The eggs are moving when you find them, so you need to lure them into food and wait for them to sleep. You need to find a monster egg and catch it simple as that. The monster-catching mini-game probably could have been its own game. You can send extra monsters to gather items and gain experience when you are away as well. Your monsters can join you on your adventure and fight with you. Seeds provide food to feed your monsters to make them more powerful or sell for extra cash. I upgraded from an iron axe to a silver axe as soon as I got blacksmithing and saved about $3,000. The price of weapons and armor is absurd, so crafting is beneficial. Here you can forge new equipment, make new instruments, planet seeds, and take care of your monsters.

When you aren’t fighting, you will be back at your house doing work around your yard. You are invulnerable when charging up your special attack though, meaning you can use it to get out of a sticky situation instead of doing damage. I mostly used large area of effect attacks to avoid this problem. These have to do a slight charge up before launching, which often means the enemy will move before you strike. During combat, you fill up your special bar and press one of the buttons to activate your abilities. Special attacks are learned from weapons and by crafting instruments to use magic. If you can play with two people, I recommend it, but you’ll also completely dominate the game. That’s a really cool thing to have in combat. Other times, they are taking out three enemies before you can even charge up a special attack. Your allies will sometimes be on the opposite side of the screen doing nothing while you are off fighting. Much like the combat system, the AI leaves much to be desired. Legend of Mana also gives players the chance to find monster eggs and hatch them into creatures that travel alongside you.

I’m partial to turn-based combat, and this game would have benefited greatly from it. That being said, I was able to completely stun lock a couple of bosses by repeatedly doing two-hit combos in the corner. The hitboxes work the same way sometimes, you find the mark easy, while other times your weapon goes right through the enemy. You have to move your character up and down to get someone above or below you. You can’t swing up or down just left and right. It makes for a hit-and-miss combat system that you can sometimes exploit or be exploited by. You get into fights, and then the actual fighting is in real-time. The combat in this game isn’t turn-based, but instead features a more action RPG-like system. There are no waypoints, so often you’ll have to speak with everyone you see until someone gives you a mission. The only downside to this system is if you don’t know where to go for the next quest. It’s an odd system because there isn’t a main story for you to follow at first just a number of minor quests to complete. Generally, each new Artifact has one quest for you to complete, along with treasure to find. They can be towns, mines, jungles, lakes, and other areas you will explore. The items you place down on the map are called Artifacts.

You begin with your house and a single town to place on the map. You then set out from your home on a 25-30 hour adventure. You start playing at a time when the world is empty, and it’s up to you to rebuild it. The tree was burned down, and everyone fought for the remaining mana until there was none left. The world you inhabit was once home to a great mana tree that spread magic throughout the world. You aren’t locked into the weapon choice, but the character is the one you’ll be for the entire game. When Legend of Mana begins, players choose between a female or male character and then select a weapon.

Legend of mana remastered review