Legend of Mana

Genre: Action-RPG

Players: 1-2 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Legend of Mana is an Action-RPG originally released on the original PlayStation in 2000 and remastered for release on the PC, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2021. This is the fourth game in the Mana series, though players needn’t have played any prior games to fully enjoy this one, as the Mana series tends to only have thematic and stylistic elements carry over from one installment to the next, not any continuous plot.

When it was originally released, Legend of Mana was an absolutely gorgeous entry in the PlayStation library, and developer M2 has done a fantastic, if a bit uneven, job of bringing that beauty to modern platforms a full two decades later. Character sprites still retain their classic somewhat jittery pixel art style, but backgrounds have been completely remastered to bring their beautiful storybook-like hand-painted appearance into the realm of HD visuals, and also animated some new anime-style cinematic sequences rather than trying to upscale the low-res video files of the original.

While the remastered visuals look great, the odd mix of old and new clashes somewhat – I get that the pixel art visuals were kept to retain this release’s ties to the game’s classic roots, but I think it would have been better if these were updated much the same as the backgrounds. Add to this menus that combine pixel art icons with high-res text and you have visuals that try to straddle the line between old and new and end up just looking like a jumble of disparate components.

However, while the visuals suffer a bit from failing to commit to either retaining the old-school look or going for a full remastered treatment, the soundtrack is a different story. In short, Legend of Mana’s music is absolutely phenomenal, and players can opt to play the game with the original music (still great today), or play remastered music instead, and the quality of this orchestral remaster of this game’s already-joyous soundtrack is a wonderful addition that may very well be the highlight of this package. For examples, check out the remastered versions of Opening Theme and Title Theme (both extremely faithful to the originals), as well as the new orchestral arrangements of Picturesque Landscape, Lumina: City of Moonlight, and Bejeweled City in Ruins.

Perhaps to highlight the amazing work done on this game’s soundtrack, this release of the game includes a music player to listen to the game’s great music, as well as an art gallery to look over this game’s beautiful promotional art, and some additional settings options to customize your experience with the game. M2 is renowned for the quality and comprehensive nature of their modern ports of old classics and their skill at this is once again on display here.

Okay, so the game overall looks great, it absolutely sounds great, and it has a good selection of options and features… how does it play by today’s standards, when not looking through the veil of nostalgia?

Well… the gameplay here hasn’t aged so well, I’m afraid. It doesn’t help that this game more or less preserves the absolutely terrible localization of the original game, resulting in unnatural dialogue that’s difficult to follow on top of an already disjointed story. And this game’s somewhat experimental array of unusual mechanics that are best left explored only by the most dedicated players due to their unnecessarily confusing nature, such as its world-building elements, farming, and monster-raising components. But even if you’re just looking for some classic Action-RPG combat, this game feels clunky and at times unresponsive.

It’s not all bad – the way players naturally unlock abilities by using pairs of abilities to combine to find new ones is absolutely inspired, and I’d love to see this explored further in more modern games. Also, while the 2-player co-op mode is something of an after-thought in this game, it still makes for a great way to have a more casual player join you on your quest – they can technically only join in when you’ve recruited a helper character to follow you along, but this will end up being most of the game, so your second player won’t be inactive for too terribly long.

In the end, Legend of Mana is kinda’ a beautiful mess of an Action-RPG. The clunky mechanics, over-complicated game systems, and poorly-localized and disjointed story have all aged poorly, but players may be able to overlook these flaws due to the sheer beauty of this game’s art and especially its soundtrack, as well as its delightful (if a bit lacking) 2-player co-op. And this release does a mostly pretty good job of preserving this game’s best qualities and updating them to be every bit as good as we remember, if not even better. On balance, this is a great port of a good but flawed game.

tl;dr – Legend of Mana is a remaster of the classic PlayStation One Action-RPG that updates the beautiful visuals and the absolutely gorgeous soundtrack, adds some welcome new menu content and options, and retains the flawed gameplay, story, and localization of the original release. However, those who can look past this game’s flaws will still find this to be a beautiful experience with some solid co-op gameplay.

Grade: C+

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