Topic: 2025/07: Legend Of Mana (PlayStation) - mechaskrom

[JonLeung]

Legend Of Mana

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to mechaskrom's Legend Of Mana (PlayStation) maps.

This is the 250th time we have recognized a set of maps as "Maps Of The Month"!  That's a quarter of a thousand beautiful games with great maps!  (If you include the five April Fool's jokes from 2005-2009, that makes this #255, but that's also a milestone number... in hexadecimal.)  A complete and fully-labelled map set for a truly gorgeous game would be ideal for the 250th selection, and we got that in mechaskrom's recent submission of maps for Legend Of Mana!

In the world of Fa'Diel, the Mana Tree is the giver of mana and life.  Recovering from an ancient war, the Mana Tree currently sleeps.  The hero - which is you - will set out for adventure, collecting artifacts that magically contain various lands and their residents.  By recovering and restoring these areas, you can freely shape Fa'Diel however you like, so venture out into your creation in this open-ended action-RPG in the acclaimed Mana series by Square.

Legend Of Mana is a visual feast, with beautifully-crafted 2D graphics (pixels placed perfectly, and this is on the original PlayStation, a platform that preferred to push polygons).  It's one of the best-looking games in a series already known for being stunning.  Shout-out to art director Kōji Tsuda and the many Square artists!  There are a couple dozen settings with varied environments, like the lush White Forest, the cozy Lumina, the cluttered Junkyard, the harsh Norn Peaks, and many others.  Longtime mapper mechaskrom has captured every pixel of every room and, while some areas do have a fair bit of repetition, that's all the more reason we need these maps!  While labelling treasure chests and room connections are essential for any good RPG map, mechaskrom made sure not to cover up any of the in-game graphics, so we can fully appreciate the magnificent pixel art.

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this incredibly beautiful action-RPG, mechaskrom's Legend Of Mana (PlayStation) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for July 2025.

[mechaskrom]

Thank you! 

Legend of Mana is a game I always wanted to play, but never got around to until last year. I thought it was pretty boring to play (too cryptic and unrewarding), but the graphics and music are amazing so I just had to map it.

It took me almost a year, which is the longest I've ever spent mapping a single game. Much of that time was actually spent just playing through the game multiple times and checking multiple guides to make sure I didn't miss anything (which I probably did anyway).

It's probably my biggest project too. I checked its folder and it contains 1662 png images and 399 paint net projects (mostly for dealing with layers). It was a lot of work, but I'm very happy with how the maps turned out.

The junkyard map is one of my favorites. That place is really confusing to navigate and in dire need of a map. It wasn't until I started mapping it that I realised it had two intertwined "sides" of similar rooms. A really clever and simple way to turn a place into a maze. I've never seen that construction before in any other game. Does anyone know of another game with a similar design?

There are many more 2D RPGs that I would like to map, but knowing how long time they take is daunting.