Under Cover Art

Legend of Mana is the fourth game in the Mana series. While incorporating elements from the three games which preceded it, Legend of Mana has its own distinct style of gameplay. Most notably, it gives the player the ability to shape the game‘s world according to his or her desires, a system which was incorporated through the use of “artifacts”, which are won as the player progresses through the game. The player uses the artifacts to create different towns, dungeons, etc., called “Lands”, to venture to and explore. This creates a non-linear gameplay, since the game is driven by a series of what would be considered side-quests in other games. Legend of Mana features three different plots which occur simultaneously, and which do not necessarily need to be completed for the player to finish the game. Due to this fact the game is highly replayable; there are also different difficulty levels to make the playthrough more challenging. While Legend of Mana is generally regarded as the fourth installment in the series, the next console-based Mana game, Dawn of Mana, is the official fourth game (in Japan, it is known as Seiken Densetsu 4). As such, Legend of Mana may be more accurately considered a side-story, or gaiden, to the series. After the player chooses to play as either a male or female character and selects a starting weapon, the screen shifts to a world map, in which the player is asked to pick a square area as the game’s play field. The selected area then becomes, for all …