Which Version of Legend of Mana Should You Play? - All Ports + Remaster Compared & Reviewed 

finally someone mentions the frame issues with the pc version

"Music by Yoko Shimimoura" Goddammit, why is she so great?

A masterpiece is all I can say about this game. Unlike any other game and just a joy to play and look at and Listen too!!!

This was a great video! Very informative and you gave a lot of information!

I am so sad to see this game isn't selling better. I love the Mana series and this game so much that I bought it digitally on switch, even though I imported the physical. Only way we will bring Mana and other iconic series back is by supporting them.

Why does Square always drop the ball in making truly definitive versions of their rereleases/remasters/remakes? I'll never understand.

My favorite game 🤙

What the helllll, they put Spanish, French but no Italian 🤨. Guess I'll play in English.

Sadly character sprites are soooo pixelated :(

Such a beautiful game, I want to love it but the combat is so boring

really good content. I like ports review :)

I for one am glad the Mana series is finally getting some proper love!

The issue with the item stats still being in accurate/being based on the English version seems like a massive oversight. Any chance SQEX would fix it?

I really like how they did the remaster here. The backgrounds especially look good. They may clash a bit with the characters sprite, but I can tolerate it here. Most SquareEnix's remasters of their older games seem to have at art clashing issue of some kind (FF9 is the worst for me. The 3d is fine but the 2d looks too blurry). Loosing the ability to bring in another player's character is a bit of a shame, but it isn't that big of a deal. Fighting in the arena will lose its major appeal. Never knew about the weapon, health and ai changes. Or it's been so long I forgot about it. As cheap as the game is, this one is an easy sell for me, but being digital only, I'll wait to buy it when I have time. I'll be getting it on PC. I'm sure the frame stutter will be fixed eventually.

They left the incorrect statistics in the game? Why is Square so colossally shit at porting these retro titles? God, man.

Will you make a video on Dragon Quest 3 when the HD-2D remake comes out?

I wish they'd give this much love to FF 6.

They should have left the fonts pixelated, i prefer the old one for its uniqueness of the graphics.

I would rather just play my ps1 disc, but it always freezes at a certain boss fight. Playing remasters always feels clunky and awkward to me for some reason, and things like name/face changes always really bother me.

Played it to completion twice. Once to find out how it ends, second time to enjoy the world. I never complete the game again because the moment Hometown Domina plays I was taken to the past and I would just sit there listening to the music.

That soundtrack redo is godlike. I only had issues with To the Sea, as they changed the pacing from flow to this weird choppiness. But on the other hand you get Searching Beyond the Truth (Distant Truth in the original) and the added chants elevate this track to high heavens. Yoko Shimomura is goddess of jRPG OSTs.

It makes no sense to me remaster a title and keep the characters originally in pixelart style. So, to me, original pixelart is more consistent than this remaster one.

I'm really happy to hear that the original soundtrack is still an option. This should be standard whenever you remake a game like this. It's not like disc size is an issue anymore, just put the original sound files in there. Legend of Mana is one my favorite games and I'm stoked to see that the remaster seems pretty decent. There are some issues like the stat glitch and performance, but as someone who played through the original US release on a pretty shoddy emulator, it's no big deal.

i have completed this game many times and have the true fantasy set for RPG, make child day goes by with fun

Good overview. The only other thing I wish they had done in this remaster is make the crafting less cryptic! Why did they not give any kind of guide to players in game on how it works is baffling.

I know this is older but i would like to ask something- In the PS1 version, for sure the first release(i bought it at best buy the week it released) there were some bugs. most were not anything to really mention. however, there was a bug or bugs where if you had an NPC along for a quest, and failed the quest, (sometimes through player fault, sometimes through wierdness in the game like the NPC dissapeared during a screen transition on a map) then the game would simply be "stuck". And by that i mean, you could visit every single area you had, fight every enemy, talk to whoever happened to be around, but none of the NPC's were in the game because the game was still thinking you were on a particular quest. Except, you couldn't do the quest because the NPC was in limbo in the aether somewhere. This means the game would never progress, ever, ever again and your file was junk and you had to start over. Is this still a thing? Did they fix the vanishing NPC bug? Example from my last playthrough long ago- i think it is Dani?(the cat girl i think) and you have a quest with her on a map that reminds me of the top of the great wall of China(i forget all the area names, forgive me it's been at least 15 years) get to the boss. We are fighting it. I miscalculate something and die. Stupid mistake, i don;t even remember what it was. Anyway, respawn or whatever, except Dani is nowhere to be found on the level. The boss never spawns, if I recall. Or maybe it did and I beat it, but i think I reloaded a save file. Didn;t matter, Dai was gone forever, nowhere in the entire game, and now the game thought I was supposed to be fighting a boss with her and would never offer me another NPC or quest again from any area. that type of thing happened on multiple playthroughs for me, sometimes the NPC just vanished moving from one "room" in an area to the next. The fat cat guy vanished on the road map once for me, early on, but it borked the whole game. They fixed this right? I can;t make myself buy the remaster if this is still a thing, i don;t have time in my life to restart multiple times so i can complete one story arc without NPC's wandering off into a black hole.

By the way the stutter issues people were having on PC should be resolved now with recent patches.

The one thing I wanted from the remake was a correct fruit encyclopedia. That was it. Turning off encounters is an _acceptable_ substitute. A very nice feature indeed.

Legend of Mana Remaster is based on the U.S. version. The soundtrack was rearranged by Ryo Furukawa under the supervision of Yoko Shimomura. The rearranged soundtrack is available on digital storefronts in the U.S. The original version of the soundtrack is unfortunately Japan exclusive.

Love this game but I also would love a 3D remake of the game similar to the way trials got 😎

Your videos have become my go to for comparisons. Not just cause they show up most in searches (lol) but, also cause they're always quality content. Thank you so much for all the work you've done.

I feel like they missed out on a lot of qol changes made to the remaster, that makes the game's events, quests, pets, items etc. Less missable or even not missable at all. Cause that's a huge problem in this game, you still have to read guides online to fully complete the game.

This was my first and currently only Mana game I’ve played! It was good :) specifically the remake was my first. Also I played the multiplayer and it made me sad that barely any games are multiplayer anymore 😭

So, no version is worth buying then. Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks for the video. LoM was, and is, one of my favourite games of all times (with Breath of Fire IV being the second one). I loved it as a child, and when I replayed it couple of years ago. Now I am planning to buy the remake. Too bad that we don't have the collector's edition here in Poland.

5:15 Let me guess, the Japanese version of this port keeps the big lips.

Great video as usual! Would you be doing videos on the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters when they come out one by one? Or will you do them in bulk once the Pixel Remaster version of Final Fantasy VI comes out?

Ah yes, another excellent comparison video king

Well i had to test it And im sorry for the correction, but diceberries affect the personality, my pet is aggresive after 3 diceberries

Can you make a ninja gaiden video?

Missed this game alot 😢 . I remember my childhood especially ost ☺️

Offf, glad the pc version has its issues, otherwise I wouldn’t believe this is a square enix retro remake.

I bet PC-version performance issue happens thanks to the Denuvo. They remove it now and experience goes much smoother.

I’m loving the remaster! Huge fan of the original since 2000 and I’ve almost gotten the Platinum trophy.

Square has serious issues with pc versions.. I still loath ff15 steam (and not epic) version for all its freaking freezes it was terrible and never fixed even though the epic store version was fine

I feel ashamed in myself for not knowing Yoko made music for this and Kingdom Hearts. Both legendary ost's

I think the game still has framerate issues even now on PC. Square is known for not caring for the PC comunity. Which is a shame.

Oh nice, you used that xm29 CRT shader (probably with retroarch) while the new backgrounds look great if you played alot the original you can see differences in the artstyle. I just wish a company like Square adopt a option to use some sort a CRT shader in their older games, specially ones that have pixelart. But I must say given the option to a whole new OST and the abilite to turn off encounters this make pretty much the definitive edition. And talking about the weapons status I'm pretty sure someone will make a mod in the future making changes to be like the original JP release

Amazing review and exactly what I needed! Didn’t realise they’ve remastered it - all this time I’ve been playing it on an emulator!

I hope they will make this game 2D HD

Certainly buying the Switch version. Just would have liked if there was an option to retain the pixelated world visuals. And larger boss health.

It was better remastered than say, ff9. They didn’t even bother making it support widescreen and the pre rendered background wasn’t done like it was formthis game. But don’t get me wrong, I still love them bth 😅 ff9’s remake was just a bit lazy on some aspects lol

Does the PS4 version have the same framepacing issues as the PC issue? Not talking about the battle stutters (which I never really noticed from my memory of the PS1 version) which appeared to get mitigated with updates, but scrolling seems rough.

This might be the first Square soft/enix remaster I end up liking more than the orignal.

I got the steam remaster, but I keep playing the PS1 version using emulators on my Steam Deck, I don't like the technical issues, prefer the old look with CRT filter, oh, and also, the remaster won't run on my Steam Deck

3:43 Ah no wonder playing the PC version felt a bit different combat-wise, even if I've played / finished the original version on PS1 lots of times for many years. I thought I was just getting rusty from not having played the game again until recently for the PC remaster 😅 To be honest I'm surprised to find out that there were differences for combat-related stuff between the English and Japanese games for the original PS1 verion.

It just me or the resolution is locked at 720 and 768. Pc ver

use psx version on retroarch > it has this nice shader called "Denoisers" which make the graphic almost on par with the remake (the remake has hd background but very pixelated sprite which looks weird), and there's another one called mattias iirc it gave that authentic crt look just like in old days.

Considering forcing the game to run at a higher resolution is only going to blur to 2D artwork, not make it look better, combined with the stutters, it looks like there's zero advantage to the PC version over the console version. Yet another less-than-stellar PC port from a Japanese studio :(

The Legend of Mana is the best game overall. I like the game as there's no ATB or TBB. Screw the Final Fantasy series as Square Enix further ruined that series. #legendofmanaisbest

As always thank you for these videos, I'll pick this up some time in the future, need to grind away on some games before I buy more.

I play it on the Switch and love every minute of it. Going back to the PS1 version only works if playing on a PS1/2 with a CRT TV because the PS3 will upscale to 480i as the default giving it an ugly appearance. I call it a win because it's widely available and more affordable as an option to playing it.

Why have less hp for bosses ? Why can't Japaneese and U.S. versions be identical except for language ?

The most faithful remaster from SquareEnix. I don't understand how they struggle so much with FF.

I'm an oldie who fell in love with this game way back when it released on PS1. I absolutely grinded through this game to completion. Spend over a hundred hours trying to figure out forging and crafting with the help of early GameFaqs. I tried many times over the last decade or so to pick this game up again. Every time, I wouldn't last until the end, because the random battles were such a chore. The simple fact that they made encounters optional is such a blessing, it gave this game new life for me. Now I can focus once more on re-discovering all those amazing characters and their intertwined stories.

So, I was about to buy the PC version since it's on sale right now, but after watching this and hearing other things about how bad the PC port was, I think I'll just get it on PS4. I'd much rather have a good port with few issues for $30, rather than save $6 and have a bad port.

The oldest game in my pile of shame. Always found something else to play rather than this.

the switch version sucks. it has a major drift problem that i thought was my switch doing it till i started playing other games and nothing would happen. if they can update the game and fix that i will not play it till then.

I'll finally play this game for the first time. I always wanted but never played.

This game was my top 3 ps1 games of all time. I HAVE to get it.

only game I still have on the original disk. Song of mana is my fav song from the game.

I hate that they just remaster it, instead of remake. Trials of Mana which is a inferior game got the remake treatment.

Does this game use drm it will cause stuttering.

Are you on drugs? The new backgrounds are not hand-painted.

Remember that old games should be judged by what they look on a CRT. Not pure unfiltered pixelated crap they give us on modern releases (and retro nostalgia games) CRT filters are nowadays easy to implement.

My sprites and menu graphics are extremely pixelated, looks nothing like this, even more pixelated than the original..

Owned legend of mama on PS1 and Vita it still feels like the same game

I don't think the remaster background looks good, it is too clean, without CRT it's bad...now it's as if you can see even better that it wasn't a game finished at launch ... I always said that, and I still believe it. A rushed product, in my opinion.

Why they are not smoothing the character too? It’s still pixel

I care more about my supporters there then here lol like WOW

Will look into fan mods instead.

1 question that I have does not the get fully answered by my google searches is about the coop mode. when importing a character from another save file it is said that they only get exp and cannot change their equipment / skills. they can only change it if you load up their orignal save game. does this also me the imported character does not receive any equipment / skills as well? this would make co-op play very complicated/frustrating if you want to coop the game from start to finish. hope you or someone aroudn here can answer my question. great video btw!

The soundtrack for this game is a gem!

Just play the ps1 original with a crt shader

Just bought a beautiful copy on ps1

This is masterpiece 👍👍

i really wanted to get it on Steam, because I love the original, but between the prohibitve price in my country (155 bucks!!!!) and the fact that I already played the original, i'm gonna wait. I only got SaGa Frontier Remastered (at 133 bucks) because I HADN'T played the original and i'm a huge fan of the SaGa series.

Ahh I Love this game the song the gameplay the character all in this game, please make this game for Mobile Phone Game 🙄☺️🤩

The music isn't as good...

Nice video Sad they use USA version Don't know why but ok, because the problem was the easy difficulty but the game put japanese version in this but the life still low on enemies :'(

thanks for the info, played this on psx/ps1 and me and my cousin even print some walkthroughs speciallly the what they call again? 7 wisdom and the suppose to be ghost thing in one town/city where when enter or exit the room someone would appear that you might end up failed the quest. The print walktrough that my cousin print from the net also have the secret like the chocobo pet, the sword from saga frontier 2 thing(reason I'm looking for comparison because of that). Now my question is answered by this video either gonna play psx/ps1 emulator with of course have a ff8 and saga frontier 2 save file or wait for a big steam sale because it's on my wishlist for a while.

I wish they added new quests :(

Considering that the PC version if $40 CAD and comes with Denuvo, I'll stick with the PS1 version.

The question everyone is afraid to ask but I am not. Is there an auto-fire option for attacking the monsters ? My index finger just about fell off playing through the original PS1 version by mashing that (X) button a gazillion times.

The game was re-coded from the beginning, with them guessing and using old notes, so how is that stuff still incorrect? surely they'd have noticed and fixed it, unless they blindly followed notes?

Already have the PSX version on my vita. Looks like a pass for this one.

really enjoyed the nostalgia trip. but yea, they couldve doen with some improvements to the menus, item/skill descriptions, tutorials for crafting and building, as well as maybe allow for some degree of customisation of the NPCs, such as their skills and abilities but not their equipment/weapon. along with some more bonus content would be appreciated

I don't like the decision to keep pixelated sprites

I hate how you can't point up or down to attack. Secret of Mana managed that. Why couldn't this game?

it lags because denuvo