Legend of Mana

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Legend of Mana, restore the artifacts of the world and face the toughest enemy out there–love.

[/vc_column_text][vc_message icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-gamepad”]Purchased: As a PlayStation 1 game, way back when!
Achievements: N/A
DLC: N/A[/vc_message][vc_column_text]I absolutely adore this game.

It’s the only game that I’ve ever had the desire to play so much that I decided to start doing speedruns on. I don’t mean the any% or a storyline%. I mean the real deal–all events%.

What’s funny is I thought I’d played the game before on my PlayStation 1 console, because it looked very familiar.

I lied to myself. I’ve never played the game before. But it was so much fun, I went for the speedruns anyway.

But let’s step away from that and focus on the review.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_color=”warning”]This post has affiliate links within it, which means if you happen to make a purchase or go to said link I may earn a small commission with no extra charge thrown your way.[/vc_message][vc_zigzag color=”peacoc”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Pros:

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  • Beautiful music
  • Good boss battles
  • Amazing pixel graphics

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Cons:

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  • Map layouts are weird
  • RNG is a bitch
  • No way to know how to do all events (unless using a guide)

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Navigation

Get ready for some really odd navigation in this game–if you’ve never played it. If you’ve played it, well, you should know what I’m talking about.

Map layouts are funky. You could be running to the right and transition to the next screen, where you’ll need to immediately go left. If you didn’t know that, you’ll just end up running right and exiting that screen to the one you were before.

There are also tricky areas that change the way the map is on you, depending on if you’ve completed a specific event or not.

As for the actual artifact map placement.

You’ll have no idea where to place specific artifacts to acquire specific events unless using a guide. It’s not a terrible loss, but still.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_color=”juicy_pink” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-youtube”]Unfortunately, I have no gameplay of Legend of Mana on my YT “gaming” channel, but it is up on my older channel that’s more for World of Warcraft. You can see some of my LoM bloopers over there.[/vc_message][vc_zigzag color=”peacoc”][vc_column_text]

Graphics

I love pixel art.

I love how it can look so intricate and in-depth without having to using realistic type of shading and all that. It takes skill to use simple pixels to paint a beautiful image.

Most games now stick to realism, so this is a refresher on the older games where realism wasn’t too delved into.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_color=”violet” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-twitch”]I’ve done several speedrun attempts of LoM on my Twitch channel, and a few casual plays. I still go back to this game from time to time, but it’s very long, and I just don’t have the time to complete it all of the time in one go.[/vc_message][vc_zigzag color=”peacoc”][vc_column_text]

Gameplay

For the gameplay, you’ll need to acquire artifacts, which in turn will have specific events for you to complete within them. Not only this, but some events from other artifacts may tie into the location of one you’re in, so there will be some back-tracking.

Typically, if you don’t know what to do, you should back-track to different places, or even ask the “fortune teller” who will hopefully give you a hint.

What I’m saying is, the combat is great, (although the hit box on some bosses suck), but you’re going to more than likely get lost on your first run through this game. There’s not much hand-holding going on.

At the start, the game offers you a variety of weapons to choose from. If you don’t like said, weapon, other weapons also drop throughout the battles you’ll encounter, as well as from certain shopkeepers. With each of these weapons, you can acquire different techniques from them, depending on abilities you have equipped.

It sounds like a lot, but it’s really not once you get used to it.[/vc_column_text][vc_message message_box_color=”peacoc” icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-video-camera”]If you’re interested in streaming yourself, I highly recommend Streamlabs OBS (otherwise known as SLOBS). It’s free, and I use it for both streaming and recording gameplay.[/vc_message][vc_zigzag color=”peacoc”][vc_column_text]

Audio

This game has a great soundtrack to it. No matter how many times I’ve played, no matter how many times I think about putting on some music from Spotify, I just can’t. The music is too good to filter out.

You’ve got your battle music. Cutscenes. Different scenarios in different events. None of the music makes you not want to hear it.[/vc_column_text][vc_zigzag color=”peacoc”][vc_column_text]

Overall

If you’ve got a PlayStation 1 (or even a PlayStation 2 for backwards compatibility), I definitely recommend you buy this game. It’s frustratingly amazing, but totally worth every moment of playing it, I assure you.

You’ll hate it for the RNG sometimes. But love it for every other moment.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]