Final Fantasy Adventure: Legend of the Mana Sword

Legend of the Mana Sword focuses on making the first game of the Mana series both a better experience for first time players, and more fun for returning players.

If you've never played a Mana game before, Legend of the Mana Sword is a good place to start your adventure.

If you've already played later Mana games, it will be familiar yet new.

If you've previously played the original (whether it was called Final Fantasy Adventure, Mystic Quest, or Seiken Densetsu) then Legend of the Mana Sword helps the game you remember better live up to its true potential.

Choose one of the two included patches. Your choice mainly affects your main character.

Features include:
* New title and title screen.
* Super Game Boy border adapted from https://www.deviantart.com/orioto's https://www.deviantart.com/orioto/art/Vision-Of-A-Tree-1010165610.
* Two choices for the main character.
* Gameplay bug fixes including the infamous Heal bug.
* Script improvements inspired by the original Japanese script and the lore of later Mana games.
* Hints improved for some of the more baffling puzzles.
* Small graphics tweaks.
* "Lazy DX" enhancements.
* Bug fixes and improvements throughout.

Legend of the Mana Sword!

Final Fantasy Adventure, Mystic Quest, Seiken Densetsu--many names, one game. Beloved by many, but also disliked by quite a few. Legend of the Mana Sword's goal is to bring more of the magic from the following games (especially Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana) to the seminal game of the the Mana series.

Gameplay and Bug Fixes:
* Using Heal, Unicorn, and the Moogle item no longer corrupts your DP.
* You can now use the Moogle item, Unicorn, or Heal to remove Moogle status effect.
* When using Nectar and Stamina you no longer need to press START or SELECT for them to take effect. (They still won't wear off until a window is shown at least 20 seconds later, so they are still exploitable.)
* Enemies with two possible drops no longer re-randomize if your bags are full.
* Poison is cured on level up, and when riding your chocobo. Stone is cured by chocobo.
* Silence buzzing in certain emulators.
* All known soft locks fixed.
* Poison and Fuji's ASK heal are no longer prevented by attacking.
* Fix the Iron Helmet exploit (because it could unintentionally nerf other equipment).
* Fix the Sickle warp bug.
* Poison now waits one second until it does its first damage. (Fuji's ASK heal still ticks immediately.)
* Puzzles using Snowman and Chests no longer fail randomly.
* Magic Power is set correctly when loading a save.
* Followers now move with player across chain post transits.
* Nuke has been buffed to its original Japanese power.
* New-and-improved Random Number Generator (RNG)!

Graphics:
* New title screen.
* "Shieldless" main character sprites used in a few cutscenes.
* Choice between two main characters.
* Minor tweaks to background graphics throughout, including a new animated tile on the worldmap.
* Many small sprite tweaks.
* Status Bar ("HUD") layout improvements.
* Super Game Boy enhancements, including a border adapted from a piece from the incredible artist orioto celebrating the announcement of the next Mana game, Visions of Mana.
* "Lazy DX" color improvements when played on real hardware or an emulator properly configured with a BIOS.

Script and Text:
* Rewritten intro crawl.
* Hundreds of lines of dialog modified!
* Specifically cleaned up a lot of the dialog most important to the plot.
* Reworked some of the ending because it both didn't make much sense and also ignored the original Japanese script.
* On level up you are given a choice of jobs instead of stats to mirror the Japanese original. (Does not affect gameplay.)
* Excalibur (also Excalbur and XCalibr) renamed Mana Sword.
* Slep spell renamed Sleep.
* Status names are no longer limited to four characters: "Moogle" instead of "Moog", "Poison" instead of "Pois", "Stone" instead of "Ston", and "Blind" instead of "Dark".
* Each spell is now associated with a Mana spirit (Mana spirits were not previously introduced until the second game).
* Original names used for "Shadow Knight", "Bon Voyage", "Granz", "Lorimar", "Genji", and "Mithril".
* Changes to the "Bag of Fang" quest to make it less frustrating and to make the hint actually useful.
* Changes to the Ruins quest so people might be able to do it without searching the web.
* A large number of typos, misspellings, grammar mistakes, awkward phrasings, bad translations, unnecessary verbosity, incorrect pluralization, and unintelligible uninteresting nonsense fixed. (If nonsense is interesting or intelligible it's likely left as is.)

Changes in 2024-03-29:
* New Linear Congruent Random Number Generator (RNG).
* Huge random spawn location rewrite. Should now always finish in a single frame.
* Fix random spawn logic for entering from the left or top to allow the same amount of space as the other sides.
* A Super Game Boy border adapted from a piece from the incredible artist orioto.
* Super Game Boy Ending Letterbox effects.
* Further ending script improvement.
* More background tile improvements, such as Castle tower swamp edges, airship improvements, the Dime tower Jump scene, and the Mana Pure Land.
* Speed up window drawing.
* Speed up script execution in a lot of cases (including floor switches).
* Speed up Shadow Knight's rush to push you off the waterfall.
* Increase number of tiles that can be loaded between frames.
* Six letter status conditions: "Moogle" instead of "Moog", "Poison" instead of "Pois", "Stone" instead of "Ston", and "Blind" instead of "Dark".
* Rename Bronze Key to Silver Key (the original Japanese name).
* Fix level up AP/DP preview.
* Mt Rocks, "Play a 'wrong' sound when you've entered a looped hallway".
* Saurus Fang drop rate increases after a "broken" Fang.
* Add an obvious exit from the Mana Pure Land.
* Fix boss load glitches.
* Fix Magic AP bugged after save file load until a window is displayed.
* Buff Nuke.
* You can now ride Chocobot through all bridges.
* Cure Stone with chocobo.
* Followers follow you across chain poles.
* Fix attempting to equip non-existent equipment. Add error sound.
* River corners (but not lake or ocean) move right up to the bank.
* Using Sickle to clear plants now shows swamp.
* Script space expansion.
* Fill in edges for shake effect.
* Leave inns while the screen is faded.
* Make bats black again. (Oops, broken in last release.)
* Add Lorimar to the in-game map.
* Like usual, a large number of script edits, minor bug fixes, and small graphic improvements.

Changes in 2023-10-31:
* Now built from source! https://github.com/xenophile127/FFA-Disassembly/tree/lotms
* Pumpkins (and Scorpions) are now red instead of blue with "Lazy DX". Happy Halloween!
* Ice projectiles (yours and enemies') are now blue instead of red with "Lazy DX".
* Riding your chocobo now cures poison.
* Nuke is called Nuke again.
* Change Duke's eyes to look more like Amanda's.
* Wendle cutscene changes including changes depending on whether or not the Mysterious Man assisted you.
* Edit the scene where you learn Cure to (hopefully) be closer to the original Japanese.
* Fix Mithril Helm (for real). Now gives some damage resistance to certain damage types, as documented.
* Fix for puzzle switches sometimes not activating, a huge longstanding bug in this game.
* Fix for an obscure exploit that would allow normally immune enemies to be muted or put to sleep.

Changes in 2023-02-13:
* Status Bar spacing much improved.
* No poison instant death.
* Fix a graphic issue with Kary introduced in the last version. (Oops!)
* Jumping enemies can no longer follow you when scrolling to another screen.
* Graphics improvements to the overworld, especially the swamp. Also to certain other maps that shared graphics.
* Lucre limit raised from 65536 to 99999.

Changes in 2022-12-21:
* Waterfalls and two more skies are now bluer when playing on real color hardware or on an emulator with a properly configured color BIOS. (Tested on SameBoy, bgb, and Emulicious.)
* Garuda now explodes into a cloud of feathers.
* Text edits, including more detail from the Japanese version

Change in 2022-10-30:
* The Iron Helmet fix was badly broken. My fault.

Changes in 2022-10-30:
* Poison and Fuji's ASK heal now are unaffected by attacking.
* Each point of wisdom now always gives one mana.
* Fix the Iron Helmet exploit (because it could unintentionally nerf other equipment).
* Fix the Sickle warp bug.
* Mithril Helmet now gives resistance to certain damage types, just like Mithril Armor.
* Shadow Knight's position to not overlap the dialog window.
* Separate the HUD from the playfield by a pixel like in the Japanese original.

Changes in 2022-08-21:
* Fix LotMS specific Wendel cutscene bug recently introduced. (Oops!)
* Fix all known softlocks due to lack of keys or Ice spell.
* Graphics improvements.
* More cutscene and script improvements.
* Bug fixes and performance enhancements.

Changes in 2022-06-09:
* Change dialog position logic to favor displaying at the bottom.
* Rename gold to "lucre" and use the lucre symbol from later Mana games.
* Fix a couple of LotMS specific bugs that were reported. (Oops!)
* More edits and tweaks.

Changes in 2022-03-26:
* Shadow Knight pre-fight scene changes and restoration.
* More very small graphics tweaks, script changes, and bug fixes.
* Changed one reference to "Nuke" that had been missed.

Changes in 2022-03-06:
* Choice of main character.
* Graphics tweaks.
* Intro text crawl rewrite.
* More Item and Spell name changes.
* Cutscene polish (including "shieldless" main character in some).
* More text edits.
* Too many other small changes to list!

Bug reports and feedback welcome! A huge number of minor issues were found (and squashed) during testing, but I'm sure things were missed.

Addendums encouraged! Legend of the Mana Sword has improvements over the original that make it a great base for additional hacks or translations.

Thanks you to:
* Ok Impala! for testing, feedback, and graphics.
* Dagmor for some really impressive assembly bug fixes and enhancements, and for a lot of testing runs.
* Arathron123 for Mystic Editor, making so many of these changes so easy.
* Daid for disassembly.
* Ligeia and Thirteen1355 for testing.
* Da_GPer for title screen polish.
* radimerry for bug fixes.
* amaturehr for coining the term "Lazy DX" and moving the bar forward on this facinating technology.
* Everyone who has played!

-xenophile 2023-10-31


Database match: Final Fantasy Adventure (USA)
Database: No-Intro: Game Boy/Color (v. 20210227-015730)
File/ROM SHA-1: 8B93C55EE2660C60CF86DD70058F96ACE98782C8
File/ROM MD5: 24cd3bdf490ef2e1aa6a8af380eccd78
File/ROM CRC32: 18C78B3A