choice between killing Daena or Escad really, really intense, if they had given you enough time to spend with them and really get to feel their sides of the story. The majority of the time, it feels like they’re compelling you to side with Daena the entire time.

Well, KoF isn’t something I’d put on my iPod or anything
But let’s say I’m playing BW or something, it’s AWESOME at setting the mood.

Man, Lucemia is pretty badass.

While I agree that Yasunori Mitsuda is generally overhyped, he has the occasional moment of brilliance and I agree with Hades that Knight of Fire is one of my favorite battle themes. He did a good job on Chrono Trigger, but Xenogears is his best work and he hasn’t done anything else that really struck a chord beyond the occasional track.

As for Lucemia / Two Feelings, yeah that track is also excellent. Its hard to pick out specific tracks from LoM and say “oh yeah this is great” because so much of it is great. Shimomura has a unique way of using instruments that I really like and she did a very LoM like soundtrack in Heroes of Mana, which is a really good game except for its gameplay (set up, graphics and music are top notch). This is why I cursed when I found out she did FFXIII before hearing it was coming to 360. It will be interesting to see how she’ll transition into FF considering FF games have usually been so different from the Mana series.

It can’t be worse as a standalone soundtrack than FF12. The music there was certainly nice and fit the mood, but you can’t put it on a CD player and listen to it without falling asleep.

Actually, it’s not so much that I think Mitsuda is overhyped, so much that his battle themes are. If anything, I think that Mitsuda gets kind of a lot of hate these days. :confused:

As for Lucemia / Two Feelings, yeah that track is also excellent. Its hard to pick out specific tracks from LoM and say “oh yeah this is great” because so much of it is great. Shimomura has a unique way of using instruments that I really like and she did a very LoM like soundtrack in Heroes of Mana, which is a really good game except for its gameplay (set up, graphics and music are top notch). This is why I cursed when I found out she did FFXIII before hearing it was coming to 360. It will be interesting to see how she’ll transition into FF considering FF games have usually been so different from the Mana series.

I mostly remember Lucemia because the actual location as a final scene for a story is really hardcore. It’s easy for me to go right back to that place when I listen to it.

As for other Shimomura stuff, I’m actually pretty ambivalent to Shimomura. She writes good stuff, and she’s a VERY talented composer, no doubt. Legend of Mana, however, is the only work she’s done that really stands out in my mind as a complete masterpiece, because of how natural it fits in the game. It’s almost as if the game’s locations wrote the songs themselves.

There was a huge fanfic in rpgc about LoM.