Legend of Mana Remastered is the latest PS1 RPG to get a very thorough remastering, and it has a lot of people rooting for this to be another good one. Cleaned up visuals and music are always a plus, but it does little to address some of the biggest issues the game had to begin with, unlike its predecessor.
Legend of Mana Remaster
Developer: Square Enix
Price: $30 USD
Platforms: Switch (reviewed), PS4, PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a Nintendo Switch code for review
This is an interesting one for sure, Legend Of Mana had its North American release June 6th 2000 on the Playstation. It was a game that a lot of people felt very strongly in their like or dislike for the title, but over the years it has seemed the reception has turned to generally positive in retrospect. It is the fourth entry in the Mana series that the beloved SNES game Secret of Mana is a part of as well, but for me Legend of Mana was the first exposure to the series. LoM took the generally linear gameplay that the Mana series had thus far, and completely turned it on its head, giving near complete control to the player and how they tackle what the game has to offer.
In LoM, you will basically create the world you play in via the Land Make system where you use powerful artifacts to bring back parts of the world on a large grid where their placement will influence lots of things like certain events, power of certain elemental spells and the general difficulty of the world. Contained within these are lots of towns, dungeons and more for you to explore and get to know all the unique residents of this world, as well as the story they have to tell. There is very little overarching narrative in this game beyond a few quest lines that are multiple entries long, but it does have fantastically written standalone quests that will have you doing everything from discovering ancient wisdom, hunting down treasure, learning entirely new languages or even just an excuse to go beat up some baddies and get some treasure! This is both a strength and a weakness if you ask me, and it’s a very polarizing aspect of the game.
For me though, it keeps every single playthrough feeling fresh! I love that I can tackle things in different orders, and you will see some quests and characters influencing other events in the world depending on the order you do them in. This freeform gameplay combined with some seriously tight action RPG gameplay with a TON of weapon types lets you really branch out every time you pick the game up and find something new to love. You can learn various abilities to supplement your attacks, they can range from taunting enemies, single, double and high jumps, grapple attacks that do damage and more. As you use those, you will begin to learn special attack techniques as well that you can use when you fill a particular gauge up to devastate your enemies with big damage, wide range or both! You also have access to musical instruments that you can find or make yourself that give you all kinds of cool magical spells that can do TONS of things.
Of course, being an RPG from the PS1 era in particular, there is a TON of things you can do to make you and your party stronger. Surprisingly in depth, Crafting weapons, making robots and programming their attack abilities and behavior through a unique tetris like system, growing fruits and veggies, hatching and raising monsters to fight besides you and all of these systems weave together a bit as well. If you are willing to put the time in, you can seriously make your life easier with these powerful side activities and I remember when I played this early on in life I dumped some SERIOUS hours into them, I loved it!
All of that aside, this is a review of the new remaster, I just wanted to hook you a bit with how GOOD the game is on its own. The Remaster is the latest in some PS1 classic RPGs getting some real through love in their remaster, the first being Saga Frontier. This game’s amazing music has been cleaned up and sounds better than ever, the BEAUTIFUL pre rendered backgrounds have been cleaned up more than I could ever believe and it has elevated the visuals to a level where the character, enemy and boss sprites almost look a little bit out of place against it. Seriously, some of the areas in this are jaw dropping, and combined with the cleaner than ever OST, I found myself just kind of hanging around areas to take it all in while I fell back in love with this game all over again. The aspect ratio has gone up to 16:9 as well and it just feels like they pulled the camera back a little bit more so your eyes can take in even more goodness. They cleaned up and improved the UI in menus to great success I would say, as well as an easier to read font for menus and dialogue.
Some other cool extras are the option to change between the original or rearranged OST in the game, if you happen to prefer one version of a song to another you can fix that up here! The ability to turn off enemy encounters if you just want to explore is welcomed here, some dungeons are pretty big and can be confusing due to the nature of the game having you revisit lots of areas to do new things in them. We have an art gallery so you can look at all the pretty new art for this game, as well as some cleaned up versions of original art for the game, as well as a music gallery if you just want to vibe to some awesome tunes. We get the ability to play a mini game we never could in america, Ring Ring Land which is great for powering up your monsters quickly and getting some good loot in the process as well, and I spent more time than i’d like to admit rolling the dice and playing with my monster. The auto save function is welcomed, as well as the ability to save pretty much anywhere as well.
They did a lot of awesome things with this remaster, but my one big complaint was something that was VERY well addressed in the Saga Frontier Remaster. LoM and SF1 are both games that don’t do a lot of hand holding, or even direction at times, instead just setting you off on a world and hoping you find the right direction to go in. Legend of Mana REALLY could have used a redone diary, where you can see what quests you have, because honestly a single line of text does not even begin to explain some of the things you have to do for these quests. I loved that with SF1 they did a lot to make the game a bit more accessible to a curious party picking the game up in 2021, and I found myself wanting just a little bit more of that in Legend of Mana as well.
The Final Word
I really hope that this gets more eyes on this awesome game, and continues to grow the community! This generation has been absolutely fantastic for the Mana series, and I think it has gained more fans than it has in ages so fingers crossed they have something cooking behind the scenes, this remaster is going to do nothing but help show them people still love and care about this series. Check this out if you are an old fan, or even just vaguely curious of the series at large!
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
