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Monday 14 January, 2008
Summary:
The game starts by introducing the overarching history of Thanatos, some Lich King of the past who was sealed away before destroying the Tree of Mana by a warrior who wielded the Sword of Mana. Then begins an intro with the main character, Randi (in the game the name is ambiguous since you get to choose it), who is paying on a tree bridge above a waterfall. Randi falls to discover the Sword of Mana and pulls it out. This causes hordes of monsters to attack to village as they are no longer protected by the sword. After you are exiled from your village you soon encounter the two other playable characters, Purin, a princess in search of her friend Dyluck, and Popoi, a sprite who follows you for what seems like no reason at all. All along the way you vanquish minions of The Empire or Thanatos. Then you finally destroy Thanatos, save the world, and return the Sword of Mana. Oh ya, and the Purin becomes a tree... it's complicated.
Gameplay:
Typical of games in its time, you begin by fighting easy mobs to help you get into the swing of the game. Fortunately, this is not drawn out any more than it needs to be, and you are soon inside the first town. Typical uninteresting 'clone' NPCs greet you and direct you to the 'elder' where you see brief dialog before a pit envelopes you. Surprise! Ten minutes into the game and you're already fighting a boss and, while challenging, is easy to defeat since you are given infinite resurrections. The only problem is for the next hour you only can rely on weapon based combat since you have not made a pact with any of the elementals and thus have no spells. Enemies are free roaming within their given area, and respawn upon returning to their area. To attack them you can just bash the A button. But wait, under your character's health is a bar that has a percent inside it. One swing reduces you 100% weapon damage to 0%. It is better to swing then back up you while your 'energy' recharges than to run in swinging. When an enemy is hit by a weapon they will recoil for a second during which you can hit them and they will still receive damage and continue to be stunned, if you are doing this your weapon damage will be at 0% thus accomplishing nothing. This is where your companions come in handy, they can continue to hit the enemy for damage while it is stunned (you can cycle between the three main characters or have a second player control one). Enemies are invincible while performing their recovery animation which can cause the game to appear laggy or 'broken' at times, learning the best time to attack is key. The other way to lose energy is to run, this is usually not an issue in combat since your energy recovers fairly fast. For the first hour or so these are the only things at your disposal.
After accumulating experience by fighting enemies my characters have 'leveled' and are more powerful. You can check out your stats, but in reality you can only directly impact two of them. Attack power, depending on which weapon you equip, and defense, depending on which armor you buy and equip. Unlike most RPGs you don't buy your weapons, you upgrade them with ore and money. Ore you get through events and bosses and money you get from normal monsters and treasure chests. The more you upgrade you weapons, the higher weapon rank each character can achieve. Higher weapon ranks enable you to 'charge' your weapon. While 'charging' your movement is slowed 50%. With each completed charge bar, unleashing you weapon will do more damage. Learning to balancing time consuming 'charging' and normal 100% hits becomes the main challenge of the game. The other challenge at this early stage is staying alive. You have no healing spells and can only carry 4 of each item. This causes the game to become very frustrating. One team 'wipe' will reset the game, making saving an addiction. Without spells and few chargeable weapons this combat is fun but lacking. By far the most memorable aspect thus far is the music played in the dwarven town. My friend and I would find ourselves going out of the way to go back to the dwarven town to save and buy items rather than using a closer town. Some of the best 16-bit music in any game of its era.
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