Saturday, March 17, 2012

TEXT PLAY: Legend of Mana (PlayStation; 2000): Issue #01: SPAAAACCCCEEEEE!!!


Perhaps I should have called this one “Things I Didn't Talk About In The Prolog”.

Then again, this stuff fits just as well here as it would have in the last part, so I suppose it doesn't really matter that much.

Anyway, the backstory we get for this game is that 900 or 1000 years ago, Fa'Diel's Mana Tree burned down or exploded or something, which really made a mess of the world. Chunks of the planet turned into enchanted artifacts, leaving big craters in their place. Whoever possessed one of these artifacts could control the fate right down to the very existence of whatever place that artifact was made from. At first, there was much fighting and strife over these artifacts as a result of that fact, but over the course of the next millennium, people started to lose interest in the artifacts and Mana in general, instead preferring to go about the act of staying alive. But Mana itself had not disappeared from Fa'Diel, and over the course of the centuries, it began to want a restoration. To achieve that goal, it chose an avatar, which, surprise beyond surprise, is the player character, who is the guy or gal, depending on which gender the player chooses, will eventually restore the Mana Tree and bring it back to the people's hearts.

Now, for a little personal history here. Back in 2007 or 2008, I tried to do pretty much this exact same thing in the forums at The Spoony Experiment. It didn't work out so well, and I gave up on writing after only a couple parts. Intentionally or not, I'm sure there will be similar jokes along the way. One thing I'm pretty sure I won't be doing, however, is repeating the opening gags from those original posts. Somehow, quoting the Book of Genesis doesn't seem quite as funny now.

In one last little bit of housekeeping before I get onto the actual game, I should make mention of how this'll play out, if you'll pardon the expression. This first issue will pretty much just be all setup and exploring the first couple locations a little bit. Next issue, we'll actually go on a handful of quests. The next few after will probably be the same as well. At some point, however, I suspect the quests may start taking multiple issues to complete. I'll make note of the change when it needs to happen.

So, now, on to the game. The first thing we need to do is choose the gender of our character. I'm gonna go with the male character. It's not that I have a problem with the female hero. Heck, I could even give her the same name and it would work out well. It's just that this thing is going to be awkward enough without getting into some of those implications. So, I'll be playing with the male hero, and I'll give him my own name: Jesse. At first, I was considering going for some reference to Doctor Who, but eventually decided against it because it would at the very least have too many characters.

Next up is selecting a section of the game's world map upon which to work. I usually take the section in the southeast corner of the map. Maybe this is why I wind up reaching a point at which I find myself unable to continue, but from what I've heard, that may not matter. Just about any section of the map is selectable, so long as there are at least a few water features. Those'll be important later on, but I'll say when I use an artifact where it does.

Once that's all taken care of, we're given our first artifact: the Mailbox. This turns into my house. It's a nifty place, but I'll talk about that in a minute. The map I've chosen has a mountain range sort of thing in the southeast corner of it. I usually put my house within one or two spaces of the west end of that, so that there's a little space all around to put other locations. That'll be important later, too, from what I understand, but I've never made it quite that far. Anyway, once the Mailbox is placed on the map and the Home location springs into existence, a nicely done, if somewhat long for its era, title sequence and music video thing happens. We'll be meeting most, and more than likely all, of the characters shown in the title sequence before this thing is done, even if I don't actually make it through the game itself. And it's a cool song, too. It's just too bad there's no English translation that I'm aware of

Once we actually get to a point where we can play again, it's time to explore this homestead. I would so totally live in this place if I could. The whole second level of this place is a giant bedroom with lots of nice windows and a desk. The desk even has a little cactus on it, though that's a little creepy in its own way. See, the cactus is a sentient being, with a little face and everything, called Lil' Cactus. He likes being talked to, and after quests, he'll write a little something about that quest in his journal. The main floor has the bathroom, which I can only imagine is real nice, since we never get to actually go in; a kitchen area, and a study, where we'll keep part of the rather large in-game encyclopedia set that gets unlocked in stages early in the game and filled as the game goes on.

Outside the house, there are four more distinct areas. We'll come and go through the front door area. There's one path that leads south there that leads to a garden area, which will come in handy later. There's a path that leads northeast that leads to a barnyard where we can keep pets and the other part of the encyclopedia set. There's a third path that leads northwest to a workshop in which we're supposed to be able to build things and temper weapons and such. I've gotten all those areas unlocked, but I've never gotten to a point where I could actually make effective use of the workshop.

Also outside the front door is this little leaf guy that kind of reminds me of a character I thought I once saw Weird Al play in a 90s episode of either Twilight Zone or Outer Limits, where he was an alien that looked like a giant lettuce plant that could walk and talk. He's called a Sproutling, and he tells you that there's an entire species of him, and they all have this hive-mind thing going on. He also hands over the second artifact: some magical Legos called the Colorblocks. He tells you that this is the town of Domina, and that the place will exist if you make it exist.

I think I'll put the town of Domina west of my house. Domina's a nice little town. Kind of reminds me of the town of Dell Rapids, a place where I at least used to have family. The first place we come to is Domina's town square. There's a hotel, a pub, a shop attached to it's owners' house, and some weird area where two-player things can happen. I've never actually made use of the two-player stuff, but everything else, yeah. Right away, we see this annoying little onion kid ragging on some dude named Elazul because the dude is looking for his girlfriend. We can get a quest from Elazul right now, but I'm gonna follow the onion kid first. He says his name, but I'm not going to bother with it. He goes into the shop owners' house and tells you you're cool for asking so many questions. He offers hints, but it's all pretty standard stuff if you've played games like this before. There are some things I'll explain myself when we get into actual fights later.

The house and the shop are owned by a husband and wife called Mark and Jennifer. One of the subplots here is that these folks have a daughter named Rachel that they got a job for at the pub. The daughter doesn't like her job. Her dad, who likes to spend all his free time sitting in his comfy chair at home, is all depressed about that, and that his kid doesn't like the way he's gone and “girled up” her bedroom, either. There's also this possessed teapot with a stereotypical British accent. We'll get to interact with her more later.

Heading west from there, we come to a park where a pair of transient performers called Capella and Diddle are putting on their show for the butterflies and the fountain. They'll introduce and explain themselves for now, but later on, they'll have a quest for us too.

Further west still is the residential area of the town. The most important thing here is Pelican the Mail Bird. She'll kind of help us with our barnyard later, but for the most part, she's just obnoxious. At the far west end of the road is an open field. There's a few things that'll happen here, too, but we'll get to them in due time, as well.

The north part of town has a church where we meet the closest thing I think I've ever seen to myself in a video game in Inspector Boyd. Boyd makes a lot more noise than I do, but he makes up for it by being a lot less competent at what he does. We'll see him later, too. Inside the church is a priest focusing on reading his holy book. After a bit he finally realizes you're there and introduces himself. Nouelle, I believe his name is. He'll give you a bit of history about Fa'Diel, but I don't ever recall it being relevant. That could also be part of the reason I eventually get stuck in this game.

There's another market area nearby, too. This is where we can find Jennifer if she's not running the shop. She'll give you any encyclopedias that Mark doesn't. There's also a fortune teller here who gives largely worthless fortunes, but they do come in handy from time to time.

There's also a rabbit guy named Nicollo at the market right now. He's supposedly a merchant, but I get the feeling that even Deep Space Nine's Quark would find him a little greedy. Unfortunately, he's also got an artifact that will open up quite a few quests for us, which means he's the guy we'll go on our very first real quest with. But that's for next issue.

As I said earlier, we'll more than likely be doing a handful of quests next issue, in part out of convenience, and also because quite a few of these are short, and in at least one case, don't have actual boss fights at the end. See what I mean next time in Issue #02: Hit The Road, Me!

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