Video Game / Legend of Mana

Nine centuries ago, the Mana Tree burned to ashes.
The power of Mana lived on inside Mana stones, enchanted instruments, and artifacts.
Sages fought with each other for control of these last remnants of Mana.
Then, after hundreds of years of war, as the power of Mana began to wane, those who sought it grew scarce, and the world returned to peace.
After that, mankind grew afraid to desire. Their hearts filled with empty emotions, and grew estranged from my hands. They turned their eyes away from my infinite power, and were troubled by their petty disputes.
Remember me!
Need me!
I can provide you with everything!
I am love.
Find me, and walk beside me.

Legend of Mana (1999) is the fourth game in the World of Mana series, and the only one released for the fifth console generation. It was originally developed for PS1. It was then re-released on the North American PlayStation store as a PSOne Classic on March, 22, 2011 and a full remaster for the PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam was released on June 24, 2021 with HD 2D backgrounds and an arranged soundtrack as well as some quality of life upgrades like saving (almost) anywhere and turning off enemy encounters as well as including the "Ring Ring Land" mini game that was previously Japan exclusive. The remaster was then brought to iOS and Android on December 7, 2021.

This one was developed not by Koichi Ishii but his director, Akitoshi Kawazu (SaGa), and it's still the most peculiar entry. It's really just a collection of vignettes in contrast to the Doorstopper novels of Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears and their ilk. (To say nothing of the previous Mana titles.)

You control a nameless main character, pick their gender, then set off to roam the world of Fa'Diel. It operates like a dungeon crawler with some sandbox elements: You collect artifacts that you place on the overworld map, magically turning them into towns and dungeons. Various quests and events will occur in these places. Although some are melancholy, Slice of Life scenarios, there are three over-arching plots and several minor ones that crop up. You only need to finish one major arc to beat the game, but it is possible (though laborious) to see every single event in one playthrough.

The battles are similar to Trials, with a few quirks:

• HP is restored at the end of each screen, making easy mode a breeze.
• You can recruit one of various NPCs. It's similar to Chrono Cross (another bizarre sequel released that year) in that there is a wide variety of weird characters. Each have varying effects on the story and your party configuration. You can swap characters whenever you like (again like Chrono Cross), provided you know where to find them again.
• You can also have a mon join your party: either an animal (who you feed) or a golem (which you build).
• Legend has one the deepest, or possibly just obtuse, crafting systems of any video game. A FAQ is mandatory. (To be expected from a Kawazu game.) Thesis-length documents on how to "Temper" items exist.

The hand-drawn art style offers a unique visual hook, and the score features some of Yoko Shimomura's less-known (but no less fantastic) soundtrack work.

An anime adaptation of the game animated by Graphinica and Yokohama Animation Lab, titled Legend of Mana: The Teardrop Crystal, had started airing on October 8, 2022. It centers around one of the game's story arcs about the Jumi. Crunchyroll had licensed the series for everywhere except in Asia, where Muse Communication licensed the series.

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This game provides examples of:

• Aborted Arc: The Heaven's Gate arc concludes with Selva offering Matilda the position of the new Seventh Wisdom, but she declines. Bits and pieces of the game's dialogue seems to imply there were originally plans to have an arc, possibly the Final Arc, be about the Seventh Wisdom.
• Aerith and Bob:
  • The Heaven's Gate arc gives us Matilda and Irwin (standard if uncommon Anglophone names), Daena (a Zoroastrian name), and Escad (total fantasy name).
  • Jumi names run like this as well, from Diana to Elazul. Justified in that their names are similar to the type of gem of which their cores are made. Diana has a diamond core, Elazul has lapis lazuli, Rubens has ruby, et cetera.
• After-Combat Recovery: One of the things that makes the game so easy is that you return to full hitpoints after killing everything in a particular screen.
• After the End: At the start of the game, Fa'Diel is nothing but a barren wasteland, and the opening narration suggests that the world's civilizations destroyed each other in pointless wars to possess the remnants of Mana power that remained in artifacts. The player's actions can be seen as rebuilding Fa'Diel by planting the artifacts.
• All Just a Dream: The philosophy of the Wisdom Pokiehl and the Sproutlings - they believe the world of Fa'Diel is shaped by your dreams. That's why the player character is able to build the world by using the artefacts to place the various lands.
• All There in the Manual:
  • The game has a very detailed history, and you'll miss a few plot points without reading the books in your library.
  • Like all Square Enix games, this one has an Ultimania guide that contains loads and loads of backstory that didn't make it into the game itself.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: All we know about Bud and Lisa's father is that he washed out of the magic academy in Geo and that he advised his children to run away if a fight was too hard. It's very faintly implied he's dead, but we get nothing about how he might have passed.
  • Bud and Lisa's mother is an even more ambiguous figure. Unlike the twins' father, neither Bud or Lisa ever mention her, so all we know about her is that she once owned the frying pan that her son now wields in battle.
• And I Must Scream: The toys in the junkyard were animated to fight in a great war. They are still alive, but all they can do is lie there and think about the war.
• Anti-Frustration Feature: The 2021 remake changed the section of The Underworld where Shadoles teleport you to the bottom of the dungeon so that each Shadole that teleports you never respawns, making each subsequent attempt a little easier than the one before.
• Arc Words: The Goddess is love.
• Artificial Stupidity: Your companions are not smart enough to coordinate with you or evade attacks, though you can influence the behavior of pets (through food) and robots (through logic blocks).
• Bait-and-Switch: After the end of the Jumi story arc Alexandra drops a note for the Hero/ine, just as she previously would to deliver a warning before targeting a particular Jumi core. The note only says: "Please take care of Florina for me."
• Battle Theme Music: In this game standard battles share the music of the area they take place on. However, there are four different Boss Battle themes, plus each arc villain (the Lord of Jewels 1000, Irwin and Drakonis) and The Mana Goddess have their own unique battle music.
• Bigger on the Inside: Pandora's Box appears from the outside to be the size of a regular trunk, but on the inside is the size of a comfortable bedroom. The flow of time inside is altered as well.
• Bilingual Bonus: The Main Theme's (Song Of Mana) lyrics are sung in Swedish, but said lyrics (or their translation) never appear in-game.
• Bittersweet Ending: Again, all three major story arcs. The world is saved, but at a very high price. Here's the breakdown...
  • Jumi Arc: The Jumi are alive and can cry healing tears again, but Alexandra is going to be exiled from the Jeweled City for a damned long time if not permanently, and there's nothing to say that the Jumi won't be hunted to extinction a second time.
  • Dragons Arc: The mana crystals are returned, the dragons come back to life, and even Larc and Sierra reunite...eventually. It's not clear in the epilogue how far in the future all of this comes to pass.
  • Gate of Heaven Arc: Irwin and Matilda are definitely dead, and depending on your choices either Escad, Daena or both of them are dead as well. Irwin also wants nothing to do with Matilda even in the afterlife. However, the world has been saved.
• Black-and-Gray Morality:
  • Alexandra wants to kill all the Jumi to save Florina. Blackpearl expects and demands that Florina save the Jumi at the cost of her own life.
  • Irwin is seen by Escad as a monster for what he did to Matilda, but Matilda and Daena think differently.
  • Larc knows what he is doing is wrong, but he continues to follow Drakonis in hopes of returning to the living.
  • Depending on the quests you do, your character may end up doing things which are not inherently good. Like aiding Larc and Niccolo.
• The Blacksmith: Watts appears once again, this time to teach you to be The Blacksmith.
• Blatant Lies: Tote tells the penguins that the Gorgon's Eye is big enough to cover half the screen. In fact, it's one of the smaller Bosses (not counting the spikes).
• Bodyguard Crush: Jumi Guardian/Knight relationships; just about all of the games' protectorate/protector pairs pretty much dive headfirst into this trope as well.
• Both Sides Have a Point: Inverted by Tote. The penguins want the fairy treasure and the fairies believe that if the lake guardian dies they'll all die so they try to protect him by petrifying the penguins. As it turns out, both sides are wrong—there is no treasure that can be taken by defeating the guardian (as the petrification stone only works while it is alive) and the death of the guardian of the lake doesn't affect the fairies (other than depowering their magic stone).
• Bowdlerize: Several examples from the remake.
  • Roger, who was modeled after an African tribal^note his name in the Japanese original was even 'Congo', had his lips ensmalled and his large hoop earrings removed to forestall accusations of racism.
  • Hamson, who also had big lips, had a bushy black beard and eyebrows (brown on his sprite) added to cover his entire face. In Hamson's case his design had rather eclectic influences, but apparently Sony didn't want to take any chances.
  • The item Virgin's Sigh was renamed to Damsel's Sigh.
  • At one point, Niccolo asks you to stomp on and squish a Sproutling. In the original, if you agreed, he says you shouldn't do that because you'd get annoying green goo on your feet. In the remake, he just says you shouldn't have taken him seriously.
• Broken Bridge: The game uses Boinks - a monster that teleports you when you try to talk to it (or in some cases, get too close to it) - to keep you out of areas you shouldn't be in. For example, Elle's cage is blocked by a Boink until the mission that introduces her starts. The Duma Desert also has torrents of falling sand blocking paths to keep the player out of certain sections until they're on the pertinent quest.
• Broken Pedestal: Apparently, Inspector Boyd was a huge Sandra fanboy back when she was a Classy Cat-Burglar and he didn't know that the jewels she was stealing were the cores of dead Jumi. When she started killing live Jumi for their cores though, he became ashamed and decided to take her down.
• Brother–Sister Team: One straight example, one played-with example.
  • Near the beginning of the game, two small children named Bud and Lisa team up to try and take over Domina with pumpkins. After the Hero/ine knocks some sense into them and they have a Heel–Face Turn, they become the Hero/ine's apprentices. They are brother and sister, and the missions involving them often involve their relationships with each other, and their father.
  • Larc wanted to be a brother sister team with his sister Sierra, but she was so much stronger than he was that he held her back. He ended up making a Deal with the Devil to become stronger, but since the devil he made the deal with was the Crimson Dragon Emperor Drakonis and she was a servant of the White Dragon Vadise, his deal just set them against each other. However, after the Hero/ine defeats Drakonis, the game says that they were eventually reunited with each other.
• But Thou Must!: Averted most of the time, as you could refuse any NPC if you didn't want to play their subquest, but in the Dragon Arc you're not even given the option to refuse Vadise once said Dragon Lord takes over hell. (But then, you're the one that helped the Dragon Lord to power in the first place...) In fact, you can kill (directly or indirectly) a handful of the major NPCs with a little willful mischief.
• Button Mashing: Discouraged by the combat system. Similar to games like Dark Souls, inputs are retained and queued even if they come in faster than the character's attack animation. Mashing the attack button as fast as you can simply results in a standard 3-hit combo (4 hits for some weapons) with a long cooldown after the 3rd hit. However, attacking at the correct pace (in time with the attack animation) can allow you to perform a basic attack (or, with more mastery of timing, a multi-hit combo) repeatedly with no cooldown. This can hitstun enemies and utterly break the combat system.
• Canon Discontinuity: Square Enix says that this game no longer happened within the Mana universe.
• Can't Catch Up: Your NPC assistants and pets unless you have an accessory equipped. Leveling Non Player Characters is pointless anyway since their levels reset every game cycle.
• Casanova Wannabe: Gilbert chases love all over Fa'Diel, but isn't successful until he gets turned to stone and realizes that Monique is the one for him.
• Changeling Fantasy: Rachel hates her life and wants something more exciting; she eventually gets her wish when she switches bodies with a student at the Geo academy.
• Choice of Two Weapons: At the beginning of the game, you have to choose a starter weapon — and you have a lot of weapons to choose from. You can choose between 1H swords, 2H swords, Daggers, 1H Axes and 2H axes, Gloves, Spears, Hammers, Bows, Flails, and staves. Though starting with any particular weapon does not lock you into only using that weapon. There's even an Achievement in the remake for getting every entry in your encyclopedia, which will require at least some time using every weapon.
• The Chosen One: According to Selva, Elazul, Pearl, Daena, Escad, Matilda, Irwin, Larc, Sierra, and The Hero/ine are all chosen ones - the Hero/ine is just the most chosen of the chosen.
• Classy Cat-Burglar: Sandra is perceived as this by those who aren't aware of her genocidal intentions against the Jumi.
• Climax Boss: There are three arcs, each with a climax boss - for the Jumi Arc it's Lord of Jewels, for the Heaven's Gate Arc it's Irwin, and for the Dragons Arc it's Drakonis. You'll have to beat at least one of them to trigger the final few missions, although you can play through all of the arcs and beat all of them if you wish.
• Cloudcuckoolander: The Sproutlings often utter Non Sequiturs such as, "The cow isn't anywhere. He's inside my mind."
• Clueless Aesop: The game repeatedly drops aesops about the importance of being true to one's self and not infringing on the personal freedom of others. The length it takes this aesop to is the problem with it, since many characters' "freedom" includes murder and catastrophe. Some examples...
  • As Flameshe explains to Elle, being yourself is the most important thing, and whether other people get killed in the process doesn't matter. Furthermore, doing something you don't want to do for the sake of someone else because you don't want to hurt them is wrong. (But whichever way you choose, don't apologize, because it's who you are.)
  • A girl's friend is dying and has already given up hope. The advice of Gaeus the Wisdom? "She said to let her die, so let her die."
  • As Selva essentially says to Matilda, "You did absolutely nothing as your friends killed each other and eventually you. This proves you have the required wisdom to be the new Seventh Wisdom."
• Combos: Sufficiently long attack strings will drop full-heal items, as well as add damage. Since only a limited number of Weak Attacks can be strung together, and a single Strong Attack will always cause the combo to end, this leads to a number of Unnecessary Combat Rolls or Lunges.
• Comically Missing the Point: Lil' Cactus' diary entries often don't focus on the main point of the quest but on pointing out the progressively bizarre situations the Hero/ine find themselves in, eventually beginning to wonder if they're just lying their pants off.
• Commonplace Rare: Ash is one of the best tempering materials in the game. Nothing drops it, and you can only find it in 3 treasure chests per playthrough.
• Continuity Nod: Some of the Artifacts are actually event items from other World of Mana games, materials are still named after the (now-destroyed) cities in the rest of the series, and the final boss takes forms resembling monsters and Big Bad-types from the previous games.
  • Also, save points are statues of Sprite (the Squishy Wizard of Secret of Mana).
  • Watts the dwarven blacksmith who appears in all the Mana games is a character here as well, as is the dancing merchant in the turban, Mr. Moti, who acts as your alternate save point.
  • In the intro, it's stated that nine centuries before the game begins, the Mana Tree was destroyed. This is probably a reference to either Thanatos using the Mana Fortress to destroy the Tree near the end of Secret of Mana, or a similar event that happens in Trials of Mana.
  • In the art museum, many of the statues are of characters from Trials of Mana: Angela, Riesz, Darkshine Knight, Duran, Hawkeye, Carlie, and a goblin appear on the main floor^note there's also a spiky character with blade fingers that doesn't really match up with any ToM character, but might be a seriously off-model Kevin in wolf mode. It's facing away from the player making it hard to say for sure.. Gormand (Deathjester), Mispolm, Flammie, Undine, and Belladonna (Bigieu) appear in the basement.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Pokiehl and Nunuzac. They both act more silly than moronic, but the game has hints to their Hidden Depths. For example, the toy in the junkyard is begging Pokiehl to let him keep fighting. Or Nunuzac lamenting the thought of having to teach his students "true conjuration".
  • Nunuzac in particular looks like a carpet because he overloaded on magic while fighting a seriously nasty world-threatening opponent and trapped himself in his own conjuration circle in the process of saving the day. At least it apparently made him immortal, and he gets to show off his true abilities when he kidnaps a Sproutling and tries to trap it in the Dream Realm to keep it from creating the Mana Tree.
• Deal with the Devil: Larc made one with Drakonis in the distant past; the player character is similarly made to serve Drakonis if they choose to trigger the Dragon Arc.
• Death Mountain: Norn Peaks is a somewhat-less-threatening-than-usual mountain setting. It's misty instead of stormy or snowy, and there's no lava. Akravator, a dragon who guards one of the mana crystals, lives at the mountain peak.
• Deconstruction: Takes a bit of a pickaxe to some of the themes and motifs of the previous games as well as the usual tropes. For example, The Power of Love can be just as destructive as it is awesome, and if not handled properly can really rack up the body count, never mind a heroic stranger interfering in other's business randomly in the first place. Meanwhile, the corrupted Mana Goddess as the Final Boss comes after several games of trying to prevent their destruction or corruption in the first place, showing that one doesn't even need an inherent villain to ultimately cause The End of the World as We Know It if everything was simply a degrading Crapsack World in the first place.
• Defeat Means Friendship: At the beginning of the game, after you beat the naughty sorcerer Bud and his sister Lisa, Bud is so impressed by you he asks to become your apprentice.
• Derelict Graveyard: The access point of the Underworld is a menacing headstone in the middle of a grassy field.
• Developer's Foresight: The dialogue in the game accounts for some atypical situations. This is particularly noticeable while playing the quests that lead up to the Jumi arc. Normally you would complete The Lost Princess with Elazul as a partner, but the developers prepared dialogue for the possibility that the player would ditch Elazul and try to save Pearl alone. The Flame of Hope and Drowned Dreams also have additional dialogue if you bring either Jumi with you to complete them.
  • Having Bud or Lisa as a partner triggers extra dialogue at Geo Academy.
  • Most NPC partners have a reaction to Irwin should you take them with you to his final boss fight.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Inspector Boyd will accuse just about anyone he sees in the area around one of Sandra's crimes of being Sandra in disguise. The one person he doesn't accuse and never suspects? The jewel merchant who also appears near every one of Sandra's crimes.
• Devour the Dragon: Sandra willingly sacrifices herself to let the Lord of Jewels eat her core to become more powerful.
• Dialogue Tree: You learn about the history of Fa'Diel via one of these and the Onion Kid's tutorial is another; some of the dialogue also differs based on which gender you pick as your character.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: The hunched-over, sad-faced, overtly polite, butler-looking Lord of Jewels really was the mastermind behind Sandra's killing spree.
• Double Entendre:
  • After the first Monique/Gilbert mission, Monique laments the fact that Gilbert wants a "much bigger lamp" then she does, commenting that "Size is meaningless, it's whether it works that's important".
  • When Kathinja threatens to petrify Gilbert, he enthusiastically proclaims that he's "Getting hard".
• Down in the Dumps: The Junkyard is a resting ground for old artifacts that were enchanted hundreds of years ago to fight a war against the faeries. They lie there in gigantic piles dreaming about the war.
• Dream Land: You visit the dream realm three times: 1) to defeat a monster haunting Florina's dreams, 2) to save the Sproutling kidnapped by Nunzac, and 3) to see what happened in Matilda's childhood to make Escad hate Irwin.
• Dub Name Change: Any character whose name came from a Japanese word.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: The Male Hero has long curly blond hair and wears a long skirt and midriff-bearing armor, and dresses in pastels. Feast your eyes
• Dueling Player Characters: Escad and Daena come to blows over what to do about Irwin. You're forced to take a side (refusing to take a side will have them choose for you), and the battle is to the death. No matter what, one party member isn't coming out of that fight alive. And then it's all made moot when Daena's third option is outright rejected by Matilda and you're driven to kill Irwin anyway.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Lord of Jewels' real form is apparently a Space Whale with a Black-Hole Belly that allows him to eat 1000 Jumi cores. How it intends to revive the Jumi or if it even truly intended to do so is anyone's guess.
• Encyclopedia Exposita: It's a game much more preoccupied with showing rather than telling, especially after you read the "World History" encyclopedia. It does just enough to suggest a teeming world.
• Escaped from Hell: The player character every time they visit the Underworld (might as well install revolving doors); you also prevent the Dragon Lord successfully doing this once he takes it over.
• Escort Mission: All over the place, thankfully most of the time the person being escorted actually can fight and defend themselves quite well (save for a bit of Artificial Stupidity). The one exception is Pearl, but even she is far more resilient than most videogame NPCs and will actively try to stay out of harms way. Niccolo's quests in particular basically boil down to this.
• The Faceless: When Lucemia is floating, its face is facing away from the player, and when it falls, the head lands face down. We never get to see what it looked like.
• Failure Knight:
  • Elazul relentlessly follows after Blackpearl even after she dismisses him because he made protecting Pearl his everything and he can't let her go out of fear of becoming this.
  • Florina's current guardian ( Alexandra) believes that her previous one ( Blackpearl) was willing to consign Florina to sacrificing her life force to produce healing tears, and carries a huge grudge because of that.
• Fake Pregnancy: A minor quest has a female penguin imply to her pirate boyfriend, who was about to go to sea for an extended period of time, that she had an egg. At the end of the quest, she says she was misunderstood and was only musing about the possibility of having an egg. Then, when he's out of earshot, she admits that she lied the second time and Wanted Her Beloved to Be Happy.
• Family of Choice: You start out the game living alone with just your cactus and a random sproutling at your doorstep. Depending on your choices you can end up with 2 orphan magicians, a mother penguin and her child, multiple crabs, several pets, a giant talking tree, and 3 sproutlings as permanent residents. And while the Jumi quest is still ongoing, Elazul and Pearl will, at separate points, stay in your home temporarily.
• Fantastic Racism: Niccolo towards the Sproutlings, and many people towards the Jumi.
• Fate Worse than Death: After Gilbert is turned into stone, he's sold as an art piece to a collector and then used to prop up a collapsed cave ceiling in a pitch black room left to lament his own stupidity. It's up to you to get him out of this, leave him there, or even worse give Monique the wrong words to the spell to save him, destroying him instead.
• First Town: Domina is the first land you place besides your home, and you'll be introduced to a significant portion of characters who will be important later on during your first visit.
• Flying Postman: Pelican (actually named Amalie) is a flying pelican who uses her beak pouch as a mail pouch. She can usually be seen hanging out in Domina, and also figures into several sidequests.
• Foreshadowing: Talking to the Non Player Characters give you lots of hints about what's going on, and a lot of your cactus' apparent non-sequiturs that it makes post-mission only make sense in retrospect. "Seventh is Girl" (said at the end of "The Six Wisdoms" quest), for example, refers to Matilda, who takes the previously vacant seat of the Seventh Wisdom after she dies.
• Forest of Perpetual Autumn: The level called Lake Kilma is mostly the birchwood forests surrounding the lake. It seems to be early autumn - the leaves are mostly green-gold, but viewing the woods across the lake shows trees in various stages of green, gold, orange and red.
• The Four Loves: The arcs seem to be themed based on them.
  • Dragon Arc: Storge
  • Fairy Arc: Both Phileo and Eros
  • Jumi Arc: Agape
• Frames of Reference: Alex wears round glasses that reflect his gentle and slightly nerdy nature. It's an act.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Bud's weapon. Mechanically, it's classified as a two-handed sword.
• Full Motion Video: The intro and ending cinematics are FMV, as can be expected, but the game also uses embedded movie files in backgrounds to depict large creatures such as Trent and Gaeus speaking with seamless animation.
• Gainax Ending: The party defeats a corrupted(?) avatar of the Mana Tree, which causes the Sproutlings to grow magical dandelion puffs and fly to the portal leading to the Mana Tree (the first one claiming they came to heal it). The Sproutlings give a monologue on the spiritual, soulless nature of their existence as Niccolo comments on the disappearance of the Sproutlings^note and moves into the Player Character's house. The Player Character has, post final battle, seemingly disappeared and never seen again.
• Gangplank Galleon: The S.S. Buccaneer. The Pirate Penguins are much friendlier than pirates usually are and the ship serves more as a place to find miniquests, but there are some ocean monsters down in the ship's hold and it does get attacked by monsters a few times.
• Gem Tissue: The Jumi have cores of gemstone (of varying types), which are their most vital organ. Damage it and you damage them permanently; remove it and you kill them.
• Gender-Blender Name: Several examples.
  • In the Japanese version, Elazul's name is Ruri.
  • Alex is most often a male name, but not unheard of for women, often as a nickname for Alexandra. This becomes plot relevant.
  • Gaia is a female name, but the character has always been male. The PS1 English translation changed his name to Gaeus, but the PS4 version changed it back.
  • Assuming Larc is pronounced with a hard K sound, it sounds the same as Lark, which is a woman's name.
• Geo Effects: Each land has an intrinsic mana value; good luck figuring out what that does without a walkthrough.
• Ghost Town:
  • Bejeweled City. The few citizens left eventually evacuated due to the genocide of their people.
  • Lumina only has about half a dozen inhabited buildings. When the empire soldiers invade it trying to find Monique's shop they realize that all the buildings with doors you can't open are actually uninhabited. They wonder out loud who the hell designed this place.
• Giant Corpse World: Lucemia is the floating, hollowed-out shell of a titanic dragon who accidentally killed itself by eating a volcano. The outside is just the scaly body, the inside is full of various kind of mold, fungus and grub cocoons.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: A lot of the bosses are like this, but the centaur boss at the top of the Tower of Leires was a bit extra blatant.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: The opening and ending themes are sung in Swedish. Most people are surprised to find out that they were not scatting. (Especially as the game was not released in Sweden.)
• Green-Eyed Monster: While Irwin did turn out to be dangerous, though whether he always was or only became dangerous when he and Matilda couldn't be together is up for debate, one gets the strong impression that Escad's enmity towards Irwin was born primarily out of his jealousy that Matilda chose Irwin over him.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Big time. Several missions involve needing to talk to specific people in a specific order with little info about where you're supposed to go. And as for the god-slaying sword mentioned in Game Breaker, good luck figuring out how to make one of those on your own.
  • The placement of lands, including the original home site. The ideal setup for the aforementioned Item Crafting stuff. Endless numbers of sidequests which can be lost (well, sort of, anyway) if you make one tiny little mistake.
• Helpless Good Side: Pearl cannot fight, at all. Her alterego, Lady Blackpearl, certainly can.
• Heroic Mime: The main character does not even seem to possess any real personality, (save for some dialogue tree options) other than helping people and being absurdly stupid in the Underworld.
• Hey, You!: The player character's default name, literally, is just "YOU". This is more than likely a Shout-Out to the character's original homophonic name in the game's original language, which incidentally makes this a real name and not just a hint as to what sort of name you should provide your character with. There is actually a way to replace this with a randomly-generated name on the naming screen - you can just hit the Select button to gen a new one.
• Hidden Elf Village: There's a village of Lilipeas in the White Forest that you won't be able to find without a native villager leading you there.
• Hide Your Lesbians: Alexandra gets hit with this hard. The manga made the male Alex to be Alexandra's true form, with with "Sandra" being a disguise], to make her Bodyguard Crush on Florina more "acceptable." The Ultimania guide on the other hand lists the identities and genders of all the Jumi within the game (and a few that were removed). Alexandra is the only one listed Male/Female, as in BOTH. One is not a disguise for the other, as Alexandra actually changes forms; Alex is male and Sandra is female, possibly alluding to how alexandrite (the stone) changes color depending on the kind of light it's in. The Teardrop Crystal anime adaptation leans more heavily towards the male half by depicting this form as the default/original look throughout the Jumi's flashback sequences (where the name is "Alexandre") but also acknowledges that the female form is also true and not just a mere disguise.
• The Hilarity of Hats: The male protagonist's hat is referred to a few times as 'ridiculous.'
• Hive Mind: The Sproutlings and Flowerlings. As the manual says, "They all share the same mind with each other."
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: Invoked by the Faeries in the Gate of Heaven arc and the sirens during the Elle/Monique/Gilbert story arc.
• Hungry Jungle: The Jungle is a borderline case. It's one of the strongholds of the faeries, and the faeries hate humanity and have enchanted the jungle to be an un-navigable maze. On the other hand, the Wisdom Rosiotti the Warrior lives here. Rosiotti is mildly benevolent, will share his wisdom with those badass enough to find him, and will aid heroes against the faeries.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Normal, Nightmare, and No Future. In Nightmare, things still scale with your level, but they start at level 20 and get exponentially higher as you progress through the game. In No Future, everything starts at level 99.
• Improbable Hairstyle: The difficult to describe braided triple ponytail worn by the female protagonist, called "hair pipes" in game.
• Infinity -1 Sword: When coming to the apex of the Jumi questline, Elazul gives the player a 1H sword of legend for free if you don't pick him as a party member. It's got 40 atk and it's made of Ishe Platinum, which is pretty good! Unless, of course, you've been messing with the forging system, in which case you almost certainly already have a...
• Infinity +1 Sword: Or Spear, bow, etc... Unique in that these weapons have to be crafted using not crafting recipes, but honest to god techniques and patterns. Getting a weapon to 200 with a basic understanding of the rules isn't too hard. Getting a 999 power weapon is a flat out Guide Dang It!. Any weapons created this way can then be crafted into the body or logic block of an infinity +1 Golem.
• Informed Attribute: The Six Wisdoms are described as almost omniscient entities with powers beyond normal creatures and second only to the Goddess of Mana herself. They are even featured prominently in the remake opening cinematic. In spite of this, only Selva and Pokiehl are shown to do anything remotely superhuman or even "wise" for that matter. Gaeus and Tote only dedicate themselves to give enigmatic one liners, Rosiotti just sits on his throne doing nothing (even falling asleep in the middle of an important discussion), and Olbohn who's supposed to be Archdemon of the underworld has been usurped by Drakonis. The fact that Matilda, of all people, who makes stupid decisions one after another and has allowed the world to be brought to the brink of collapse because of ineptitude and poor logic, is somehow chosen as the seventh wisdom goes to show how "good" these folks are at their role. The idea of choice and free will as an ultimate virtue might be the cause, though: most of them have just chosen to do nothing, no matter the pleas of the world.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: The Mindas Ruins are full of pagodas with paths leading 4 ways, but gates blocking off 2 of those paths at any given time. One particularly frustrating quest causes 3 of the paths to be blocked off at once. The pagodas are only two steps above ground level and it would be extremely easy to just walk around the gates if those two steps weren't unsurmountable.
• Interface Spoiler: Alex appears right after Sandra in the Character encyclopedia, with their artwork positioned so that the characters' heads are in the same spot on the page. It's just one of many ways the game manages to make it easy to clock that Alex is Sandra's alterego.
• In-Universe Game Clock: Time advances at the rate of one day per world traveled or entered, though you can also sleep in the Geo Inn to make days pass as well.
• Invisible to Normals: Fairies are normally invisible to humans unless they choose to make themselves seen or if someone puts a spell on you to see them.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: After Cap'n Tusk has decided to release Gilbert he insults them by saying that the pirates are all cranky because they don't have girlfriends. Tusk immediately orders that the Penguins make Gilbert Walk the Plank.
• Item Crafting: You can create your own weapons (and via lots of farming and tempering, make Infinity +1 Swords, Spears, Bows, or whatever your weapon is) and build your own robot golem to aid you in battle (and using those Infinity +1 Swords as ingredients, turn it into an unstoppable death machine).
• Item Farming: How you gain all of your crafting ingredients, save for the scant few you find in treasure chests during each game cycle.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The Tower of Leires. You have to climb it a few times during the Jumi arc. It's full nature and purpose isn't extensively explained by the game lore.
• It's Up to You: Seriously, how does anybody get anything done in Fa'Diel without the player character? Hell, you even have to build the map! (Not as in you have to draw the map, but you literally create the world around you by plonking down the magical artifacts that create the towns and dungeons you quest in.)
• Jerkass: Escad, who is rude and condescending to everyone, including the player character, but especially to Irwin.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Elazul emerges as a far more likable character than his earliest appearances would lead one to believe.
• Kneel Before Zod: Sandra, right before killing Jumi, will order them to cry and beg for their lives. Of course, they can't. This interaction has a layer of added depth, since Sandra hates the entire Jumi race for slowly killing their Clarius, who can still cry healing tears but is giving up her life in bits and peices to do so.
• Knight Templar: Two examples, both within the Jumi arc.
  • Lady Blackpearl is determined to save the Jumi from extinction. But the only way to heal a Jumi is with a Jumi's tears, which pull from their core and their life essence. To the point where cying too much will eventually kill a Jumi. The only member of the entire race who can still cry is the Clarius Florina, and Blackpearl is determined to save the Jumi as a race at the expense of Florina's life.
  • Alexandra, on the other hand, loves Florina, and wants to protect her at all cost. If that means committing genocide against the Jumi, well, Alexandra reasons that a race that needs a means so evil to survive shouldn't be allowed to.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Gilbert's incessant pursuing of beautiful women comes to a head when he harasses the wrong lady and she turns him to stone. You can make it even worse for him if you give Monique the wrong spell when the two of you are trying to turn him back.
• Last of His Kind: At the end of the Jumi arc, the entire Jumi race save for Florina and either Pearl or Elazul (depending on who accompanied you to the Bejeweled City) has been exterminated. However, thanks to the Hero/ine's tears of compassion, the Jumi are revived.
• The Legend of X: Lampshaded in Catchin' Lillipeas, when Hamson and Skippie each have fake quest starts named Legend of Hamson or Skippie as they run of to decide their own fates.
• Leg Focus: In one mission, you run across a non-hostile Mad Mallard who gushes over Sandra's legs.
• Lighter and Softer: The manga adaptation is a lot lighter than the game, partially due to the protagonist being portrayed as a comedic Idiot Hero. But in particular, the Fairy arc is rewritten to be much more upbeat. In the game, the story ends with all the principle characters besides Escad OR Danea dead (and possibly not even either of them depending on your choices), and when they meet in the afterlife Irwin rejects Matilda and chooses to reincarnate with no memories of her. In the manga, Escad and Danea do NOT have a duel to the death, Escad is less of an asshole, and both Irwin and Matilda reincarnate as babies together after their deaths, with Escad and Danea choosing to raise them. Which is altogether a much happier ending for everyone.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Inverted. Thanks to exploiting the Item Crafting system, it is possible to make a Infinity +1 Sword, but no such equivalent exists for making magic instruments, which are used to cast spells. This means that when you start taking on Nightmare Mode, magic users will get left in the dust.
• Loads and Loads of Races: Hoo boy... humans, dwarves, elves, faeries, demons, mermaids, sirens (which are separate), centaurs, mummies, lizard women, chocobos, nagas, rabbit people, cat people, onion people, fruit people, turtle people, Dudbears, Jumi, people made of puzzle pieces, talking monkeys, talking teapots ^note if we're getting technical, they're magically animated teapots since Mark discusses replacing Teapo with a Teapo 2 from the Magic Academy at Geo, talking penguins, talking walruses, talking pelicans, talking mountains, talking storks, cavemen, mouse people, bird people, wolves with dragon tails, music playing tadpoles, people with antlers, people with butterfly and ladybug wings, whatever the hell Rev. Nouvelle and Revanshe are... and that's not even getting into the monsters. One of the many manuals explains that in this world, humans' appearance change subtly based on their experiences, and these new traits can be passed on to their children. Furthermore, at the end of the Fairy arc, Matilda discusses with Irwin that just by wishing it people in this world can change their shape and appearance. But most of the above are still completely separate species.
• The Lost Woods: The White Forest is an unusual variation of this trope. It's a very large, very ancient forest, and it's the demesne of the dragon Vadise and the mana stone she guards. Vadise is completely benevolent, however, and so the White Forest is only malevolent towards those who bring malice in with them. It's also not murky or very shadowy; though it's easy to get lost in, it's a rather beautiful area.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Gilbert, though the ladies that he hits on do express annoyance at his advances.
• Love Dodecahedron: Irwin struggles between his supposedly Always Chaotic Evil half-demon nature^note this can be interpreted as a genetically-inherited pathological disorder and his feelings for Matilda.[[spoiler^note Eventually he decides he can't see a way to resolve his twin desires for true love and monstrous sadism and commits suicide by willing his soul out of existence.]] Escad was against Irwin's relationship with Matilda since they were children, and while he's right that it's damaging for her in the present, he comes off as entitled to Matilda's love, which she doesn't reciprocate. Daena possibly has some form of romantic feelings for both Matilda and Escad, but constantly opposes the latter to protect the former's right to live and love freely. Matilda is in love with Irwin, but believes in free will to the point that she doesn't take a side in any of the above fights for both her and the fate of the world rather than suppress any of their natures and prevent the ensuing tragedy.
• Love Makes You Evil: Larc (sold his soul to be as strong as his sister and one day return to her), Alexandra (pushes the Jumi, who she believes are unfairly taking advantage of Florina, into extinction to save the latter from dying), Irwin (plots world destruction to free Matilda from her duties), and Escad (says he wants to kill Irwin because the latter is a demon, but comes off as wanting to Murder the Hypotenuse) all do what they do because of love. This may have something to do with the goddess of love getting corrupted in the last world war.
• Loyal Animal Companion: You can raise pets by capturing monster eggs, which you can raise in your pasture. If you build up mana levels in certain levels to certain levels, you can recruit a demihuman as a pet. This can result in mildly humorous things like setting your pet succubus out to graze.
• Mad Scientist: Miss Thenesis, despite being a witch, is one of these. Her spare time is spent conducting strange experiments in the library - it's implied that Nunuzac puts a stop to them when he's around to do so. She appears to have been involved in or at least aware of the body swap that's incured between Rachel and the magic school student Rosemary since it happens right in front of her.
• Magic Music: Enchanted instruments conjure elemental spells when played; additionally, sirens can cause nautical disasters whenever they sing.
• The Man Behind the Man: The Lord of Jewels is behind Sandra. Probably. The Lord of Jewels is conspicuously absent from the character profiles, and no one knows exactly what he wants out of the whole deal. The Ultimania guide states that he is a Star, and that he is using the Jumi cores to evolve into his final form. Supposedly he will also gain the power to create a crystal teardrop in the process. It is also stated that he is a man who loves beautiful things, and as he finds the Jumi beautiful he wants to help them, in his own strange way.
• Man on Fire:
  • Dragons can cause a burning status aliment that causes massive, continuous damage. (But you can do the same to the enemy with the right pet or magic.)
  • Freezing and Poison cause much the same effect. Poison causes the damage to happen in chunks instead of steadily, and freezing causes steady damage and paralyzes you.
• Marathon Boss:
  • Tropicallo. No matter how hard you hit the hands, the boss takes a fixed amount of damage, and it only takes damage when it regenerates one of his knocked out heads. On higher difficulties this will take forever. And if you're caught in the self-destructing hand's attack (that fills the entire screen), start the entire fight over. You have to go through this fight twice: Once for plot purposes, and afterwards for romance ones. Lord help you if you go through these quests on No Future mode.
  • Tropicallo has a younger brother, called Labanne. The only difference between both is that Labanne takes less damage to kill, and Labanne is fought on a much bigger screen so his self-destruct attack is much easier to dodge. For either of those bosses, the heads take morbid amounts of damage to kill on No Future mode. Anybody not using a weapon with over 500 attack power for Labanne, and with max attack power for Tropicallo is bound to get stuck on the bosses for quite a while. Hint: getting a weapon with over 300 attack already needs insane amounts of very precise tempering.
• Mathematician's Answer: In one subquest you have to convince the Geo Academy students to not boycott class. One student's excuse is that he thinks Adults Are Useless and especially dislikes those who only answer questions with "Yes" or "No". Those are your only dialogue options with that student.
• The Maze: The Junkyard area. At first it appears to be a Mobile Maze, and it's even lampshaded by the jack-in-the-box in the starting area when you return there; he claims that the piles of toys may have toppled over with all your running around, making some areas inaccessible. The reality is a bit more complicated. The whole area is actually made up of 2 similar but not identical maps meant to confuse you, as some paths are inaccessible in one map but open in the other, making it seem like paths have mysteriously vanished or new areas have appeared. There are actually multiple teleport points in between rooms that bring you back and forth between both maps and most rooms have 3 or more exits (with one being a teleport usually). This is the reason why the jack-in-the-box at the first entrance room gives you very specific instructions on which path to take: if you deviate from his path, even if you think you've arrived at the same location, you will have probably crossed a teleport point and ended up in the other map, unable to reach the boss room. To make things easier for the player, if you get lost there is a sad jack-in-the-box in the center area of both maps that'll teleport you to the main entrance area, there is a mirrored exit area in map 2 as well just in case you want to leave while you're on map 2, and in any follow up visits, you'll find a flowerling at the entrance who'll transport you directly to Professor Bomb's lab (which is in map 2)
• Meaningful Name:
  • All of the Jumi are named after their gems, so if you're attentive you'll very quickly realize the connection between Alex the Gem Merchant, Sandra the Jewel Thief, and Alexandra the Jumi Knight.
  • Niccolo is named after Machiavelli.
• Memento MacGuffin: Lisa's broom belonged to her magician father. When the Cactus accidentally throws it away, mistaking it for trash, this kicks off a subquest where you have to go retrieve it.
• Mirror Match: One quest has you chasing your Doppelgänger around town as they go about causing mischief. This culminates in a fight against them at the edge of town.
• Missing Mom: Bud and Lisa's father may be missing, but at least he's a plot point and an influence on their characters. There's absolutely no mention of their mother in the game. All we know is that Bud wields her fryingpan in battle.
• Mook Bouncer: Boinks teleport you to the location of their tails if you talk to them; Shadoles (but only in the sidequest where you have to save a suicidal NPC) return you to the bottom of hell if you so much as brush against them.
• Multiple Life Bars: Both you and the enemies you fight can have layered health bars. In order, the colors are blue, green, yellow, then red, though characters with sufficiently high HP will have the colors alternate between blue and green numerous times before progressing to the others.
• New Game Plus: Everything carries over except NPC levels and artifacts. You also unlock The Forbidden Tome, which increases the difficulty of the game (enemy HP and levels), in your library.
• Nintendo Hard: Seriously. Yeah, the game got blasted for its ease. That's regular difficulty we're talking about. Try fighting Boreal Hound, Orc, or Tropicallo on No Future Mode.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Most of the Bow attacks are in a straight line, though for some of the special attacks there is some attempt made to show the effects of gravity (and in others the arrows are apparently heat-seeking).
• Noob Cave: Luon Highways and Mekiv Caverns. They're the two lands you can obtain during your first visit to Domina, and Duelle the Onion Warrior appears at their entrances for some last-second tutorials. Though, if the player wishes, they can hold off on placing one or the other on the map - and a lot of optimized map placement strategies call for doing so with Mekiv.
• Noodle Incident: A lot of the backstory, even if you bother to read the in-game encyclopedia, seems to have been lost in the mists of time.
• Old Save Bonus: Averted with the remaster having the events always on, but they were as follows:
  • With a Final Fantasy VIII save file, your first monster egg will spawn a Chocobo.
  • With a Chocobo Racing save file, you get a secret quest that nets you the Fastest Wheel accessory.
  • With a SaGa Frontier 2 save file, you can fight a secret battle whose reward is the best sword from that game.
• Ominous Pipe Organ: A fair few songs have bits of it, but the Lord of Jewels 1000's battle theme is all pipe organ.
• The Omnipresent: The in-game character encyclopedia ascribes this ability to Mr. Moti, the dancing turban man who acts as your save point: "He is everywhere, doing everything."
• One-Time Dungeon: Two examples.
  • At the end of the Dragons Arc, Drakonis causes his palace to rise from The Underworld, turning it into The Flames. Once Drakonis is beaten, the palace sinks and the place reverts to The Underworld.
  • At the end of the Fairie Arc, Irwin begins trying to resurrect the dragon Lucemia, which he begins by levitating its corpse into the air. When Irwin is defeated, Lucemia's body crashes back to earth and can't be reentered.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Early in the game, Duelle will ask if your name is "Chumpy"; answering "Yes" will result in you being addressed as such by all of the NPCs for the entire game cycle.
• Only Sane Man: Two examples.
  • Daena in the Heaven's Gate arc. Escad wants to kill Irwin, Irwin wants to kill everyone, Matilda doesn't want to take any action at all lest she tread on someone else's freedoms. Daena at least wants to try and figure out a way to resolve things without people dying.
  • Vadise for Dragon Emperor. Larc is willing to kill whomever gets in his way in his attempts to reunite with his sister Sierra, and Sierra tries to kill the Hero/ine to stop Larc. Vadise on the other hand trusts the Hero/ine to be heroic once s/he's not bound to Larc and his master anymore. So she calls off Sierra and gives her mana stone to Larc without fighting (and dying) over it, freeing the Hero/ine and enabling them to act against Larc's plan.
• Our Humans Are Different: The human race encompasses a wide variety of sapient beings: from the Little Bit Beastly to full on Civilized Animals, mythological creatures such as mermaids and centaurs, and various others. This is in addition to the "ordinary" humans like the player character. Basically any sapient creature that isn't said to not be human — such as Sproutlings, Faeries, or Jumi — is human.
• Our Orcs Are Different: Fa'Diel only has one Orc, and it's a sort of sharktopus sea monster. It was originally called Shore Grell in the Japanese version.
• Palette Swap: Bosses such as Mantis Ant/Hegs Ant, Spriggan/Gova, the Iron Centaurs, the Jewel Beasts and the Du' family are all this. Any mook you hatch as a pet will also be a different color from the enemy monster (likely to be able to differentiate them in battle).
• Palmtree Panic: The above ground part of Madora Beach is a tropical beach with palm trees.
• The Password Is Always "Swordfish": The Penguin Pirate's secret password is "What", meaning you can accidentally give the correct answer when the pirates demand it of you.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • You can lose out on several quests if you refuse to take Bud and Lisa on as apprentices near the beginning of the game.
  • There's an early game quest called The Wisdom of Gaeus/Gaia. In order to trigger it, you have to talk to Daena in the inn in Domina. You can miss it by starting the Love Triangle arc first, or by giving the wrong answers to Daena when talking to her.
  • If you go into the White Forest without Larc you may trigger the quest "Catching Lilipeas", starting this quest locks you out of the penguins/dudbears quest "Where's Putty?" even though they're completely unrelated.
  • In one of your quests, your Cactus (who is responsible for the Cactus Diary entries) runs off and you have to find him. If you finish any other quests in the meantime, they can not be recorded as complete in his diary and you'll have to wait for a New Game Plus to try again. Whatever you do, NEVER talk to Bud if you have a Diary entry waiting to be recorded. (Luckily, "Daddy's Broom" does not cause this same thing: while the cactus leaves, he also comes back before the event ends. Once again, however, failing to talk to Bud LAST will screw you over: if you don't, you'll lose Bud when you go back into the house to talk to Lil' Cactus, and he won't come back until after the event.)
  • Additionally, any of the Cactus Diary entries are lost if you fail to talk to Lil' Cactus before finishing another event. This can be very irritating for first-time players due to abruptly-ending events (such as "Mana Orchards") as it will cause the previous event's entry to be lost.
  • You can lose access to the entire Elle subplot if you go to the cafe in Geo before starting it. Since starting the first quest in the series ("A Siren's Song") involves talking to specific NPCs in a specific order in specific locations, it's one of the easiest quests to miss.
  • Anything in The Flames or Lucemia is lost forever once those areas are no longer accessible. Luckily for us, the game's cyclical nature means that "forever" lasts only until your current playthrough is over.
  • The Heaven's Gate Arc is the hardest of the three primary arcs to begin. A big part of this is that you can potentially miss out on it for the entire cycle if you go to the wrong level at the wrong time.
  • The only time you can fight a secret boss, Deathbringer II, is in between killing Jajara and killing Drakonis.
  • There are various quests that will not trigger at all if the land they're triggered on does not have the requisite mana levels in the right element.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: The Pirate Penguins. Their description in the in-game Character Encyclopedia reads, "Extremely proud of the fact that they are pirates, though they don't seem to act like pirates that often." They do get up to nefarious antics once, when they kidnap Gilbert with intentions to sell him. One of them even lampshades it, saying "Hee hee he. We do be pirates, after all!]]
• Planet Heck: The Underworld is a pretty standard depiction of the underground cavernous take on Hell - ambient red glow, grimacing demonic faces with glowing eyes in the walls. You can leave and enter whenever you wish, although that's fairly unique for the Hero/ine due to an understanding with Olbohn, the Underworld's ruler.
• Player-Guided Missile: Among the various area-of-effect types for elemental spells is the "Control" type, where the player manually guides a targeting circle to the desired area before igniting the spell.
• Player Headquarters: The Hero/ine's home is a comfy house built into a tree. Their homestead also has an orchard, a pasture for raising monsters, and a workshop for making various kinds of equipment.
• Police Are Useless: Not for a lack of trying, but Inspector Boyd never solves any case he's involved in, he seems to be always fooled by Sandra's schemes, and basically trails two steps behind her all throughout the Jumi arc. In fact the last time we see him he's literally left standing outside because of a magical barrier and he never solves the Jewel thief case.
• Port Town: Polpota Harbor is primarily a resort town, but it is set at the ocean and has boats and a small beach and stuff.
• The Power of Love:
  • Zigzagged. It's subverted in that the problems underlying every major arc (and many minor arcs) are initiated because Love Makes You Evil. It's played straight in that the Hero/ine's compassion and love for the Jumi is what saves the entire race when s/he sheds a healing teardrop crystal for them, and arguably in Daena's and Sierra's motivations to help you in the final dungeon and fight of their respective arcs. Interestingly, per The Cage of Dreams and The Legend of Mana events, the moral of the whole game seems to be, if the Mana Tree and the Mana Goddess are love, that The Power of Love is worth the risk of Love Makes You Evil.
  • Played straight, though, in the Siren subquest—Gilbert's fickle womanizing gets him turned to stone, but he is redeemed when his original girlfriend Monique decides to rescue him. He mends his ways, and they get a Happily Ever After. Unless you screw up the cure so terribly that he blows up.
• The Power of Rock: The right tune will charm the mana elementals into approaching you and dropping a silver or gold elemental coin.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: All that differs when you play either a male or female character is whether your male character's nice hat or your female character's Improbable Hairstyle is mentioned in dialogue.
• Remember the New Guy?: If you don't complete the Jumi story arc, you'll see Belle the Dream Witch for the first time when she confronts Nunuzac after he traps the sproutling in the dream world. She doesn't get an introduction in her dialogue with Nunuzac and everyone (except you-the-player) seems to know who she is.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Lil' Cactus. As described on the Analysis page of that trope, he hits all four points: oversized head, large eyes, large feet, stubby limbs and huggable looking. In one of his journal entries he even complains about how he can't cuddle or be cuddled because he's so spiky.
• Robot Buddy: After completing a quest with Dr. Bomb in the Junkyard, he builds a Golem lab in you workshop so you can make your own robot buddies. Given that the creation uses equipment you can make in the other workshops, the robot buddy can become a Game Breaker if you use an Infinity +1 Sword in its genesis or "logic block" creation.
• Ruins for Ruins' Sake: The Mindas Ruins are a set of jungle ruins with only a couple of remaining large structures.
• Sadistic Choice: Near the end of the Heaven's Gate arc, Escad and Daena come to blows. You get to decide who to side with, causing the other person to initiate a battle to the death. You can't even Take a Third Option: proclaiming that both of them are wrong causes the one you'd been nicer to in the story arc up to this point to flip out and try to kill you.
• Scenery Porn: Backgrounds are lovingly done in a soft pastel / watercolor style that's very easy on the eyes.
• Screw Destiny: When Matilda says it's Irwin's destiny to destroy the world, Daena doesn't accept this, and tries to stop him. (Then Matilda tells Daena that is her destiny, too.)
• "Shaggy Dog" Story:
  • The "Lil' Cactus" quest. When Bud falls ill, Lil' Cactus uproots himself and goes to find a solution. You spend the entirety of the quest going all over the map just to be told that Lil' Cactus just left. By the end of the quest Lil' Cactus is waiting for you back home (shoved into your mailbox) and he's found the cure for Bud. All that running around all over the map was pointless since he found what he was looking for and managed to get home all by himself. This is even foreshadowed by the Fortune Teller who flat out states "The cactus will save the boy", i.e. not you.
  • In-Universe: Pokiehl promises to tell you the legendary story of Watts the blacksmith when Watts returns. As it happens there's not much to tell since he hasn't done much of anything. Pokiehl spends a few moments trying to find a story worth telling before Watts eventually tells him to just shut up.
• Shifting Sand Land: The Duma Desert is... pretty much your standard videogame desert. It has sand, windswept rocks, giant cacti, (in the background, you can't bump into them and hurt yourself) bleached animal bones, and several of the enemies there are undead or demonic. Weirdly, it also has torrents of sand falling from heights unseen to block your way, and said torrents are dispelled in a dream which somehow extends to real life.
• Shout-Out:
  • There's a glove technique called "Fist of the Norse Star."
  • The description of the "Jump" skill in the encyclopedia reads: "Might as well jump." This is a reference to Van Halen's song "Jump", although it could additionally be a reference to Final Fantasy VI and the scene where Sabin and Cyan jump over the edge of a waterfall.
• Shrinking Violet: Pearl is very shy and unsure of herself, and apologizes constantly.
• Shrouded in Myth: Mr. Moti, the dancing turban man who acts as your save point while visiting towns. According to the in-game encyclopedia: "He is everywhere, doing everything."
• Simple Score of Sadness: Etansel - City of Flickering Destruction, the score that plays in the Bejeweled City.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: The game's pretty far towards idealism, taking the point of view that if you're true to yourself things WILL work out right somehow. However, each of the three main arcs land on a different points of the scale.
  • The Jumi arc is ultimately rather idealistic. Everything that everyone does in the storyline comes from a place of love, and even the Final Boss of the arc is something of a Well-Intentioned Extremist. And ultimately, (aside from the Lord of Jewels, apparently) Everybody Lives at the end. The Hero/ine cries for the Jumi race, which brings them all back at the cost of the Hero/ine turning to stone. Talking amongst themselves and collectively deciding to try, the Jumi shed tears for the first time in ages, reviving the Hero/ine in kind. The only bitter part is that Sandra chooses to exile herself from the Jumi homeland for what she did.
  • The Dragon arc is somewhere in the middle. Motivations become a bit greyer, as even the Hero/ine is forced to work with a shifty character on pain of death, and said shifty character, the main antagonist, is a straight up evil conqueror, who you unwittingly help ascend to power. The Big Bad's second in command Larc is your ally through most of the story, but he just wants to reunite with his sister. And his sister ultimately helps you right everything and defeat the Big Bad. You are forced to kill Larc in the process, but an unknown amount of time after the story, he and his sister do get their reunion. So largely a happy ending.
  • The Fairy arc sits pretty firmly on the cynical side. While, like in the Jumi arc, everyone ultimately acts out of love, there are a lot more toxic dynamics to that love throughout the story. The arc revolves around Matilda and Irwin. They cannot be together due to Matilda being raised to be and eventually becoming a high priestess, so Irwin as a demon decides to both steal Matilda's power (and simultaneously, her youth) and ultimately destroy the world to free Matilda from her duty. Matilda doesn't try to stop Irwin as she loves him too much to want to interfere with his free will. And then you have Escad, who also loves Matilda but hates all magical creatures, including Irwin (and it's hard to say how much of this stems from jealousy of Irwin having Matilda's eye). Finally there is Daena, who also loves Matilda, but her feelings are healthier and she's much more circumspect about them. Ultimately Daena and Escad have a fight to the death over how to handle the Irwin situation, you and whoever you choose to take with you confronts and kills Irwin, and Matilda dies of old age. In an aversion of Together in Death, upon meeting Matilda in the underworld, Irwin decides to wash his hands of everything and reincarnate with no memories of his previous life. About the only positive thing to be said is you save the world from destruction.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Fieg Snowfields is an unusually un-slippery version of this since it's all snow and snowdrifts.
• Space Whale: Lord of Jewels 1000 looks somewhat like a whale, and you fight him on an Amazing Technicolor Battlefield IN SPACE! Funnily enough the Lord of Jewels himself appears to be some sort of fishman, and the Lord of Jewels 999 is a faintly fish-like monster.
• Speaking Simlish: The Dudbears. Their vocabulary is composed of very few syllables and only "Duba", their word for "you", is part of a real language, being an African word for "bear".
• Special Person, Normal Name: Mark, Jennifer and Rachel have surprisingly mundane names for a family of insect people who own a living, talking, human sized teapot and are friends with an onion warrior.
• Stern Teacher: Miss Kathinja is half basilisk; her glare can turn people to stone, and she has a rather short temper. However, the students also think she's hot, and she's the most popular teacher at the school.
• Sucking-In Lines: The vast majority of super moves start with streams of energy pouring into the person using it.
• Superpowered Evil Side:
  • The final boss is the Mana Goddess'.
  • In a rare inversion Pearl is the Underpowered Good Side of Lady Blackpearl. While the latter is not exactly evil per se she's definitely a Knight Templar, in contrast with the former's Shrinking Violet.
• Superboss: The remaster upgrades Deathbringer II to this status by giving it a lot more health and a variety of new, devastating attacks.
• Swiss-Army Tears: Played straight and inverted: a Jumi's tears can heal (and perhaps even bring people back from the dead), but crying for one turns you into stone.
• Technicolor Death: Every boss has their own flashy death sequence in which they explode, disintegrate, melt, vaporize, etc.
• Tech Tree: New abilities and super-moves are learned by using ones you currently have.
• Theme Naming:
  • The Jumi are all named after the jewels in their core.
  • The students at Geo are named after spices. You find out that Bud (and possibly Lisa) attended the school there for a while too, but have since dropped out.
    • Speaking of Bud and Lisa, Lisa's name in the Japanese version was Corona, giving them theme naming as well.
• To Hell and Back: The player character in the Dragon Arc and a subquest where you rescue a despondent organist from Hell.
• Token Evil Teammate: Each major arc arguably has one.
  • The Jumi arc has Lady Blackpearl who, while not evil exactly, is perfectly willing to let one of her kind die if it means reviving the rest who have been exterminated since the fall of the Jumi city of Etansel.
  • The Dragon arc has Larc, who has sympathetic motives but works for an evil man who wants to rule the world.
  • The Fairy Arc has Escad. He has a MAJOR hatred of demons in general and Irwin in particular for taking Matilda's mana. He is a pretty big jerk to anyone who gets in his way and it is ambiguous how much of his hatred of Irwin is just jealousy that Matilda chose him over Escad.
  • Outside the 3 arcs, we have Niccolo. He is an unrepentant conman who drags you into his increasingly immoral schemes. And with your help, he scams another (admittingly unsympathetic) character out of millions and never receives any comeuppance. Oh, and he's racist towards sproutlings.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Springballs. In most other Mana games they're just benign monsters who launch you from one place to another. In this one, they try to kill you.
• Trauma Inn: Present in Domina and Polpota Harbor, and though you never use them as such, NPCs can be seen staying there and speaking to whoever is behind the counter saves your game.
• Two-Teacher School: Averted in Geo; the teachers even have different schedules depending on the day of the week. Which is quite odd considering there's 4 teachers but only one classroom.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: Watts the Blacksmith teaches you how to become this for finding his hammer. Great, because, short of having someone else make and pawn it at the Junkyard, it's the only way to get that Infinity +1 Sword.
• Underground Level: The Mekiv Caverns and the Ulkan Mines are both entirely underground. Also, Madora Beach and Gato have underground sections that look identical to Mekiv and Ulkan respectively.
• Unwitting Pawn: Everybody who's not Alexandra in the Jumi Arc, but even she seems to be manipulated by the Lord of Jewels to some extent; both you and Larc are used by the Dragon Lord in that particular arc.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Mana Tree. The introductory movie for the game has the Mana Tree begging you to find her. Then, after you've completed one of the three major story arcs and defeated a Climax Boss, stuff starts happening right outside your home, which leads to you rescuing someone from inside a dream and receiving the Sword of Mana (the Infinity +1 Sword from Secret of Mana) as an artefact. Once you place the Sword of Mana, a dimensional portal with the Mana Tree visible inside it appears instead of a normal land.
• Villain Protagonist: Niccolo is this for his storyline. He is a very scummy conman who is rather bigotted towards Sproutlings. And his storyline is ultimately about him conning and scheming his way to becoming rich. And you enable him the entire way there.
• Walk the Plank: The Pirate Captain orders the penguins to make Gilbert walk the plank after he offends them one last time.
• We Cannot Go On Without You: Averted, as it's only game over if all the members of your party are dead, and even then, you can restart any battle at the beginning with a full super bar.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • The female penguin who hid her egg from her partner gets no resolution. Unless you step on 32 crabs on Madora Beach. If you do, she and the baby will move in with you.
  • After finishing Rachel's story there are no further quests or interactions with her and her family. You can find a student in the Geo Academy that will refuse to speak, just like she did while she worked in the Domina tavern, but we're never shown what comes of their relationship or her plans to build a rocket.
• When Trees Attack:
  • Besides the Sproutlings and Li'l Cactus, one of your enemies is walking-tree-themed.
  • And then there's the goddess herself...
• Wizarding School: The Academy in Geo is a school for children learning magic. Bud and Lisa used to be students there.
• World of Weirdness: From talking teapots to lamp-selling sirens to a vain chocobo pretending to be a canary. The fact that Niccolo of all people calls Watts a lunatic when his new wallet doesn't automatically have the money from his old wallet in it is one of the few times someone acknowledges how bizarre people in this world really are.
• Wrestler in All of Us: The Grapple command gives you the opportunity to suplex any enemy in the game. If you're lucky, it can even work on bosses that are at least fifty times your size. They even did the research on pro wrestling moves, some of the special moves with the glove are named after obscure wrestling moves. For example, one of them was called "Tiger Driver '91". Back before Kenta Kobashi started using his "Burning Hammer", the Tiger Driver '91 was the ultimate murderdeathkill pro wrestling Finishing Move - although only smarks knew about it.
• You Are Worth Hell: Found at the culmination of Irwin and Matilda's story. However, when she greets him in the underworld, he simply leaves her and decides to be reborn free of her, averting it at the last moment. The nature of this world's underworld as "Hell" is a bit ambiguous however, as it seems more in line with some traditional mythological depictions than the Judeo-Christian standard as people seem to walk in and out freely and with no consequences.
• You Bastard!: The Dragon arc pretty much exists to make you feel bad about killing everything that moves.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Over and over during the "Lil' Cactus" quest.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Sandra the Jewel Thief does this when she steals the Jumi's cores. At one point, she even tells a victim, "Your core is mine!"

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