Legend of Mana is an action role-playing game from Square Enix, played here as the 2021 HD remaster on PC. The complete run across five streams took just over twenty hours, finishing all sixty-seven events and reaching the credits.
The music is a standout throughout, with the Swedish-sung intro and the boss themes among the best in the series. The Land Make premise is the hook, with artefacts placed on a blank map causing the world to rise up like a pop-up book.
The layout system makes the world replayable, with many ways to build the land and still experience every event. The anthology structure refreshes, offering a collection of stories rather than a single main plot.
The presentation charms, with pixel art among the prettiest on the PS1 and a diary-keeping cactus who grows sassier with each entry. The cast delights, from the emote-heavy dud bears to the swindling but charming merchant Nicolo.
The remaster quality helps, with saves possible anywhere and widescreen, redone cutscenes and a rearranged soundtrack. The combat is the biggest gripe, with attacks only able to land left or right and hits frequently missing entirely.
The events are exceptionally vague, with a guide needed to find most of them and missable content all too easy to overlook. Some events can be failed outright, and the monster-catching minigame is finicky enough to frustrate.
Overall, the music, the charm and the world-building structure make this a very special game. The awkward combat and the guide-dependent quests are the caveats.