The game starts off with a story telling how the world of Fa’Diel was destroyed through a war to control magic power. Pretty standard stuff, but where things take a turn is when you learn that you, the chosen hero, must recreate the various places in the world from the artifacts they have been stored in. And that’s just about it for metaplot for the whole game. You place artifacts, visit lands, and participate in various quests. There are about three main storylines, but they’re entirely separate. There are also a great number of minor events that help flesh out the world. The events that you participate in frequently involve either running around town talking to people, exploring dungeons, or visiting specific places in a variety of lands. The dungeons are probably the easiest to navigate, though they frequently have screens that look almost identical, leading to getting lost occasionally. When you’re in for a town adventure, watch out! You’ll need to talk to everyone, usually several times. Occasionally you’ll even need to talk to them from a specific direction or on a specific day of the week. Without a walkthrough or serious use of hints, a lot of these will take a long time to figure out. While tedious, few town adventures require much legwork. Not so with exploration missions, which will have you trekking all over Fa’Diel searching for something, anything, that will trigger a scene in your latest quest. The events that you run into run the gamut of content, and so it’s hard not to enjoy at least a few of them. However, the story is so non-linear that it’s frequently difficult to figure out anything at all to do, which detracts from the enjoyment of the scenes when you eventually find them. All in all, not the worst stories out there, but Seiken Densetsu 3 (the next most recent incarnation of the series) has all of them beat. Not to mention that the stories are not worth the aggravation of going through talk quests (been there, done that.)
If Legend of Mana has a strength, it’s in the characters. Where the story is not so great, the characters are truly interesting. With so many side events, almost all the characters in the world are unique, and are developed in at least one event. Plus, reading up in the in-game encyclopedia on the people and monsters that you meet really gives the world of Fa’Diel the feeling of depth. The characters involved in the major storylines are ven more intriguing. The character of Larc, a dragonman bound to serve an evil emperor working from the pit of the netherworld, is wonderfully dark. Pearl is a princess (with a secret) who’s protected by the knight Elazul, both of whom are on the run from a mysterious enemy. And of course Niccolo, the rabbitman who will do anything for a profit, up to and including faking amnesia. Some of these characters sound familiar, but there’s a certain amount of nuance to them, mostly from their participation in the varied and expansive world the exist in.
The battle system? Do we have to? All right. The battle system is real-time. You hit the monsters, and when you hit the monsters enough, you can use a special move. That’s really all there is to it. There’s a lot of weapon types to choose from, but they function essentially the same on the battlefield. Each weapon type has its own set of special moves, which are learned at unspecified points while using the weapon. Special moves are pretty bad, because while they leave you invincible during the charge up, they hit so infrequently that it’s hardly worth the bother. This goes for boss enemies too, so even bosses in this game aren’t too hard. In fact, on the default difficulty that you get on the first play-through (see replay value below), the whole game is almost painfully easy on the combat end of things. Once in a while you might have trouble with a boss, but normal enemies are never anything more than a waste of time.
Of possibly more interest are the systems for farming, raising pets, creating golems, and creating weapons. While going into each of these in too much detail would be as tedious as it would be repetitive, the basic premise for all of them is very similar. While you explore dungeons, you may run into a monster egg/elemental spirit. By doing some annoying cat and mouse antics, you can catch said thingy and get a monster/elemental coin. At home, you can harvest fruits to feed your pets hatched from eggs, customizing their stat growth, and you can make weapons/armor by taking materials and tempering them with elemental coins. Golems are just random pieces of equipment strung together with some kind of AI instructions. Sound complicated? It is. In fact, it’s really too bad that none of it’s even remotely necessary, because of the game’s ridiculously easy difficulty level. Even so, it’s very difficult to get anything useful out of these places, because very specific ingredients and items are needed to make something that’s better in any way than what you just find lying around.
Replay value is where this game is supposed to shine, I guess, and to its credit, there’s a lot of things that you can do differently. Different part of the map, different order of events, different weapons use, you name it. There’s even an adjustable difficulty the second time around, which is handy, since it makes for some challenge in an otherwise pretty easy game. Even so, the battle system’s not great to begin with, the item creation system less so, and the different weapons aren’t really all that different. The only remaining pleasure might be had from finding events that you missed on the first play-through, but if you follow a walkthrough, it’s possible to get every event the first time. So, that makes this game’s rating a dubious “at least once with a walkthrough, and who know how many without.” While you might manage to accidentally find more events yourself simply by trial and error, there’s a fair number that are very difficult to find without a clear idea of what you’re shooting for.
So, that was Legend of Mana. Really, not a terrible game, just not as great a game as could be expected. You’d think that the previous game in the series would have been a better choice to bring to the US, but I guess that wasn’t in the cards. The only thing I should mention before I get to the ultimate rating is that this game is pretty. The art is colorful, vibrant, and gives the game its own unique style. While the art doesn’t exactly make up for the problems with the game, and indeed occasionally exacerbates them, it’s still so good that I feel it deserves some mention. With that aside, this game gets a 7.0 out of 10. It’s underwhelming, but there’s little that’s jarringly wrong with it. The battle system’s extreme simplicity is the game’s biggest downfall, though the annoying town quests contribute too. It’s fun enough to at least play once if you follow a walkthrough.
Quick Tip: When selecting a location on the map to start your game, be sure to choose one that has very little water. You need a little water for those lands that require it, but otherwise, you’re better off on land.
How I Broke Game: If you press the attack button quickly, you go into a combo, with ghost outlines of yourself showing up. However, at the end of the combo, you can’t attack for a while. A friend and I figured out that if you wait just a little after the first hit, you can attack again without being in a combo. This means that you can be constantly attacking.
If you liked this game, then you should definitely try out some of these games. Dark Cloud and Dark Cloud 2 are action RPGs with weapon modification systems and town building aspects that are remarkably similar to those in Legend of Mana. Dragon Warrior VII and to a smaller degree Dragon Quest VIII share a certain amount of the episodic nature found in events. Odin Sphere has some similarly deep stories for its protagonists, and is also an action RPG. It’s quite a bit harder though, so be warned.
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