Legend of Mana

[Dracos]

By popular request, I'm jotting down a review for Legend of Mana.

Legend of Mana is not, as some might presume, the sequel to Secret of Mana.  Instead it is the fourth game in the Legend of the Holy Sword series and geared highly towards a younger audience.

First thing you will probably notice when you play this game is the musical score.  It is superb all around.  As is completely expected from any game in the Legend of the Holy Sword series, it opened with a powerful opening theme and continued to be solid in it's choices of musical background throughout.  If you don't have the Legend of Mana soundtrack, take it as recommended if you like game music at all.

The next thing that will come up is the graphics, well done for the style but if you aren't into pastels artwork it will get annoying.  I was indiffirent to it either way.  It wasn't particularly awe inspiring nor did I feel it really detracted in any way from the game.

The game mechanics were quite unique as you slowly discovered new areas of the world and 'placed' where they were in your world.  This was far less interesting then it should have been due to the fact that the relative importance of where you placed things were fairly small.

The game contained somewhere around 3-5 really major plotlines.  This came across as fairly nifty and enjoyable, giving you effectively entirely separate games to fool around with during you journeys in the world.  The last level eventually opened itself up when you completed enough adventures, far less than the game actually had avaliable.  This part was wisely designed, leaving a lot of replay value into the game.

The big weakness of the game was it's difficulty... which was centered around little kids.  The whole game was pitched primarily at the ten and under age bracket and for kids of that age it's perfect.  The battle system was simply broken by how much it favored the good guys.  By the end of the game I had a dozen ways to kill the average boss without coming close to them.

Anyhow, it's cute, it's cuddly, and it's fun.  A good distraction if you are in the mood for just childishness.

Fearless Leader

[Anastasia]

This is the *Spoiler* warning.

Fear it.

First thing you will probably notice when you play this
game is the musical score.  It is superb all around.  As is completely expected from any game in the Legend of the Holy Sword series, it opened with a powerful opening theme and continued to be solid in it's choices of musical background throughout.  If you don't have the Legend of Mana soundtrack, take it as recommended if you like game music at all.

I'll second that, it is one hell of a sound collection. While a few of the tracks are a bit off, most work excellently.

The next thing that will come up is the graphics, well done for the style but if you aren't into pastels artwork it will get annoying.  I was indiffirent to it either way.  It wasn't particularly awe inspiring nor did I feel it really detracted in any way from the game.

I liked the graphics a good deal.  They were unique to the world, and helped set the ambiance nicely. It felt like I was playing a anime, my very own series.  This ties into below.

The game mechanics were quite unique as you slowly discovered new areas of the world and 'placed' where they were in your world.  This was far less interesting then it should have been due to the fact that the relative importance of where you placed things were fairly small.

Actually, it does have a fairly big impact. Firstly, it determines the relative level of the monsters in the area.  The farther away from your home it is, the stronger the beasts are.  Secondly, the amount of each Mana element in the land is partially decided by the lands that border it.  Each land spills some of its Mana energy into the next.  This influcens the power of magic and Mana Elemental boosted weapons in the area, as well as the Mana Spirits that might appear. It's not a huge deal, as you said, but I do think it plays a bigger, albeit subtle, role in the game than you gave it credit for.

I do wish there had been a direct impact on the lands depending on what is near it(Visual or zone changes), but I guess there wasn't room for it.  

The game contained somewhere around 3-5 really major plotlines.  This came across as fairly nifty and enjoyable, giving you effectively entirely separate games to fool around with during you journeys in the world.  The last level eventually opened itself up when you completed enough adventures, far less than the game actually had avaliable.  This part was wisely designed, leaving a lot of replay value into the game.

Yeah.  There are three 'main' plotlines in the game, along with several lesser ones.  The main ones are:

The Fairy Arc with Escad, Daena(BITCH) and Irwin.

The Jumi Arc with Elazul, Pearl and the rest of the motley Jumi crew.

The Dragon Arc with Larc, Sierra and lots of scaly things to stab. ^_^

You had to complete one of these, along with a few random side quests, to open up the last string of events which lead to the Mana Tree. It's just as well, too, as one of the Arcs is very easy to get stuck in. Jumi Arc, I'm looking at you with your day specific triggers. Bleh.  Anyway...

The lesser plost revovle around both various characters.  Some are recurring, like Nicolo(The BASTARD to Daena's BITCH status in Legend of Mana.) and the sea pirates.  Most tend to be one shotish or at most two adventures.  There are a few that you might not find until your fifth or sixth playthough, unless you know where and what to look for.  

Overall, I agree.  The replay value is excellent, and certain elements play on this even more.  For example, the higher difficulty levels cannot be opened unless you are playing a cleared file. Speaking of that, there is something highly awesome about this.  Taking a page from Crono Trigger, Legend of Mana allows you to load end game saves to start over with.  No challenge, right? Nope.  Y'see, when you start a clear file it adds a book to your library.  This nasty little piece of deadly literature allows you to upgrade the difficulty of the game.  Not only does this make the game harder, it increases the rare item drop rate some, making it possible to find the best materials, such as Adamantite or Dragon's Scale.

Note: It's theoretically possible to get these on a normal game, but the odds don't bear trying.  It's it the league of getting Adamant Armor without Alerts in FF4.  It's not gonna happen, folks.

The big weakness of the game was it's difficulty... which was centered around little kids.  The whole game was pitched primarily at the ten and under age bracket and for kids of that age it's perfect.  The battle system was simply broken by how much it favored the good guys.  By the end of the game I had a dozen ways to kill the average boss without coming close to them.

To a point, I agree with this.  Even on Nightmare, once you make some tricked out equipment, it's not that bad.

Anyhow, it's cute, it's cuddly, and it's fun.  A good distraction if you are in the mood for just childishness.

-_-...And then the other shoe drops.

Okay, I'll concede that the battle system is fairly easy.  With that said, I don't think that the label of childishness fits. There are cutesy elements in the game, sure.  But that is merely a bit of the cellophane of the package, not the entire game.

To be honest, I think you kind of missed the point of the game.  It's not meant to be a roaringly difficult game, even on Nightmare. If you look beneath the gilding, I think the point of the game is not to play in Fa'Diel, but to live in it.  

From the beginning of the game, it tries to create this illusion.  The default character name is 'YOU', and it is made clear that the main character is a player avatar.  Once you start the game, you build and explore the world from the ground up. You can become a parent, a dragonhunter, save the Jumi, restore the Mana Tree, whatever. You can sit around and farm friuts and vegetables all day if you wish, or spend a year collecting the elements for a fearsome weapon and crafting it.  Hell, you can easily spend a year of real time working with the weapon and armor creation system, it's that deep and complex. It's your life in Fa'Diel, live it how you like.

To call it 'childish' due to a bit of cute looking graphics and a somewhat(in your opinion) lacking hardness curve truly shortchanges this game.

[Dracos]

Actually, it does have a fairly big impact. Firstly, it determines the relative level of the monsters in the area.  The farther away from your home it is, the stronger the beasts are.  Secondly, the amount of each Mana element in the land is partially decided by the lands that border it.  Each land spills some of its Mana energy into the next.  This influcens the power of magic and Mana Elemental boosted weapons in the area, as well as the Mana Spirits that might appear. It's not a huge deal, as you said, but I do think it plays a bigger, albeit subtle, role in the game than you gave it credit for.

I do wish there had been a direct impact on the lands depending on what is near it(Visual or zone changes), but I guess there wasn't room for it.  

But, to me, that was indeed a minor impact.  You really had to work the system to see some major impact on the playing of the game.  You could entirely ignore the effects of where you placed them and just plop them down without much concern.  They didn't make the subtle effects grand enough to really shine.  They failed, as you said, to really make the backgrounds link up with what is around it.  The worst part, in my opinion, is they had conceptually prepared for some lands to be right near each other....  Such as the old road you first meet Niccolo on being next to your house.  This of course isn't necessary and you can verily arrange for it not to happen at all.  Basically they were neither loose enough with the worldset to really make that system shine nor locked enough to make it so at least you could ignore it entirely and just walk around a predesigned world.

Note: It's theoretically possible to get these on a normal game, but the odds don't bear trying.  It's it the league of getting Adamant Armor without Alerts in FF4.  It's not gonna happen, folks.

Actually, this was another pet peeve of mine.  Not when you got the equipment but the fact that the materials were neither clear in their effects nor particularly different between them.  The lack of in game ability to learn more about black smithing and advance your knowledge on things was a real drawback.  I learned the ins and outs of it finally through a faq and I have to admit, it's designed almost to require you waste a good several hours and tons of equipment just to begin to figure it out.  The best equipment armorwise by far didn't even really depend on what material you used... but simply that you went ahead and added the right vegatable afterwards...  giving it such a huge bonus that the actual material modifiers just seemed to disappear.  The overemphasis on building stuff was also a touch unrealistic.  With the odds of creating different weapons there really was a lackluster ability to buy and find odd equipment.

To be honest, I think you kind of missed the point of the game.  It's not meant to be a roaringly difficult game, even on Nightmare. If you look beneath the gilding, I think the point of the game is not to play in Fa'Diel, but to live in it.  

That's fine, but I didn't feel the game was nearly developed enough to achieve that.  I know it was MEANT to be that sort of thing, but it truthfully was never built up to it.  Too much of the stuff was able to be done remarkably fast, the level of difficulty removed the long term time investement (One could easily finish every quest in the game long before truly getting any level of appriciation for the attempt at a worldset), too little defined worldset and interaction...and the defining point: Too much emphasis on battle.  The majority of the game can be reduced to fight quests or fetch quests.  Sure, there was some interaction...but it was, as you note, rarely developed except in a few choice cases.  The ability to do every possible quest in a single go also damaged the simulationist world setting.  Effectively, I know what it was reaching for... but the game overall was toned at a younger audience and plays like such.

The armor and weapons system...while complex, was in a bad way.  The lack of info and documentation around it was astounding.  What are you the only blacksmith in the world?  You can't even get someone to teach you the ropes particularly well?  Building a few items with you?

The game was effectively way too hero centric for it to work well as a simulation worldset in my opinion.  At best it was a decent attempt... but overall, it feels to bear a far greater emphasis on appealing to a younger crowd then it does to an older gamer.

Fearless Leader

[nemesis_zero]

the world placement idea does sound like a truly intreguing possibility not explored to the utmost.  If the placement of different areas opened or locked subquests, altered the individual area maps, changed the npc interaction, and even affected the overall plot of game, then they would really be onto something... a game with nearly limitless replay value.