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To the highway!

1 (25%)

To the caves!

3 (75%)

Total Members Voted: 4

[chaoticag]

Spoiler: In retrospect, I ought to have gotten a smaller picture (click to show/hide)

Okay, time for one of my all time favorite games: Legend of Mana.

This game was pretty unique when it first came out. If I could describe it in as few words as possible, I'd call it a side-quest feast with a strong, yet simple, crafting system. This is also one of the few games that, in my opinion, handles level scaling in the best possible way, by having enemies levels dependent on the distance of a region from your home and the "new-nes" of the region.

The whole point of the game is doing side-quests, which restore the world, or something, untill the Mana Tree appears. There isn't really a main story as much as there is small stories and story arcs. You do not need to complete every single quest in the game, and I certainly won't in this LP, but I'll try to cover as much of them as possible.

Due to the open ended nature of the game, I think the best way to handle this is provide a list of choices and have the readers choose what quest to do next. I don't think dialog options have that much power to influence quests, so I will handle those. Also, since the level scaling can be abused to give an easy game, I'll also handle the placement of the regions to give me a hard game. Oddly, that ought to lock us out of an inconsequntial quest, and we may end up with a desert, jungle, glacier and a seashore next to each other.

Spoiler: Character creation (click to show/hide)

First things first, we need to decide on our gender.

Next, the sort of weapon we will use.


Finally, our name.

[Myroc]

Male, Axe, Urist.

[Duke 2.0]

 Be sure to get plenty of pictures of the Penguin Pirates, and at least a transcript of what they say.

 I believe I streamed this before, much to the bemusement of everybody watching. I hope the screenshot format will go over better. Then again, nobody needs to slog through some of the rather disorienting dungeons.

[chaoticag]

Yeah, I'll try to keep the screenshot size smaller in the future. It means a bit of editing in the future, but not too much.

I'll probably have a transcript of the opening speach the Goddess gives, as well as the pirates.

The biggest problem in my opinion is the dud-bear quest, which is probably the most chore-like quest I've seen with an inane amount of non-sensical dialog, although I like the reward.

I'd make a video of the boss fights, but:

A) I don't know how to do so.

B) I'm sure uploading it to my youtube account would take ages, although it would be fun.

(If you happen to recommend a screen capture program, I'd prefer it if it was free and let me use my mic)

[Duke 2.0]

 Liuvestream has an on-demmand feature that keeps previous recordings, although I dunno if one could save it to the computer. Mic works well.

[Keita]

No way haven't see nthis game in ages.

[chaoticag]

Urist it is then.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is the place I'm picking, since it has plenty of land as well as just enough sea.

As soon as we are done, we are given a cinematic. In Swedish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTy1NwhqZ2o


Our first order of business is to place our mailbox on the map. I ended up picking the South-Eastern corner in order to give me an abundant amount of far off places.


As soon as you put it down, the screen blurs, and we are given a speech.






Don't get it? Don't worry, the game is technically a sequal to Secret of Mana, but this is the only bit of "story" that pops up for a long while. It gets explained later.


We are finally given control of our character. The thing in the bottom left corner is a cactus, who records the quests you take once you complete them if you talk to him. He also gives his opinion of things.

Going downstairs...



We bump into our first chest, which contains Lucre, the universal currency of the game. 100 Lucre is just enough to get us menos bronze gloves and leave us a little cash.
(Bronze is from menos, all metals follow this naming rule.)


Plant people galore! You HAVE to talk to this dude to advance the story in any way. He goes on about how the world is an illusion and it is shaped by our imagination. He then hands us an entire town! Sort of, they're just colored blocks.


See.


As it turns out, the blocks are in fact a town, I place it To the North of my home.

From here, we have two options, go to a highway to fight highway men, or look for a missing lady.

[Duke 2.0]

 Ah, the trippy-licious moments this game offers when you take the time to think about things. Unless you just think about it like a childrens storybook. Which, I did, and it was awesome.

 But yeah, save Pearl. I find that area more straightforward. You can also purposefully not tell us the gender of Eazul and have us bicker over what that character is.

[Keita]

I'm more familiar with secrets of mana but I think some thing awesome happens if you do a bit of exploring when looking for pearl.

Go look for pearl.

[Dakk]

Gosh this game was awesome, the beautiful art coupled with addicting gameplay and incredible story, really one of Square's past gems. Too bad square is too busy these days making Final Fantasy clones to make something as beautiful as this again.

Caves, nao.

[chaoticag]

Surprisingly unanimus vote there. I'll get to it right away then.

I'll have to delay the update quite a bit... So many pictures to edit... It might come in pieces..