Monday, July 29, 2019

Sword of Mana, Part 2 - Overnight Guest

Forget Neko the merchant cat. Now we've got Niccolo, a rabbit with a sombrero.

In this episode, I continue on a bit, then do the second intro (this time for the Boy), then continue on again.


Aw, son of a bitch!

Popoi...no relation to Popoie, of Secret of Mana fame. Will I cover Secret of Mana too? I probably should.

Britty is weirdly polite. I'm just not used to this from characters in games.

Not only is the Magic Rope great for escaping dungeons, it also means Britty can tie down Jer when he gets unruly.

Oh, there it is. She finally flips out and beats him up for some reason. Moving on quickly

::Flashback graphics ensue::

It's time now to cut back to the intro of the Boy's scenario. I can't continue much further without showing what happens there.

He's in jail with Willy, his best friend.

All wrong. He was eating...Britty.

He doesn't know her name yet though.

That's right.

lul

Here's Amanda, the Boy's canon love interest. This is turning into a convention of characters who immediately died in FFA.

This intro actually follows the beats of the FFA intro. This is why it was important to do this before continuing.

And now, a word from our leader.

Dark Lord: "Damn, it feels good to be Dark Lord."

If you're going to try to pass yourself off as a benevolent, heroic leader, why not call yourself Light Lord or something?

But you're not actually fighting anyone, you're just bullying vastly-weaker nations and taking their crystals and shit. Of course you won't lose. That isn't the point.

"Hail Victory! Hail Victory!"

So, Glaive is now called Granz.

Meanwhile Jer and Willy are face-to-face with Spiky Tiger as the mob awaits BLOOD.

This guy is a literal beast. Luckily, there are two of us! We can win if we work together.

...annnnd Willy proceeds to walk right into the nearest wall and get stuck. I see the Legend of Mana ally AI is in full effect here.

I win the battle, no thanks to WILLY. In a just world, I'd team up with the also-imprisoned Spiky Tiger and we'd jump up to the stadium seats to murder Dark Lord instead.

"But remember, here in Granz Empire, we're all winners!"

Our heroes toast Dark Lord while mumbling under their breath.

And on that note... Willy died here in FFA. Not the case now. Dammit, we have a wrong to put right for Willy!

Our heroes escape during all of the post-fight hoopla, only to run right into Dark Lord.

Dark Lord asks them to join his legion, and they politely decline.

Jer gets knocked off the bridge and falls down the waterfall, as is tradition. What of Willy, though?

Jer gets caught on the fishing line of Niccolo, who hauls him onto the shore.

My...God.

And that's how he got to find Britty rummaging in the grass.

I probably should have covered this intro first, but c'est la vie.

Back in the present of the main scenario, our heroes go outside so Jer can teach Britty how to jump.

She jumps around while Jer ponders the meaning of life.

"HELLO!"

I tantalizingly find a Cannon Travel location. Unfortunately the crew are nowhere to be found, so I can't use it yet.

The first non-starting weapon is acquired. Either character can switch to it. The Bow is one of my lesser-favorite weapons in Secret of Mana, and it functions exactly the same way here. I guess it was always upstaged by the Boomerang (due to Zelda similarity) for me. And then you find the Whip which is even cooler than that and also strikes at range. Yeah, I never got much use out of the Bow.

Brit is adorable running around with it, at least. At this point things veer towards FFA, with a creepy mansion and a swamp as our next accessible goals.

I arrive at Vinquette Hall, and the gate is locked. Not sure what to do, so I wander aimlessly for a bit.

I get the option to build a hot house, the domain of Lil' Cactus.

Hot house makes me think of this:

The torch of Gondor is LIT.

The hot house sprouts out of the ground. What is even happening

This is absolutely a fusion of Final Fantasy Adventure and Legend of Mana. It has comparatively little in common with Secret of Mana or Seiken Densetsu 3.

Inside the hot house is Lil' Cactus of LoM fame. My God.

This little bastard doesn't have much to say yet.

There's also a giant tree with a face. This place is like the Tardis.

After wandering around for about a half hour and not being able to figure out what to do next, I stop by Vinquette Hall and now it's...open? Maybe it only needs to be night-time, being the lair of the Count and all.

Nope. Hopefully the Vampire isn't as tough as he is in FFA.

At this point I took advantage of the near-broken game mechanics to level up my new weapon by firing it at an unkillable, inanimate spell stone. You can level all your weapons to level 99 while AFK by doing this with an automatic controller. Any time a new weapon is acquired, it's a good idea to level it up fast on the nearest stone.

Once that's done and the Bow has some power, I'm ready for the next phase. This place is clearly a vampire lair in this remake, no being coy about it.

They don't even try to hide that the butler is some kind of undead weirdo. That or he's just inexplicably purple like Julius.

They really made an effort with this part of the game. It's atmospheric and interesting.

A busty milk-wench welcomes our heroes to the world's shadiest hostel.

Brit wants to get out of here, and Jer calls her huffy!

I don't know if she's upset because this inn is CREEPY AS F**** or if she's upset because she has to sleep next to... a BOY. GROSS.

Later that night, our heroes get restless and go for a walk.

Isabella is such a hot name.

Brit has a couple drinks and begins to lust for yuri.

Oh baby.

...they then kick Jer out of the room for about 40 minutes. I don't know what happened.

That's true, because this guy has been a fighting slave for so long.

He immediately falls asleep.

Brit then lies awake restlessly.

Later...

Noises stir Brit up in the middle of the night and she finds herself under attack by BATS.

A spirit pops out of the fireplace and starts ranting and raving.

That's...the second spirit, I believe. I liked him more when he was Salamando. As far as what spells this imparts, I'll get to that in a minute.

Here's the coffin room where the seedy Mr. Lee keeps his victims. Yep, I remember all of this from FFA.

The coffins contain Mana Women. They used to be called Mana Girls, but it's 2019.

Miniboss fight with a werewolf. Have to do this alone, though with the AI being what it is, it isn't much of a loss. Fighting with both characters is very different from FFA having you only fight with the Boy and hide behind the Girl for heals.

We hear the first rumblings of the ruler of the mansion. His name is Count Lee, and he's a vampire.

Scene change to the Count's lair, where Isabella asks him what he thinks about the new additions to their zoo.

"ONE TWO THREE! HAW HAW!"

::lightning crashes::

I just remembered something else I don't like about this game...

The spell trajectories. What an attack spell does depends on what weapon you have equipped. Each elemental has a different support spell (Wisp has Heal, Salamando has Power Up ((which makes you hit 2X as hard for a little while and makes the game even more profoundly easy)), etc etc. Each elemental has one spell, basically. They all have a second spell, which is an attack spell, but guess what? Every attack spell in the game is the same. No Gem Missles or Earth Slides in this game. The only difference between each elemental's attack is the color. And I guess some of them do more damage to enemies weak against them, but even that's questionable since Salamando (Fire) and Wisp (Light)'s attack spells both did the same meager damage to the Vampire, which we can assume is Dark/fears light.

And yes, besides the color, THEY'RE ALL THE SAME SPELL. I'd take FFA's spells over this, actually. There was that fireball...that at least looked like a fireball...if FFA were this game, the fireball would have just turned blue if it were Undine casting it. And they follow weapon trajectories. With the sword/vibrating lollipop equipped, attack spells fly like Cage's green fireball in MK2, kind of an arc. With the bow equipped, they go up and fall back down, which is almost impossible to actually hit anything with. Wish I'd realized sooner that spell graphics change only with weapon (here I thought my new spell was different from the old one at the time) and equipped the vibrator again before I casted. With the whip equipped, spells fly in a nice straight line along the ground. Gotta say, not too impressed with Sword of Mana so far, but hey...it's FFA, and at least we're getting to see what it's like. It's been on the list for a while.





1 comment:

  1. Damn, Bethesda got us again.

    The sprites are pretty great in this.

    I suppose it's possible that the vampire is weak to light AND fire, but then it's a bit odd to have the "choice" when those are your only two spells.

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