Introduction

Legend of Mana is the fourth game to be released in the Seiken Densetsu series. Despite this, it's actually not Seiken Densetsu 4, but rather Seiken Densetsu: Legend of Mana, designating this as a sort of side story for the series. It is much different from its predecessors, with a different style of combat, no real central storyline, and a huge nonlinear world. Of course, lots of people don't like the game because it's perhaps too open, or because it's easy to screw yourself out of quests, or because you pretty much run around and do stuff with no real purpose, or that some of the gameplay features are, well, so ridiculously esoteric that people are still confused on how they work.



Yet Legend of Mana may very well be my favorite game of all time. It has some fantastic 2D visuals that hold up to any modern game, as well as some amazing music to draw you in. I also love the "story," where the main character is just some nobody who wanders around and helps people. Occasionally you're doing something that affects the lives of many, but usually you're just helping some rabbit scam someone or selling lamps to dogs. The characters are all distinct, right down to even the generic townspeople.



This is mainly a narrative LP. My goal with this is to better give the reader the sense of what it's like to play this game and to better understand the odd, wonderful world of this game. So while the in-character writing may be bland, I'm hoping it emphasizes how great the rest of the game is. If you're looking more for insight, I am also doing commentary in batches of five updates at a time, where I go more into detail on these quests, so I highly recommend reading those as well. Finally, I'm also showing off all the various special moves you can use in the game with each weapon.



While I'm not taking reader's input for quests or larger choices, I am putting up to vote the names of the various pets I pick up and the weapons I use, so there's that.



Mark spoilers. This isn't a narrative masterpiece or anything, but there's also some cool moments that shouldn't be ruined.



Currently running on a Monday/Wednesday/Friday whenever I feel like it update schedule. This means I'll have Commentary Updates every other Friday. I'll throw up Special Technique updates whenever I have the extra time.



If you don't prefer a narrative LP, then I highly recommend Azure_Horizon's Let's Play for the game.



I have compiled a master list of all music, characters, lands, and enemies in the game.

Here is the list.


My final thoughts on the game.





Originally I had the commentary updates separate from the main ones. I decided to merge them together for the archives. I still have the banner here just because I like it.









At this point, I lost steam and stopped doing them. Sorry! There's plenty of videos showing the other techniques on Youtube, though.



Here's a few posts that I liked, including game mechanics, story themes, and even some neat LoM swag!



(SOME SPOILERS)

Click here to see over 50 avatars made by myself and Explosionface! Feel free to use any of them!



Shaezerus shows off Talamond's self-professed expertise with a blade.

Shaezerus posted:

Mega64 posted:

...I have perfected my sword technique.

You sure did, Talamond!

Orange Fluffy Sheep corrected what was obviously a translation error.

Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:

Hold on, something is wrong with Selva's dialogue.

Let me fix it right quick.



He is a Lilipea after all.

The following two pictures are from a postcard book Square published for this game. Though most of the images are simply the same sets of character art that appear in-game, here's a couple of nice pictures from it that stand out.