![]() Of all things, combat is probably the most straightforward aspect of Legend of Mana. This isn’t strictly a good or a bad thing, but it is at the very least an interesting one. Not only are branching paths and dialogue options plentiful among the dozens of quests here, but the order in which you complete quests and place new Lands also affects the kind of content you can engage with later. Again, this is by design, as it’s clear that Legend of Mana expects you to play through multiple times via new game plus if you want to see all that it has to offer. Similarly, this isn’t exactly a game that we’d recommend to completionists, as there’s plenty of missable content along the way that you can unknowingly lock yourself out of if you don’t have a guide open on another screen. Still, those of you who don’t have the patience for this more hands-off approach to quest design will find that Legend of Mana can more often than not be a challenging experience to parse. This is by design, of course, as it’s clear the developers want to encourage you to engage with more of the world and really dig in, rather than simply sprinting from point A to B as efficiently as possible. In the latter case, it can then be quite frustrating when you basically have to trial and error your way through until you finally find the NPC you needed to speak with to get things moving again. Some quests are good about pointing you in the right direction, while others give only the vaguest of suggestions as to where you should go. The flipside to this, however, is that there is next to no direction about what to do next. As you can probably guess, this means that there’s quite a bit of player agency to toy around with. Every Land has at least one quest for you to fulfill, and most quests will award you with at least one new Artifact to place a new Land and repeat the cycle. The basic loop consists of placing “Lands” on various nodes of the world grid, which then allows you to enter that land and interact with any towns or dungeons that might be contained within. Gameplay is much the same in its structure, which is to say that it’s often hard to grasp and poorly explained, but not necessarily low quality. That’s not to say the storytelling is weak, however, as topics like love, war, genocide, and persecution are all explored in ways that can be shockingly hard-hitting. And while you can tease out a ‘main’ quest over time, it’s so esoteric and airy that it could hardly be described as gripping. Legend of Mana plays more like a collection of loosely connected fairytales all set in the same world, connected to each other in various thematic ways. If you come into this expecting a typical RPG story (or even a ‘normal’ story in general), you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Broadly speaking, there are three ‘arcs’ to the story, but they can be experienced in any order you choose and are each comprised of a series of sidequests that can also be played in a very loose order.Ĭonsidering this non-linear approach, it’s certainly advised that you approach Legend of Mana with an open mind. The story goes that the legendary Mana Tree burned down centuries before the events of Legend of Mana and the world of Fa’Diel was subsequently broken up into fragments called “Artifacts” which were then scattered. You begin as a nameless, self-insert character, and you’re tasked with effectively creating the world as you explore it. The narrative of Legend of Mana is… confusing, to say the least. Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) Now, over twenty years later, and following on from 2019's Collection of Mana and the Trials of Mana remake the following year, Square has finally seen fit to bring this misfit classic back into the light, and while many aspects of it still hold up, it is unmistakably a very weird game. Legend of Mana-the fourth entry in the series-was one of the earliest to be localized, but it was met upon release with middling reception. Secret of Mana was widely considered one of the best RPGs of its time and even today carries quite a bit of clout, but many of the other titles either didn’t get localized or arrived overseas years after their initial release. It’s interesting to see how the Mana series has been treated over the years, both by Square and the general public. ![]()
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