Mindset: In spite of this action RPG's beautiful and cute art direction, Legend of Mana is deceptively complex in the mechanics department. If you approach this game as you would an open world, rather than a linear story, you're sure to have a good time in this gem of an action RPG. The storytelling style of Legend of Mana takes an open world approach as I said, however, there's 3 primary questlines that will make the end of the game appear when one of them concludes. So if you're working with Dragoons (Larc & Sierra), Jumi (Elazul & Pearl), or against Faeries (Daena & Escad), you're on the right track. It’s probably easier just to assume if you’ve seen the character in the anime intro, they have an important role to play!

Starting Choices: At the start of the game you choose your language, then between Male or Female protag, who you choose doesn't make a difference in gameplay aside from the obvious dialogue pronouns. The starting weapon you choose however, will grant a free Special Technique for that weapon. You won't be locked to that single weapon though, in Domina's shop, you'll be able to purchase each type of weapon if you reconsider, or want to experiment with other weapons. The third choice will be your play area, that’s going to be your world map for this playthrough. Most of the time it won’t matter unless you want to do perfect placements to trigger every quest, but if it’s especially your first time through, go with the play area that feels right to you!

NEW Features: A couple quality-of-life features found their way into the remaster, you can now save anywhere from the options menu, and also turn off encounters if want to navigate an area unhindered, the Jungle and Tower of Leires are notorious for backtracking, so I strongly recommend disabling encounters at those spots if you get stuck. Now that saving whenever you want is a thing as well as auto-saves, be sure to rotate your manual saves between 2-3 slots! Sometimes you might run into a situation you weren't prepared for, or a boss you can't seem to beat. If you rely on auto-saves for the majority of your playtime you might end up at a hurdle you can't surpass and lose a bunch of progress. One situation that comes to mind where autosaves help a lot is when you first meet Elazul in Domina’s cafe. When he’s interrogating Rachel you’ll have 3 dialogue prompts, and if you answer wrong, he’ll leave in a huff. He will ask to follow you from the Domina map too, at which point you need to go back to rachel anyway to get the artifact. But this is no longer a problem thanks to autosaves!

Button Layout: Returning fans who played the PS1 version of Legend of Mana might be immediately confused when their muscle memory kicks in for battles. Yes, the control scheme has been changed to a more standardized format, or at least that's what I'm guessing. If you're using a controller for this version, and want the original battle experience, here's the combat controls from the original game.


Stumped: Legend of Mana will leave you directionless on multiple occasions, and this game likes to use old-school talk to everyone logic for some of the quests, so if you're stumped, backtrack and talk to NPC's in your path, they might give you a clue on what to do next. If you're really stumped, you can check with the fortune teller in Domina, because she sometimes gives quest hints as well.
Leveling: The max level in Legend of Mana is 99, but everybody starts at 1 and Chobinhoods in Luon Highway are great enemies for leveling early! These guys drop both a ton of exp crystals, as well as bows to sell or use yourself.

CO-OP: Legend of Mana has local cooperative play, and at least with Steam you’re able to remote play as well. Thankfully the manual and automatic control settings are available at any time from the start menu too, so if your second player walks out for any reason, you don’t have to wait for them to be able to move around the map. Something that can easily be missed now that this control toggle is a constant feature, is that you can also IMPORT player characters to your game too, so long as it’s in your local saves. This is activated by speaking to reverend Nuvelle in the Domina Church, and asking him about 2 Player Co-op. Once you do that, you’ll be able to use the house to the left of the Inn to access other player characters in your saves, and once they leave, their stats will be updated too! There’s a huge benefit to playing co-op with another player save, because they’ll be teaching you their Abilities and Special Techniques for their weapon too! that’s something that player controlled NPC’s cannot share!

Follower AI: The ally AI can go from dumb to downright frustrating when you're trying to level them, so aside from just getting someone to play co-op with you, I recommend getting yourself the Forbidden Ring which shares EXP you gather with your team! You can obtain it pretty early after you've placed the Luon Highway. Assuming you were with Niccolo initially, take care of his unusual business, then afterwards head to Domina, Daena will be in one of the Inn's rooms. Speaking to her will trigger her quest to see Gaia. Afterwards she'll reward you with the Forbidden Ring!
Abilities & ST’s: Among the deceptive mechanics I mentioned near the start, are Abilities and Special Techniques. Abilities are customizable, and include moves like lunge, jump, defend, and crouch. To unlock more, the only thing that does matter is if they are equipped, and winning battles. The same system is used for learning more Special Techniques, or ST’s, for the weapon you have equipped. These are your powerful attacks that you can execute after your ST bar has filled during a fight. Some major and extreme ST’s require more than 2 abilities to unlock, so how is that done? Well, each ability has a hidden mastery score, the more fights they are equipped for, the more that counter goes up. So if you’ve been hoping for new abilities or ST’s for your weapons and it’s been 10 battles or more, try switching abilities to something else for another 10 battles!

Heavy Attack Tricks: After your first couple fights you’ll start to notice that standard heavy attacks are slow, lock you in an animation, and are generally cumbersome to use. This isn't the only way to do heavy attacks though, in fact there are numerous heavy attacks that can be pulled off with fighting game-like directional inputs. These are shown as MASTER MOVES in your weapon status, but don't explain HOW to do them. First is the Thrust Attack, which is Forward Forward Heavy Attack Button, Second is the uppercut, which is done by holding down and forward and pressing heavy attack, then finally there's the jump attack, which is back, forward, then heavy attack. These each can come off of some abilities too, like pressing heavy attack after a lunge or somersault will turn it into a jump attack!

Blue Aura: When you get to battles, the blue aura around your character when they attack represents a combo, if it disappears and reappears, the combo count resets. If you manage to execute 10 moves without interruption, you'll drop a candy. Of course that's harder than it sounds since even quick attack combos for small weapons end at five hits. This is where abilities save the day, abilities themselves extend your combos, so long as you’re not mashing. Somersault is a good starter for keeping the enemy in range, while late into the game, flip-kick is a great combo extender and counts as a hit!

New Game+: There is a new game plus, with a way to change difficulty after you've beaten the game once. After starting the game again with the same character, in your encyclopedias will now be a book called The Forbidden Tome, you can use this to keep the game at normal, switch to Nightmare Mode, or go for No Future mode. This will give enemies higher health and damage, but also unlock more of their loot tables!

Lil Cactus: Lil Cactus is your adorable housemate upstairs, and if spoken to after completing a quest and leaving, he’ll scramble over to his diary and write an entry about your last adventure. If you want to fill out lil cactus' diary completely (which is an achievement), you need to make sure that you speak to him after each improvement at your home, that's the orchard, monster corral, and workshop upgrades. These quests will not happen in New Game+ because they carry over too!

Orchard: After speaking to Gaia at Luon Highway, you’ll gain the orchard at your home. Your Orchard will provide you with produce as long as you provide the seeds. After a while you might notice that there’s a huge variety of produce that Trent can grow. The color of the seeds affects the produce the orchard will grow, so if you’re looking for orange produce, use small seeds, or combine oblong with crooked seeds. Yep, the orchard is also mechanically charged, and runs on mixing seed colors for results!

Spirits & Eggs: After you’ve gotten your Monster Corral and Musical Instrument training, know that Elemental Spirits and Monster Eggs spawn in the same locations. These are often in places where you've fought a boss prior, or dead ends in each dungeon. Each of these you can run back and forth between areas to get them to spawn.

Corral & Coin: The corral can hold a max of 5 monsters, but if you're going for a particular monster and don't want to wait for them to hatch, capture eggs past 5, then choose to sell a different pet. Doing this you'll be able to tell if eggs contain different monsters, due to their different HP and Power stats! If you're looking for the Envy of Niccolo Achievement, there's some serious money in Dragon Eggs, which will sell between 500 and 5000 lucre if done in a similar way to checking stats. Once you get to the Feig Snowfields, there is a dragon egg spawn not far from the boss area. Collect dragon eggs until your Corral is full, then after picking up the next egg, choose to sell a different pet. Doing it this way will let you sell stored eggs at the cost of the monster they contain, rather than the measly 10 lucre egg price.

Spirit Trick: When coaxing spirits to you with instruments, know that the instruments are obstacles for whatever reason. So, if you choose the smallest instrument, the flute first, it will let the spirits more easily reach you when you're farming for coins, while the drum and marimba will make it harder for them. Also it appears that the power level of the instruments also influence how fast the spirits approach you.

Smithing Is NUTS: Enemies do drop weapons and armor once in awhile, but the best gear is of course, what you can make in the smithy. The Blacksmith is unlocked by doing Watts Drops The Hammer in Ulkan Mines, after which he'll trundle out of your workshop when you try to enter, launching you into the lackluster smithing tutorial. Crafting in Legend of Mana is on another level, rivaling modern games even; but it’s so poorly explained in the game that online guides seem like the only way to learn how to make decent gear. Here’s a short crash course: Primary materials are required for making armor and weapons, while secondary materials are used for alterations. Now for improving weapons through tempering: The simple way of increasing weapon stats is by using elemental spirit coins, either collected from elemental spirits, or by using elemental stones that you can get from vendors. Pound 4 elemental coins or stones into a weapon, and it'll get a substantial boost to its stats. The cards you see flying into the gear can fill up to 3 mystic slots at a time, seen in the status of the item; so if you continue tempering it after 4 times, these mystic powers can be pushed out to make room for new ones. For altering armor, throw a Dryad silver or gold into it, then add 4 needles or needlettuce. This makes the bed of thorns mystic card which boosts defenses by a huge margin. As you can surmise, there's a complex, and expensive method to make damage, defenses, and immunities completely overpowered for weapons and armor, but that would take an entire separate video to explain, so please let me know if you're interested in crafting godlike gear in Legend of Mana!

BONUS: Tell the captain you don't like the ship to leave the SS Buccaneer. When I first played this game I distinctly remember running all over the ship trying to leave.