After suffering from anime watching OD (where I couldn't get myself to watch anime yet was still feeling excessive amounts of ennui), I decided to take up a few games to cure my boredom. In the overall case, my opinion is that Legend of Mana is significantly better than Seiken Densetsu 3, despite what everyone else says.
In actuality I had started Legend of Mana a while ago (about 5 years ago, when I was still in high school) yet never finished it because I was told the game copy I had (which was an illegal CD >.> ) had some bug where if I beat the game it would freeze. Not liking that, I never beat the game. Eventually I lost my memory card as well and I stopped playing Legend of Mana (along with some other PS games). During this summer I had the random idea to try Legend of Mana again but I remembered I thought it was an awesome game. And I still think its an awesome game. Legend of Mana encourages a large amount of creativity and innovation while still setting enough rules for the game to work (a game without rules isn't fun, and rules are sometimes where creativity can stem from as well). The gameplay isn't hard at all so the player doesn't necessarily have to focus on levelling to beat the boss but instead on other more interesting aspects of the game. (There is actually a nico video of an example where a person didn't level at all - by not collecting EXP crystals - and yet beat the game in "No Future" mode where all monsters and bosses were level 99... it was really amusing). Of these aspects there are pet raising, golem making, instrument (magic) making, weapon/armor tempering, skill learning, and quests in general for the player to go through. IMO each aspect in itself can be a "game" of sorts and the player can decide which one he wants to do in the game. I've tried my share in working all of these except the golem making and found it very entertaining.
-Pet raising is fun in that you grow fruit and then feed them to pets and their stats and personality change. It's quite amusing to see how your pet acts in the battlefield due to their personality and watch stats rise rediculously high as you feed them delicious foods with fun names.
-Instrument Making I haven't looked into significantly especially since there's no real FAQ guide on it, although the concept is simple enough. I just created strong enough magic instruments for me to use in the game.
-Tempering can be very entertaining, yet extremely complicated. The FAQs liken it to chemical reactions and this is what insterested me. First off, you can temper almost ANYTHING you get into a weapon or armor. This includes the fruit you grow in your backyard or the random (and seemingly useless) items you win in battles. and of course these things have effects that can modify your weapon and armor. These effects, like the FAQ says, can work similar to compounds in a chemical reaction; there are even things like catalysts to get over an energy barrier and reach another level, and cards/compounds which won't work if combined with other things. It can be dangerous as well, since it can lower the effectiveness of your tempering item. Finally it can also be a good way to earn money since some things you compound will be worth more after you temper some things together. Overall I never became an expert on this and worked on it only for one night, but it was really fun and I made some spiffy weapon that OHKOs monsters with one arrow shot and OHKOs bosses with one special.
In sort, I had much too much fun with tempering. :V
-Skill Learning isn't as complicated but it also isn't just "level up, learn a new skill". There are some basic skills set that one can use and depending on the combination of basic skills one can learn new skills and even some new special techniques with the weapon they're using. This isn't very complicated but each skill does somethign different in battle so its fun to play around with a bunch of moves and set up a character that works for the player. There's even a way to load other characters from the memory card and battle them... that's actually quite fun if I had more players to play LoM with. Well, my sister is playing but it will be hard to play her since she's still pretty new and it would be rather unfair if I battled her in the arena. :P
-And of course, quests to make the story interesting. There's no linear plotline but there's three main stories one has to get through in order to activate the final quests in the game. I only got through one of the stories in my most recent trial and remembered getting through another a long time ago, but there was one more I haven't finished so I'll be getting through that one soon. Overall in terms of the characters its probably without a doubt that Pearl is the most moe character in LoM (with main character debatable but I used the less-moe character so I dunno :V). This is especially because about 70% of the characters are some animal hybrid (ie, furry) and of the other 30% only Pearl acts rather cutely in compared to the others...well... Diana could probably be moe too.
Actually, I take that back. Pearl is the most humanlike moe character, but characters like Elle (a siren) and Flameshe (a mermaid) are very moe too. But you can't get Flameshe as a partner and Elle can only use magic, which is cool but rather limited. Well. If you use Pearl she can't do crap until she turns into another character, which then she's not moe, HOWEVER IF YOU'RE USING PEARL YOU CAN COMBO YOUR CROUCHES AND I FIND THIS ENTERTAINING FOR WHATEVER REASON.
AAAB236BXY- long chain combo for any usual character. For Pearl it gets you like 5-6 crouches in a row. Why do this? I dunno, but it sure is entertaining. :V
Seiken Densetsu 3.
I found this game remarkably cheesey and rather lame compared to the ratings it gets, but perhaps it was innovative and new at the time. Obviously with the whole stat raising and real time action gameplay it gives it plays a lot like RO so I never had that much trouble playing the game. Despite what others may say I don't think the difficulty of the game is that high if you're playing normally- I died about 2 times because I did some stupid stuff but otherwise it seemed pretty easy. Although my game style is to level quite some levels before playing the boss and I also had a healer so it might have been that I just had a really easy team to use. Maybe its a bit annoying in that I didn't know what to do sometimes so I had to use the guide (where it tells me something stupid, usually, but not as bad as when I'm lost in LoM. Geez like 3 times when I got stuck and had no idea how to continue the quest even though it seemed like I went everywhere it told me "go home and... etc" and I'm like "wtf" and I go home and boom the quest continues and I feel dumb). The storylines... could be better. Final Fantasy storylines definitely make SD3's storylines seem rather lame, especially since plot is so predictable... even if there ARE different stories for different characters... but oh well. I got through the game anyway.
So WHY did I play this game in the first place, then, if I didn't find much interest in it? It's because of RIESZ. The ONLY thing you'll probably find if you search for SD3 fanart is pictures of Riesz, who for whatever reason is made to be incredibly moe. Not that she wasn't moe in the game, but perhaps because she's the best looking and has the best personality out of the three girls (one is a loli, the other is... a term I prefer not to use, but let's just say she's good with the opposite gender). SO ESSENTIALLY, because she's everywhere whenever SD3 is mentioned I decided to play the game just so I know her story and know what's going on, and so when I go look at SD3 fanart I don't feel guilty for not knowing who she is and can fully appreciate the art, so to speak.
...:V
Afterwards I tried Xenogears but I couldn't get it to work (gets stuck in the world map) so I gave up and decided to end my gaming for the summer (with the exception of replaying some LoM at times). But OMG RIESZ IS SO MOE WHYYYYY. :(
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