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.
