Ok, first try at this.
I had played this game so many times dating back to when it first came out in 1993. This was back when Square, the developer, could do no wrong. (For those that don't know, they were "Final Fantasy guys") Due to the game sending me into frustrating rages at more times than I needed, I had never really had the patience to actually finish the game. Despite this, I always really liked the game, and, with some help from a walkthrough, I finally completed it.
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| Close to the end.... |
The game is an action-adventure type with RPG elements. (Meaning you get experience and "level up" during gameplay) The controls are pretty well done, and the graphics are really, really well done. It's a big game, and you'll spend tons of time playing it.
The story is something like this: You're this kid, see, and one day when screwing about in the woods with your delinquent friends, you happen to fall off a bridge you were not supposed to be playing on. You fall off into a pool at the base of a large waterfall and you start to hear a voice. The voice is not the result of a concussion, but is a nearby sword.
The sword beckons you to pull it out, and, well, you do.
Now, the sword has a background of sorts. The story is something like this - The land is full of magic, or in this case, Mana. There's a Mana Tree, and there was a Mana Fortress. In the past, a "bad guy" had gotten control of the Mana Fortress and was out to destroy the Mana Tree because he wanted power and decided that being as difficult as possible was the best way from point A to B. There was also a "good guy" who had used the sword, or rather, the Mana Sword, to beat up the "bad guy", remove the Fortress, and save the Mana Tree, and in doing so, also the world.
Once this was done, he planted the sword in a rock, Excalibur-style, and the only person who can remove it is the next "good guy" who has to save the world again.
Where it sorta gets me is that, after you pull the sword, bad stuff starts to happen. Once you take the sword back to your village the NPCs there seem to explain that the whole reason things are going badly is because you pulled the sword. After completing your first boss fight in said village, they cast you out, leaving you to a grand quest of basically cleaning up your own mess.
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| Oops... |
What follows afterwards is a massive sprawl of beautiful pixel landscapes and loads of colorful enemies and sometimes maddeningly-frustrating bossfights. I really have to express just how good looking the game is. I'm a big sucker for the pixel art, so it was right up my alley.
As I said before, it is a pretty big game, and with a walkthrough it did take me several days to complete. I really cant say just how long as I did take breaks and am just adding this game after the fact since I recently completed it, and am not playing through it currently.
Things that I did not like about it - I did not like how the game sometimes felt vague about what it was I was supposed to do next. I felt that without a walkthrough that my dumb ass would not have completed it. I also did not like the magic system. I mean, the system itself isn't bad, but in order to make many boss fights bearable, you'll have to spend lots of time grinding magic in order to level it up. Later in the game as you gain access to more magic, the time spent grinding seems to increase. This can get really boring, really fast.
I did like the game though, and would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of JRPGs, regular RPGs, "oldschool" gaming, or pixel art. That being said though, now that I finished it, I'd probably never play it again.
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| Spoiler alert...? |
HuckleCat
