Here's a strange bird for you.
This game here, Legend of Mana,
let me tell you, this game comes from one really weird series. If I
know my history right, this is part of a series that initially came
out on the Game Boy in the 1990s and was marketed as a Final Fantasy
title, Final Fantasy Adventure,
I think it was. I owned a Game Boy at the time and this is one of
the games I tried on it. I never really got into FFA, or handheld
gaming in general, for that matter.
I did
get more into a later game in the series, Secret of Mana,
for the Super Nintendo. I think I already mentioned someplace that I
was considering doing a text play of that sometime in the future,
but, as with all the things I do on this blog, there's no set
schedule for that.
But
the game at hand here is Legend of Mana.
From what I understand here, the series this game is a part of a
series better known as Seiken Densetsu,
at least in Japan. The games span across several systems and is hard
to follow, sequel-wise. The series itself is an anthology sort of
thing, like the Final Fantasy series. It's the numbering of the
games and the order of release that's got me confused. Legend is the
fourth game released in the series, but a game called Seiken
Densetsu 4 was released after
this one. It's confusing, and I'm not really enough of a fan of the
series to follow it well enough to do a decent job of explaining it.
Legend of Mana,
or LoM for short, is pretty much what I'd call a Choose Your Own
Adventure story, which is where I got the title for this prologue.
In a sense, it's the ultimate sandbox game. There's an overarching
story with quite a few intertwining threads, plots, subplots, and
such, and a ton of things to do along the way. Beyond that, though,
there's no set structure to the world, and no clear indication of
where one is to go next after a quest is completed. That's not
necessarily a bad thing, mind you. It makes the game more
interesting, to be honest.
Ultimately, though,
that's what's usually wound up getting me in the end. I've tried to
play this game several times, and in all cases, I've come to a point
where I'm just baffled as to what exactly I need to do to finish a
quest and move on with the game. If I had to guess, I'd say I've
made it maybe halfway through this game before I got confused to the
point that I felt I had to quit because of how lost I was. I'm not
anticipating this time to be any different, but maybe it will be if I
know there are people reading along with my adventures.
As far as the
adventuring itself goes, there will be plenty of that to be had, as
I've said before. There are some things that will need to be set up
or explained, but I'll do that as I go along, for the most part.
There'll be plenty of time for that, I'm sure.
One thing I will
set up in advance, though, is that this is probably the only game
I've ever owned where I know the world has an actual name to it.
They call the place we'll be playing in Fa'Diel. That's memorable
because I don't recall any of the other games, or at least the RPGs I
own, giving official names to the worlds they take place in.
There's also some
basic setup stuff that I should explain, but I'll get into that in
the first “real” issue, #01: SPAAAACCCCEEEEE!!!
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