We need to save Mana AGAIN!? Let's play Seiken Densetsu 3!

Once upon a time, there was a game called Secret of Mana. It was hastily downgraded for release on a console it wasn't designed for, and was buggy as hell, and the story made no sense. But everyone loves it all the same.

Square took note of this, of course, and released the sequel a scant two years later...



...Unfortunately this sequel never made its way overseas due to technical and monetary problems, according to Nintendo Power circa 1995.

But roll forward five years, when SNES emulation was starting to hit its stride, and a fan translation of the game made its way around the internet.

A very good fan translation.

I came across the game somewhere around that time, and I've played through it a... number of times since. All told, I've probably beaten the game more than any other game I've played. Yeah, even including those 1-2 hour long action games.

I guess what I'm saying is that this game is to me what Mario RPG is to Tanto. But those kind of stories can wait until later!

I'm sure you'd all rather see the intro moviie right now, right? right?















It may not be obvious in screenshot form, but after bad stuff happens at the Mana Tree to scare all the birds off, four balls of light rush off in the distance. Three of the balls blink out, revealing a fairy, and fall back, leaving only one fairy to do whatever it is a fairy does.

Did you take notes? This will be important later.

But before I actually start a new game, I'm going to need your help!



As you can see, there are six characters here. That's double what Secret of Mana had!

But before you get all excited, we can only choose three. Since those three characters will be the only ones we'll have access to for the entire adventure, this is pretty much the most important decision in the game.

What kind of things are there to consider when choosing a character? Why, I'm glad you asked!

One of the more important things to think about is that the first character chosen is designated the main character, which decides which of the three story paths we'll follow throughout the game.

The paths aren't vastly different, since they only change two dungeons and the last boss, but I'll go over any points of interest for each in addition to the characters involved.

The other important thing to consider is that each character here, like the characters in some other game you might know, get a class change at a certain point in the game. But unlike that other game, you get a choice between two typically significantly different classes for each character.

In addition, you get another choice between two more classes later on, giving you a total of four potential final classes for each character.

You might understand why I have played this game so much now. Not all the classes are perfectly balanced, of course, but I've played with all of them at some point or another.

I'm pretty confident that I can at least make any combination work, but I'll refrain from giving detailed descriptions of most of the final classes for the moment, on account of length.

So without further ado, here are our stars! Grouped by story path.


The most notable thing about this path is that it's the only one that lets you fight the game's optional superboss, the dreaded Black Rabite. It's also basically the only thing in the game that I'm not completely sure I can deal with using any party, especially if Angela is the main character. Magic is a pretty bad idea there.


Duran here is a mercenary in the Grasslands Kingdom of Forcena. He nearly gets killed during an invasion by the Magic Kingdom of Altena, and goes off on a quest to get stronger so he can kick a wizard's ass. His dad was best buds with the King of Forcena before biting it.

His friends call him FIGHTER. He hits things really hard with a sword and... doesn't really do much else before class changing. His class changes involve either getting some rudimentary support or exploiting elemental weaknesses to hit even harder. He's the only character in the game that can equip shields, but only on the support path.


Angela is the princess of Altena. Her mother's magic keeps the normally icy climate warm enough for her to run around in a leotard all the time, but Mana starts to weaken and the spell loses its effect. So she hunts down the Mana Stones and invades other countries and plans on killing Angela to get the magic back up to snuff. After she finds out, Angela skips town, wondering why mom doesn't love her anymore.

She goes by Bl.MAGE in some circles, and is one of two characters that can do more than attack until class changing. She has access to all the basic elemental spells (After you've met the appropriate elemental spirit) before class changing. All told, though, she probably has the most boring final classes. For all intents and purposes, they're pretty much the same. "Elemental spells, bigger elemental (With either light or dark depending on class), big nonelemental."


There's not really anything unique to this path beyond a throwback to a Secret of Mana boss. It's practically made for one of Carlie's final classes, though.


Kevin is the half-human son of the King of the Beastmen. Being a halfbreed, he doesn't really get along with the other beastmen. So he lives in the forest with his dog, Karl. Will until this fellow named Deathjester turns the dog into a feral wolf at the King's command. Kevin kills it, feels bad, finds out it's dad's fault, then runs away to look for a way to revive Karl.

Kevin's dad actually wanted to name him Bl.BELT, but his mother refused. But unlike your average martial artist, Kevin's beastman blood allows him to transform into a werewolf at night, raising his damage considerably. He doesn't hit quite as hard as Duran, but every press of the attack button causes him to swing twice in rapid succession. Additionally, he's the only character that gets two weapon techs per class change; one (usually) multi-target, and one single-target throw. Unfortunately, there's no way to choose which one he uses, and the throw doesn't do any more damage. It exists only to infuriate you when you need a multi-target tech. He also has the dubious honor of being the only character in the game who has a first class change that doesn't learn any spells, with his other option getting some support spells.


Carlie (Or Charlotte, depending on how anal you are about sticking to the original Japanese name) is the granddaughter of the Priest of Light in the Holy City, Wendel. She's by far the youngest selectable character, and sees a cleric named Heath as her older brother. One day, she leaves the city to look for Heath, and sees Deathjester kidnapping him. That guy sure does get around, huh?

Carlie hangs out with Wh.MAGE to make herself look more attractive. Unlike her friend, she's actually useful to pretty much any team. This is mostly due to the fact that she brings along more than just healing, having a ton of variety in her final classes. You may have guessed that she's number two of the characters that can use spells before class changing, though she's limited to healing and status curing.


You can theoretically get the second class change the soonest via this path, but it would take so much grinding that I would really rather not bother unless there's an unusually large demand for it. The last boss is very slightly harder than the other options, though.


Hawk (Or Hawkeye, if you are seriously that anal) is a member of the Navarre Thieve's Guild. The leader of the guild gets mind controlled, by a lady named Isabella, into declaring the place a nation and attacking Rolante. When Hawk tries to figure out what the hell's going on, his best friend Eagle gets mind controlled into attacking him. Hawk injures him, Isabella kills him, then places the blame on Hawk. Isabella throws him in prison, then puts a cursed necklace on his squeeze that'll kill her if he ever tells anyone what happened. He escapes to look for a cure for the curse.

Hawk is a THIEF. In other words, he's a weaker Duran/Kevin and can't even steal. He fights with two daggers, and gets the same doublehit that Kevin does, but he doesn't really shine until he class changes. He has even more variety in his final classes than Carlie does, and is very much a jack of all trades. Even the trades that you didn't even know existed until he jacked them.


Lise (Or Riesz, if anus) is the princess of the Wind Kingdom of Rolante, and the head honcho of the kingdom's Amazon army. Two ninja from Navarre come in, kidnap her brother, and kill her dad. That just won't do!

Lise is not a RedMAGE, but she's close enough to pretend she is. Before class changing, she's a somewhat weaker Duran. Her spear doesn't get the doublehit, either. But, like Hawk, she doesn't really come into her own until the class change. She doesn't have nearly as much variety as Hawk, but she gets her most useful stuff during the first class change, so she'll be more useful for longer. Eventually she'll have buffs or debuffs, and some attack/status change magic, and some pretty solid physical attacks. So, close enough, right?

There's one more thing to take care of when choosing these characters...



They need names! Unless you guys want to stick with the default names, that is.

Six letters max, and make sure to indicate which character you want to be the main when voting.

I'll pick this back up sometime in the middle of the week, after I'm done with my finals.

tl;dr version: Pick three faces, name them if you want.

Neat. I've started a playthrough of this several times but have always gotten distracted. If you're taking votes for your character mix, I'm going to put mine in for the Valkyrie type as your main. I don't remember enough about them to know what's a complementary choice for your alt.

Edit: Hmmm, after reading your description, I change my vote to Duran as your main character and Carlie as your support . I'll be playing through as the thief and the werewolf myself, eventually, and so I'd like to see the path I wouldn't get to.

Is it just me, or is the Mana Tree pretty much the most doomed macguffin ever?

Lise is Reisz in Japanese, which is close to Reis, like the dragon-lady from FFT. So pick her.

And name her... well... Reis, I guess.

It hasn't had a good track record, no. It got cut down in FFA, laser'd in SoM, and LoM opens with a movie showing the Mana Tree getting destroyed, then ends with you beating the shit out of the Mana Goddess.

Will SD3 be different? It is a mystery.

What is the rest of Angela's outfit? Hip-mounted pincers?

It looks like you can't quite pull off ○✗∆□☆, but ○✗♥● isn't too far removed. No, this isn't a serious suggestion.

The arrows next to the ♥ are actual, selectable letters too.

Just throwing that out there.

Assuming the class changes will give you some interesting spell options, I like the idea of Fighter, Blackbelt (or Theif), and White Mage. This seems like the most balanced option, but I'm really choosing this because you get a girl who looks like a Sprite from SoM with cool class chance, a wolfman, and an optional battle against "the dreaded Black Rabite". I mean, come on.

Black Rabite.

That's all I want to see now.

Plus, if you really want to do this right, you'll post an appendix with any cool stuff we miss with this group, right?

Do you have to choose both characters on a path to get to the Black Rabite, or only one? In any case, put me down for Duran (FIGHTER), Hawk (THIEF), and Lise (RedMAGE).

I've tried to play through this multiple times, but I always get stalled out after a few hours and find a different game to play. When I first played this, I tried to recreate the SoM team, so I went with Duran, Angela and Carlie, so go with that I guess! If you want to, you can even use Randi, Purim, and Popoie for the names, even though they've dumb.

My last few attempts at a playthough used Hawk, Lise, a random person for my 3rd. Usually Carlie, but sometimes Angela or Duran. I did like Hawk and Lise the best out of the 6 characters, and I hated Kevin and Carlie. Carlie being annoying at least got her a pass because she was a healer, but Kevin is still a window licker on the short bus.

Rieszsszszz, Angela, and Kevin!

I never leave home without Riezszzsszs.

Roll 3d6 and generate a random party.

Oh! You could do Lise, Angela and Carlie for a girl power adventure. Seiken Densetsu 3-2!

Choosing one of the characters is enough to get the Black Rabite, yes.

There's not really any advantage to picking both characters for a path or disadvantage to not picking any characters in a path. About the only change is a couple of lines of dialogue when we run into another character related to a particular protagonist.

I'm not finishing this one, SG, just so you're warned. =p

Also, beastmen rock.

I've false started on this game SEVERAL times. I always enjoy picking my party and playing for like an hour, then I want to try someone else.

I'm sure he gets old after a while, but I really liked Hawk's fighting style. I always prefer speed over power. But it doesn't sound like he's that good for the long run.

I really want this game to a real release here, either on DS or VC or something. I can't seem to play emulation for long enough to finish an RPG.

You might say that now, but just you wait.

It's actually kinda the reverse of that with Hawk. He's not all that hot in the beginning compared to the other three fighters, and he's just sort of OK during the first class change, but once you get pretty much any of his second classes, he's pretty awesome.

In my experience with this game, there are two difficulty levels: With Kevin, and Without Kevin. With Kevin is easy mode, Without Kevin is normal.

This is why you always choose Kevin and Carlie. The third slot is up for grabs!

I've seen most of Carlie's story and am so sick of her so I vote for NO CARLIE.

My for-votes go to Lise, Angela, and Hawk. Reis sounds like a good Lise name to me. I could see naming Angela "Bunny". Because she is.

I'm inspired by your FF1 inspired class descriptions, so I vote for four letter caps-lock names.

I want a party of STAB, HEAL and WOLF. I will also accept FAST, POKE and HURT

I vote Angela, Carlie, and Lise purely for a certain scene in the ending.

Eee, like you, I have beaten this game more than anything else. I adore it and am SO HAPPY you are doing this!

This game also includes the best rendition of the Mana theme ever (when the lights are traveling over the clouds).

I also have a physical copy of the Super Famicom version with an instruction manual that includes stupidly tiny illustrations of each character's intro. I just decided to browse around and look for them and discovered that these were evidently used for some card game (note: image has spoilers for Hawk's intro and Riesz's although it's not as clear what's going on in hers), which is evidently part of a Prologue book I didn't know existed until now but now desperately want.

Anyway, the point of that before I got distracted by pretty things to buy with money I don't have is that I can go scan the official character art from my instruction booklet if anyone is curious and Spoony doesn't mind.

I HATE HATE HATE Angela and Duran and can find Black Rabite battles on Youtube if I need them. I especially hate Angela for one of her more advanced special attack animations.

Hawk is damn sexy and an absolute joy to control in my opinion but I've seen that story a billion times so no for him as the main character.

This is true if you can deal with the dialogue, although I'll occasionally substitute Riesz for Kevin. Also, if you're going to choose Carlie always choose her as the third character! I think Riesz has the most interesting story and dialogue and as much as I like both Kevin and Carlie and I can't deal with two characters with stupid-speak.

So Riesz, Hawk and Kevin. Should counteract the easiness of having Kevin by depriving you of a healer unless you decide to make him one (which will take forever anyway).

Pick the one party that you think is the weakest. If Angela is in it, make her the leader so you can kill the Black Rabite anyway.

Do it!

Oh heck yes. I love this game. I played through it at least three times (to get all the endings) in Japanese, and I hardly know Japanese. Fortunately, in Mana games a knowledge of Katakana and the basic element kanji will take you far.

Anyway, my only absolute request is that you must take Lise, because she's awesome. Beyond that, I dunno. The all-girl party suggested above could be fun.

Hmm, dragons are fun, though, and I don't think I've seen the Black Rabite, so I'm gonna suggest Duran-Lise-Carlie. THat party also has the advantage of sorta paralleling SD2's boy-girl-sprite setup.

I love this idea, and am changing my previous vote for randomization to "use the Wh.MAGE and name her SKUB".

You have to take Duran. I always make him my main character, but I'll leave that up to you. But you have to take Duran. Lord and Paladin are both great classes (Lord is great if you need a healer and Paladin has Saint Saber which is the most godly thing ever), but his dark classes are great too. The Duelist is ungodly strong, and the Swordmaster can exploit any weakness an enemy has. I'd recommend either taking him as a Paladin or Duelist, depending on what the rest of your team will be. And again, Lord is great if you need a healer. Hell, my first time through I took him as a Paladin and used him as my healer and it still worked (although it was a bit rough at times).

That said, as far as allies go, Rise as a Star Lancer and Hawkeye as a Ninja Master are a great combination. You can debuff everyone while buffing yourselves. It's beautiful. Hawkeye's Wanderer class is out of this world too. ...But I'm not too concerned about who else you take. As long as you take Duran, then everything's fine. You have to take him! He's SD3's take on SoM's Boy! You can't have SoM without Boy!

Also, thanks for doing this. I LOVE this game and was considering doing it myself at some point. But now I don't have to! Hurray!

My only vote goes to Hawkeye. Because stabbing things with daggers is cool.

I guess this'll finally be a chance for me to see this game, since I could never get very far when attempting a playthrough, since I have a hard time maintaining interest in an RPG if I'm emulating it.

Carlie is the worst/least interesting character and having healing spells does not make her worth using. If you must use her, pick her 3rd to spare us her plot.

My votes go to Kevin, Hawk, and Lise. I haven't seen the ending to the Lich path, nor have I seen Hawk's story since I picked him 3rd the one time I used him. Lise is awesome, but I've already seen her main story.

KARL!!!

This one right here. And go Light-Light, Dark-Dark, Light-Dark. Awesome offensive and buffs, no healing outside of items, the toughest end bosses, and a murderous near-endgame battle with some vampires.

YOU WILL SUFFER. SUFFER!