Legend of Mana Review (Zallycat)
The Mana series as a whole has been one of my favorite game franchises for a very long time, and Legend of Mana in particular stands high in that for me. While I almost certainly have at least some nostalgia bias, I honestly do believe that this is a good game and worthy of your time if you enjoy ARPGs of this sort.
+ The zone art of the various locations within LoM are genuinely gorgeous, paired with good music that manages to avoid feeling like it gets repetitive. There are several stand out great music tracks, as well.
+ There is an absolute *ton* of variation for how you will go through any given playthrough, and while there won't initially seem to be much of any connecting tissue between the many short quests you go through there are several storylines to follow and though there are a couple weaker ones, the overall world that it builds and the narrative of the better storylines are enjoyable.
- Don't come here for a combat challenge. While there are a couple bosses that might give some challenge, combat in LoM is generally pretty easy.
- The sheer mutability of the location placement mechanic can make it easy to lock yourself out of a few side missions, which can lock out certain achievements in a given playthrough. A blind playthrough is likely to fall afoul of at least one of those, so completionists will likely want a guide for that.
\ Both a positive and a negative are the crafting systems in the game. You have a farming aside to grow produce used for raising pets caught as eggs, with little in-game explanation for how each produce item modifies a given pet (though optimal raising isn't really needful because of how easy the game is). You have a system for crafting magical instruments with nothing in-game to tell you what material, element, and instrument combination will yield what spell or at what power. You have a frankly arcane weapon and armor crafting system that is incredible in just how much you can do with it, but again there is no real explanation at all in game for what does what. And finally, you have a system for crafting golems that combines the weapon/armor crafting with the instrument crafting to build and program the golems. The crafting systems in this game can keep someone busy decoding them for literal years and are excessively daunting to get into...but it can be very satisfying to dive into them, too. Even if the low difficulty of the game means that such is entirely unneeded.