Legend of Mana

Voices of: N/A
Developer: Square
Designer: Akihiko Matsui
Rating: T
Genre: Action Role Playing Game
System: Playstation
1999

Times Completed:
Tim: 1

Summary: A hero is enlisted to restore the land around them and resurrect the Mana tree.

Review:
Tim: I've definitely enjoyed the Mana series of video games. The first one, Final Fantasy Adventure was a solid Gameboy game from the early 1990s. The franchise hit its stride with the classic Secret of Mana in 1993, then delivered my favorite game in the series, the ambitious Trials of Mana. I was excited to continue the series in this spin-off game, Legend of Mana.

Unfortunately, I disliked most of the things about this game. I usually love video games and I'm especially forgiving, but I struggled mightily with this one. I simply think it does not work. The game took an interesting approach- rather than having one linear story, there are multiple stories weaving different paths through the game. You don't have to complete very many of them to complete the game, but it rewards intense exploring. You build the map of the world as you progress through the game. Here's one of the big problems- the game is beyond obtuse. I know some players think you should just wander around and discover things as the game progresses, but I did that for about ten minutes. I wasn't going to pour countless hours into this game, hoping I stumble across the secrets. So, I used a guide. And I was beyond stunned at the impossibility of unlocking many of the different side quests. With almost no guidance, no clarity, what you need to do in specific order to trigger certain events, and there where you need to go to complete them is asinine. Even following a step-by-step guide, I struggled to understand what the heck I was supposed to be doing. The game emerges as a ridiculous fetch quest, running back and forth to various places, doing obscure things like talking to this random person, getting this random item. None of it makes much sense. None of it seems to matter. And then, after every completed quest, you have to return home, talk to a stupid cactus, leave the room so he can go over and write your accomplishment on a piece of paper. Seriously. And people love this stupid game.

Using a guide liberally, my 8 year-old son and I (thankfully, the game is 2 players, although it offers one of those watered-down multiplayer experiences) were able to complete 67/68 events. Seriously. Even though I was using a guide to make sure we did all the worthless events, I still missed an incredibly minor and obscure detail and got shut out of The Wimpy Thugling event. It's enough to make me want to hurl my controller across from the room. The game is too long, too boring, too pointless as you're crossing repetitive events off the list.

This brings me to the writing, which is atrocious. I'm usually quite forgiving of video game writing. I'm not expecting classical literature. But, the writing in this game makes no sense. The stories were slapped together and none of them feel like they matter. The characters are all cardboard versions of actual characters and the dialogue is painful. Like, I actually cringed and rolled my eyes at the godawful dialogue throughout this game. It might be the worst dialogue I've ever been subjected to reading. It was awful and there's SO. MUCH. DIALOGUE. I read it all, because I was trying to experience this game, but I hated it.

The combat is decent, it's just like the other Mana games. With two players, the game wasn't especially tough. I think my son and I breezed through every boss in the game except for that hanging plant thing, which wrecked us until we discovered the strategic approach to defeating it. And then, we wrecked him. There was one dragon that was a bit challenging, too. The combat is fun, but it's repetitive. For many of the bosses, we struck blows repeatedly so neither of us lost a life and we defeated the boss in 45 seconds. It was fun at first, then soon became boring.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point clear. I just didn't care for this game at all. We played it about 23.5 hours and very few of those hours were legitimately fun. The first 10 hours weren't bad, but then the novelty wore off and the rest became an absolute slog. I got the main character (which I accidentally accepted the default name, so I played the whole game as You) to level 46 and my son got his character to level 30. He would have been higher, but he played as multiple different characters for different quests, plus I was selfish and grabbed an unfair amount of crystals that came from the bad guys (he's reading this over my shoulder and said "true"). I didn't really do any of the crafting parts of the game- building weapons or whatever the else you could do. I had no interest in that and we felt so overpowered, it felt pointless. I did actually love the idea of having a pet accompany you on the quests. That was such a cool idea and we had a pet with us on most of our quests. That part was great. But, the rest of the game felt ludicrous and I can't believe how much time I spent on this game.

I still like the Mana series, but this game was so bad. I read a lot of things online and it boggles my mind that so many people claim to love this game. Maybe it's the nostalgia. I personally thought this was one of the worst video games I've played over the last decade.



Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: N/A



If You Enjoyed This Game, We Recommend: Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana, Trials of Mana