Legend of Mana fansite

Hello visitor! Welcome to The Holy Tree a shrine/fansite about Legend of Mana (in Japanese 聖剣伝説 レジェンド·オブ·マナ), one of the best and most underrated games ever made and my favourite game ever. Legend of Mana is an action jRPG that was released on 15 July 1999 in Japan and on 7 June 2000 in the USA for the PSX, and remastered in 2021 for Switch, PS4, Windows, iOS and Android.

It is the 4th game in the Mana series (聖剣伝説 Seiken Densetsu in Japanese), developed by Square Enix and is hugely underappreciated in favor of its much more famous older sibling Secret of Mana. The game is unfairly not liked or unknown by other Mana series fans (I took this info from subreddits) mainly because of its unique gameplay (which I think is a shame because this is the charm of the game).

In 2000, the game received a 5 volume manga adaptation written and illustrated by Shiro Amano (the same mangaka responsible for the adaptations of the Kingdom Hearts series) that added personality for the game's silent protagonists and adapted the 3 main game arcs (I'll talk more about the game arcs on their own page). Recently, in the fall season of 2022, the game was adapted into a 12 episode anime series by Studio Graphinica, which took a different approach to the game's story and adapted only the Jumi arc. The game also has a TCG released only in Japan in 1999. Also, it's the only game in the Mana series to have this many adaptations!!

In Legend of Mana, the player (you) controls a silent protagonist that is tasked with the mission to restore a destroyed Fa'Diel to its former glory, and you do this by completing different side quests where you receive a magical world-building item, called an artifact, that is planted on the game's map and creates a new place (either a city or a dungeon). The game has 3 main arcs (side quests) and many small arcs with different NPCs; some of them are sequential, and all of the NPCs appear in a quest at some point! Other features of it include: no random battles, a complex weapon/armor forging system (optional), and infinite continues upon each death. I'll talk more about the game in the about page (to be created).

Why Legend of Mana is the best

Legend of Mana was one of the first games I ever played as a kid. At that time I only played PC and browser games, but one time when the PC broke my brother showed me some Playstation games to play, and LOM was one of them (this was way long ago that I don't even remember correctly, so this could be a fake memory lol). It wasn't love at first sight; LOM was just a game that I had to play at that time, but its whimsical atmosphere started growing on me, especially because I didn't know English then and I used a guide, so everything was even more mysterious (I still remember the time when I found out about the dragon's arc and played in a bunch of different lands that I haven't played before).

But my experience is so nostalgic and personal that it may not convince you to play the game, so I made a list with 12 reasons why LOM is the best game ever:

• The soundtrack is amazing, created by the wonderful artist, Yoko Shimomura.
• The game art is pixel art combined with hand-painted backgrounds, and both of them are gorgeous.
• All of the NPCs are relevant; each character participates in at least one quest.
• The gameplay is easy, and you have infinite continues after dying (so no need to buy tons of items).
• You can unlock a harder mode after beating the game once if you want a challenge.
• The game is customizable; you can choose your character's gender, name, weapon, and magic (the last too you can change anytime), and you can shape the world the way you like to.
• You can tame cute monsters to use them as pets.
• The game has a co-op mode where you can play with a friend that controls a recruitable party character.
• Each time you play is unique, you can always find new quests and stories (as long as you don't use a guide!).
• Fa'Diel, the in-game world, is a whimsical world full of magical creatures, like faeries, mermaids, dragons, magical teapots and unique races like the jumis (humanoid people with a gemstone as their life force).
• It doesn't have random battles and you can't run away from monsters so it makes grinding nonexistence.
• The game features a lot of strong women.

About this Shrine

This shrine is supposed to be a tribute and an amalgamation of Legend of Mana stuff. I want to both add my personal feelings about this game and add more factual stuff like trivia and guides. I'll try to mark all pages with spoilers as such so I'm not going to ruin the experience for anyone (and by spoilers, read that you finished the game at least once).

The reason to create this shrine is to throw on the web more information about this game that is so underrated and not that known, that makes a bit of obscure in finding information about it online. And since it's also my favourite game, I wanted to create a page to express my love towards it and create a HQ for everything Legend of Mana.

The shrine is still incomplete, so check back later for more content!

Site Updates

• 23/10/2024 - Added the Links page.
• 12/10/2024 - Site released.

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