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About Legend Of Mana
Amazon.com Though it lacks the dramatic intensity of the Final Fantasy series--the crown prince of console role-playing games--SquareSoft's Legend of Mana still satisfies with its beautiful hand-drawn sets and its innovative nonlinear gameplay. Billed as the sequel to the Super Nintendo's Secrets of Mana, Legend of Mana's story contains more than 60 self-contained miniquests, but generally the goal is to restore the world's Mana, or life energy. Gamers won't need to be obsessive about winning all the quests, but there are some challenges that must be completed if you wish to reach the final showdown. The game begins as players choose either a male or female lead character while a map displays the new lands within the world of Fa'Diel. In each of these lands, players will find items and clues they can use in other lands. The fragmented nature of the game can be disorienting for gamers looking for quick gratification. A diary can be used to keep track of current miniquests, while an encyclopedia neatly organizes the vast amount of story players uncover. Due to the vast nature of this game's plot, you'll likely need these features to stay focused on your quests. Anime fans will be wowed by the character design and beautifully illustrated storybook backgrounds. The game includes a Pokémon-style monster-raising element, which is surprising for a teen-rated RPG, but it works well. --Porter Hall Pros: Pokémon-style monster raising adds nice nurturing element to RPG tasks Nonlinear quest system makes story engrossing Stunning hand-drawn backgrounds Cons: Music is at times absurdly overdramatic Second player controls character only during battle Review A few years into the PlayStation's life cycle, Square suddenly remembered all the great 16-bit franchises it had lying around the office. "Maybe we shouldn't let these flounder," thought one of Square's brighter executives, and a bevy of design teams were quickly assigned to resurrect old glories. One of the first fruits of this "renaissance" is Legend of Mana, the fourth title in Square's Seiken Densetsu series. Yet despite its obvious mastery of presentation, Legend of Mana never delivers the gameplay to match its predecessors. The heart of Legend of Mana's gameplay is the new "landmake" system. You begin the game by choosing a male or female player, a starting weapon, and an initial location on the world map of Fa-dil. From this point forward, the world is literally what you make of it; "artifacts" placed on empty ground turn into fully formed, frequently populated environments. Towns, dungeons, forests, plains, and more - everything in the world comes from the placement of artifacts. New artifacts mean new quests, and new quests mean even more new artifacts. Unfortunately, the landmake system is responsible for Legend of Mana's greatest downfall: an overbearing sense of fragmentation and isolation. Since you place artifacts wherever you please, there's no sense of "world." Instead, you get a spattering of disconnected islands, with nothing to unite the different environments. This fragmentation extends to the story itself: The game is divided into 60-odd miniquests to uncover and complete. When a quest begins, the name of the quest flashes on the screen; upon its completion, a unique splash screen declaring "The End" of the quest appears. Instead of a continuous narrative, you feel thrust into a stop-go lurching ride of a storyline. Even so, the game unfolds linearly, with completion of early quests a prerequisite for later adventures. Legend of Mana also commits the cardinal sin against the Seiken Densetsu heritage: the omission of multiplayer. Previous titles are renowned for their fabulous three-player mode, yet Legend of Mana inexplicably jettisons this series tradition. Instead, the largest party you can have now consists of two characters and a pet monster. When present, the second character can be controlled by another player. "When present?" asks the pe
