An Otaku World review of

Legend Of Mana

SquareSoft

Reviewed by Jennifer Diane Reitz, May 29 2000

Platform Reviewed	Playstation
Genre	Action RPG
Number of Players	One or Two
Multiplayer Value	Two
Length	80 hours or more
Difficulty	Moderate
Skills Required	Reading, Some Joypad Skill, Mild Puzzle Solving
Interface Devices	Joypad
Interface Design	Excellent
Programming	Excellent
Game Design and Playability	This is the fourth 'Seiken Densetsu' (Secret Of Mana) game. There is everything good about it, and for anime style superdeformed magical fairlyland action RPG thrills, the Mana series cannot be beat.
Type Of Fun	Happy, light, fairytale fun. Whack baddies, save kingdoms, and romp around incredibly colorful watercolor worlds.
Replay Value	Excellent to Exceptional. The player controls the creation of the world, making no two games identical.
Overall Value	Exceptional!
Quality	Exceptional!
The Best	The artwork is hand-painted jaw-dropping splendor, the animation stuns, the gameplay is romping and stomping fun, and the whole damn thing just makes one want to hug the package. Also, you get to build the world as you go, so the game is different every time.
The Worst	If you are an immature little piece of feces, and cannot abide cute, colorful, fairlylands full of Wizard-Of-Oz-like baddies to whack and worlds to save, then you will be miserable.
How much I would pay for this	80 bucks! (fortunately, it only runs around 35)

Description:

An action Role Playing Game with two separate characters and a non-linear world you can construct as you play.

Story:

A Faery dreamworld has been lost and must be reconstructed from fragments of magic.

Review:

If you remember the SNES console, then you remember "Secret Of Mana", one of the finest Square games ever published. During the latter days of the Super Nintendo, Squaresoft made the single biggest mistake of it's existance, in that, rather than publishing 'Secret Of Mana 2' (Seiken Densetsu 3 in Japan), Square created an all-American game studio that churned out the utterly wretched "Secret Of Evermore". Many found it difficult to forgive Square this idiocy, and the awful "Evermore" died a deservedly dog's death.

The American Square Studio is no more, thankfully, and now Square is trying to make amends, on the Playstation, with a whole boatload of games, including -finally- a proper "Mana" game. "Legend of Mana" features two seperate quests, an amazing world-building system that lets players create their game world as they go, and the most marvelous graphics and sound imaginable. Watercolor wonderlands and bouncy anime characters romp though an Oz-like fairyland, and frankly there is nothing bad to be said about it.

"Legend of Mana" is the one game your author has been hoping for the most, so I cannot but recommend this wonder enough. Combined with the other Square wonders of 2000...Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, and Threads Of Fate, all I can say to Square is...apology accepted!

"Legend of Mana" is a must-get game. If you get only one anime action RPG this year, this is the one. If you get two, then you are spoilt for choice. This is a good year for the anime gamer.

Unbelievably recommended.

Jennifer Diane Reitz is a Game Designer and Computer Artist, one of the co-founders of Otaku World, and, in an earlier time, a co-founder of Happy Puppy Games OnRamp (where she was also wrote many game reviews). She is the creator of numerous games and software products, including Boppin', Kokoro Wish, and many others. She has worked for such companies as Activision, Sculptured Software, Epyx, SRI, and Electronic Arts, and founded Accursed Toys. She has been active in the computer gaming industry since its earliest days. She considers games to be works of artistic merit and achievement, and views computer entertainment as the most important media of our era.