Legend of the Holy Sword, or Final Fantasy Adventure

I finished this game yesterday. This game makes an interesting topic to write about.

This was a Game Boy game from back in the day. The original Japanese title translates to something like "Legend of the Holy Sword: a Final Fantasy Story". Its full title in the U.S. was "Final Fantasy Adventure". It was a game that had many elements from the early Final Fantasy games, including spells, weapons, and quite a lot of the character sprite designs from the NES/Famicom Final Fantasy games. But it was more of an action RPG and also clearly had inspiration from the early Legend of Zelda games. 

Significantly, it spawned a sequel for the Super NES, which gained a very large following and ended up generating a whole series of games. The Japanese series title references the Holy Sword featured in the games, but after the success of the second game, which was called Secret of Mana in the U.S., the game titles in the U.S. have all featured the word Mana. This first game is the only game to use the Final Fantasy name in it, but I believe most of the Final Fantasy elements in the game were shed (maybe gradually) from the series and the future games are not considered Final Fantasy games.

The first game in the series is fun enough. But I have a feeling that, if not for the sequel, the game wouldn't be remembered as much more than a relatively obscure footnote in the history of Square. (Arguably, that's still true even with its sequels.) As a Game Boy game, it was designed as a shorter, simpler game than its contemporary games for consoles. There's not a lot of depth to it, and the core game play can be quite repetetive, especially in the dungeons. The menus can be tedious to operate, especially when the game requires you to switch your equipment around far more frequently than most RPG's.

But it has a pretty good story to tell. You can save anytime, and it's paced well for a game that you can just pick up and play here and there when you have a few minutes. You meet and travel with just enough interesting NPC characters to keep things interesting. And the way you use different weapons in different circumstances in the game is actually very interesting, even if it is a little bit to use the game's menus to switch between them.

So while it's enjoyable to play, I don't know that it stands out particularly beyond the legacy its sequels made.

This game, interestingly, has been remade twice, under different new titles each time. Sword of Mana for the Game Boy Advance is a remake of this game; so is Adventures of Mana for modern smartphones. I plan to purchase and play the latter quite soon. I understand the remakes are somewhat different from each other. I want to play both, but the smartphone one is a little more accessible right now.

I played this game because I got the "Collection of Mana" for the Switch for my birthday. It has the first three games in the Mana series, the third of which, "Trials of Mana", never saw a release in the U.S. until, I believe, last year, on this very collection as well as a standalone release on the Switch.

I was surprised to discover that I cannot find my original Game Boy copy of this game. I was going through my Game Boy games a couple of days ago and it's not with them. I know I have the game, but I can't think of where it could possibly be if it's not with those other games. It's been well over fifteen years since I played it, and I'm not sure I've physically handled it since, say, moving into this house. I hope I haven't permanently lost it.

I'm moving onto Secret of Mana, which I think still may be the most popular game in the series. I played it through years ago when it was still a new game, but I cannot remember anything at all about the plot and only remember a few details of the game play (one thing I remember is that changing weapons is a lot easier in this game than in its predecessor). I'm just to the first save point, but it's good so far.

The last thought I have about this is that, because of the title localization choices, I did not know for a long time that Secret of Mana was a sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure. I actually didn't play Final Fantasy Adventure until years after I played Secret of Mana, but I recognized the similarities between the games' mechanics and then learned their connection. It's one of those quirks in the history of game localization. For Japanese players, it was obvious that Seiken Densetsu 2 was the sequel to Seiken Densetsu, but because of the way the titles were localized, that was lost on US gamers who didn't do further research.