Secret of Mana

**Leopold Stotch** · 16-03-2011, 00:50

Originally Posted by kestegs

I bought my wife a computer, so I wouldn't have to feel bad about playing a game while she should be doing schoolwork or something.

that's why i have my netbook and Mara has the house comp. i can't game on this, but i didn't want it for gaming. mainly schoolwork, writing projects, and socializing.

im quite content.

**stillman** · 19-03-2011, 20:49

Originally Posted by Dredd

There's another thorn in my side: Actraiser, one of my all time favorite video games ever! Period. An innovative classic. Then comes Actraiser 2 which completely removed the element that made the original game brilliant (the world-building/god-mode aspect)... in return for an unforgivingly hard, and dull side-scroller.

Then comes Castlevania 3 (back to linear platformer) after Simon's Quest!

**kestegs** · 20-03-2011, 15:00

I loved Simon's quest, the only castlevania I liked up until the PlayStation titles.

**Technomancer** · 21-03-2011, 01:08

Simon's Quest!! I'm right there with Kestegs, by far my favorite Castlevania until they shifted to Metroid-vania!!

**Leopold Stotch** · 13-04-2011, 22:14

hey, guys? i had a question. the action grid is confusing (to me for right now). do y'all have any suggestions where i should put my chars? and then when it asks where to keep the gauges at level 0 or 1? what does that mean? >.>

thanks for any and all help.

p.s. the sprite kid is a boy?! really?? hmm.... might name him Lemon or something. Sprite. Lemon. hahaha im (not) funny.

**kestegs** · 14-04-2011, 03:26

Lemon

I usually kept my action gauge kind of in the middle but more towards attack/approach, If they are getting pwned then adjust it back, if they are smelling flowers too much then make them more aggressive. The gauges are what level they will charge their weapon up to before attacking, so "0" means they will attack every time their gauge fills to 100% "1" means they will fill up to a level 1 charge (like when you hold the attack button down to charge yourself)

The action grid is a bit confusing, and I never paid that much mind to it, I usually set it to one of the 4 center squares and never touch it again.

**Technomancer** · 14-04-2011, 09:26

I haven't played in a while, but yeah, the middle 4 squares are probably where you wanna keep it. All the way toward approach, and they'll keep running into monsters and getting hit, totally keep away and they'll stay so far away, they won't be nearly as effective. It's pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it though, but it is actually a pretty unique game element I've never seen anywhere else.

I went and loaded up an old save-file of mine and looked what I had done. For Attack, I set all of them to second column. For Approach, I set the guy to the second row and the other 2 to the third row (since I usually kept them equipped with ranged weapons). You can do quite a bit of playing around though, especially depending on what weapon you're using. I would only recommend to not set it to the top-left corner and probably never set Approach to the top (you'll just walk into monsters

). If you are using ranged weapons, you could play around with setting Attack to highest and Approach the lowest. Also, like Kestegs said, if they keep getting hurt, try moving their grid closer to Keep Away, or if they're just standing around picking their nose while you hack up all the baddies, set their Attack higher. You may find yourself wanting to tweak the grid some throughout the game, like if you enter a new strong area, shift to Keep Away for a while, but when you can just blow through the area, you can be more aggressive to speed things along. Really though, you can mostly get away with setting it once and forgetting about it.

Kestegs nailed the number thing too. You probably already stumbled on it, but if not, you can hold down the attack button after you attack to save up for a powerful attack. This lets you set whether you want your other characters to do that and if so, how high. For every level of experience you have with a weapon, you can charge up another level which takes longer, but can be REALLY strong. I usually just left this at 0 though so they'd keep attacking and let me worry about the fancy stuff, but it's just experimentation and taste. I wouldn't recommend setting this too high (levels go up to 8-9 by endgame) cause it could take WAY too long between attacks, 1-4 should be plenty.