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| Jo, the Baby Tree of Mana! |
Keys are a real problem in the game. In two different dungeons near the end of the game I ran out of keys and was stuck with a locked door between me and the boss. Early game a lot of enemies dropped keys which got me into the habit of ignoring my key count. I even vendored some keys at one point because I was looting too many from the mobs. But dungeons went from being filled with guys who dropped keys to having maybe one enemy who might drop keys.
I certainly could have solved this problem by just going to a town and buying a lot of keys. I had limited inventory space but I ended the game with my bags full of elixirs that I didn't need to use so I could have afforded the space for a few more keys. I'd advise anyone playing this game to carry around 5 or so stacks of keys at all times. If I play again I know I will.
The puzzles were interesting the first couple times around but it felt like they ran out of ideas and just recycled the same tricks over and over. Needing to bust down a wall to make a secret passage is fine and all, but having to poke every wall of every dungeon in case it's the way I need to go got tiring. I eventually resorted to a description of the last couple dungeons on gamefaqs instead of bothering poking walls. Needing to turn enemies into snowmen to use as weights on pressure plates is the same thing. Really neat the first time. Interesting when it comes up a couple more times as they keep you on your toes. But it felt overdone by the end. I eventually put a few points into wisdom in order to have more mp to cast ice spells for these puzzles.
The blood sword is stupid. It lets you heal when you do damage with sword swings but it seemed like the numbers were off. The big scary dragons at the end of the game would hit me for 1 with their fire and maybe 6 with their claws. I had 503 health. Each time I attacked I gained 13 health. So as long as I hit the dragon once for every 2 times he hit me I'd stay at full and he'd be dying. Follow the boss around mashing attack? Doesn't seem like a very deep strategy but it worked.
Some enemies were immune to physical attacks. Others were immune to magical attacks. So I was forced to constantly switch between my thunder spear and my morning star if I wanted to keep killing enemies. This required a lot of menu interactions which was annoying. Secret of Mana improved on this game greatly with the advent of the menu ring system. Hit one button to show a ring with all your weapons on it. Use the d-pad to rotate the ring so the weapon you want is on top. Hit one button. It also has item rings and magic rings which really worked.
The music was better than the music in the Final Fantasy Legend games I've played thus far but it was still a little tinny. I'm pretty sure the blame for this is with the Game Boy's primitive sound capabilities but that doesn't make my head hurt less. Having to keep the sound on so I could find the hidden walls was annoying and is part of what led to turning to gamefaqs for help.
The plot existed and made sense. There was an obvious villain that you grew to hate as the game progressed, you had a rough idea what he was trying to do, and the stories of the main characters wrapped up in the ending.
Overall this was a pretty good action-RPG game. You can tell it was made 20 years ago for old hardware but it was fun. I don't think it was better than any of the core games in the series thus far but it beats out the Legend games thus far for sure.
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