Let's Play Legend of Mana - Supplemental #3: Special Technique Montage (Part 2)
15The part covering the weapons that didn't fit yesterday—namely, the hammer, the spear, the staff, the glove, the flail, and the bow.
Since I didn't have room yesterday, today I can devote my rambling to my favorite STs for each weapon.
Knife: Dance of Roses is beautiful *and* deadly. Reaping the Mist is a close second.
Sword: I honestly don't remember many of these moves and I haven't reviewed the tape, so I'll go with the one that left the most memorable impression: Dynamite X.
Axe: Karma. Easily. One of my favorite STs of all the weapons, period.
2H Sword: Raging Pain looks like it hurts so bad that it almost makes me feel sorry for the enemy that gets hit by it. (Incidentally, Deep Swing took me longer to learn than any other ST, mainly because I almost never use Counterattack or Counterstrike.)
2H Axe: Gotta love the way Sparkling Rampage rumbles across the screen.
Hammer: Pearly Gates by default—I don't remember any of the others that well.
Spear: Blue Dragon, for the insane range and the awesome-looking titular dragon.
Staff: Bubbles is kind of cute, I guess. Maybe Paint It Black? The staff blows.
Glove: Oh man, so many great ones. Ultimately I think I'd have to say Power Combo, though Sparkly Feet is a close second.
Flail: An anomaly, in that this time I was actually wowed by a medium-damage move, Drunken Monkey. I mean, that thing just kept going and going. It was hilarious to me.
Bow: Main Gun. No contest.
Final overall weapon impressions:
I think the spear is still my favorite, just for the overall consistency of its STs' usefulness, but of the other weapons I'd never really tried before, the glove was the standout. There was a very exciting and visceral thrill to beating up monsters with my bare (well, razor-augmented) hands; even the extremely basic Bloody Knuckles is a great ST, just pounding the shit out of a dude's face. I didn't really care for the bow, but it offered a similar kick by being able to shoot dudes point-blank in the face or the back with arrows (I remember getting a kind of sick thrill out of the Backshot ST).
The worst weapon in the game is easily the staff. This isn't a matter of opinion; it's empirically true. The staff is the only weapon with no "Extreme Damage!" STs; it only has one ST that does Major damage; it only has twelve STs total (the other weapons have anywhere between 15 and 17); and it has the lowest base attack of all the weapons. It took maybe 15 minutes to learn all the STs though, if that, so it is an easy weapon to master.
In the middle range, I found myself preferring one-handed weapons to two-handed. I appreciated the extra speed, which I'll gladly take in a game where you move like molasses running uphill during battles, and at my high level, the power difference was negligible. (Speaking of leveling, over the course of learning all the STs I gained something like 24 levels, I believe.)
Next (and final) supplemental video: A couple of Easter egg mini-games, the demi-human pets, and a few useful tempering recipes. For those of you who have been impatient to move on to something else, there's only that video tomorrow and then the final Legend of Mana mission, entitled, appropriately enough, "Legend of Mana".
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