Most of the party members are tied to specific storylines, and will generally only be available to travel with you for those quests, at least until you finish them. You can have one at a time, as well as either a pet monster or a golem. Their plights range from comically minor misunderstandings to being the victims of genocide, and the vast gulf between the extremes makes Legend of Mana stand out as unique but also helps drive home the stakes when things take a darker turn.Īs befitting an RPG, you’ll be able to recruit party members. You’ll meet pirate penguins, horny centaurs, unscrupulous rabbits, depressed monkeys, and many more as you quest for the Mana Tree. The entire game has a gorgeous fairy tale aesthetic that prioritizes whimsy and variety over coherence. The formless structure of Legend of Mana would be more of a problem if the world of the game and the characters inhabiting it weren’t so darn charming. Besides just starting over, however, the game offers a robust New Game+ mode if you want to continue exploring the world.

You’ll just wander the lands, rebuilding things and helping people resolve what are often extremely low-stakes problems until, suddenly, you’ll find yourself able to tackle the final area of the game.ĭepending on how you go through the game, you may find yourself facing down the final boss surprisingly quickly. You know you need to find the Mana Tree, but there is quite literally no guidance whatsoever on how to do that. It’s an extremely odd structure for a game. The screen will dim and the name of the quest will fly onto the screen, and once the quest is resolved you’ll be treated to a splash page before being dumped back to the world map. You’ll bump into characters who are trying to resolve some issue, and you’ll get roped into helping. What you’ll soon find is that the game is divided into discrete quests. Note that there are considerably more than nine tiles to fill. This is the world map after you’ve placed some artifacts.

Legend of mana map placement