Buscando conhecer outras franquias de jrpg, testei o remake de Legends of Mana de switch.

Um jogo bem interessante, originalmente de ps1, tem ótimos visuais e o combate em tempo real mostram um rpg bem avançado para a época, além disso, uma história que em 3 horas de jogo é uma completa interrogação.

Pretendo voltar para ele com certeza, mas optei por outros jrpgs primeiro por achar o combate um pouco datado e a jogabilidade simples demais.

I wish they had made HQ character models as well, and improved localisation the way Vagrant Story did, but other than this, this is a direct improvement on the original game in every way. Seeing the backgrounds and portraits in HQ for the first time and noticing so many details I hadn't before is just an amazing feeling, even if they are exactly as I remember them lol also really cool for it to include Ring Ring Land as well. This is definitely the version to play. I'm glad they recognised the importance of the art in this game and didn't go for a 3D remake like Trials.

Wasn't a fan of the arranged version of the soundtrack, though. I prefer the originals.

At its best this feels like a book of short stories where some characters reappear in surprising ways. It quickly gets kind of repetitive, but I think it's worth playing for at least 3-4 hours, simply because there's a lot of fun ideas there, even if Square doesn't follow through on most. In particular, the action fundamentals are surprisingly weak, going for a '10,000 so-so moves' rather than a smaller system that is more interesting to engage with (and leads to more interesting level situations!)

Honestly I wouldn't even mind the boring action if it was just more straightforward to progress. Lots of levels are mazelike and come down to trying to trigger the next flag to advance the dialogue.

But, even with the simplest characters there's something neat about randomly seeing them hanging out in a cafe in another area. The concept of the random world you choose how to build is interesting on paper, but the choices of where to place stuff ended up not feeling too meaningful.

It really gives me the sense of how 90s Square must have been just overflowing with money - there's so much beautiful background art in this game, but it's hard to feel it's not just wasted on these maze-like levels with the same few layouts.

The music's great! Although I feel like they could have used two composers - a lot of songs get repeated, or some are just too short for areas where you're getting lost running in circles.

It is cool that this was released as a remaster, but this is a very weak entry in the Mana series. The visuals and music do the heavy lifting here but most everything else doesn't hang together well at all.

Structurally, Legend of Mana is a very open JRPG. The worldmap starts off completely empty, with new areas being added as you discover and place artifacts. There is some effect you can have on the levels based on element types of a given zone and its relative location to other areas, but it is complexity that is uninteresting and unearned. Maybe on a third or fourth playthrough you would see some differences from your choices here, but there is nothing really intuitive about how you are placing things or what it is really doing to the game. The system itself is evocative, it just feels under-baked.
Once placed, areas are either towns where you can meet npcs, gain quests, and buy items, or they are dungeons. Dungeons are universally presented as a maze of (beautifully painted) backgrounds that are all very hard to navigate or remember. Spatially, these mazes probably make sense, but they do the thing where moving through a door at the back of an east-west corridor takes you to a connecting north-south corridor (Valkyrie Profile does something similar). In a fully 2d game like this one, this is probably the most confusing way to present things. Playing through any of the dungeons just feels like running around randomly until you stumble upon whatever you are looking for.

Legend of Mana's narrative is very jumbled. There are 3-4 main story threads, following specific NPCs as well as some one off events you can trigger. None of it feels connected and your character isn't actually very involved in any of them. You invariably meet someone, get vague directions to go to a dungeon, stumble your way through it, then fight a (beautifully painted) boss.
The writing itself is very stilted and often doesn't make very much sense. It was hard for me to tell if the problem was the localization or the writing.
This is definitely an attempt at a SaGa-style open world game, but it didn't work at all for me. Kawazu's games are not only more narratively coherent, but systemically consistent as well.

Throughout the dungeons you are attacked by groups of enemies you can deal with using fairly simple action rpg combat mechanics. The game has a ton of weapons with varying ranges and attack combos. The weapon variety is definitely the best part of the combat system.
There are special actions which are things like jump, cheer, and roll -- mostly they are useless or have unclear effects.
Each weapon has specific special attacks that are all pretty similar, but mostly exist just to provide a moment of invulnerability while you are executing them.
There is also spellcasting, which I never found to be any good. Spells take forever to cast and do less damage than a single attack.
The majority of your time is spent performing regular attacks. There is a sort of interesting attempt at having Street Fighter-style specials you can string into your combos, but inputs are often missed or delayed, buffering is inconsistent, and it just ends up feeling pretty bad. Enemies and attacks have really bad and inconsistent hitboxes and enemies are often in some sort of invulnerability state with no feedback for no discernible reason.
Still, the combat is easy enough that you can just use the regular and special attacks without issue, so even though there is a lot here that doesn't work, you can just ignore most of it (besides the general jankyness of the attacks).

Beyond combat and free area placement, this game has a ton of systems in play. You can recruit monsters as pets, create golems, craft weapons, craft magic spells, and there is a light farming simulation. It definitely feels like the team tried to add too many things here, and most of them don't add much (if anything) to the narrative or gameplay. What is here mostly feels unfinished or unconsidered, though getting a monster to follow you around and ineffectually attack things is pretty chill.
Similar to the combat, nothing really requires you to engage with any of these systems, so you can sort of ignore them all.

The artwork in Legend of Mana is absolutely great. Environments are detailed, varied, and interesting. Character and enemy sprites are all very unique and expressive. This is probably the best example of 2d sprite-based artwork on the Playstation 2 and it still holds up today.
Similarly, Yoko Shimomura's work here is fantastic. There are a ton of tracks in this game that are beautiful and memorable.

This game tries to do so many things and fails at just about all of them. The gameplay itself is almost tolerable just because it is so simplified, but it simply feels bad to play in just about every way. The visuals and music alone (and possibly some amount of personal nostalgia) almost bring this game up to two stars for me, but if I am being honest with myself, I don't like this game at all.
Listen to the soundtrack, but don't bother playing through this game.

Has a really interesting world and systems in place, but is an extremely frustrating game to play. I'm not talking about the quest and land placement systems which I actually like, but the action RPG gameplay itself which is too slow and too simple. On top of that the navigation of dungeons can be extremely frustrating as you're wandering through identical hallways with no map having to fight the same enemies over and over again that you usually can't skip. It's a shame because the game looks and sounds incredible. This is peak 90s Square. I do have a slight beef with how the remaster looks. The backgrounds have this AI-upscaled, smoothed look to them, but they didn't do anything with the sprites which look great in the original but look like a garbled mess against the HD backgrounds. Would have been better just to have the game playing at the original resolution and unfortunately there's not an option to enable that.

Truly a beautiful game: aesthetically, of course, but especially in the ideals it inspires. I think if I had played this 20 years ago, I might have been a kinder person back then. I probably would've adored this game, too - but playing it now, it was hard to avoid some frustration.

Following a guide is almost mandatory, because very little of its systems is communicated, and the conditions to progress are extremely obfuscated. Even within any given quest, it can be incredibly vague trying to figure out how to push the events forward. I tried at first to just experience the game naturally on my own, but after enough aimless wandering and hopelessly talking to NPCs over and over, it felt much better to just let someone tell me what I needed to do.

The reward for pushing through, though, is a heartfelt tale of radical love told through a great number of story threads.

Legend of Mana is a game about finding your own way through the world. It's nonlinear, but not in the way a modern open world game would be. Rather, it throws you into the world with very little direction and a bunch of quests to do, forgoing any overarching narrative. This is the game's greatest strength in my opinion, because it allows you to see the world through a network of short stories and interpersonal connections. Every character is only a degree or two removed from every other, and it makes the world feel alive.

This degree of freedom in the narrative also extends to other parts of the game. Everything from crafting to the actual layout of the world. It can be very overwhelming, especially considering how esoteric many of the mechanics are. However, since the combat is so braindead that you can just mash your basic attack for most of the game, I didn't engage with most of these mechanics past what was required.

In fact I think the combat is my biggest issue with this game. It's certainly not offensively bad, but it quickly becomes so mindless that I just completely disengage with it. That combined with many other tedious aspect - lack of map, maze-like levels with repeating backgrounds, lack of direction in quests, lack of direction finding quests, etc. I appreciate all the ideas this game has, and it's super unique among its contemporaries, but it's mechanically rough around the edges.

Also I should mention this is one of the most gorgeous PS1 era game, every bit of the sprite work and backgrounds are incredible. I was so excited everytime a new boss showed up, because it meant I got to see the lavishly detailed sprite work. The Yoko Shimomura OST goes hard as fuck too, but that's a given.

As a newcomer to the series just over a year ago, I became pretty invested in the Mana series. With the third game, Trials of Mana, becoming one of my favorite JRPGs of all time. Both the original and its remake released last year were all very good because they both encapsulated what I was looking for in a game that was good from the past and had something that was refreshing for modern audiences.

It was until I found out that Legend of Mana was coming to modern console, that I wanted to try out the game for myself and see how it compares to the classic 3D titles and the Trials of Mana remake. Let me tell you, you don’t want to sleep on this game. For a spin-off of the main series games, it is that good.

To start off the story, there is no main story. Just 68 quests you can get in the game that revolve around the world you make. You literally create a world yourself with artifacts that transform into the world around you. This is what I like about this world. That you have the freedom to create and mold the landscapes you want to make instead of following the story of a strong protagonist.

That said, there are 3 main story quest lines that hold interest as you are gathering these artifacts. Though I will say, since they are based on different interpretations alone, it would be better to play the quest yourself if you want to get this game. But I will say, one of these quest lines are probably the best story you will ever see in a Mana game.

However, the added complexity of the game’s world does not reward completionists very well. To complete all the quests, you must put each artifact in a specific place while answering a few things correctly from NPCs. It might be frustrating for some, but on my first playthrough I didn’t have this problem. I completed over 80% of the quests without feeling bad about missing some. But I understand that if you want to complete all the quests in the game, you will need to look up a guide on the internet.

The gameplay is awesome. There is so much simplicity that goes on with the battles, yet it has a complicated side for it too. Mainly learning the special techniques that go with each of the 11 weapon types, which come from the abilities you get while battling normally. You must test out each ability for yourself for the weapon of choice and fight a few battles to see if you can get the special technique. Believe me, it is a bit of trial and error, which is pretty much this whole game. But it rewards you greatly once you figure it out. The battles including the boss fights for the most part is really easy as well. So, if you aren’t familiar with ARPGs that well, this should a breeze.

The weapon and armor tempering system is probably one of the craziest things you would find in a JRPG. Especially for its time. Being able to play around with how you want to try to ooze out all your stats in a weapon or armor piece is rather interesting or could be a time waster if you think about it. Same thing goes with the Golem building and instrument tempering system. Even raising a pet or growing a garden in front of a talking tree is a great time waster. All controlled by the player.

I haven’t tried this myself, but it’s really nice to have a second human player play locally (or if you are on PC, remotely) to join you in battle. That is because the AI in this game is dumber than a bunch of bricks. Most ARPGs are known to have dumb AI, but this one feels like a total joke to have. It sucks that you can’t control if they get the experience crystals or not and forces you to give up an armor slot (the forbidden ring) to basically grind your npc or pet up to a good level, so they don’t die a lot. Though I will say, when a second player controls and npc, they will have to give them up when you enter your house or leave you for a bit in an event, which I like to call girlfriend mode.

Gameplay aside, can we appreciate the art of this game. Each area feels like it came straight out of a Disney movie, or like a whimsical fantasy illustration. It’s pretty striking for a 2-D style game. Each character is designed so uniquely that adds to the fantasy vibe of this world instead of feeling very generic. Such as walking teapots and creatures with onions on their heads. Or a hippo with an extremely long tail that boinks you to different places. The music is also fantastic too. Mainly it was originally done by Yoko Shimomura (you all know who she is), but I much prefer the remastered versions, which were also done under her supervision. I also like the opening song by Annika Ljungberg, adding to the feel of being in this world and experiencing it.

The remastered version put in one very important QoL change (and it is not Ring Ring Land). That is the ability to turn off fixed encounters which is a huge benefit not only for speedrunning or just not wanting to fight enemies, but for backtracking very long areas to hunt for monster eggs or the elemental spirits. Also saving anywhere you want and autosaving is a great thing to have as well.

Overall, a very solid game. One of my favorites in the Mana series. I honestly don’t get the hate that surrounds it because it’s meant to be very different from the main games, and I like it for it. It doesn’t have super memorable characters, but the sandbox nature and gameplay wholeheartedly make up for this. Not to mention the awesome music and visuals that have aged rather well compared to today’s modern RPGs. I would recommend giving this one a shot!

a cartesian nightmare wrapped in a winnie the pooh-esque husk, legend of mana goes out of its way to be unmarketable, genuinely weird, aimless, and wholly contrarian, but in the most charming way possible. koichi ishii is on record basically saying he wanted to be an asshole with this game and make a game about nothing.

legend of mana's development came hot off of saga frontier, which ishii and battle chief hiroshi takai both worked on. the team that made that game splintered into two, one for legend of mana and one for saga frontier 2, so it's interesting to compare the two and the relatively similar styles they both present. it kind of also represents the rebelliousness in which mana was made with - ishii wanted to go with these insane ideas he had for frontier which were shotdown (which evolved into many of mana's systems like the world make system and the monster raising), and takai felt like at least his take on turn-based games were crystallized and perfected with frontier.

there's this transgressive rub to legend of mana which will definitely turn people off, which is one of the most perfect aspects of the game. the true enjoyment comes with just not giving a fuck anymore and really sliding into the saccharine comedy and weird arcane elements of the game. you can really do whatever you want and interact with whichever systems you feel like, or totally ignore them. it's a game that really could not care less if you're playing it or not, yet has a weirdly emotionally resonant story despite all this - I mean, yoko shimomura did the soundtrack, so you know it bangs and is gonna make you cry at some point.

though the story is light and fractured, there's some excellent and creepy components that bind it together. one of those are the sproutlings, which are a hive-mind race of little cabbage fairies that once guarded the mana tree that walk around the world talking about how the world is all a giant lie. people react to them similarly to say a beggar or a soothsayer - some people like niccolo straight up detest them for no particular reason and most everyone else just ignores them as if they aren't there. but you as the player totally know they're telling the truth because you are actively reconstructing the world.

there's also a few plotlines that have several events that progress in sequential order. it can be very easy to miss these or forget what's going on within them. that's perhaps why the cactus diaries exist (which is another fun and sweet little system that you could wholly not know exists or participate in). the most compelling of these imo is the jumi plotline, but all of them are interesting enough to keep me pressing on. you have to finish at least one of the main story arcs to finish the game but you can theoretically do all three in one go and there's a few differences depending on how you do them.

there's a lot to dig into here - it's legit teeming with STUFF to read and ponder and replay. but it also cannot be understated how absolutely gorgeous the game is. the music is incredible. the drama of laying an artifact on the board and watching it froth with golden bubbles or ignite a geyser of fire is invigorating and mythic. and all the backgrounds are incredible - the style is somewhere between final fantasy tactics and beatrix potter. my favorite areas are probably the junkyard, tower of leires, and gato grottoes but a ton of them are genuinely memorable. the character designs are probably my fav thing from the game. the design team was told no one could be straight up a human besides the main character so you have people that are cornucopias, centaurs, onions... there's a little girl who's super angsty because her force her to dress like a fairy (her dad's a beetle and her mom's a butterfly).

this is probably the only thing i've played this year that i would actually replay. v happy with it!

Yeah this really isn't for me, sorry

And I hate saying that since this is one of the most unique, creative, and beautiful games I've played in a while. There's layers upon layers of micro-systems and game tech that makes progression far more surprising then any AAA game on the market. It's character and world design is timeless, and incredibly imaginative with captivating portraits and sprite work. Literally anything and everything can be it's own fantasy race in this world. Yet this game asks a lot from the player, but not in time nor difficulty.
This is a PS1 game, which are well known for being experimental and unorthodox (compliment). Seriously, anything goes during that era of gaming. Nowadays there are a lot of "rules" on how to do things. What is considered "good design" or "bad design" feels established and settled, at least when speaking about the big studios. Despite the many, many issues of modern game design, there is some precedent on why games are the way they are now, and that's convenience and clarity. You're almost never lost on where you can go, what you can do, and how to do it. And I feel you need a certain level of tolerance to truly get the most out of this game in particular, if you aren't one to play the more unconventional games often (Hi that's me). If you aren't paying attention, you can skip text directing you on where to go for your current quest and there isn't a way to replay what you missed. Entire sub-systems are locked due to specific quests you may or may not ever complete. Systems and tutorials are explained in text monologues, again sometimes just once, but are also just not the way I learn the best in any context. That isn't to say it's impossible to proceed if you weren't paying attention, but it'll involve a lot of backtracking, repeatedly talking to the same NPC till you exhausted their dialouge, hugging the wall on these beautiful backgrounds to scroll the screen over and find a new area you would've missed otherwise... I hope you don't mind getting lost. And not just with figuring out what to do but also where you are since these dungeons, unfortunately, reuse room layouts within the very same dungeon. It's genuinely disorienting to me, and apart from maybe the first area I could not for the life of me create a mental map of any of these places. Enemies also respawn the instant you leave a room, but thankfully you can disable encounters. However, that actually messes me up even more with my sense of direction because enemy encounters are fixed; so I would walk in a room, see a familiar formation, and realized I've been here before. Not all dungeons are this bad with the issue, but despite the gorgeous art direction, exploring these places grew pretty tiring. What, I felt, tried to be wonderous yet daunting with its winding dungeons, grew to be annoying and directionless. But "directionless" I feel is kind of the point. (EDIT: Not a fan of using the word "directionless" in this context, but for a lack of a better word I guess it works).
Here's the thing, the game's progression is RNG... well sort of. It's technically consistent, but you sure as Hell ain't figuring that out on a first playthrough so it might as well be random. The world map is created by you, and by placing artifacts found by completing quests in different areas onto the map, you can create whatever layout you desire. The placement of these locations influences a lot of things, including what artifacts you receive from a quest and even the availability of quests. I think, without a extremely specific setup, it isn't feasible to find everything on one playthrough (EDIT: It seems straight up impossible actually, game isn't too long for one playthrough so they took that into account ar least According to @moschidae, it is possible to do it all in one playthrough, just have be careful to not softlock any quests. My mistake). Assuming you weren't copying exactly what I did in where I placed my artifacts, your playthrough of this game will be different from mine.
But if that's the case, then how does the main story proceed? It doesn't. That's the crux and, arguably, the main attraction of this game. There isn't a strong central goal other then "explore and adventure". There is a ending, but more than most other games is this a "It's about the journey" game. Annnnd... that's why I didn't jive with this game. I couldn't find a hook to latch onto to keep me engaged the whole way through. That isn't to say there isn't any story to be found. Faaaaaar from it. There's heaps of characters, quests, and lore to sink your teeth into. But everything is more bite-sized. Some quests are multi-parter that carries a more intricate plot, but there's no real central thread connecting them altogether. No not counting your player character, whose more of an observer than someone integral to the world (until someone decides to pull you into the story). That isn't a bad thing, many games do that, but bottom-line my interest in continuing was waning only three hours in since I couldn't find anything that really caught my attention enough for the entire runtime. There were so many neat tidbits, but they weren't enough.
And then there's the gameplay. As mentioned it has tons of mechanics from learning movement and weapon skills, to crafting magic instruments, raising monsters from when they were eggs, creating your own golem with a massively intricate system, and so much more... but this game was way too easy to care about any of that. It comes off as superfluous when I almost never needed the extra help since store-bought weapons and armor was all I really needed. OK, learning skills from how you fight during combat was neat, but stun-locking foes and bosses are way too easy. With the fists especially, you can jab so many things from 100% to death. Plus you have a lot of health and deal a crapload of damage. Why should I invest myself in these systems if the game doesn't put much of a fight? OK, there was one boss that had a shockwave attack that killed me from full health, but after learning it's generous tell I never got hit by it again. I had to look this up as I was scripting this part, and there is a hardmode, but only after beating the game once. Yeah I don't like that. The first playthrough was confusing and unchallenging, I don't have any desire to try it again. While the combat feedback was nice (being able to throw even the biggest of bosses is admittedly pretty cool), it just wasn't enough to make me care about it overall.

I hate writing these reviews since I see the audience for this kind of game. It's a game the gives back the more you put into it. It rewards multiple playthroughs exponentially with new scenarios and surprises. It has a superb soundtrack that I'll probably be listening to for a long time. It's sense of discovery can be infectious for those who love to dive deep into a game. And I normally loves games like those, but man this just didn't do it for me. I didn't enjoy myself much with the initial run, sad to say.

Best advice I can give is to give it a look to see if it looks interesting, but beware as the surprises and secrets are part of its charm. I've seen people absolutely adore this game, this has the potential to be one of your favorite games ever. While yes, that can be said about practically every game, you also won't find a game like this anywhere else.

I had played the original game on PS3 (PS1 Classics) about 10 years ago, and when I did there's a few things...I don't remember if I ever finished it, in fact I'm 100% sure now that I didn't, and when I played that time I didn't have a guide or anything.

This time I followed a guide, because I was curious of what I had missed. I was aware because you place the stages where you want and you select where the game even starts, that some things were missable, and add to the fact I thought I had beat the game years ago.

I also had played this solo, the game does have a local 2-player co-op option that honestly looks like it would have been fun, but I can't speak on it because I played solo and have no one to co-op with.

For starters I don't believe the Remaster really added anything new, it just fixed up dialogue, names, made Ring Ring Land available without an outside device, reanimated the cutscenes, and gave the option to have the music original or orchestrated, on top of the usual SquareEnix additions of turning on or off encounters. Other than those things, I believe the game is mostly the same aside being upscaled and upped the definition.

I'll say this game is much better than I gave it credit for in the past. I already thought it was a good game, but once I played this version I decided it was a great game. The graphics still hold up, the areas are beautiful, the character sprites look good although I do wish they had updated them to match the art they redesigned in the intro. The music was better than I remembered, but that may have been from me turning on the orchestral version of the songs (though some are better with the classic sound.)

I do have something that bugs me that I didn't notice until halfway through the game, but when it comes to the adventure, I realized it's not far off from the style Children of Mana would use later. It doesn't have the mission based structure of going to pick up a quest then go, but it still has that same short quest feel of going to an NPC and starting the quest and going to places you've been too for a very short time and then being done...some quests lasting between 5 mins to maybe 45 mins...so it made me wonder why people had such an issue when Children of Mana did it, but they tout Legend of Mana for it's greatness.

While it was a super fun adventure with awesome and fun combat, I think the story is what takes a hit. The story is actually good if not a bit scattered and damn near requires you to have a guide to find some of them (especially later ones), but also...your character doesn't seem to have any agency during most of the quests or even the story overall...you just do stuff and help people and like maybe for 1 or 2 late quests you have actual story involvement, but most of the time you're kinda standing there watching stuff unfold and asked stuff that inconsistently effects the story or doesn't at times. That's really my only gripe.

Like the game, this review is kinda scattered because it's hard to talk directly about this game without giving examples because it's very combat fun if the story doesn't grip you, but your options of weapons, gear, crafting, pet raising and such gives you more stuff to do, so definitely play it if you can, it's super fun, just don't expect a super detailed story.

Started this one up again, with the intent to use a guide to actually see everything this time, but I fucked it up really early on and ended up just playing this through normally. Maybe next time!

I love how there are all these obtuse, unexplained systems at play here (making instruments/weapons/golems, raising monsters, mana being cultivated on the board), but you don't actually need to use any of them at all. But if you figure them out, the deep dive is so satisfying.

I still love the three or four main stories that make up this game, and even though it's really clunky, I love how much of this game feels like you stumbled onto something on accident. It's a lovely feeling, and one I don't think you could mimic today. Back in 1999, when there was really only GameFaqs and strangers figuring things out for you, this was a revelatory casual game that slowly became something serious.

Plus, it's so cozy and beautiful. I want to live in that house and go to Domina for my groceries, maybe take a trip to Lumina for the weekend.

"My nightly dreams, my hopeful dreams- you might not see them, but they're real to me"

As soon as i started up this game when the remaster came out two years ago, I knew it was going to be something very special. If there was ever a game that i wish i experienced as a child, it's this one. Legend of Mana is an incredibly difficult game to explain, because its made of several different things instead of having one core function. Immediately upon entering you will notice lom's strange, mythical atmosphere. The ambiance of this game is incredibly hard to pin down, it feels so warm and personal but also somehow mysterious and alien at the same time. You will also notice that this is very, very, very different from all the other mana titles, as combat really isnt the main focus. This is a game fueled by emotion and stories, more than anything. There is a great deal this game wants to tell you, but it's not like a typical rpg with an overarching plot either. There are 3 main events that you can pursue at your own pace, and these often tend to overlap with the dozens of other events outside of those. Something I love about this, besides the writing itself, is how interactive the story is. You are not treated as a hero, and some of the things that happen feel like they can go on entirely without you. But because combat isnt the main focus, completing an event doesnt typically boil down to just "fight this guy, give x this item" but instead has a unique objective each time, which really immersed me in the game. And on top of the story events, there is also monster ranching, farming, weapon/instrument crafting, and uh... you can build a cool robot.
What i love most about this game is very hard to put into words. Its the theming, the sense of wonder, the vastness of the world...after two playthroughs i have still not seen everything there is to see. It feels so dreamlike, like reading through some strange disjointed storybook. I love the way this game is designed for kindness and pure imagination. I love the characters, i love their designs, i love watching them interact with each other. I love the concept of the artifacts, the idea that objects carry with them their own histories and meaning. I love all the little details, like lil cactus' journal that you could go through the whole game without knowing it was ever there. I love the music, the whimsical environments, everything... well, except gilbert. but mostly everything.
I apologize that this is so long but this game is dear to me, i can talk about it for forever. There are only a few issues i have with it but it's not too hard to overlook it in the grand scheme of things. If anyone else is remotely interested in Legend of Mana, i really hope you get the chance to play it too ! there is truly not another game out there like this one !

Legend of Mana é talvez o RPG mais único que eu joguei da era do PS1. Pra começar, a arte e trilha sonora desse jogo são simplesmente incríveis. Um dos meus trabalhos favoritos da Yoko Shimomura, sem dúvida.

Mas quando começa a entrar em gameplay ou até mesmo história que a coisa fica bem maluca. Esse jogo tem TANTOS SISTEMAS que acho impossível não se sentir extremamente sobrecarregado. Literalmente a segunda decisão que você faz, depois de escolher o gênero do seu personagem, já é uma decisão extremamente importante que vai impactar em tudo, que é o local do mapa onde você quer usar. Porque veja bem, nesse jogo, você monta seu próprio world map. E a localização e até mesmo a ordem em que você adiciona cada nova área impacta em quests, dificuldade, itens disponíveis... e obviamente um jogador de primeira viagem não pode nem sonhar com o que ele vai ganhar ou perder ao criar novas áreas. E isso é somente um dos sistemas malucos desse jogo.

Falando nas quests, o jogo não segura na sua mão pra nada. Então muitas quests você tem que adivinhar como progredir. É extremamente fácil nunca achar uma quest ou simplesmente perder a possibilidade de fazer alguma pelas coisas mais bestas, como dar uma resposta errada pra um npc ou sair de uma área. A história do jogo é contada de forma bem quebrada e quase de background enquanto muitos plots se desenrolam. Alguns deles extremamente interessantes mas no geral, o texto é super estranho e muita coisa difícil de entender claramente. Uma coisa boa é que meu arco favorito (e sem dúvida o mais importante pro jogo além da main quest) vai virar anime, então estou bem empolgado pra isso.

Eu ainda queria falar do combate, que é um tanto quanto irritante. Você encontra inimigos pelo cenário e entra em batalha sem uma tela de transição, mas ainda fica preso na area até matar todos os inimigos. O maior problema é a movimentação, você se move livremente na horizontal mas na vertical se move com pequenos passos que são bem desconfortáveis de controlar e te colocam em situações estranhas onde você tá colado num inimigo mas erra todos os golpes. Apesar da jogabilidade do combate em si ser simples, os sistemas em volta dele são muito profundos. Você tem acesso a 2 habilidades "básicas" e até 4 habilidades fortes, e você desbloqueia novas habilidades misturando todas essas. E tem MUITAS habilidades. Counters, pulos, esquivas... muita coisa mesmo. O que é bizarro tendo em mente que eu terminei o jogo todo quase que só usando ataque forte e counter de vez em quando. Ah, e claro, tem 10 classes de armas pra você escolher... cada uma com suas próprias habilidades e movesets.

Ainda tem sistema de pets que podem ser quase qualquer inimigo, com direito a customização de atributos e personalidade através de alimentação e também o crafting mais complexo e confuso que eu já vi. Você pode criar instrumentos musicais, armas, armaduras e até mesmo golens que funcionam como alternativa pros pets. E você pode cultivar seus próprios alimentos. Eu já disse que esse jogo nada em sistemas confusos e complexos? Tem até multi-player, da pra recrutar uma penca de personagens e um segundo jogador pode tomar controle deles...

Pra não me alongar muito mais, eu acho esse jogo extremamente interessante mas eu não sei se consigo recomendar ele pra todo mundo. É uma experiência confusa e complexa e pode ser frustrante. Eu joguei ele a primeira vez quando era bem criança e não entendia nada de inglês, eu nunca consegui terminar. O que mais me motivou a jogar ele agora foi justamente pra finalizar algo que eu não tinha conseguido daquela vez. E apesar de ficar muito feliz com a experiência, eu não acho que seja pra todo mundo. Eu definitivamente consigo enxergar porque tanta gente AMA TANTO esse jogo, ele é realmente muito especial.

Minha dica pros interessados seria jogar da primeira vez às cegas, ciente de que vai ser impossível fazer tudo e no ng+ pegar um guia pra completar todas as quests.

Beaten: Oct 29 2021
Time: 13.5 Hours
Platform: Switch

The Mana games are... interesting games. They're almost always experimenting with some aspect (or aspects!) of their own design, and trying to distract you from a bounty of rough edges with gorgeous aesthetics and music. They're definitely not the best games Square's ever put out, nor are they my favorite, but as a series it's really only second to the SaGa series for unadulterated experimentation (it's really hard to outdo SaGa on that), and even my least favorite game in the series has this in spades. It's a really cool throughline for a series to have!! Final Fantasy does this too, especially from X on, but Mana was doin it from the start.

Having said that, Legend of Mana might be the most wild game in this series. The combat is weird, at least for an action rpg, and the structure of the game is extremely what the hell. If you don't know, Legend of Mana has no main quest. It's got 3 central arcs of sidequests, but starting these quests is almost never straightforward, and they really don't feel like a main quest. They're just groups of sidequests, spread throught the game, that culminate in satisfying thematic & emotional conclusions, and unlock the final dungeon. It's really weird, but what it reminds me of most is 2000s MMO design? With the main difference being that there's no indication on what you need to do to progress. Kind of like an adventure game. Kind of like Moon.

I'm not gonna lie, this game reminds me of Love de lic's masterpiece, Moon Remix RPG Adventure, all the time. It's full of the same kind of weird, knotty and obtuse yet kinda comforting adventure game puzzles, and has a pretty similar tone and aesthetic as well. The difference is that Legend of Mana is actually a JRPG, and much less self aware. It's not subversive, and while it's really funny, it's not quite as snippy as Moon can be at it's best. It's a genuine JRPG with the structure and themes of a game trying to make a point about all the other JRPGs, and it's so strange to play.

As a remaster, this is great. It doesn't add too much QOL in, but it does let you save anywhere, and in a turn of extreme generosity from the devs, it autosaves between each area. For context, every dungeon is filled with 20-30 areas. If you lose any fight, you can immediately retry it. Not that you'll need to use that feature, it's a rather easy game. The remastered backgrounds are absolutely gorgeous, looking painterly and quaint most of the time, and suitably twisted and unnerving when it wants to. Occasionally you'll come across something (Bud's portrait for me) that really doesn't look correctly remastered, but broadly it's a huge success. The orchestrated music is also as lush as possible, but it's a less necessary change to my ears (the PS1's soundcard actually sounds pretty good lol)

But yeah, it's a great game, a good remaster, and most importantly, weird as hell. It's affecting and thematically focused and almost always interesting, and as long as it's not being completely obtuse, fun as hell. If you're looking for a fun and easy JRPG and not guide-averse/want to really hang out in the world to even stand a chance of finishing it without a guide, it's a huge rec from me.

Probably the most unique and charming game I‘ve played recently.

I really liked how the game is split into small quests where the longest ones take about 30 minutes to complete. For me it was more encouraging to keep playing than a huuuge 60 hour storyline.

The battles weren‘t challenging at all (harder difficulties are only unlocked after beating the game), but just following the stories of the lovely characters was good enough for me.

Also: The game looks gorgeous. I got excited everytime I unlocked a new area, just because I could stare at the beautiful environments. Some great wallpaper material.