Legend of Mana - PSX

What a welcome change of pace. My last review had me playing through Final Fantasy IX, which shall now be referred to as the Final Fantasy That Never Officially Existed. This one has me reviewing the Legend of Mana. A game that I had some uneasy thoughts about upon purchasing the Playstation Store. However, the good news is that it was on sale at the time, and came heavily reccommended.

I don't know a ton about the game's history, nor do I care to look it up. However, I believe it is the second game in the "series" so to speak, following the Secret of Mana on the SNES.

Graphics - 7

It was... new to me, sort of. Remember how much I hated the cartoony graphics in the Final Fantasy That Never Officially Existed? Well, the graphics in Legend of Mana could be described as cartoony. Actually, it's a very colorful look, and I am kind of a fan of it in this case. It comes off well, and didn't agitate me. Sure the quality of the game's graphics is lesser than some might like, but it doesn't hinder your ability to play the game. Very basic, in that you know they weren't trying to blow you away. The character design was also rather interesting at times. There were moments where I just smiled at some of the sillier designs.

Sound - 6

Nothing overly special. There were a few nice tunes, but also a LOT of bad ones. And they kept looping. Some of the battle themes are still grating to me. Grating enough that an easy way to piss me off would be to play one certain battle theme, and send it to my PM Box. Please don't though. The surround sound is ok. Nothing overly ambient, but also not non existent. There are some nice subtleties, that I didn't catch on first look.

Addictiveness - 7

Not a terribly fun game. It gets points in this department for it's well done, yet simplistic battle system. Essentially you can have a party member, a pet, and yourself in battle. Each character moves independently. You move your own character on the battlefield. You swing your sword, or whatever you use with one button, which I believe is customizable, and you use magic with the shoulder buttons. You can get sword skills or axe skills, or whatever in those slots as well. Another nice feaure... is multiplayer co-op. You can have a buddy fight alongside you in battle, although that makes an easy game even easier.

Depth - 3

Not too many worthwhile sidequests, or extra areas. For the most part, it tries to say you can choose the order you do things... but ultimately the path you go down is EXTREMELY linear, and forcefed. The few side quests you can do don't really do much to advance you in any particular way. The exception is the pet breeding system if you have the patience to work with it. I only had a level 7 pet when I beat the game because feeding it, and growing the fruit to give me stats I wanted was just busy work. Some will like it, I didn't. It's there though.

Story - 6

What I gathered is that there's this thing called the Tree of Mana. You kind of have to save it. The story doesn't make much sense beyond that, as it's mostly loosely connected events with the same 5 or 6 characters that you can recruit as teammates... though you can only have one at a time. They almost never interact with your other teammates. There's very little character development, and very little story development for that matter. So why a six, if the game is lacking both? The feeling of imagination. The game even tells you at the beginning that you basically require an imagination to progress your OWN story along. I get the feeling that if they put in an actual story it would hurt the meaning of your own story in the game. After all, it's all about the journey, not so much the destination. Despite this, I was way more immeresed in this than I was in the Final Fantasy That Never Officially Existed. Because I felt like I mattered in the grand scheme of things. Sure I could walk away, but then the two orphans I have might die, my three pets might starve, and the world may never recover from the catastrophic events I had complete capability to stop. It wasn't bad. It just wasn't good.

Difficulty - 2

It gets 1 for actual difficulty, and 1 for fake difficulty. A lot of the difficulty is imposed on you by retarded partner AI, and you end up fighting almost all the battles by yourself, because the AI has trouble recognizing the hitzones of your enemies. Ultimately, you can be severely underleveled (which you won't be, because the game is a f***ing maze, and you WILL fight the same enemy groups NUMEROUS times for nearly unlimited EXP) and still beat nearly any enemy that challenges you. The toughest enemies, as usual are the bosses, which normally have some sort of special move you will not be able to sidestep. The trick is beating them fast, and being able to dodge the easy stuff. If you have ever played an RPG, you won't have much trouble.

Overall - 6.8

While the scores won't say it, I truly think this game was more fun than the Final Fantasy That Never Officially Existed. And really, when I go to make the overall judgement, what I weigh most in this category is the fun aspect of a game. This game isn't something you'll dedicate hours upon hours into, but more something you should play an hour or two every few days, and enjoy the characters and world around you. And most importantly... you can only enjoy this game if you have a sense of imagination and haven't been brainwashed into thinking a good game NEEDS a good story. Decent game, but nothing I'll return to in the near future.

Amazing detail there leggy! I was wondering who just suddenly ranked on the tour-de-vizzed xD

I've recently heard about this series and I've been wondering if I should consider looking into it. You make it sound like it is not a very deep game but kinda mindless fun. A more enjoyable but kinda like scraps from the Final Fantasy franchise, yes?

A pretty good and detailed review!

play4fun :

It's worth a look at the least. They aren't terrific or really great, but as a 6.7 overall, I'd say it's definitely a game one should at least try, since it isn't a total disaster.

I'm a little low on it I think, but that's also because I'm more used to the Final Fantasy mold of RPG, as such, it kind of caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting what I got at all (I paid like 10 dollars on PSN forever ago for it, and finally played it)