"Square makes another great game... still a step down from the others though"

The Seiken Densetsu series has always been a favourite of mine, with it's non-turn based battle system and the ring system. The fourth installment delivers much fun, but at a few costs.

The graphics for this game is amazing. The backgrounds are drawn beautifully with much detail and vibrant colours. Each character looks beautiful as well, and everybody I've talked to so far has a portrait, which means that there must be a lot of art in this game. The spells are good but of course, nothing like the FMVish look of Final Fantasy VII. But with all the great graphics... the main male character still looks like a girl...

The music is beautifully composed, the boss music very exciting and the town themes very peaceful. The sound effects are uh... fitting. What exactly is good sound effects? I dunno myself.

Controls are great, with Circle and Triangle in charge of your regular attacks, Square and X, your special abilities (jump, dash, etc.) and the L and R buttons are your special moves and magic. The one think I thought was weird was even though you can use the analog joystick to move, you must still hold X to run around.

The gameplay is great, but a few flaws. Your NPCs (which can be controlled with the second contoller) are very colourful on paper (a giant rabbit ^_^) but when you enter the menu, you notice they cannot be customized. You cannot give them or take their equipment, you cannot change their magic and special moves, and the AI is idiotic. I'll give you an example. When you kill an enemy, they will leave an item, candy, chocolate or these small coins or crystals (they add to your exp). Now the AI will NEVER attempt you grab any of these. If they do, it's because they were wandering around and hit it by accident which is very stupid. I haven't played this game very long but so far, most NPCs have been in my party for less than half an hour. So I've been through 3 NPCs so far and I hope I do see some of them again, I thought they were pretty cool. An intresting part of the game is the monster raising aspect. You can catch a monster and raise it in the game, or the PocketStation. The monsters are somewhat weak, but get stronger with more experience. Now the main chunk of the game, the storyline. Okay... I don't have enough Japanese to grasp the storyline properly so I'll avoid that. The game works on a non-linear aspect since you can do a few things out of order or not at all, but there are always a few required quests. Now in the game are things called Artifacts. Those are items that well... turn into towns and dungeons. When you get one, it is in your invnetory and you can place is beside any other piece of land you have. Thus you create your own world map, I think that's pretty cool. The battle system is easier to use, but less fun I believe. The loss of the ring system also meant the loss of item usage. So how do you heal in battle? Where there's this one ability where you hold it and you regain health. But when you kill enemies, they sometimes leave candy and chocolate which allows you to regain health instantly when picked up and when you finish a battle, your health is regained.

Legend of Mana is a great game and its pros outshine its cons. You will require a grasp of the language to properly enjoy the game, or you could always bumble through it. =)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99