So a cactus can keep a journal. How is a new player supposed to know that? I’d already completed a dozen or so missions when I stumbled across that titbit, so the records of those particular adventures are lost to time. It shouldn’t have to be the case, but if it wasn’t for online information I wouldn’t have known basic stuff about the game: revisit your home after every mission so a cactus in your bedroom can jot down your adventures in a journal, for example. So if you’re ever stuck, help is at hand. If you prefer to have more direction, there is an option: since this is a remaster of a 21-year-old game, the internet is filled with walkthroughs. It makes Legend of Mana stand out, though it won’t be for the same reasons for everyone. But the lack of direction and impetus on the player to set their own course will certainly appeal to some players. If you’re the type of person who likes to know exactly what they’re doing, Legend of Mana Remastered can quickly get frustrating. But more often than not you’ll simply be making your way through a labyrinth of connected screens, going back and forth until you find the right way. Occasionally, you’ll have some environmental puzzles to solve in order to find where you need to go. Bring it down, and that’s it – story over. Even when you do have a mission to complete, its goal is often vague, and you’ll simply spend time wandering around a labyrinthine location to see what you stumble upon.Ī lot of quests follow the same pattern: make your way through an environment in order to find a boss to beat. But sometimes you might have to simply visit past locations to see if anything has changed. If you have a new item to place on your map, you’ll put it down and see what the new location offers to you. With absolutely no hand-holding whatsoever, it’s not always clear what your next step should be, either. In a fleeting moment, that story will be done, and you’ll be on to the next. Yes, your character remains consistent – they’ll level up, learn new skills and get new equipment as you progress, just as they would in any standard RPG – but when you’re jumping from one random story thread to another, it feels as though nothing is worth investing in.
With no real story to follow, it’s hard to truly care about your character and the people they meet on their journey. In fact, the disjointed nature of the narrative strands detracts from the experience. For an RPG, it’s an unusual and noteworthy choice.Ģ1 years later, with the release of Legend of Mana Remastered, that lack of a set path is still a novel feature, but one that doesn’t exactly add anything.
These stories are random and unconnected, with no single overarching narrative. By placing down map tiles, players can chart their own journey, visiting areas in almost any order and uncovering a variety of stories to play through. There’s no one set path to follow through the game, for example. If you cast your mind back to 1999, when Legend of Mana first released on PlayStation, it’s easy to see how some of its systems were stand-out. And as much as I hate to admit it, Legend of Mana is one of them.
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