Let's Play Legend of Mana - Supplemental #2: Special Technique Montage (Part 1)
13Originally this was going to be a single video, but Windows Live Movie Maker couldn't handle the huge amount of raw video I was feeding it, so I had to split it in twain. Today's installment features all of the special techniques for the knife and both types of swords and axes, single- and two-handed.
Throughout the game I stuck exclusively to the spear, and while you certainly got to see every special super-move for that weapon, you didn't get in on too many of the others, so I decided to show you those so that you got the full spectrum.
The two parts of the montage took the better part of three days to record. In that time, I learned a lot that I wasn't expecting about the process of learning new special techniques. To wit:
—Learning STs is a bipartite process. To learn a single special technique, you must (a) use anywhere from one to four specific abilities (those being your Triangle and Circle moves that you set, e.g. Spin, Jump, Lunge) a certain number of times, and (b) also have used your weapon in a certain amount of battles to that point. These dual numbers are hidden from you, tabulated by an invisible experience counter. Some people have delved into this matter and come up with the exact number of battles you have to fight in and times you have to use each ability to learn each ST. I could not find said data through a Google search, but loyal subscriber Yamamanama was kind enough to provide me a link to an archived GameFAQs thread from the game's message board, which I will also share here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/256525-legend-of-mana/57481809
In that thread, each ST for each weapon is listed. The number right after the equals sign represents how many battles you have to use the weapon in question in to learn the ST, and anything in brackets represents how many times you have to use a specific ability to qualify for learning the ST. Knowing this, you see that some moves are very easy to learn and some moves are very hard to learn. For example, learning the glove attack Bloody Knuckles is extremely easy...
Bloody Knuckles = 1 [Lunge 1]
...meaning that you only have to use the glove in one battle and use the Lunge ability all of one single time to learn that move. Ridiculously simple, right? But check out something like this...
Blue Dragon = 100 [Retreat 12, Spin 26, Evade 20, Defensive Lunge 18]
...now, even if you had a resource like Ronnie Crowder's ST list on GameFAQs at hand, you would know that you had to use some combination of Retreat, Spin, Evade, and Defensive Lunge to learn Blue Dragon, but you wouldn't necessarily know that you have to use EACH of those abilities a specific number of times, nor that you have to use the spear itself for a hundred battles (just to clarify, meaning that even if you've done 12 Retreats, 26 Spins, 20 Evades, and 18 Defensive Lunges, you're STILL NOT learning Blue Dragon if you haven't used the spear in 100 battles). Like many things in Legend of Mana, the process of working your way toward STs is, in my opinion, needlessly obfuscated.
—There is a lot of overlap between similar weapons. I guess it spared them from having to make too many unique sprite/3D animations. Many weapons share a few STs, so that if you know a ST for one weapon, and you switch to a weapon that also uses that ST, you already know it and don't have to re-learn it. E.g. if you learn Looking Glass on the knife, you won't have to learn it again when you use the flail.
—The process of learning STs gets easier the more weapons you master. This actually makes a certain amount of intuitive IRL sense. At a certain point, you don't even have to actively map the required abilities to your Triangle and Circle buttons, because you'll have already used them so many times prior, and the game counts the number of times you've used an ability across all STs (i.e. e.g. if you're learning knife STs, and you use Defensive Lunge four times to learn Dance of Roses, it won't make you use it ten more times to learn Phoenix; those four Defensive Lunges meant for Dance of Roses simultaneously go toward your total of ten for Phoenix). The only thing you'll need to do is just use the weapon the number of battles you need to use it to get the ST. I noticed this about the time I had all the STs for about 7 of the 11 weapons.
There won't be nearly this much rambling tomorrow, I swear.
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