Legend of Mana is a vintage Squaresoft action RPG with out-there ideas, pointless systems, mediocre gameplay and really stellar art and music.
The game is kinda hard to explain apart from the action gameplay that is simple, straightforward and kinda boring. You get quite much customisation options what commands you want your buttons to do but I found that just alternating with regular light and heavy attacks was by far the most foolproof way of dealing with every encounter. The action gameplay can also be played in co-op, which seems to be a staple of the Mana series but I couldn't test this out. I can imagine it would have made this piss-easy game even easier.
Outside of the combat, the game goes to places. The game world is laid out on a grid-based map where you place artefacts that create new locations for you to visit. I may be wrong but I feel like placement of the artefacts (i.e. what you place the artefact next to) has an effect on what location comes up. The locations are either "dungeons" filled with enemies or towns where you talk to NPCs and buy stuff. Each location has short stories for you to complete. These are honestly nothing to write home about and are mostly quite disconnected from the main story. This makes the game a sort of an anthology which is a novel idea but, again, nothing amazing. At least completing short stories makes you feel like you're constantly progressing. Also, by completing short stories, you get more artefacts, which means more locations.
The main story didn't wow me either. I didn't quite grasp what was it about because of the aloof storytelling and loss of interest on my part. Something about how power (or the Mana Tree) has the ability to either corrupt people or provide possibilities I guess? The game also follows two Dragoon siblings for quite long and I still don't really know why but at least their story was a lot more comprehensible tale of sacrifice and longing.
As a special note, the game has some weird writing. It seems like the writers/localisation team wanted to goof around and slipped in some double entendres here and there. It's pretty amusing, especially since the game is generally such a cutesy whimsical fantasy RPG.
The grid-based anthology world-building thingy is quite unique in itself. Top that off with monster breeding, crafting weapons and programming NPC golems to help you in battle and you got quite a mix of systems for a simple and easy game. Oh, and for good meaasure throw in some weird mana meters to the map screen and have a weekday mechanic, both of which I still don't have a clue about. I got to applaud the flow of ideas but generally almost all of these systems feel either underutilised or useless when the combat is as simple and easy as it is. Oh yeah, there even is a super simple farming mechanic which I found so late that I couldn't benefit of it in any way. No biggie as I don't have a clue what you need crops for in the game.
With all of my nitpicks and headscratchings about the gameplay, the game at least shines in the art and music department. The game has super colourful and vivid hand drawn backgrounds and impressive spritework. Some of the bosses have huge detailed sprites that are wonderful. The music, then again, ranges from whimsical fantasy RPG whimsy to epic hard rock hype-ups for boss battles. Also, the theme song is in Swedish for no reason I can discern. Probably the folks at Squaresoft that it sounded exotic or something. Either way, it's a really good theme song.
Legend of Mana is a game that's hard to hate but equally hard to feel passionately about. Because of it's sights, sounds, outlandish ideas and constant stream of new stories and events, it ends up a bit on the positive side for me. Cautiously recommended if you want a retro RPG that goes its own way.
