Legend Of Mana

• USE your secondary moves-often your specials require certain ones to be unlocked, and the only way to earn new ones is to use the ones you have.

• As for the secondary skills, you only need to have them equipped for a certain number of battles. Every advanced secondary skill and special attack requires you to have different secondary skills equipped for a particular number of battles. Like crouch + jump for high jump. The forward and backward movement skills get a couple improvements. Be sure to try pressing the heavy attack button during them for additional effects.

• There are 3 main plot lines, any of which will bring you to the end, but you're welcome to do all of them. One is the Gato line, starring Escad, Deanna, and Irwin, which incidentally starts in Gato. You've got your Jumi line featuring Elazul and Pearl, most of which involves Geo in some way. Then there's the Dragoon line, with Larc, which begins in the Underworld. A "plot quest" will usually have a little symbol appear by the name when the quest first pops up.

• There's really no way to know what artifact is going to be involved in a story line, without actually consulting a guide or anything. You don't always get the next location from the previous quest. Example, to continue the Gato line, you might have to help Nicollo find the sprite in the Mindas Ruins to get the next artifact.

• I recall the Underworld line being the most straightforward, in that finishing one area will give you the artifact for the next, and so on. Just play through until you get the Twisted Spoon and follow that line from then on.

• Don't mash the attack buttons. Weapons are capable of one heavy attack and a varying number of light attacks. Input too many light attacks at once and your character will be stuck for a moment. Light attacks chain into heavy attacks and the best standard heavy attack is the one you get while holding down-forward. Secondary skills can be slipped in damn near anywhere. I remember a lot of them chaining into light attacks.

• A blue afterimage lets you know you're still mid-combo. With good timing, it's possible to chain the first hit of a combo with itself!

• There is a hard limit to the length of a combo. The bad news is this freezes the character in place as if you screwed up. The good news is this also creates HP restoring candy!

• Just like learning new secondary skills, learning special attacks requires you to have certain secondaries equipped for a set number of total battles. You don't have to do this for every new weapon type you try. That's why you'll find yourself learning tons of special attacks later on when you try out a new weapon.

• Golem buddies are fun to create and play around with. They share that party slot with pets. Pets can be pretty awesome, but raising a good one requires meticulous care and overall high mana values for your home.

• Blacksmithing is almost incomprehensible without a guide.

• There is a depressingly short list of magic instruments you can make, but this means the process is really simple.

• Getting your constitution to 90 or higher causes your character to constantly regenerate HP. Which means it recovers amazingly fast when you use something like Crouch.

• The stats you gain on level up depend on your equipped weapon type. It's mostly intuitive. Like mostly Strength from 2-handed swords, Constitution from hammers or Magic from a staff. This isn't important unless you want to go all min-maxy.

• Check your home's library when you hit new game+. I don't remember if the game points out the added feature.

• The contents of shops and the level of enemies in an area depend on how far from your home it is placed.