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Friday 8 February, 2008
(gamelog 3, part 2, for CMPS 80K)
GAMEPLAY
In my second session of Legend of Mana, I focused primarily on becoming more familiar with the game's battle system. Though I played through a couple of battles during my first session, being afforded the ability to further extend my party this time meant that I was able to take on more enemies and thus better understand the mechanics involved. I was pleased to find that the ability to customize extends also to the battle system. Essentially, the player had the ability to assign any available action to almost any of the buttons on the Playstation controller. This feature came in particularly useful as I began to encounter different enemies, since I was able to assign the most useful offensive and defensive moves available according to my situation. Winning battles with these moves also gains the player a new ability from time to time, and these new abilities will differ depending on the moves already equipped.
The battle system in Legend of Mana is also real-time and action-based as opposed to turn-based, which I always find to be an interesting feature in an RPG. The system is very successfully integrated into the gameplay, and the shift between battle and field mode is very subtle, meaning that the player does not have to reorient his or herself a great deal when an enemy is encountered. Battle style also differs according to the player's self-designated class, since each class has a different method of attack.
Other elements, such as interactions with NPCs, are also fun to participate in. The characters inhabiting an area have a surprisingly large number of things to say, and quite often asked for my input as a player, presenting me with a variety of responses to choose from which would, in turn, affect the outcome of the interaction significantly.
DESIGN
The most obviously innovative element in the way that Legen of Mana is designed is, as I have said before, the level of customization offered to the player. Although the game does seem to follow some sort of linear progression plot-wise, quests and events can almost always be completed out of sequence. The ability to decide who to recruit as a party member, which quests to complete, where to place certain areas on the world map (and so forth) all contribute to the extremely loose and free tone of gameplay, and permit prospective players with an unprecedented amount of control over how the game will advance.
While I did not find the design of the playable character to be particularly memorable, the distinctive design of the gameworld and its NPCs is extremely successful in its contribution to Legend of Mana's overarching tone. This is even further enhanced by the dialog: the game has a very cute and whimsical feel to it that managed to overcome my better nature and win me over almost instantaneously. Although the dialog is, to be frank, rather silly, I found it to be surprisingly appealing when it was presented to me in the context of the bright and cheerful gameworld. In particular, I found characters such as the Sprouts (sentient, walking plants which happily exclaim “I have no soul!”) and the main character's pet cactus, to which you can relate your many adventures, to be particularly irresistible.
Perhaps the one element of the game that was frustrating for me, however, was that the lack of an overall narrative (at least at this point) makes the game feel just a bit purposeless. While the overall goal of the game appears to be to replenish the land's magical energy or Mana, the lack of any evident conflict in the beginning is a little underwhelming in spite of the freedom it permits.
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