My Inspirations: Where I Prove Myself an Incredible Sap

Today's inspiration is another video game. I know, I know, but if I wasn't so inspired by the industry, I wouldn't want to get into it, now would I? This one may come as a surprise to you. It sure as hell came as a surprise to me.

The year, I believe, was 1999. This was the year of "Summer of Adventure" AKA the year that Squaresoft (well before it was Square Enix) conveniently released a brilliant new game every single month for like five months straight. Some of their most celebrated, famous or infamous, and controversial titles came out in this time frame, from the sequel to Chrono Trigger to yet another Final Fantasy (9 this time.) There were also lesser gems like Threads of Fate and Front Mission 3, but in the middle of it all was a semi-sequel to Secret of Mana, another earlier hit by Squaresoft. The sequel, though, was a much different beast, one that made a lot of people angry and to many signified a spiral of doom for the entire Mana series that continues to this very day. I LOVE this game.

It's difficult to explain why, but I'm doing a blog for a reason, so here it goes. The game starts with the premise that the world got horribly screwed up, so it was more less laid bare, every person or place stripped away so they can be placed down anew, restored. The first thing to be put back is a simple home containing an avatar of the Goddess of Mana, part of the ongoing theme that connects the entire Mana series. You are, of course, that avatar.

As the game progresses, you find other items, each of which physically personify a location on the planet. You place these objects in any order and locations that you see fit, slightly altering their nature and thus the monsters you fight and quests you can earn there. Slowly, the world expands, creating towns, caverns, beaches, dungeons, towers, and usual RPG features. However, because of the game's design, there's no single unifying story arc that drives things. Instead, as inhabited locations become available, major individuals can be encountered, and their introductions start any of the three smaller story arcs available in the game. As you encounter these people in multiple locations and the plots get deeper, the adventures get more complex until you can get access to a "final dungeon" style location, containing a final boss for that arc.

In addition to the three main arcs, there are literally dozens of other quests, from amusing interactions with each city's locals to even smaller mini-arcs involving the fate of minor characters. The entire game eschews any realistic artistic style (not that the original Playstation could get too photorealistic in the first place,) in favor a more stylized, cartoon design with two dimensional graphics.

There are generally two things that Legend of Mana detractors complain about. The graphics are rarely one of them, since the earlier Mana games have a similar cartoon style and the artwork is both aesthetically pleasing, consistent throughout the world, and unique; you can always recognize a game by the Legend of Mana developers. The game play and story were much less successful. Secret of Mana (the first game in the series as far as many Americans were concerned) had an elaborate fighting system using top-down perspectives, chargeable weapons, and most importantly, as many as three players active at once! Conversely, Legend uses a side view with 3D elements but not graphics, letting characters move up and down to reach different levels of the ground but with almost no way of directly interacting above or below you. In other words, it was a traditional beat-em-up game like Final Fight with magic and slightly more options. In addition, while you can have as many as three characters on your team, one was always a computer-controlled golem or monster. The second character can be player controlled, but it was never a permanent part of the party, instead being related to the current story, one of the apprentices the main character gets early on, or the main character from the other player's save file. Either way, it's doubtful the second character will be at the same level of power that the main character is, either unbalancing the entire adventure or becoming useless as a result.

The story loses points, in some eyes, in the lack of focus, the way the individual story arcs could halt for hours while the avatar builds up the lands needed to continue them, and the often bizarre and surreal stories in the first place. Others complained that these arcs have nothing to do with the game's ultimate conclusion. You have to complete at least one of the main three (or possibly two, it's been a while,) to open up the final level, but which one you complete has almost no bearing on the final area or the game's story.

It's that surrealism that appeals to me, however. Say what you want about the stories in Legend of Mana, but they were almost nothing like the stories I had gotten accustomed to after so many RPGs. And the staggered way they were presented helps make the world itself seem more expansive and real. It wasn't just a line of quests, empty of any other point or motivation beyond serving you. Okay, it was, but it disguised this fact much more thoroughly. Combined with the often bittersweet and dark story arcs, a strange thing for such a fancifully styled game, and it makes the world much more real.

But all that still wouldn't be enough were it not for the music, which is flawless. From the exciting action scores to the sorrowful dirges of ruined towns to the epic conclusions of the story arcs, the music constantly captures the tone of the game and accentuates it. Done by Yoko Shimomura, famous for her work with Kingdom Hearts and countless other games, it manages to do something that even now rarely happens to me; it created a video game that made me cry. And it didn't just do it once. No, the ending of one of the three arcs has made me cry every time I beat it. Who knows if it still would today, but I certainly couldn't resist it in those days.

Between the music, the art, the often touching stories, and the sheer expanse of the game, it remains a personal favorite. I didn't even get into the more complex features, from the weapon and armor forging to the garden and even programming the simple AI logic of your pet golems. This game, like Majora's Mask, taught me that if one is to make a story about saving the world, one can't do so without making characters worth saving.