Originally posted by: Injury
Originally posted by: AntiFreze
Bought Secret of Mana last night. Really fun game, gonna sink some major into it this weekend. Can anyone explain the whole stance thing? far, near, attack, defense... as well as the weapon level select. Should I always use the strongest I have?
The awesome thing about Secret of Mana is that it's quite a complex stat-based RPG if you want it to be... (at least for the SNES era) but can be played just fine by those who really don't care about leveling characters and striving to be the best you can... the game just might get a little bit more challenging by paying no attention to stats.
The stance is pretty much only for your CPU controlled characters... it tells them how to behave so you don't have constantly tell them what to do to keep them out of harm's way. At the beginning while they are quite weak you'll want them far/defense, and as you progress through the game and their defense/evade goes up you can gradually move it over to near/attack.
The weapon level + your attack stats determine the amount of damage done by certain weapons. Early in the game most every enemy can be hit by most every weapon, but as you progress through the game some enemies are quite good at evading certain weapons. You'll want to spend time with ALL the weapons, and if you are in to the grinding thing, level all of your weapons up to their highest. (Each orb allows a weapon to go up one more level) If you use only one or two weapons then those weapons will almost always stay maxed out while other weapons are weak and useless by the end of the game. When you get magic you will have to do the same with your magic. Failure to keep your levels up will only make the game harder... and some boss battles will take ridiculous amounts of time because the damage from spells will be minimal.
To summarize: The higher your weapon and magic levels go, the better the damage (or healing/longevity of spells, in case of magic.)
