/vr/ - Retro Games

legend really needed a way to escape from fights

in retrospect none of the games had particularly great combat, but the atmosphere, music, graphics more than made up for it

>>1959304
I always really enjoyed the battle system. I especially loved the variety of weapons though

Seiken Densetsu 3

>>1959298
I'm sad its dead.

I always liked Legend of Mana's aesthetics, and I beat the hardest modes when I was a teenager, played it a ton with my brother, did the smithing bullshit obsessively. But when I tried to play it on my PSP, I just couldn't be bothered, it felt like it had a lot of guide-dang-it moments to see the parts of the game I actually like (the little stories and everything).

I like how combat skills unlock pretty "naturally" from usage and combinations. Overall I wish there had been more combat depth (it had a lot of variety at least), less item min-maxing and annoying to unlock conditions for quests.

TLDR: It is pretty, Legend of Mana was the pinnacle of the series, too bad they didn't make a game that was a genuine improvement on Legend of Mana.

>>1959327
>guide dang it
This game was impossible to 100% without a guide. What with the territory mana bullshit you had to setup so you could open some quests

FFA had the best fighting, LoM had the best storytelling, or well, an exploration of a theme.

>>1959331
Yeah, that pisses me off.

Almost as much as my run-on sentences and grammatical errors.

>>1959331
Mana has a lot of that I feel. I mean the whole Light-Dark thing in 3 you kind of needed a guide to explain what to do. Since you were never really explained about any of the stats. Like you would think Agility is great for Hawk since he's a thief but Agility is a fairly useless stat in the game.

>>1959343
You don't have many friends do you?

>>1959307
enemy AI was too passive in Legend, I feel.
bosses do that annoying hidden loading time shtick where they get invincible and start blinking and you have to sit through the whole animation, only to shoot a laser or something that's easily avoidable because the blinking telegraphed the attack from a mile away

all bosses do this and it's really lame

>>1959384
>disguised loading time
Fixd. Come to think about it, the only mana that poses any challenge was Secret but that could be easily cheesed if you knew how to stunlock enemies with magic
I never played the game boy game and neither feel like it

>>1959298
SD3 best and one the GOAT games period. I don't even like to think about what happened to the series.

Legend is nice but they deviated to far from the snes game formula.

I think it's really a tragedy what's happened to this series. SD1/FFA was a fine game, SoM of course is an all-time great, same for SD3. Legends was a really fun & atmospheric romp and after that... the thunder just never struck again.
Sword of Mana? Needless, inferior remake.
Children of Mana - an agonizingly boring dungeon crawl.
Dawn of Mana - the worst handled Kingdom Hearts clone I've ever head the displeasure of playing. And now at some point we'll have Rise of Mana, a mobile f2p game that will nickel-and-dime the player to death through microtransactions. THAT'S what this once-legendary series has been reduced to. I wish Squeenix would just give this series a mercy kill already.

>>1959458
make it stop

>>1959458
this. all you people who want Squeenix to dig up old properties so you can get a sequel to Chrono Trigger, or Super Mario RPG, or whatever, be careful what you fucking wish for. Let the Mana games serve as a warning. They are not the company they use to be, and they a no longer capable of recapturing the magic.

>>1959458
>Rise of Mana
>microtransactions

Get the Vita version, then.

>>1959503
>he owns a Vita

yea totally tubular

>>1959506
I don't.

I really love the series. Its one of my favorite series period and is my favorite ARPG series.

Secret of mana has been my favorite SNES game since I first played it, and has the best gameplay of the series in my opinion. Combat has some flaws, like the invincibility periods the enemies get when they attack, and needing to enter the menu to cast magic.

Legends artstyle is one of my favorite things about the game. Its so bright, colorful, and cute. The fact that it resembles a painting makes it feel like you are playing a fairytale. I admit that its flawed gameplay-wise, its not unplayable like so many people claim though.

Im playing through Legend right now, and its surprisingly long if you do every quest. I have forgotten about many of the more difficult to trigger quests in the years its been since I last did a 100% run.

>>1959298
LoM is one of my favorite games of all time. Strangely enough though, I'm not really a fan of the rest of the series. I don't think they're bad games, I just can't get into them as much for whatever reason.

Legend of mana was the last good game of the series, Seiken Densetsu 3 was the best.

Sword of mana was terrible and Heroes of mana was ruined by the combat system, the only good thing was that you can see the parents of the Seiken Densetsu 3 protagonists.

I don't know if that PS2 game was good.

BTW, best musics of Legend of mana:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgYqv3UEnGc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_lVoiRSa8M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBKqX3txZt4

So /vr/, what's the best weapon type for LoM?

>>1960170
instruments

Legend of Mana is my favorite Mana game. Secret had a clunky combat and no exploration, the only good thing about it is the co-op. SD3 had a few wonky moments too, and but it was great otherwise. Yet Legend managed to capture this atmosphere of adventure and free exploration really well, and that's what I like the most about a game.

The music was amazing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3Nl6S-tTkM)), the aesthetics were unique, the storylines you could persue were varied and there was so much left to you to discover in them. Not to mention monster raising and breeding, weapon crafting, farming, filling encyclopedias, etc. It's one of those rare games that really allow you to do anything you want and have fun with it at your own pace.

>>1960170
2H Sword (with the obligatory SwordofMana nomenclature) or Spear are my favorites, but I guess you can really use whatever you like best. Everything's useful if you can craft it well.

>>1960208

Fucking this. Legend of Mana is my favorite game of all time. It's like playing with a painting. And that music... man, Yoko Shimomura really is a genius, just look at Super Mario RPG. She really knows her shit.

>>1960208
>It's one of those rare games that really allow you to do anything you want and have fun with it at your own pace.

This is one of the biggest reasons I love the game. You never really feel forced to do anything, and the world opens up on your terms.

>>1961892

I hate open world. Maybe that's why I'm not a fan of LoM. SD3 is one of my GOATs

>>1961895

>liking SD3

What are you, a person with excellent taste?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u107vJFlFg

>>1959335
I really wish they had made a GBA port of the cellphone FFA game, instead we got sword of mana.

What a bummer.

>>1961895
I dunno if I'd say it's "open world", more like building the world to your liking. Open world always makes me think of Skyrim or something, where it just dumps you in a place and says "do whatever". I'm not really a fan of that either. But, I understand what you mean. SD3 is a great game too.

>>1960170
Depends on if you get into thr crafting system. Any weapon type can get extremely high attack through crafting, so it really boils down to attack speed and usability at that point. If you dont want to spend literally hours learning the crafting system then 2h sword is easy to use and strong, but bows and spears have much better range and attack speed.

>>1959298
Legend was the beginning of the end. They started experimenting with the series and it just went to shit.

>>1961928
Always liked this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDWui9hW0Rg

Is like you are in a real holy land.

Loved LoM too.

I really liked the style of Seiken Densetsu 4/Dawn of Mana too but its...not...yeah...

>>1961928
my favorite is the music in the caves. I always love getting to dwarf's cave level and that music starts going. awesome

I recently got the official guide from japan , I couldn't find a pdf online of it, it's pretty awesome.

>>1960043
>Legend of Mana Music: 09 Earth Painting (Extended)
sounds like a blend of secret of mana & final fantasy tactics, nice

>>1960043
>listing the best music
>not listing Geo

>>1964532

Is like i was listening a Super Mario RPG music, but it appears that Yoko Shimomura was the composer of both games, so it make sense.

>>1964781
Damn, I never realized that connection, but listening to the Geo theme again you're totally right. This song would totally fit in Mario RPG

loved lom, but the combat was just bad, and being fully healed after battle hurt it too.
just tapping the attack button can give you an infinite, and wiggling up and down while moving horizontally moves you much faster than intended.

I remember hearing forever ago that someone was going to hack the game to alter the combat. i think he was going to change too much or something though

>>1959335
Whoa, what version of Final Fantasy Adventure is this?

>>1966034
>the combat was just bad
Easy? Sure. Bad? No. The game is still fun, and there are harder difficulties you know.

Legend of Mana is poetry. I can't describe how much that game appeals to my soul. I mean it.

Don't listen to guys bashing the battle system, it's actually really compensating when you kill a hugeass boss in the higher difficulty without grinding too much.

>>1966193
That would be Sword of Mana

>>1966193
Jap-only remake (or rather graphical update with minor additions), on phone only. Apparently can't be bought anymore and there's no emulator.

>>1966532
Nope.

>>1966554
>Jap-only remake (or rather graphical update with minor additions), on phone only. Apparently can't be bought anymore and there's no emulator.

Fuck. I need to find a way to get my hands on this. One day.

>>1966554
Japanese phone games in general are kind a lost to time. At least the KH game got a release.

I hope one day we'll see the colored FFA version on 3DS VC or something, but I doubt it heavily.

>>1966640
*kind of

I just ordered the strategy guide for this game. Anyone else have it? How good is the guide?

>>1959331
Aren't there only two locations on the world map that actually work for getting the full story of the game?

>>1967378
if I recall right, one thing you had to do was keep a space open next to your home so you could put the Mana Tree there if you wanted a couple quests.

>>1967378
the ones on the top right corner with as few water squares as possible, I think

I was in love with the Seiken Densetsu sound chip, and I always wanted there to be a soundfont from that game, just so I can have drums that sound like someone's getting punched in the face! No one cared enough to do it though ;_;

>>1966201
I agree with the guy that it just feels like garbage. In addition I'd note that I can't stand how slow and unresponsive the attacking feels, especially compared to the previous Mana games. Plus you can't even attack up and down, only horizontally.

>>1967378
That is incorrect. The only thing that you can fuck up by picking a bad map or placing artifacts incorrectly is the mana levels (which only affect the demihuman pets, and how fast produce grows in your orchard) and the material shops (the level of the shop is determined by how far from your home it is placed and how late it is placed). Neither affect the story or quests.

>>1967392
Theres no reason to place the mana tree next to your home besides raising the mana levels of your orchard. The best way to place it is for it to be in the middle of all the locations of the demihuman pets and the orchard you place with the golden seed, since everything immediately adjacent to it gets a huge mana boost.


>>1967395
There are 26 artifacts (one of which must be placed on water) and the map has 36 squares on it. The game will not let you pick a map that does not have enough squares for all the artifacts. Its simply easiest to max out mana levels if you can place all the artifacts near one another

>>1968141
Mana levels can dictate whether or not certain quests are available to the player. For example, without level 3 shade in Domina, you have no access to the Shadow Zero quest.

But if you are talking about completing the game, the three main arcs which unlock the mana tree remain unaffected. You just may lose out on some minor fun filler quests.

>opinion on the mana series?
great visuals and music, poor gameplay

>>1959384
>>1959307
I just found it really disappointing how counterattack would 1hko nearly anything, bosses included.

>>1968586
You are correct, I forgot about shadow zero. Domina also needs three wisp and three salamander for Pee Wee Birdy. Duma needs three dryad for Wimpy Thugling. Neither of those get you anything interesting or unique

I think thats it for mana level triggers.

There are several quests that will lock you out of other quests if you do them out of order, so 100% runs of the game do require some trial and error or multiple playthroughs.