The game showed me that I don't necessarily need good writing in the form of story, characters etc to enjoy a game. Because, and I'm sorry to say this, the writing in this game is pretty rubbish :D It's absolutely the most standard fantasy stuff that you shouldn't think about for too long or you'll open up the deepest holes in the story :D But, and I really appreciate this, the game puts its gameplay front and center and mostly remains rather restrained when it comes to story and presentation.

In terms of gameplay, the game was a delight. I found it so motivating to explore the areas, beat up monsters and level up my characters. There are so many ways to develop the characters, which also greatly increases replay value. I've played it once now and I can already see that there's still a lot to discover. I'm really looking forward to the next playthrough with other characters.

That brings us to another great achievement - the game is totally adaptive. Depending on which 3 characters you choose at the start, the story and cutscenes adapt to them, so you can have very different experiences. That was certainly very remarkable when the original came out, but I still think it's very cool today.

Yeah, all in all I had a lot of fun with it. I wish the writing was a bit more ... sophisticated but even so I thought it was great. I'm looking forward to more cool Mana titles.

PS: I've just caught up on the post-game content and I'm really impressed. The last dungeon is rather huge and a bit too monotonous, but the fights are fun and the final boss fight was also great, amazing optional content.