#LEGEND OF MANA SWITCH REVIEW FULL#
#LEGEND OF MANA SWITCH REVIEW SERIES#

WellвЂ¦ the gameplay here hasnвЂ™t aged so well, IвЂ™m afraid. Okay, so the game overall looks great, it absolutely sounds great, and it has a good selection of options and featuresвЂ¦ how does it play by todayвЂ™s standards, when not looking through the veil of nostalgia? M2 is renowned for the quality and comprehensive nature of their modern ports of old classics and their skill at this is once again on display here.

Perhaps to highlight the amazing work done on this gameвЂ™s soundtrack, this release of the game includes a music player to listen to the gameвЂ™s great music, as well as an art gallery to look over this gameвЂ™s beautiful promotional art, and some additional settings options to customize your experience with the game. For examples, check out the remastered versions of Opening Theme and Title Theme (both extremely faithful to the originals), as well as the new orchestral arrangements of Picturesque Landscape, Lumina: City of Moonlight, and Bejeweled City in Ruins. In short, Legend of ManaвЂ™s music is absolutely phenomenal, and players can opt to play the game with the original music (still great today), or play remastered music instead, and the quality of this orchestral remaster of this gameвЂ™s already-joyous soundtrack is a wonderful addition that may very well be the highlight of this package.

#LEGEND OF MANA SWITCH REVIEW FULL#

However, while the visuals suffer a bit from failing to commit to either retaining the old-school look or going for a full remastered treatment, the soundtrack is a different story. Add to this menus that combine pixel art icons with high-res text and you have visuals that try to straddle the line between old and new and end up just looking like a jumble of disparate components. While the remastered visuals look great, the odd mix of old and new clashes somewhat - I get that the pixel art visuals were kept to retain this releaseвЂ™s ties to the gameвЂ™s classic roots, but I think it would have been better if these were updated much the same as the backgrounds. Character sprites still retain their classic somewhat jittery pixel art style, but backgrounds have been completely remastered to bring their beautiful storybook-like hand-painted appearance into the realm of HD visuals, and also animated some new anime-style cinematic sequences rather than trying to upscale the low-res video files of the original. When it was originally released, Legend of Mana was an absolutely gorgeous entry in the PlayStation library, and developer M2 has done a fantastic, if a bit uneven, job of bringing that beauty to modern platforms a full two decades later.

#LEGEND OF MANA SWITCH REVIEW SERIES#

This is the fourth game in the Mana series, though players neednвЂ™t have played any prior games to fully enjoy this one, as the Mana series tends to only have thematic and stylistic elements carry over from one installment to the next, not any continuous plot. Legend of Mana is an Action-RPG originally released on the original PlayStation in 2000 and remastered for release on the PC, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2021.

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