I'm playing through the classic Mana games! Let's all go plant trees!(Now playing Trials of Mana!)

[Second Duke Revier]

Having finished one classic series of SNES action rpgs, I figured, hey, why not try another? The Mana games are entities I've heard of, but never directly interacted with, in any major capacity. Truth be told, I've always been intrigued by their artstyle, and think they will provide some great vibes on the strength of their visuals alone, nevermind how the rest of it turns out. I'll be playing, in order:

I expect updates to be reasonably quick, but I can't promise a steady schedule, a lot depends on how things work out on my end. Hopefully they work out just fine.

Feel free to talk about the games, just try to put spoilers behind the appropriate tags.

UPDATES

FINAL FANTASY ADVENTURE

1. It's a Final Fantasy...or is it?
2. Axes and Spooks
3. Mr. Red Wizard
4. Burnin' Vampires
5. Kidnapped, again!
6. Under and Above the Earth
7. Sandy Woes
8. Magical Tunes and Mythical Foes
9. The Empire's Revenge
10. From Kary to Cibba
11. Hot and Cold
12. Tower Tablet Museum
13. The Dawn of a Tree

SECRET OF MANA

1. Excaliboo
2. Ingenious Dwarven Entertainment
3. Haunted Forest of Witchcraft and Brigandry
4. Witchcraft and Wizardry
5. Of Angry Gnomes
6. The Empire Strikes
7. The Wonderland
8. Unforeseen Travellers
9. Santa Callous
10. Deja Vu
11. The Game Breaks Apart
12. The Excalibur Fails

TRIALS OF MANA

Character and Party Voting - Rules and Guidelines
1. Ignoble Hood
2. A Beastly Wave

 

[FelixSH]

Of those three, FF Adventure is my favourite one. Something about the other two just doesn't work well for me. That said, FF Adventure is rough in parts, it does show its age. Still, I think it's one of the best gameboy games.

This comes from someone who hasn't played any of these in forever, so what do I know. I hope you have fun.

 

[Violentvixen]

Yay! One of my favourite series. SD3 is wonderful, and I look forward to everyone arguing on who to be in the party and in what order.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Our journey begins on the Gameboy, where it's still called a Final Fantasy and not a Mana game.

This is not to say that Mana isn't involved; in fact, the intro itself spends a lot of time talking about the Tree of Mana, how powerful it is, and how an evil emperor is behind it for its power. Said emperor is named, I kid you not, "Dark Lord". How very subtle.

Two naming screens later, the game throws us right into the action. Of course, this is a pretty simple battle, the huge jackal there spends most of its time dancing rather than actively chasing the protagonist, whom I named Revi after myself. Revi can thrust and swing a sword, but not do much else.

The game wastes no time directing the protagonist either; after that fight, he's immediately told by his dying friend about how Mana is in danger and how he must go inform Bogard about it. One quick arena match later, he escapes, and is set free.

In a manner of speaking, that is. The evil imperial castle is atop a huge cliff, he can't quite get anywhere actually.

So he chooses to eavesdrop on the evil emperor and his aide, Julius. They talk about how they're stymied by a tall waterfall, and how some girl shall let them through.

His cover is blown quite quickly afterwards, and the Dark Lord sends him hurtling down the cliff!

Fortunately, since this is a video game, Revi survives the fall, and in pretty good condition, even. The game would be quite short otherwise.

NOW he's free. Kind of. He's heavily limited by water bodies, can't scale cliffs, and can't cross any solid natural obstacles, but at least he isn't confined to the evil cliff of evil castle anymore. In other words, this is where the intro ends and the "real" game begins.

I must now mention that the game does have two really handy features - it can be saved anywhere, and it has a map marking Revi's current position and the location of towns. Since every space is exactly the same length and breadth, this makes it so that the map can be easily read, and there's little room for confusion.

Revi fights through some unremarkable monsters, passes through some unremarkable screens, and ends up at our first town, Topple. Which is itself also unremarkable, as the townsfolk mostly just prattle on about how the evil emperor is evil, how he plans to use a girl to get to the Mana tree, and how the tree protects them from evil, somehow.

Except for this lady. She bluntly mocks Bogard for not being a gallant Mana knight anymore, and it's bizarre enough and abrupt enough to be funny.

The town, of course, also has all of the traditional RPG amenities, as in, an item shop that sells various cures, an armory that sells equipment too pricey for Revi currently, and an inn that bizarrely heals him to full with a good night's rest. All of these are served by dancing turbaned men, who will later be collectively given the name of Mr. Moti in future games.

No, I don't know why he dances or wears a turban, nor why he has many clones of himself. It's one of those weird RPG cliches that the game chooses to make a spin on, and it adds a little more flavor to what would otherwise be very drab and typical activities.

Soon, Revi runs into more plot; a girl shrieking for help and spinning in place! He easily defeats the enemies around, and then checks on her and the boy lying next to her.

He is immediately "rewarded" by being saddled with escorting her to Wendel, and making her meet Bogard. Hey, at least the two were heading to the same place anyway, so he won't have to make any diversions. She introduces herself as Luna, the second name I had entered on the naming screens. This is clearly setting her up to be very important, despite her unassuming appearance here.

Luna doesn't fight, and has very rudimentary pathfinding, but every time Revi "ASK"s her, she heals him for free. Weird romantic implications aside, this makes the rest of the surrounding regions quite a bit easier, especially since the enemies don't really improve much. Two additional enemy types show up, and they fly and bounce instead of simply walking around. This doesn't help them enough, they still die too quickly to be a threat.

Sometime during all of this, Revi levels up. Level ups let me pick which of the four stats to boost. As far as I can tell, Power is tied to attack power, Wisdom to MP, Stamina to HP, and Will to some mysterious thing I don't know about. It's fairly simplistic, but it's nice to see it exist, I always like having options in my RPGs. For this playthrough I think I'll do a "balanced" build, but feel free to offer suggestions on building him.

After running into a blocked cave, Revi and Luna head westwards and finally visit the man near the waterfalls, Former Sir Bogard. This will be enough for today, while this is still "early" in the game I think I've given a decent glimpse of it in this post alone.

Next time, we talk to a non gallant Bogard and get a cave unsealed, maybe.

 

[gogglebob]

Sometime during all of this, Revi levels up. Level ups let me pick which of the four stats to boost. As far as I can tell, Power is tied to attack power, Wisdom to MP, Stamina to HP, and Will to some mysterious thing I don't know about. It's fairly simplistic, but it's nice to see it exist, I always like having options in my RPGs. For this playthrough I think I'll do a "balanced" build, but feel free to offer suggestions on building him.

Will measures how much you miss your OG homie, Willy. Considering you only referred to him as "dying friend", you should keep your Will Points (WP) at 2, as you do not deserve to reap the benefits of memorializing the most important character in the franchise.

Seriously: Will determines how fast your weapon charge meter refills.

 

[Violentvixen]

I somehow completely forgot you get to name the girl in the Game Boy one.

 

[FelixSH]

I love how this game looks. Juet that extremely simple text scroll at the start. No idea if it's just nostalgia, or not, but it's lovely, in its simplicity.

I don't know enough about the game, to make a suggestion about how to develop your character. I think (and hope) you'll be fine, no matter what you do here.

 

[Exposition Owl]

FFA was one of my very favorite games growing up—I must have played through it twenty times.

 

[Beowulf]

FFA came with a full pack-in world map; you were expected to have it. You can find a scan or just use a remade one, but especially in the late-game when you can freely roam the world you'll appreciate it.

FFA was one of my very favorite games growing up—I must have played through it twenty times.

Mine too. I've also played a hack of the original, I've played Adventures of Mana twice, and I've played Sword of Mana...eight times, I think?

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Bogard is a reclusive man who wishes to do nothing with anyone.

Fortunately, Luna's pendant gets his attention. Seems like it was a heirloom passed by the leading lady of the last revolution against the former evil empire. I dunno how much time has passed since, but this setting's kinda screwed if defeating one evil empire only leads to it getting replaced by another one within the span of a generation.

Bogard decides to help us and gives us his mattocks, which break the rocks blocking us in the eastern cave. He also directs us to Wendel, and specifically to Cibba, who knows more about this whole Mana business. But he doesn't join us, presumably because of his age.

Questionable routing aside, the cave is fairly small and routine, and is easily passed once the rocks blocking passage are broken.

On our way to Wendel, we run into this curious shopkeeper in the middle of the wilderness. He loudly advertises his axe, and while it's a bit pricey, I am fairly close to raising enough money for it anyway. So I do so by selling two cure potions, and pick it up.

Aside from raising Revi's attack by 4 points, the axe also covers a wider arc and looks quite a bit cooler. I don't regret my purchase at all.

The party comes across this odd castle too.

Apparently it's an inn of some sort, with exactly two rooms available. The current guests talk about a magical mirror that can reveal people's true nature, which was apparently thrown by the inn's owner in a cave somewhere. They also mention a lizardmen's nest southward, whose denizens apparently own the key to open the Marsh Cave, which may or may not be the cave the inn's owner visited. Throughout all of this, extremely creepy music plays, and that, combined with the fact that my character can't use MP and essentially has infinite HP, dissuades me from staying.

We head southward, but see no lizardmen. Bummer.

We do see the locked cave eastwards. Which begs the question, why do the lizardmen lock it? What purpose does it solve? Is it somehow holding a forbidden power of some sort?

Left with no choice, we sleep in the creepy castle inn. Luna teaches Revi the Cure spell by...giving him a book. Yes, seriously.

And, sure enough, Luna is abducted that very night! Strange that they didn't abduct Revi. I would say the proprietor is clearly only interested in women, but I'm not sure that's even the case; the white mage next room over is still fine. Maybe he's just interested in her pendant.

Regardless, some rescuing is in order...next time!

 

[Violentvixen]

I dunno how much time has passed since, but this setting's kinda screwed if defeating one evil empire only leads to it getting replaced by another one within the span of a generation.

Star Wars is a fictional example of this. Fire Emblem Path of Radiance did an interesting look into the result of power vacuums in Radiant Dawn the sequel.

In real life, too many to bother looking up news articles or Wikipedia pages.

 

[Lokii]

I must now mention that the game does have two really handy features - it can be saved anywhere, and it has a map marking Revi's current position and the location of towns. Since every space is exactly the same length and breadth, this makes it so that the map can be easily read, and there's little room for confusion.

Eeh heh heh.

 

[FelixSH]

Wait, don't you have to pay in-game money (the one you collect from monsters) to save? Not really a problem, in the end, but I vaguely remember that being a (weird) thing.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Wait, don't you have to pay in-game money (the one you collect from monsters) to save? Not really a problem, in the end, but I vaguely remember that being a (weird) thing.

Not really, saving is free. I would've noticed if it costed gold, your gold is prominently displayed at the bottom right almost all the time.

Eeh heh heh.

That is an ominous laugh, I do not like it.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The "innkeeper" is decidedly unhelpful, and the two guests merely repeat their earlier lines.

Sigh. Well, let's go back and see if there are any lizardmen now.

'

OH BOY, LOOK WHO SHOWED UP!

Unfortunately they're all hostile to us and refuse to talk with us, so Revi ends up murdering them all.

Which ends up spawning a chest with this key. Wut.

Sure enough, that key ends up opening the eastern cave. Inside, this red mage informs us that many girls were abducted in that castle, and that they've all been stuffed into caskets. Jeez, talk about a morbid owner.

He joins us and starts flinging fireballs everywhere. I suddenly feel quite jealous.

This suspicious room introduces us to breakable walls. The red mage helpfully informs us that they can be broken with a star flail or a mattock, and make weird noises when hit with a regular weapon. That's good, it would suck to have to burn mattocks randomly hitting every single inch of wall. Yes, mattocks are consumable and get depleted with use, which is a little annoying for what's essentially a basic puzzle solving tool.

Inside, we find a sickle, a weapon that covers a decent area all around the protagonist and cuts through plants. I imagine this will become my favorite weapon, denying area is just too good.

Continuing through the dungeon, we find a rather cheeky puzzle; a stairwell hidden behind a rock. A quick mattock opens it up.

Shortly afterwards we run into a locked door, which doesn't open with our bronze key. Sighs Guess I have to go buy some damn keys from the shop after all. Ugh, backtracking....

This is the first mildly sophisticated puzzle we've run into. The ice acts as a one way conveyor, like in many other games. Solving this requires breaking two rocks to walk around the ice and onto both button tiles. Not too tricky, but still decently interesting.

Finally, we run into our first boss. This two headed dragon isn't exactly challenging - it hits hard, but it's easily flanked from the sides, where the sickle easily hits it from a fairly safe spot. Combined with the red mage's fireball spam, our sickle strikes soon kill it with minimal fuss.

We get the magic mirror, and, more interestingly, our first offensive spell!

The game kindly sends us outside, where I get to test the new spell. It homes in on its targets, kills everything in one hit and costs only 1 MP. Wow. Amazing.

Next time, I go light up the creepy castle on fire. Mwehehehehehe.

 

[FelixSH]

Yeah, you should always have a decent amount of keys and mattocks with you. You simply need them. At least when you find the morningstar, you won't need any more mattocks.

 

[Violentvixen]

If I remember correctly the red mage just randomly throws fireballs in different directions and I was always frustrated with the spell just missing what I was trying to attack? Been a while though.

 

[gogglebob]

The Red Mage specifically tosses out the spell NUKE, which seems like it should be above the paygrade of some dude wandering around a cave...

And yeah, pretty much all of the companion characters with attacks have the tiniest sliver of AI, and will often shoot arrows at walls in empty rooms while shouting, "I'M HELPING!"

 

[FelixSH]

The most useful are clearly the ones that refresh your ressources.

 

[gogglebob]

Incidentally, we completely missed it in America, but the connections between Final Fantasy Adventure and Final Fantasy 3 (j) are weirdly obvious if both OG Japanese versions are played. The "Seiken Densetsu" level up options are all named after Final Fantasy 3 jobs even if they don't completely make sense (Sage is Will?), and the idea of having a rotating, plot-relevant party member that you can "ask" definitely got started in FF3. Throw in a few later plot revelations and familiar scenes, and you can really see how this is a Final Fantasy (3) Side Story.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Oh, huh, that's pretty cool indeed. I've never actually played FF3, so I never noted the connections. The only things I know about it are that:
- It has a job system, but, unlike FF5, it has a linear progression of jobs, culminating in the Ultimate Fighter and Wizard jobs.
- It has a long, exhausting endgame dungeon, with no saves within.

Though, funnily enough, the idea of a rotating plot relevant party member was prominent in FF2 too. Kinda wonder if someone at Square really loved that idea.

 

[Violentvixen]

And yeah, pretty much all of the companion characters with attacks have the tiniest sliver of AI, and will often shoot arrows at walls in empty rooms while shouting, "I'M HELPING!"

This made me laugh, A+

 

[Second Duke Revier]

So yeah, the "innkeeper" was a werewolf. Hands up, whoever is surprised.

He's pretty pathetic, and dies in one fireball, much like everything else.

We discover that the castle is, in fact, a whole dungeon of its own, complete with ominous statues and enemies.

We inadvertently discover the purpose of the bottom gauge - it's a meter indicating how much energy Revi has built up for a critical attack. The longer Revi spends not attacking, the further it builds up. When it's full, Revi delivers a special attack, which is quite stronger and often covers a considerably larger area. In most situations, these attacks didn't come into play as he had to deliver attacks quickly, and the gauge gets reset every time he attacks, but it was still a very nifty tool.

Also pictured is a cute mouse that not so cutely poisons Revi on contact. Bad mouse!

Turns out, mattocks are multi purpose terrain destroyers - they can clear out pots as well as rocks! This screenshot here shows Revi demolishing the nice, symmetric pot formation to get to a button tile.

Revi finds a new weapon, the chain whip. It lets him zip to poles and also replaces the sickle as my favorite weapon. Just look at that range!

This is a clever play on the game's mechanics - the pole on the top left, required to progress forward, is just slightly out of reach. Revi needs to wait until he can unleash the chain whip's critical attack, which extends its length, letting it hook onto the pole. It's not terribly complicated, but it makes you stop and think, and rewards thinking laterally.

On the whole, the castle is less complex than the marsh cave. It doesn't take terribly long to reach Luna, and with her amazing healing powers, getting back is but a snap.

Of course, the owner of this fine establishment, the bat head vampire, isn't going to let us off that easily. He stops us with an impromptu fight against him. It doesn't work out so well for him; between the fire spell, the chain whip, and constant healing from Luna, he's even more of a pushover than the two headed dragon.

The vampire rewards us with the Sleep spell, whose usage is demonstrated in this screenshot. Sleep may honestly be even more overpowered than Fire; it has the same low MP cost, but instead of frying one thing, it attempts to put every enemy on screen to sleep. Now, granted, it's not guaranteed to succeed, but it has pretty good odds of working, at least so far.

One short uneventful trek later, we finally reach Wendel. Which, aside from being Cibba's residence, is also apparently a sacred town.

Next time, we meet Cibba, and hopefully start figuring out things.

 

[Violentvixen]

Hmm. Is Wendel the only recurring town in all Mana games? I was thinking about this when playing Visions of Mana but forgot to revisit that. I think the name is slightly different in one but forget.

 

[gogglebob]

It reappears the most often, and is frequently the "Holy City" (aside from Adventure remakes, it is central to Trials, Dawn, and Visions), but it is not the only recurring town. Topple (already seen in this playthrough) appears again in Dawn, for instance.

 

[Violentvixen]

Oh sorry, I phrased that oddly. I meant is it the only town that shows up in all the Mana games. Like you said there are a few others that show up in more than one, but I think Wendel might be in all of them?

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The red mage is back! Unfortunately, he only says this.

The rest of the townsfolk don't say anything interesting, though there is talk of a dwarven cave to the west, and a weird comment about the Mana Tree being beautiful. Like, maybe it's just me, but I don't usually hear of trees being described that way. Forests, plantations and fields, sure, but a single tree? Nahhhh.

The sacred town has an armament shop, casting some curious implications on its religion. It sells better armor, which is a welcome sight for Revi - he has been wearing his bronze set since his escape!

Welp. Here's Cibba, the big man himself. He remarks on her pendant being the "symbol of Mana" and then makes her step on the octagon.

This summons her mom's ghost, who was the leader of the last revolution. She says Luna is a child of the Mana family, a seed of the Mana tree, and must guard the tree. She also reveals that her pendant is the key to a magical seal on the waterfalls leading to the tree, and reiterates that we must guard it. Well, I don't think we're any closer to accomplishing anything. I guess we try and find a way back to the waterfalls near the evil castle?

Suddenly, the screen shakes violently! The red mage drops in, saying that the evil empire is attacking the place! He quickly whisks Luna away, promising to take her to a safe place.

It takes Cibba and Revi all of five seconds to figure out that there's something really fishy going on.

Sure enough, the red mage was Julius in disguise! Revi tries to stop him from abducting Luna, but gets trashed badly.

With their one mildly good lead gone, Revi and Cibba have no choice but to attempt mounting a rescue. Supposedly his airship is somewhere in the west, and we'll have to go catch up to it, somehow.

He also gets a new spell, but it's pretty uninteresting - it's just a status curing spell.

Our way westward is blocked by an oddly thick forest.

It takes me a while, but I eventually figure out that the axe can cut through trees, and completely chop some of them down, opening new paths. Seen here is the aftermath of some wanton deforestation.

Ahead, we run into this weird cave, who refuses Revi entry and spits him out.

We also find a dwarven cave, where they mostly talk about Watts and how he went adventuring for silver in an abandoned mine.

And, sure enough, there's a mine nearby, complete with its own minecart.

We shall ride on it next time, in search of Watts.

 

[Lokii]

Ahead, we run into this weird cave, who refuses Revi entry and spits him out.

I like how they put couple eyes over the regular cave entrance just for a lil' whimsical bit of progress gating and this guy ends up being an important reoccurring character throughout the whole series.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Lol do they seriously reuse the whimsical protagonist denying cave in future entries? That sounds utterly hilarious.

 

[Violentvixen]

Not quite, Gaia gets more anthropomorphized later, here's the Gaia in Legend of Mana, you're lifted up in the rock hand and get advice basically.