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 Legend of Mana was a Playstation game originally released in 1999 by Squaresoft, the fourth game released in the Mana series after Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana, and the recently remade Trials of Mana. A bit of a departure from the formulas of the previous games, Legend of Mana is an action rpg that finds it’s roots in arcade beat’em ups, like Streets of Rage or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. Sporting an instant classic soundtrack by Yoko Shimumura (known for Parasite Eve, Super Mario RPG, Xenoblade Chronicles, Kingdom Hearts, and somehow Street Fighter 2) and absolutely incredible backgrounds and sprite works, Legend of Mana easily became my favorite game of all time, and I couldn’t have been more excited when Legend of Mana Remastered was revealed earlier this year. Release Date: June 24, 2021 Platforms: Switch, PS4, Steam Price: $29.99 USD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0fXVsFhEug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDuiWO51IpY The World The world of Legend of Mana is unique in that it’s layout is created by you, the player! At the beginning of the game you are presented with a large world map, of which you choose a small subsection. This subsection will be the entire world for your playthrough. As you progress through the game you will receive artifacts that can be placed on the map to populate it with new towns, dungeons, and areas. Placement of new artifacts must be next to previously placed artifacts, and certain artifacts have requirements such as ‘must be next to water’. Each artifact has differing mana values that influence the total values of all adjacent areas, and these mana values can influence things such as item availability in shops, types of creatures that show up, and some quests (I think). This system can freak people out as it is almost impossible to set up your world ideally without following a guide. I would highly suggest that you not worry about it. Honestly, Legend of Mana is a game that isn’t that long and if you miss things you can always go again and see them on a second playthrough. Part of its charm is the strange encounters you have unexpectedly and you can drive yourself crazy if you worry too much about it. Also this brings us to The Story Unlike most jrpgs, Legend of Mana doesn’t have a story. Moving on. … Well, that’s not exactly true. Legend of Mana doesn’t have a real, true ‘Main Quest’ in the sense that most RPGs do. Your journey through the world you create is one of a bystander, someone meets people with problems and helps them because they ask. Sure, some of these events have worldwide impact, but sometimes you’re just helping your shady merchant buddy Niccolo make a buck. The game is driven by its colorful cast of characters, from a confused crew of penguin pirates to welsh Teapot creatures to ninja cat ladies learning about the nature of altruism and self sacrifice. Legend of Mana is a sort of dreamlike game, where characters weave in and out of each other’s lives and stories and you’re just along for the ride doing your best. The Combat Arguably the weakest part of Legend of Mana, the combat system can be fun, and there are many, many systems to improve upon your character and create companions, but ultimately it’s a pretty easy game. You have basic light and heavy attacks with properties determined by the type of weapon you have equipped, and then you have two action buttons that you can assign to various skills such as Jump and Crouch. Many of these action skills will perform new actions when combined, i.e. jumping while crouching may lead to a high jump, which will eventually unlock as its own skill. There are a lot of combinations and I suggest you experiment to find as many as you can, some of them can be seriously game changing. In addition, each weapon type has different combat skills that unlock as you progress, basically super moves that consume a meter, make you invincible, and do significantly more damage. The Systems Legend of Mana has several systems for upgrading your characters and creating companions. I don’t want to talk about them too specifically here, some of them are kind of wild, but you can expect to be forging new weapons and armor, raising monsters, lightly farming, and crafting spells for use in combat. On the whole I’ve tried to be as vague as possible here because I think that Legend of Mana is a wholly unique game, something that really hasn’t been replicated since, and I’d like for people to come to it as fresh as they can, but I will list a few starter tips here: -At the beginning of the game you will be asked to choose a weapon type. This mostly just determines your starting weapon, getting other types is trivially easy and you can switch if you want to try something else. -In your house is your good friend, Lil’ Cactus. After every quest you complete you can return to your home and report to him and he’ll keep an ‘accurate’ diary of your journey. There is no reward for this, so don’t stress out, it’s just a fun little thing to read your buddies interpretation of your doings. If anyone else has anything they want to add to the starter tips let me know, like I said I’m trying to keep things as nonspecific as possible and there are definitely things I don’t know about the game because I try to stay away from guides myself. edit: I liked what Casnorf has to say about this: Casnorf posted:It is without a doubt one of the best PSX experiences and one of my favorite games of all time. While trimming down my collections I specifically kept the Ultimania guide for it because it has original exclusive-to-the-guide watercolors of the game in it. Playing the game is almost dreamlike in both action and visual: the watercolors (sometimes in motion!) are on the edge of impressionist and the actual motion of the characters is smooth while still seeming to exist in discrete quanta. As you follow the stories they intertwine and separate, sometimes you'll leave off parts and others you'll scour every inch, and you yourself will touch each adventure in an almost discontinuous manner, bouncing around like your own brain getting distracted and "Oh, that reminds me..." There really isn't anything like it. Always get L'il Cactus's take on every single situation. CubeTheory fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 23, 2021 23:46
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Gonna wait a little bit to make sure the remaster doesn't gently caress everything up but otherwise I will be playing this for the first time
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Jun 24, 2021 00:04
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cheetah7071 posted:Gonna wait a little bit to make sure the remaster doesn't gently caress everything up but otherwise I will be playing this for the first time I'm excited for this! I will say that reviews hit today and from what I've seen they are universally positive, but I don't really trust reviews that much so I'm not even sure why I brought this up!
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Jun 24, 2021 00:06
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Is this game any good? I can’t get anyone to recommend it to me
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Jun 24, 2021 00:10
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I will play this soon
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Jun 24, 2021 00:16
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Glad to see them remastering this game even if it's extremely weird and never hooked me to the extent that Secret of Mana 1 and 2 did. I remember beating it by stumbling my way through the story without ever understanding where I was supposed to be placing things on the map or how they interacted with each other, and without understanding the monster raising and golem crafting systems at all. Multiple cities seemed to have absolutely nothing to do in them, presumably because I placed it on the map in the wrong place or in the wrong order. Going to try playing through it again with the remaster and maybe I'll be able to figure out what's actually happening this time.
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Jun 24, 2021 00:18
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wuggles posted:Is this game any good? I can’t get anyone to recommend it to me I think it's really good. I mean, there's a reason it was a cult classic and not a big mainstream hit. The game does a lot of things differently, and it's not going to appeal to everyone. In my opinion, it's biggest strengths are: - Beautiful soundtrack and graphics - Episodic, unstructured, almost slice of life story. - A bunch of overly complicated systems to dig into and mess around with But the same things that make it appeal to me are going to turn other people off. There's nothing else quite like it so at the end of the day I'd say if it sounds interesting you should give it a shot
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Jun 24, 2021 00:19
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Good Op op. Gonna play this because of it
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Jun 24, 2021 00:25
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Snake Maze posted:I think it's really good. Thank you for giving me a sincere answer. I was loving around with my friend cube, who won’t stop talking about this game. I think I’ll pick it up later this year, it looks cool. Cube and Snake Maze, if it doesn’t have a story how do you know you’re done? Presumably it ends since it was made before GAAS.
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Jun 24, 2021 01:17
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wuggles posted:Thank you for giving me a sincere answer. I was loving around with my friend cube, who won’t stop talking about this game. It does have a final boss
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Jun 24, 2021 01:18
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Game is installed on my Switch and waiting for the unlock. I wonder if I'm gonna go for Irwin or the Jumi or the Dragon this time.
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Jun 24, 2021 01:43
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wuggles posted:Is this game any good? I can’t get anyone to recommend it to me You already got an answer but I'll add : IDK how this remaster is, but they remade Seiken Densetsu 3 AKA Trials of Mana in 3D last year. SD3 never got an original English release but IMO it's by far the best of the series. The soundtrack in particular is incredibly good. If you play this game and enjoy it, definitely check that one out. K8.0 fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Jun 24, 2021 |
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Jun 24, 2021 01:50
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wuggles posted:Is this game any good? I can’t get anyone to recommend it to me It is without a doubt one of the best PSX experiences and one of my favorite games of all time. While trimming down my collections I specifically kept the Ultimania guide for it because it has original exclusive-to-the-guide watercolors of the game in it. Playing the game is almost dreamlike in both action and visual: the watercolors (sometimes in motion!) are on the edge of impressionist and the actual motion of the characters is smooth while still seeming to exist in discrete quanta. As you follow the stories they intertwine and separate, sometimes you'll leave off parts and others you'll scour every inch, and you yourself will touch each adventure in an almost discontinuous manner, bouncing around like your own brain getting distracted and "Oh, that reminds me..." There really isn't anything like it. Always get L'il Cactus's take on every single situation.
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Jun 24, 2021 01:52
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wuggles posted:Cube and Snake Maze, if it doesn’t have a story how do you know you’re done? Presumably it ends since it was made before GAAS. The game has a bunch of quests to do. Each quest is generally a small, self contained story, although there are a couple of larger quest chains. Some quests are very low stakes and might not involve fighting at all, others will have dungeons and bosses and multiple endings. The game is pretty freeform so outside of the cases where one quest is a prerequisite for another you can end up doing things in different orders, but you’re done when you finish (the bare minimum to reach the final boss/all the quests you find on your own/100% quest completion, select according to your rpg preferences)
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Jun 24, 2021 01:57
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Casnorf posted:It is without a doubt one of the best PSX experiences and one of my favorite games of all time. While trimming down my collections I specifically kept the Ultimania guide for it because it has original exclusive-to-the-guide watercolors of the game in it. Playing the game is almost dreamlike in both action and visual: the watercolors (sometimes in motion!) are on the edge of impressionist and the actual motion of the characters is smooth while still seeming to exist in discrete quanta. As you follow the stories they intertwine and separate, sometimes you'll leave off parts and others you'll scour every inch, and you yourself will touch each adventure in an almost discontinuous manner, bouncing around like your own brain getting distracted and "Oh, that reminds me..." There really isn't anything like it. Always get L'il Cactus's take on every single situation. This is an impassioned review and I added it to the op
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Jun 24, 2021 02:00
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just want 2 remind everyone that the legend of mana promise arrangement album is magical https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfDgf6BVlgs
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Jun 24, 2021 02:55
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Y’all really selling the poo poo out of this game, now I want to play it
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Jun 24, 2021 02:59
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wuggles posted:Y’all really selling the poo poo out of this game, now I want to play it it's also only thirty dollars.
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Jun 24, 2021 03:14
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Jun 24, 2021 04:48
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wuggles posted:Y’all really selling the poo poo out of this game, now I want to play it It's good, and very special
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Jun 24, 2021 06:13
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This remaster looks gorgeous.
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Jun 24, 2021 06:23
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im so happy that i can play my favorite game on the go with the Nintendo Switch. Which is totally different than when I played it on the go on the PSP and Vita.
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Jun 24, 2021 06:25
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vkeios posted:im so happy that i can play my favorite game on the go with the Nintendo Switch. Which is totally different than when I played it on the go on the PSP and Vita.
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Jun 24, 2021 06:28
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I wonder if they did anything to let you get the pet Chocobo that required a Final Fantasy 8 save. I also wonder if they did anything to let you do the 2nd hero style of co-op where player 2 is from a different save file/memory card.
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Jun 24, 2021 07:51
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Spacebump posted:I wonder if they did anything to let you get the pet Chocobo that required a Final Fantasy 8 save. A what now (Insert decaprio Django gif here)
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Jun 24, 2021 08:02
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game's out on consoles (switch/ps4) while pc has to wait until the usual steam unlock timeSpacebump posted:I wonder if they did anything to let you get the pet Chocobo that required a Final Fantasy 8 save. I also wonder if they did anything to let you do the 2nd hero style of co-op where player 2 is from a different save file/memory card.
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Jun 24, 2021 08:55
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Great OP! If this ends up being anyone's first foray into the Mana series and you dig the art, music, lore, and/or general aesthetics of this game, definitely check out Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana (both the original 2D game and the 3D remake are good and play quite differently from one another). Then if you're really hooked you could try some of the other entries. Megathread is here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3891692 I should probably update the OP but 
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Jun 24, 2021 13:46
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My biggest hope is that they redid the UX of the crafting. I'm fine with the needing to gently caress around and find out approach to getting cards and such, but just let me see what the item stats are without needing to back out to the crafting lobby first
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Jun 24, 2021 15:05
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Finally got a chance this morning to load up on the Switch. It is, for better and worse, exactly the game I remember. Moving cancel to cross (b) is a nice quality of life thing. I thought I'd be more bothered by the low-res spritework against the much higher-res watercolors but in motion it really isn't as jarring as I worried. Wandering off with Elazul to go find Pearl being the first thing I do felt so appropriate. For first-timers, go talk to Niccolo first; he's up at the market. That's a slightly less harsh entry into the battle system before you have any instruments for crowd control.
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Jun 24, 2021 16:30
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LoM is neat but both SD3 and LoM felt like their (melee) combat was at best a side-grade from SoM. Though that might be due to the game being insanely easy, especially if you do any of the crafting stuff. Still worth $30, though I continue to be baffled at why they upgraded the graphics for everything except the sprites since they feel like they stick out a bit as a result. Giving them the same treatment as everything else (like SF remaster did) would let them look as amazing as the environments do in the LoM remaster.
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Jun 24, 2021 16:32
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Frankly after Squares various efforts are remastering Final Fantasy over the years, maybe it's best they leave the sprites alone, they don't have the best track record there.
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Jun 24, 2021 17:01
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Captain Oblivious posted:Frankly after Squares various efforts are remastering Final Fantasy over the years, maybe it's best they leave the sprites alone, they don't have the best track record there. Fluffy's right though; the SaGa Frontier Remaster's sprites look fantastic
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Jun 24, 2021 19:05
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I'm really excited for this, I'll probably get it today. I loved this game when it first came out but I haven't played it since. I remember really enjoying it despite how different it was from the other Mana games.
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Jun 24, 2021 19:17
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Casnorf posted:Finally got a chance this morning to load up on the Switch. It is, for better and worse, exactly the game I remember. Moving cancel to cross (b) is a nice quality of life thing. I thought I'd be more bothered by the low-res spritework against the much higher-res watercolors but in motion it really isn't as jarring as I worried. Wandering off with Elazul to go find Pearl being the first thing I do felt so appropriate. For first-timers, go talk to Niccolo first; he's up at the market. That's a slightly less harsh entry into the battle system before you have any instruments for crowd control. All I was really waiting on was a report saying the remaster wasn't crashy or ugly or broken in some other way so I've got this downloading on my switch now
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Jun 24, 2021 19:30
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cheetah7071 posted:All I was really waiting on was a report saying the remaster wasn't crashy or ugly or broken in some other way so I've got this downloading on my switch now I only got to play for maybe an hour or so and I'm looking forward to giving it more time. I literally just turned my desk chair at work and turned on my switch. Ha!
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Jun 24, 2021 19:31
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Okay, wow, the Steam version is lagging pretty badly. I heard it had Denuvo, but I didn't think it would affect the performance of a game like this that badly.
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Jun 24, 2021 19:39
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Cyflan posted:Okay, wow, the Steam version is lagging pretty badly. PC version is running at a locked 60 for me. The brief time I had on the switch version had some framedrops when doing techs while docked. If it's more about the combat feeling stilted, that's just how LoM handles unless you do power attack cancelling then it feels better.
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Jun 24, 2021 19:47
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Gyoru posted:PC version is running at a locked 60 for me. The brief time I had on the switch version had some framedrops when doing techs while docked. Nah, I've played the PS1 version to death, so I know how it feels. This is actual framedrops in combat, and also when trying to catch an egg. And I am playing on a fairly powerful PC.
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Jun 24, 2021 19:57
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Oh yeah, this game! I absolutely adore Legend of Mana. Because I couldn't wait I already pre-ordered it yesterday and was quite surprised when it already unlocked when I was getting up today to get to work. Played a bit on the train, during lunch, and on the train back home. Thanks to being set up as those separate, sometimes rather small events, it's basically the perfect game to play during my work commute. Especially now that I can save everywhere instead of at certain points only.  Cyflan posted:Okay, wow, the Steam version is lagging pretty badly. How is this even possible, my tiny Switch runs the game super-smooth, I can't even 
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Jun 24, 2021 19:59
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Yeah, it's not really unplayable, but enough to be real annoying since they happen mostly during battle.
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Jun 24, 2021 20:17
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