January 2017 Community Playthrough - Secret of Mana

[singlebanana]

I just got to the Sprites village... not sure where to go from here.. so I am leveling my magic up in the room with grandpa !

Head south and all the way west. You should come to an orb that you have to use your new magic on. That will clear the path for you to your new destination.

[douglie007]

Thanks, I found that and wondered around a little, after I died I decided I needed better Magic

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[singlebanana]

Thanks, I found that and wondered around a little, after I died I decided I needed better Magic

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Helps to level your magic to at least level two after you get something new. Only takes a few minutes. Return to the old man and you can do it for free, since he refills your health and magic.

[Raidou]

I just got to the Sprites village... not sure where to go from here.. so I am leveling my magic up in the room with grandpa !

Protip: go into the fields when leveling up magic.  If you cast spells in safe zones such as inns and towns, you only get half experience.

Fun Story
Just beat the boss of the fire temple, and got stuck in his room.  I think it happened because I switched characters at the wrong time...
I also got this game to crash two days ago passing through a door in Gaia's Navel.  Both on the Japanese version.  Seiken Densetsu 2's original Japanese release was delayed three months  for extra debugging, and the PAL release has extra fixes on top of that.

[Fleach]

Last night I beat the Underground Palace boss, Wall Face, and Kilroy. I think exploiting a boss's weakness with magic makes the fights laughably easy. Four or five hits with the right magic and the boss goes down.

[singlebanana]

Last night I beat the Underground Palace boss, Wall Face, and Kilroy. I think exploiting a boss's weakness with magic makes the fights laughably easy. Four or five hits with the right magic and the boss goes down.

Doesn't change as you progress through the game. All boss battles become magic spams.

[Fleach]

Last night I beat the Underground Palace boss, Wall Face, and Kilroy. I think exploiting a boss's weakness with magic makes the fights laughably easy. Four or five hits with the right magic and the boss goes down.

Doesn't change as you progress through the game. All boss battles become magic spams.

I'm not complaining.

I actually encountered my first difficult dungeon. It was the Ruins south of Pandora. The Tomato Men were too much. I got to the boss with low HP and almost no magic. I decided to get a game over and just run straight to the boss the second time.

Got plenty of time to play today so let's see how far I get.

[singlebanana]

Some of the floating mobs are basically magic only and I always skip those. Later in the game you get an MP steal spell which is awesome in refilling your MP. Tomatomen and related mobs are perfect for this to be used on.

[douglie007]

So how far is everyone, I just made it to the empire, and going in to the ruins

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[Raidou]

Up to the Luna temple.  A bit behind but I should be able to beat by the 31st.

[singlebanana]

I finished the game last Monday. 😁

[Raidou]

I managed to cause another softlock against a boss in the Japanese version.  After fooling around with bosses in the 2nd last area (most of them are near save points, making it a good area to experiment), it seems that holding select is what causes the post-animation scripts to not trigger, trapping you in the boss room.

This was a known shippable in the Japanese version- I'm going to have to go back to the AUS version to see if it was fixed.

EDIT: Confirmed against another boss.

[GrayGhost81]

@raidou Thank you so much for sharing your experiences with playing different region versions of the game. It has made for some interesting reading.

So by now obviously you should be near finished with the game. If you're not already working your way through the Mana Fortress, you have a little catching up to do.

I really appreciate the participation this month. I had a rocky start with the game, and then perhaps I rushed through the last 60% or so of the game. However I found it to be enjoyable overall and I'm looking forward to discussing it on the podcast, and I am definitely interested in checking out Seiken Densetsu 3 at some point in the future.

I found a page with a lot of cool facts, tidbits, and easter eggs from SoM and I thought you all would enjoy it if you haven't seen it already. I would avoid it if you haven't finished the game though, as there are some spoilers.

http://www.flyingomelette.../oddities/oddities25.html

[Raidou]

I'd read that article, as I was trying to find more info about the boss glitch.  I find it really interesting that NA localisers attempted to increase the 6-letter limit for names, but abandoned it.

A couple of interesting oddities from Japanese version:

-The icon for the Gnome spell, Earth Slide is an animated catfish.
-The font used for Roman letters and Arabic numbers is noticeably different.
-The second robot battle IS NOT a palette swap of Kilroy. It's called Death Machine and fights with a chainsaw.
-The title screen is a more zoomed out version of the NA/PAL releases.
-The SD2 instruction manual gives names to the characters (The Boy = Randi, The Girl = Purim. The Sprite = Popoi), and these are used as default names in the Android version.

There are two major bug fixes I've found so far in the PAL versions:

Spoiler (hover to show)

-The guard to Potos Village will have his dialogue trigger one tile south of his character model to stop the re-enter Potos glitch.  In the Japanese/NA versions, you could push up against him and keep pressing select until all three characters clip through him.  This will get you stuck if you don't have the Flammie Drum.  There is still a way to re-enter Potos but it requires three controllers.
-The Ice Country drop-off point is one screen south of Neko in order to prevent the Flammie/Neko save glitch.  In the Japanese and North American SNES versions, Flammie will drop you off in the screen containing Neko. Getting dropped off on the same screen as Neko, saving and soft resetting can corrupt your save, but is the first step for a few game breaking glitches.

EDIT: Holding select during the final boss' death animation doesn't get you stuck, the credits play as normal.  This bug seems to have been fixed in the PAL versions.

[singlebanana]

Some very interesting stuff Raidou. Thanks for posting!