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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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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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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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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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Jun 24, 2021 20:34
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I'm so happy people are playing and enjoying Legend of Mana. It's the first game I played growing up where I actually thought about the themes and character perspectives. There are legitimately ideas in this game that still stick with me today and have helped to craft my personal philosophy.
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Jun 25, 2021 17:21
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Jun 25, 2021 21:57
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cheetah7071 posted:I just experimented a lot with it and none of this seems to be true. At least, the unique lines aren't true. And I'm not convinced the grid is, either. It was at one point at least. It's possible it has changed, they updated the localization maybe they messed it up. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/256525-legend-of-mana/faqs/7998
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Jun 26, 2021 01:34
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When I made the thread I literally had the thought "How long until it devolves to Dudbear speak?"
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Jun 26, 2021 04:53
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Gyoru posted:i did it you monster
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Jun 27, 2021 01:23
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Plasbad posted:I'm about 3 hours in and this game is bizarre, obtuse, and strange, and I'm all for it. Most of my favorite games of all time are PS1 titles with unique systems such as Digimon World and Monster Rancher, and I'm honestly sad I never picked this up as a kid, I would have loved it back then. Still, I'm happy to be playing it now, it's a blast and the art and music is fantastic. It can be hard to tell how close you are to getting some systems due to everyone sort of creating their own worlds in different orders.
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Jun 30, 2021 01:03
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FelicityGS posted:hate the fairies to be fair, I think you're supposed to
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Jul 7, 2021 01:28
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