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The best part about the incredibly complex crafting system is it's completely unnecessary unless you're doing the hardest difficulty of New Game +, and there's really nothing to gain from doing it anyway since it changes nothing and it just makes most battles more tedious, especially the couple of flower bosses that spawn two different sections that you have to take down constantly. You can just take some end-game material you win from a quest, craft your weapon of choice, maybe forge a few elemental coins in if you want, and wreck everything in your path in the normal game, ignoring all the insanity of crafting dozens of coins in a specific order to unlock custom abilities and moves.
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May 9, 2020 23:00
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Mega64 posted:The best part about the incredibly complex crafting system is it's completely unnecessary unless you're doing the hardest difficulty of New Game +, and there's really nothing to gain from doing it anyway since it changes nothing and it just makes most battles more tedious, especially the couple of flower bosses that spawn two different sections that you have to take down constantly. Hahaha yeah it's super easy to just throw a bunch of poo poo into a weapon and suddenly it will be like "you have unlocked a SUN COIN" and then your attack power goes up by 400% and you just pulverize everything in your path for the next 20 hours
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May 9, 2020 23:01
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Trials of Mana is the only one in the series I've actually finished, I was five when Secret came out, so all I have are dusty memories of my older brother playing it (I tried it again last year when Collection came out, but uhhh old game janky). I remember the Legends of Mana trailer looked interesting (and the music was mind-blowing) but it had the misfortune of coming out in the same year as Majora's Mask, Chrono Cross, and Final Fantasy IX, otherwise known to me as 'the year other video games didn't exist' and aside from that I played a little of Children of Mana, and about 1/2 an hour of Sword of Mana. I've always been vaguely aware of the franchise but for the most part it was like a series of beautiful soundtracks that someone accidentally plugged a gamepad into.
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May 9, 2020 23:05
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Spacebump posted:Were any games in the series worth playing after Legend of Mana? The last one I played before this remake was Sword of Mana which seems to not be well liked. I thought it was ok for the time but nowhere near Legend or SoM. I think time's been kinder to Sword then most folks were at launch, but it's still not a particularly great game. It fells into a lot of the same problems Legend did (Too many long text box exposition dumps, systems more complex then the very basic combat required to engage with) except it's not a super-ambitious unorthodox RPG with graphical and musical style to spare but just a trumped-up remake of Final Fantasy Adventure on the GBA with washed-out pixels due to portable screen concerns and GBA's poor struggling sound capabilities. Basically, if Legend was a game beloved for everything except it's bad core gameplay elements, Sword just lacks the parts that helped everyone else forgive Legend's sins. This is a trend that brings down Children of Mana, which is a dungeon crawler except it uses the Legend of Mana/Sword of Mana style combat which... does not make for a game that has any enduring merits. And then there's Dawn of Mana and Heroes which are both... just kinda bad. Dawn has potential but is held back by a whole lot of hostile design decisions and has the opposite problem of Legend/Sword/Children- the combat is complex and deep and (when it works) has a lot of ways to approach it, but... that's it. The game has nothing past it's exploration and fighting and while there was room to be good there... It's combat is an early physics engine game so it frequently breaks and doesn't work, and then there's the camera which attempts to thwart your progress at every step. It makes exploring extremely frustrating (and it already isn't terribly rewarding due to how character progress works in the game) and leads to a lot of cheap combat deaths in a game where dying can cost you over an hour of progress. Heroes is just a bad game. FFXII: Revenant Wings is a more successful take on the RPG RTS strategy and if that's what you're hankering for, play that instead. The RTS parts are extremely basic and can be completed by anyone who can memorize a small number of Pokemon-style unit-counters-unit matchups and the few times Heroes tries to throw a wrinkle in that it doesn't make it HARD, it just makes it SLOW. SLOW-er, rather, since Slow is the default speed anything in Heroes happens at. Mr. Locke fucked around with this message at 23:10 on May 9, 2020 |
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May 9, 2020 23:07
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seiferguy posted:That's because you need 6, not 5 It seems mad that having 6 gives you all 6 possible items but having 5 could give you just 2 unique ones. Surely that's not intended! I'll definitely do it this time over though.
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May 9, 2020 23:10
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I would really like to play legend of mana, everything I've heard about it makes it sound like some kind of fever dream of a game. Is there any way to actually play it nowadays? Also the music owns, I don't think I've ever listened to an OST for a game that I haven't played in full for anything else.
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May 9, 2020 23:24
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If you happen to have a PS3 you can pick up Legend as a PS1 Classic.
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May 9, 2020 23:26
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Speaking of gameplay, I really like Trials of Mana remake gameplay mechanics. You have your attack combos like most action RPGs with a solid light/heavy attack system, and you have the series's famous ring menu if you need a breather along with the ability to shortcut your 4 most used spells and/or items to the different facial buttons so that you don't need to spend more time there as necessary (and boy do the ring menu work a whole lot better when I'm not obliged to enter it every time I want to cast a spell), dodging, and even some light platforming action. The devs have built a very solid gameplay foundation with this remake, and I very much think they're going in the right direction with this. It feels a lot like an evolution of the core Mana gameplay roots that most fans are familiar with and further Mana games (please, let there be more Mana games!) can build upon this to refine it further.
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May 9, 2020 23:28
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Zenithe posted:I would really like to play legend of mana, everything I've heard about it makes it sound like some kind of fever dream of a game. Is there any way to actually play it nowadays? Back in Squaresoft's Summer of Adventure if you preordered Legend of Mana, you got a sampler soundtrack. https://twitter.com/VGArtAndTidbits/status/1188836230521380865/photo/1 Spacebump fucked around with this message at 23:33 on May 9, 2020 |
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May 9, 2020 23:31
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Is it my imagination or did the game have a lot of springy yellow things before the remake? They occupy quite a bit part of my memory of the game but you barely see them in this. I also feel like the way you get the mallet to get to the Koropokkur is the biggest indicator this is a remake of an old game of anything else in it. It's just so easy and almost pointless, they might as well have Reisz's guys just hand it to you. I feel like if this was genuinely new there'd be a little quest beforehand. Although I do appreciate that the Koropokkur village is so, so much better. It was clearly a place that they couldn't quite make "work" in the original.
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May 9, 2020 23:31
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Springsteppers in the original more or less just let you see where you are on the world map but didn't let you go anywhere iirc. In fact, I think there are more in the remake than the original. The post-game dungeon has a whole floor utilizing them as a sort of teleporter puzzle.
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May 9, 2020 23:34
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Taear posted:Is it my imagination or did the game have a lot of springy yellow things before the remake? They occupy quite a bit part of my memory of the game but you barely see them in this. There were some that got removed, but ally they usually did was shoot you up in the air so you could see some of the world map. Now that there's an actual world map you can open up, most of them lost their purpose. Mr. Locke posted:Heroes is just a bad game. FFXII: Revenant Wings is a more successful take on the RPG RTS strategy and if that's what you're hankering for, play that instead. The RTS parts are extremely basic and can be completed by anyone who can memorize a small number of Pokemon-style unit-counters-unit matchups and the few times Heroes tries to throw a wrinkle in that it doesn't make it HARD, it just makes it SLOW. SLOW-er, rather, since Slow is the default speed anything in Heroes happens at. I think the only reason anyone would ever play it is if they absolutely loved the characters from Trials and, well... that's not exactly the game's strong point.
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May 9, 2020 23:36
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Taear posted:Is it my imagination or did the game have a lot of springy yellow things before the remake? They occupy quite a bit part of my memory of the game but you barely see them in this. Yeah, that section of the story always kind of stuck out as janky, even back then. But the village ended up being super charming this time around. The only thing I wish they had added was a gigantic Lil Cactus just chilling. And the springstep things definitely appeared a lot. Their only purpose was to give you a brief eagle eye view of the Mode 7 map, so they wouldn't end up in the same spots for this remake. Instead they're more traditional platformer jumpers, though still underutilized imo.
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May 9, 2020 23:42
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Folt The Bolt posted:Speaking of gameplay, I really like Trials of Mana remake gameplay mechanics. You have your attack combos like most action RPGs with a solid light/heavy attack system, and you have the series's famous ring menu if you need a breather along with the ability to shortcut your 4 most used spells and/or items to the different facial buttons so that you don't need to spend more time there as necessary (and boy do the ring menu work a whole lot better when I'm not obliged to enter it every time I want to cast a spell), dodging, and even some light platforming action. Agreed, it's really satisfying to play, and the only things I would change are minor enough that it would just be a QOL improvement of they used a similar engine for future remakes. If LoM got a revamped soundtrack I hope they'd use the same singer for Song of Mana as the original if they're still available.
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May 9, 2020 23:44
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Rand Brittain posted:Okay, so, my review of this game after the fact is that it's a surprisingly fun and faithful remake and upgrade, but its potential is busting through the seams of that faithfulness and it's ultimately limited by the original game. The story being insipid is partially because it is a remake and also a Mana game, which always has the same core themes. The sub-themes are where stuff gets a bit more interesting. Something I'm able to pick up on now more than in the original SNES version, is the theme of 'passing the torch.' Probably because the Class 4 shenanigans all deal with that pretty directly  Heithinn Grasida posted:Probably generally good advice, but someone on the steam forums posted a sub 10 second Anise kill using light/dark Angela’s CS 2. I searched this up and want to call BS on it because I thought for sure Anise was invulnerable in her first phase with her crystals up... Then realized I never tested with one crystal down. Interesting.
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May 9, 2020 23:52
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Wait a second. Crafting system? There a crafting system? I'm on my new game plus and I never saw a crafting system
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May 9, 2020 23:57
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John Wick of Dogs posted:Wait a second. Crafting system? There a crafting system? I'm on my new game plus and I never saw a crafting system There's one in Legend and Sword, not Trials.
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May 9, 2020 23:58
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The pets and golems in LoM are underrated.
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May 10, 2020 00:03
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gandlethorpe posted:Yeah, that section of the story always kind of stuck out as janky, even back then. But the village ended up being super charming this time around. The only thing I wish they had added was a gigantic Lil Cactus just chilling. Ah maybe I'm thinking of when you see them in Secret of Mana, they're in that a lot more and not just to see the map. I feel like I clicked on them in SK3, got thrown up in the air and went "Wait what was the point of that?" I'm not really sure what the point of Domperi even is, since he just tells you "Ah, move the statues". Walking around up there you'd probably have found that out yourself! Still a nice little place though. I also feel like you see the spirits a shitload less in this so you're a bit less connected to them. When you cast the spells they only appear for a split second and you don't have those (admittedly annoying) bits where you select one from a menu to get past an obstacle. Yea you've got a bit where Lumina and Gnome pop up and do a thing but still - it would be nice to have them be more characterful and more present in the game.
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May 10, 2020 00:03
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Legend of Mana just feels like a hodge podge of half-baked ideas, but the backgrounds at least are very pretty.
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May 10, 2020 00:09
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Taear posted:I'm not really sure what the point of Domperi even is, since he just tells you "Ah, move the statues". Walking around up there you'd probably have found that out yourself! Still a nice little place though. Koropokkur village is pretty much an expy of SoM's Sprite Village only now with an Actual Village instead of being all destroyed. Domperi's trickster archetype, the midge/minor mallet being required to get in and them being connected to Mana enough to tell that you have the Faerie are all evidence of that. The point of Koropokkur village is threefold: a. have a smart dude tell your characters an obvious strategy that most importantly ties everyone's goals into a nice, tidy knot. b. have a refreshingly simple take on people who are willing to set aside grievances and help you just because the World Is In Trouble. c. give some narrative time for the Darkshrine Knight to break into Gusthall. That's it. You could easily excise it but for what amounts to a chunk of fanservice it's not that much a waste of time. And yeah, you do see the spirits less than this game (and the original) than other Mana games. Because this is where a lot of their characters were solidified to be expanded on in later mana games.
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May 10, 2020 00:23
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I'm kind of annoyed that the escape rope doesn't work in Anise's Stockade, aka literally the only place where I'd want to use one.
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May 10, 2020 00:26
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EponymousMrYar posted:And yeah, you do see the spirits less than this game (and the original) than other Mana games. Because this is where a lot of their characters were solidified to be expanded on in later mana games. Still sort of reeling from the idea that there are any other Mana games after SoM and SK3 honestly. And yea I get the idea of the village, I understand why it exists. I'm more saying that if this was a genuinely new game it wouldn't really exist, it'd be done very differently. It's a proper strange moment in the game now. I think the same applies to the way the chests work where it's nearly all recovery items or SOMETIMES a weapon/armour from the next town in the game. That made total sense on the SNES (especially the linearity of the upgrades) but less so here. Taear fucked around with this message at 00:35 on May 10, 2020 |
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May 10, 2020 00:32
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Actually there are almost no treasure chests or collectibles in the SNES game at all, except the loot you get from enemies. I've been replaying it with a friend of mine, and here at like 80% through the game, we've found maybe 3 chests.
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May 10, 2020 00:45
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Spacebump posted:The pets and golems in LoM are underrated. I mean, with the combat being so basic they are a bit useless, but having a Tomato Man, Chobin Hood, or Mad Mallard as your sidekick is 
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May 10, 2020 00:48
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YggiDee posted:I'm kind of annoyed that the escape rope doesn't work in Anise's Stockade, aka literally the only place where I'd want to use one. You can use Flammie's Drum in any of the open dark spaces in the stockade.
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May 10, 2020 00:50
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EponymousMrYar posted:That's it. You could easily excise it but for what amounts to a chunk of fanservice it's not that much a waste of time. I never minded the story aspect of the village itself, its bland appearance in the OG aside. The waste of time part to me was the whole "get shot to Beiser, boat to Jadd, go to the forest, back to Jadd, boat to Palo" sequence where nothing really interesting happens. Although I hear SoM is a much worse offender when it comes to fetch quests. Never could get past the tiger boss to find out.
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May 10, 2020 00:58
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Sacrificial Toast posted:Actually there are almost no treasure chests or collectibles in the SNES game at all, except the loot you get from enemies. I've been replaying it with a friend of mine, and here at like 80% through the game, we've found maybe 3 chests. Sorry, that's what I mean - the chests here are all just regular items because what else could you have in them? You might get side upgrades and etc in them if it wasn't a remake. gandlethorpe posted:I never minded the story aspect of the village itself, its bland appearance in the OG aside. The waste of time part to me was the whole "get shot to Beiser, boat to Jadd, go to the forest, back to Jadd, boat to Palo" sequence where nothing really interesting happens. Although I hear SoM is a much worse offender when it comes to fetch quests. Never could get past the tiger boss to find out. I kinda feel like SoM doesn't make you return to places as much as SK3 does.
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May 10, 2020 01:00
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Taear posted:I kinda feel like SoM doesn't make you return to places as much as SK3 does. Are you blocking out Sage Joch?
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May 10, 2020 01:14
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Defiance Industries posted:Are you blocking out Sage Joch? No? Doesn't he send you to the palace of darkness? In other news - if you're on the ghost ship and read the book as a different character they get cursed. Which is fine, since you can swap who is cursed anyway it's no big deal. But the game treats them like they're the main character and Faerie appears chatting to them which is funny.
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May 10, 2020 01:18
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Taear posted:No? Doesn't he send you to the palace of darkness? He sends you to the palace of darkness (or you just go there without him telling you), then the golden city (plus backtrack to Southtown for the key), then the moon/desert temple, then the capital of some nation or other that surely has a name, then finally the dungeon where you fight your doubles. And you can't fly right to Joch's cave, you have to climb a mountain each time. It's a total slog with each component ranging from "pretty interesting" to "feels pointless".
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May 10, 2020 01:33
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Taear posted:Sorry, that's what I mean - the chests here are all just regular items because what else could you have in them? Taear posted:No? Doesn't he send you to the palace of darkness?
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May 10, 2020 01:34
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Legend of Mana has some really strong SaGa DNA, which is one of its biggest charms and would be really hard to preserve in a remake. Also the visual style was simply beautiful and I imagine would be pretty hard to translate. Unlike the other Mana games, the storytelling, while inconsistent and flawed, can sometimes actually be funny, cute or just outright good, instead of insipid. The main plot is also super Buddhist, but in a weird, Japanese lotus sutra Buddhism way. the Sword of Mana represents enlightenment, this time, and the final challenge of attaining enlightenment is (of course, it’s a JRPG) fighting the Mana Goddess, which you do on a perfectly still lake surrounded by lotus blossoms reflecting the full moon, a classic Buddhist image representing the state of enlightenment. But the overall theme, rather than the traditional, original Buddhist teaching of seeking detachment from an endless cycle of suffering, is embracing the contradictions of creation as fundamentally positive and something to be cherished. Trials is the game I most wanted to see remade because I don’t care about video game stories, I just want a bright, colorful medium in which to plan out character builds and party compositions then beat up monsters and Trials delivers really well on that. But I’d still really like to see a Legend of Mana remake. The original gameplay is not good, but it’s a game that tries a lot of really creative, experimental ideas, and some of them actually work.
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May 10, 2020 02:30
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Defiance Industries posted:Are you blocking out Sage Joch? EponymousMrYar posted:There are Actual Upgrades in chests and they're not that exciting because of how quick combat is. Side grades wouldn't make them more interesting. They're still an encouragement to explore because of how the streamlined seed pot works though. You never actually have to go visit Sage Joch until the time where you're actually let into the dungeon, thank god
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May 10, 2020 03:13
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Heithinn Grasida posted:Legend of Mana has some really strong SaGa DNA, which is one of its biggest charms and would be really hard to preserve in a remake. Also the visual style was simply beautiful and I imagine would be pretty hard to translate. I would even be down for a simple port with minimal quality of life improvements tbh.
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May 10, 2020 03:23
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re: the story talk a few pages back regarding the Mana games, personally I really liked the story in Dawn of Mana and think it's pretty solid story telling. The problem is that in order to enjoy the story of Dawn of Mana you have to put up with the horrible, HORRIBLE, horrible combat and map exploration in that game. I'd easily put it amongst my top 3 of worst action combat systems ever. Whoever thought it was a good idea that ALL boss fights required you to toss whatever furniture was around to create a proper opening to whack on said boss probably watched one too many WWE fights. Not to mention that every chapter you have to regrind your levels in order to be able to properly toss said furniture around.
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May 10, 2020 03:26
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Heithinn Grasida posted:Also the visual style was simply beautiful and I imagine would be pretty hard to translate. If you're not aware, Shinichi Kameoka, the artist for OG Trials and Legend of Mana, runs a company named Brownies. They made a game called Egglia that was basically Legend of Mana 2 for phones except with the combat areas replaced with a sorta board game thing. Anyway, it's the same artstyle and a lot of it is in 3D and the answer is the visual style translates pretty well if you're doing it right and still going from a top down angle. Although it would probably be a complete 3D remake if it was from Square, and probably about the same budget as Trials.
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May 10, 2020 03:27
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Also Dawn of Mana has the best Chobin Wood design of all the saga LOOK AT HIM 
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May 10, 2020 03:31
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best thing about a legend remake would be having the music at higher quality, assuming they didn't just throw it all away years ago. they really crushed it to fit it all on that 1 cd
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May 10, 2020 03:32
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Spacebump posted:I would even be down for a simple port with minimal quality of life improvements tbh. I think the combat system really needs an overhaul. The game is just ridiculously easy and in a really bad way. Trials is too easy, but it at least always keeps you engaged. Anybody have feelings on the best team to support Angela? I’m reaching the end of my second play through and want to try and make as overpowered an Angela as possible to see just how bad the balance can actually get. I’m thinking Grand Diviner, Warlock, Star Lancer, though that means I won’t have reliable debuffs until class 3 and Star Lancer doesn’t contribute much but the buffs. How important do people feel Provoke is for Angela? I could see Angela, Starlancer, Edelfrei, using Pinpoint, Magic Smash and Duran’s CS 2 to debuff bosses. That would be a much more balanced team and have Duran there to keep heat off of Angela.
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May 10, 2020 03:53
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