One common theme old mana games is they start with a fall down a waterfall. 1,2,3

I love this game. Now I play it via emulation. It's primitive but still enjoyable.

Palm trees and an 8. Get it?

Not mentioned: when you Level up, you pick which of 4 stats (strength, intellect, vitality, or willpower) gets a big boost (2 points). The two stats "adjacent" to that stat then get 1 point, and the "opposite" stat gets nothing. Strength is attack power, Intellect is spell power and Max MP, Vitality is defense and Max HP, and Willpower makes your weapon "super meter" fill up faster and faster the higher it gets. With this system, simple though it may be, you can build your character in a lot of different ways. You can go stereotypical warrior and pump up strength, which then gives you decent vitality and willpower, but almost no MP, making all your spells except for Heal and Cure totally worthless. You can TRY to be a Mage by focusing on Int, but uh... don't. Just don't. Spells are underpowered at best and most bosses are all but immune to them. I remember fighting Dark Lord with the one "mage" I tried to build and I had to hit him with literally hundreds and Fire spells, running away non-stop and chugging Ethers for 30+ grueling minutes. You can go Willpower and still have okay Magic and HP, but your defense will be awful and the bar doesn't really reach a point of being usefully fast until you're halfway through the game, making the early going a total slog. Or you can try the tank route by focusing on vitality, which gives you great HP and pretty good strength and willpower, but again your spellcasting is pretty much worthless (aside from healing again). Or you can try any number of more balanced approaches. The game never says "no" and you can pick any of the 4 stats to be the "good" stat for every single level up, so you can just pick what feels right in the moment or set up some sort of "stat rotation" like, Strength on even levels and Willpower on Odd levels, or whatever you can come up with. For an original GameBoy title, that's some deep-ass character customization. But hey, I have really high-strength prescription rose-tinted glasses for this game; I got it for my birthday when I was in middle school and played it through from start to finish dozens of times for the better part of a decade. I love this game to death despite the numerous faults pointed out in this video, none of which I can really argue against. The game is frequently plodding, janky, obtuse, frustrating and repetitive... but I love it anyway.

Final Fantasy Adventure, and it’s 50 names, was the first game I ever played. I am so old!!!!

One of the first JRPGs I played as a kid! I love it

This game nailed the franchise concepts from the start. On a gameboy, with a workable system that had more variance than 99% of other gameboy games. Absolutely masterful creation that led to two of the best action rpgs of the 16 bit era.

Just finished it, it was amazing imagine 1991 and being 10 playing this, wow

Of all the games I played, I definitely played this one.

I love this game. Its my favorite game in the series to play solo. I never understood why you could guide your character's stat growth in this but lost this option in the SNES sequel. Trials fixed that but then for some reason restricted each character to one weapon type. They could have had each character have a ranged weapon type and a melee weapon type, or gain access to more weapon types when they change classes for example.

one of the videos i've ever watched!

It's incredibly unfair to judge a game against what came after it. The button layout argument holds no water because of that. It was an idea thought up years after this released. This game is a product of its time. Most who played it when it was new (myself included because I'm damn old) loved. The love only got stronger years later after it came out that it was Mana's big brother.

In complete retrospec, as someone who loved both games, its kind of funny to state FFA as jank and leave SOM alone. SOM was a great game, but that game also had its share of jank. Jank movement, Jank hitboxes, Jank AI from both sides (allies and enemies). Jank systems. It was far from clean gameplay too, it just looked a lot nicer. Both were absolutely pushing beyond the limits of what their consoles could do at the time with this stuff.

Went through this game at least 10 times back in the day. This and Link's Awakening are my favorite Gameboy games. As for wanting the sound off? Nope. Love the soundtrack

Except for the dungeon theme, I absolutely LOVE the music. I found the idea of the power moves awesome, magic was a great addition, and I still play it on an emulator once in a while. I only have fond memories about this game (except for the stupid ice magic maze)

This game was amazing. Especially when it was one of the few RPGs I had that was portable. I loved it a lot. Sorry you didn't have the same experience. I liked the villains actually. Not going to spoil though

I remember when I never got to play Final Fantasy 6 only because it was no longer sold in stores. This was the game I played in exchange for that and honestly wasn't too bad. Yes back then if you didn't play the games at that time they were off the shelves. They were probably making room for N64 or Gamecube games :(.

Your videos are amazing. I shall leave a flower 🌼 and wait for it to fully bloom. Once it does I'll give you a tree.

So basically what you're saying is, if you want to experience the story in the first game of the Mana-Series, play the mobile remake, Adventure of Mana instead. Or better yet, the enhanced remake, Sword of Mana for GBA?

This is the game review ever made!

Trials of Mana is so good!

Played this through totally legal means when I was a teenager discovering new games (I grew up with 2 N64 games and about 4 PS1 games). Since I was at least vaguely familiar with Zelda at the time, the gameplay hooked me right from the start, even through the jank. Ultimately, I think this is the game that introduced me to JRPGs, and ever since, they have become my favorite game genre. Criticisms toward the game are warranted, in retrospect. I'm curious what you think of the GBA remake, Sword of Mana. Most discourse I've seen on that game is that people prefer the original, but that could just be nostalgia. I never really played enough of it to form my own opinion. And THANK YOU for saying what I've been thinking about Final Fantasy VI for years. I get why people love it, but damn is that game depressing. I've never wanted to beat a game so fast just to make the world less shitty.

The editing here is really nice, loved the way you zoomed out on footage for dramatic effect, and the metacritic edit got a chuckle out of me ngl. Also really interesting you brought up FF stories progressively getting darker since I had a bit of a realization SD1 was oddly dark-toned for a GB RPG mainly compared to SOM and SD3. But I have to disagree with a lot of points made. While condensed, SD1's translation was actually pretty solid for the English text limits and the time I'd say. Some of the mistranslations were actually not mistranslations, such as the "can't carry" text. While a bit awkward at times, the lack of "the" before proper nouns is forgivable given the limitations, never really found it an issue. That said it does omit Sumo's extra vow to avenge Willy near the end of the game which is a pretty glaring oversight, glad to see you brought it up. On a side note, as far as I know there is no mention of Hasim being Fuji's brother, merely her escort. Regarding the aesthetic, I found it rather charming. The world is a lot more bleak than future Mana games, so the minimalism and almost robotic nature of the game (the electric sounding chocobo remix really comes to mind) really add to it imo. I would have rec'd playing the game with the tea midori shader or similar though, as it does a great job bringing out the nature environments compared to the pallet you used in your footage. *spoilers* I also disagree with the game unnecessarily killing characters as only two party members die and one of them begins as a villain. I also think you were a bit harsh declaring they had nothing to them aside from one attack a piece. Even years later I still vividly remember Amanda's bravery and sacrifice, the Mysterious Man's manipulative nature, or the scene of Lester honouring his sister through his musical talent. With so many playable characters and the game's short runtime I feel as though the characterization was perfectly adequate. Axes were overwhelmingly powerful when charged as well and had solid range for early game particularly. However I agree the items overall could have been handled better though, mostly due to the rare drops for the best items being a bit of a pain, or the keys not being used automatically. I don't think it's bottom of the barrel compared to other 8-bit games, at least. Even though I played it after the SNES entries, it's definitely my favourite Mana game after SD3 since I was able to look past the early installment weirdness. Regardless, you did an entertaining job presenting your ideas for one of the jrpgs in existence, I'd be interested to see your thoughts in the reimagining Sword of Mana as I still have yet to play it.

You're going crazy.

I actually played the GBA remake "Sword of Mana" before getting to play this version, which I didn't even know WAS the original version of that game when I bought it semi blind. It's clunky for sure, but given the age, still fun to mess with.

I loved this game lol

this game has the best music

Definitely one of the jrpgs of all time

Mana isnt really about beauty Is actually a religion game if you take a closer look to the details, it consist of animism stone age mythology. The mana tree is mother nature and characters are like the princess and her mother are the seeds of mana representing the incarnation of motherearth. In the Legend of mana PS1 talks about a reincarnation heroe from the previous game secret of mana being himself again in legend of mana. Thats the only detail i know so far but im Actually starting getting into it

The music is really good. And when it comes to the gameplay, there is a vast open world which was pretty good on the Gameboy when you compare to the other games. Definitely one of the best games of the platform (though it was much worst than the incredibly good Zelda game)

"Say"-ken not "sigh"-ken

A very well-spoken review with good quips! I look forward to seeing your reviews for the rest of the series!

I blame Kingdom hearts. "There can only be one action combat rpg series. Mana can try other things." --hypothetical no one.

Thanks for pronouncing the name of the game the same way I do and always have. People that say "Mahn-uh" can go live on an island somewhere far away from us.

Why did you add Mt. Metorx's Theme from Star Ocean: First Departure R ? Try to add the atmosphere to the mix ?😎

Love your videos bro, you are a pro at this!

why is your video title half finished?

Meh, it's one of my favorite GB games of all time, the story and soundtrack are amazing and the gameplay, while a tad outdated, still holds up. To each their own I guess.

I can't see somebody running this game down. It was an early gameboy title that was pretty ambitious. The other mana games were not out yet obviously so of course they wouldn't make it similar to those 🙄

If you didn't play the SNES games at the time they were around you never got to play them because they always replace it with the next new console. That's one good thing that came out of the modern times. They replaced SNES games with N64 ones. Even as a fucking kid I knew SNES was way better than N64. I could predict it.

Final fantasy adventure is not a bad title. Squaresoft release 2 title in hope to further develop one of them bae on sale.

Secret and Trials were kinda disappointing after playing this game. Later games have never been able to capture the pure 'adventure' vibe this game had.

This is my first FF game lol and given into my curiosity to look it up rather than f around and find out with it.

For it's time it was badass, you used Zelda from another handheld to compare it. Young people today, you said they wanted to see how much they could push the hardware. Bingo buddy!

This was so well made, super impressed by the way you presented your ideas and the editing of the video is 👌

I just bought the mana collection,and wanted to experience this game. After 5 hours I no longer want to 😂 It started well and I was having fun,but I became increasingly frustrated as the hours went by. Really good video!

the JRPG ever made.

That shit was badass back then when it was all we had fella.

Bought this when it first came out. Did not care for it because of the story. Just got done playing it over netplay with a friend to see if my opinion changed. Even worse this time. Story is crap. Just a bunch of fetch quests. Leveling up magic is a tedious bore. The armor was so overpowered that half the game we took little damage and a few boss fights we took 0 damage. The end boss was killed with little effort. Final fantasy adventure was 1000 times better and we are now playing part 3 and are an hour into it and it way better than secret of mana.

this game really was

What a fun review of this game. I've never played any mana games and was thinking about starting with the first. NOPE. Gonna jump straight to the mana games.

I....don't love Secret of Mana. Secret of Evermore is better! 😄

the indeed

This game is great. You're just a baby who is spoiled by all the conveniences of modern gaming.

among us when?

You didn’t play the game

nice take!

Tbh the entire video feels like a case of Seinfeld Is Unfunny. You're expecting too much of a GB game.

Thumbs down for bad grammer