Let's Play: Legend of Mana

Brickroad's "full speed ahead" comment in the archive thread finally pushed me enough to get this off the ground. Which is good! I've been itching to play this game recently, so without further ado...

Let's play!



Despite the fact that it is decidedly not Secret of Mana, like many people were hoping upon its release, I think there's a lot to like about this game. I've probably sunk more hours into it than any other game that I can think of, so I would like to hope so at least. Will my childhood memories stand the test of time? Let's find out!

But before we begin, you are going to have to make some decisions for me! Yes, you!



The first choice: should I play as the boy (left, believe it or not) or girl (right). This is, aside from a couple of altered lines of dialogue, entirely cosmetic.

Second choice: Which of the game's 11 weapons should I use? This is not just cosmetic. Weapon choice determines your base attack, damage type, movement speed, attack speed, attack range, amount of hits in a standard combo, stat growth, and the flashy special attacks that you can learn. I'll add what allies use a particular weapon in its description too, while I'm at it. You might not know who these characters are yet, but I'll let you know in case someone wants me to use a weapon that hasn't already been claimed by an NPC or something.

Knives: Dual knives. Fast movement speed, short range. You might think they would have fast attack speed too, but they really don't. Each attack in the combo swings both knives, but only one of the swings per button press will hit. (Used by: Sierra)

Sword: Most balanced stat growth. Can use a shield, shares the standard attack animation and some special attacks with the axe. (Used by: Elazul)

Axe: Like the sword, the you can use a shield. Has the best special attack in the game, hands down. (Used by: Larc)

Two-handed Sword: Slower than the lighter weapons in every way, but makes up for it in power. Shares the normal attack animation and a few special attacks with two-handed axe and hammer. (Used by: Escad and Bud. Apparently frying pans pass for greatswords these days.)

Two-handed Axe: Slower and more powerful than the two-handed sword. (Used by: Nobody!)

Hammer: Slowest weapon in the game. Also the hardest hitting. It always looked a bit silly to me, but you can't argue with the results. (Used by: omgspoilercharacter)

Spear: Theoretically has longer reach than anything but the bow, but one of the combo attacks has just as short range as your standard punches. The first weapon I chose. (Used by: Nobody!)

Staff: Shares its normal attacks with the spear, but is significantly weaker. It's special attacks are generally weaker to the equivalent attacks for other weapons, but they all have an element attached. (Used by: Lisa, though it's actually a broom.)

Gloves: Fast, shortest range. Most combo hits, though. And you can suplex screen-tall dragons. My favorite weapon. (Used by: Niccolo)

Flail: Think less "medieval flail" and more "nunchaku." Shares the normal attack problems and some special attacks with the knives. Probably my least favorite weapon, even though nunchaku are admittedly awesome. (Used by: Daena)

Bow: Longest range in the game, obviously. A little on the weak and slow side, but you should be far enough from enemies that you'll hardly ever take damage anyway. (Used by: Nobody!)

I can change weapons at any time, but I'm going to stick with whatever gets chosen through to the end. We're in this for the long haul, boys. Choose wisely.

And finally...



...our plucky hero needs a better name.

So what do you think, Talking Time? Post whatever name/gender/weapon combination you'd like to see, and I'll use the best/most popular suggestions.

Done. Sold. Go gloves.

Don't care about the name etc. But if you don't suplex monsters as often as I possible, I will take it personally.

*excitement*

As I can't remember this game at all!

Let's go with a girl, with a great sword, and have her name be chica or theDudette

I actually like this game a lot. I know I'm in the minority, but there's something about the randomness that I enjoyed.

I rented this and loved it, but I'll be gal-darned if I remember anything else about it.

Use Girl (since she looks less crummy then Boy), Either Gloves or 2-Handed Sword and you shall name her... Wossername

Use a girl with the two-handed axe. YOU MUST.

I love this game too mostly for the asthetics and the creativity on show. I also vote for the girl and 2-handed sword.

I say name her after the three people I admire most: Tigerlilly Rembrandt Frankenstein.

Take the Gloves and keep on punching til you punch the faces of God and Satan.

Girl, gloves, and a random name.

A girl with gloves named Alena.

I really loved this game too, though I admit I had to warm up to it a bit first. I wish I hadn't sold it.

My name is CJ, and I approve of this message.

I would call her Pants, because that way she would have some.

I will forever consider the true name of the Legend of Mana protagonist to be 'Chumpy'

I change my answer.

It must be Pants.

I loves me some Legend of Mana.

Use one of the random names (the game has a very interesting assortment for both genders).

I want to say bow, because I've never heard of anyone actually playing through the game with one (I know I haven't). But "female archer" is done to the death in RPGs, so gloves or two-handed axe.

Girl for sure

If you go Gloves name her Orlha
Spear -> Mikado
Daggers -> Ayame

Edit:
Or this

I've never stuck with one weapon throughout the whole game. I switch it up everytime there's a new stronger weapon.

Wait let's do a Guy, name him MC and give him a Hammer.

I have never played this game, but I'll throw my vote to girl with two-handed axe. Mostly so when you kill things, you can say "Let me AXE you a question!"

And name her, I don't know, Gina.

The results were processed in the only truly fair way possible. I wrote each person's suggestion on a piece of paper, then drew one out of a bag to determine the three aspects of the character.

It turns out our main character is...



Female. Admittedly, I didn't draw that one. Nobody even voted male until after I had already gotten this next set of screenshots.

Her weapon of choice is...



Her gloves. Not surprising, considering how much the gloves outnumbered everything else. You've got good taste, Talking Time! In fact, I went with the girl with gloves the last time I played the game and will gladly do it again. I like punching and wrasslin' that much.

However, the last time I played the game, I didn't name the main character...



Pants. I'm pleased with the results. Are you?



After making our character, we're given the task of deciding where in beautiful Fa'Diel the game will take place.



For simplicity's sake, we're selecting this spot. The cursor's default location. It doesn't really matter where I start the game unless I'm trying to do every quest possible, which isn't really the point of this playthrough anyway.



Afterwards, we get this message. This mailbox we're placing is an artifact. What that means to us is that we place the item on the map somewhere and it creates a new location for us to explore. This, being the first artifact in the game, is Pants' house. Let's just place it in the lower left corner of the map. There's a reason for this, but I'll get into it in more detail once we start placing more artifacts.





Some special effects later, and we've got ourselves a home!

The screen blurs out, and the intro movie kicks in. I don't have anything I can use to record it myself, but YouTube will do nicely. Other people have mentioned it already, but it really is a beautiful looking game.






Moving on, the Goddess of Mana tells us what's up. Sort of.

Well, not really. But this is just about the most detailed backstory you'll get without pouring over the in-game books, so relish it.

You'll learn soon enough that the story isn't really the important part of this game. You just kind of go with the flow.



On that note, Pants wakes up, ready for another day of... whatever it is Pants was doing before her house sprung into existence. That little cactus is the corner is Li'l Cactus. Keep notes. He'll be important later.



Now's as good a time as any to go over the contents of the menu.

Here, we see Pants' stats. LoM uses pictures for these instead of the typical STR, INT, DEX, etc. that most RPGs use.

Moving left to right, the top row has power (strength-based weapon damage), skills (dexterity-based weapon damage), defense (physical defense), and magic (magic defense). The bottom row has HP (determines your HP gain upon level-up, and your regen rate), spirit (status change defense), charm (success rate of your status changes), and luck (item drop).



Here's the equipment screen. The four numbers we have for defense correspond with bashing, slashing, thrusting, and magic type damage. It isn't visible, but the various weapons all have different damage types as well. Predictably, our gloves are bashing. Something like the sword, however, is made up of various levels of all three physical damage types.



This is Pants' skill screen. Our Special Technique list is kind of barren now, but the game is kind enough to start you out with one tech for whichever weapon you choose.

More techs are learned based on what abilities you use during battle. I didn't take a screenshot of the full list, but as you can see from the awesome FAQ I wrote for the game when I was in middle school, you start with 8 abilities and can learn up to 26. Different combinations will lead to different locked abilities and special techniques.

But we'll stick with Jump and Defend for now.



Downstairs, we find the first treasure chest in the game.

After breaking open what can only be assumed is Pants' piggy bank, we move outside to mingle with the locals.



By "locals," I mean this freeloading Sproutling. His rent overdue again this month, he hands me a pile of children's blocks instead and tells me this.

I guess I'll accept a city as a form of payment. This guy better be legit.

Moving outside, there aren't too many options on where to place this town. Aside from the mailbox, you can only place an artifact next to a location that you've been to before. And most towns can't float, so we're going to plop it down on the only open space.



*sparkle*



And we're in Domina. Each of the blue dots on the map point out entrances or exits to the various sections of the town.



Like s- whoa.

Immediately after entering town, we walk in on the ending of an argument between Mysterious McBroodybrood and the onion here.



He answers the kid's question and turns for the pub behind him. Clearly the only reasonable course of action here is to follow an angry man into a bar, so Pants does so.



Or would, if this fat rabbity thing wasn't blocking the door. After pushing Pants aside, he waddles over to the north end of town.

Now, Talking Time, we get to choose our first adventure!

If you want to follow the angry man into the pub, turn to page 125.

If you want to follow the fat, happy looking rabbit to the north, turn to page 53.

I don't trust that rabbit. That grin of his doesn't exactly look trustworthy to me. Go after the angry man instead.

Oh, but if it were only that easy in real life.

We have to follow the brooding young man with long hair, using Square logic he must be the ultimate baddie who'll we'll fight a dozen times or so each time to classical music before he transforms or summons the ultimate evil which we must destroy, lets get that part put of the way!

Tell me about the rabbits, George.

this game is pretty high on my games I couldn't get into way back when and should probably try again list! I'm sure it didn't help that I was expecting it to somewhat resemble SoM, and that I was playing it in Japanese (before I learned to read Japanese) and had no idea what was going on. damn that awesome local game store, renting out crazy inscrutable import games to impressionable youths.

I guess what I'm saying is FAT RABBIT FTW

Pants must follow Generic McBroodyface into the bar, if only so I can see the end of that line of quests after nine long years.

EDIT: I am so cracking open my endgame save after I beat my current RPG. It's been far too long since Maraxus and Brooklyn rolled into the Gato Grottoes.

The art style reminds me of SaGa Frontier II...only with onions and rabbits and crazy ass stuff like that.

Oh, and follow the angry guy.

Naw. This guy doesn't have silver hair. He can't be that bad.

Yeah, the game shares producers with SaGa Frontier II, in fact. There are a few other things going on that make it seem more like a SaGa game than a Mana game, too. Most of the special techniques are lifted directly from SaGa, and it flexes its open-ended muscle pretty fierce. It's also ludicrously experimental and has a lot of poorly explained, arcane subsystems going on.

I rather like it!

Anyway, it's nice to see people taking some interest in this, despite the current... issues with Let's Play threads that I'm partially responsible for. But now that it's started, I'm going to try and keep up with a regular two updates per day or so.