Secret of Mana-thon

I've gotten a good ways farther now.  Fortunately, I haven't encountered another situation like when I went from the starting area to the upper lands and struggled to survive.  Grinding weapons and elementals gets you a ton of money, so any time I make it to a new area I have way more than enough money to upgrade to the best equipment available.  Essentially, I've gotten to the point where money is no object.

I finished up my business in the upper lands and took a cannon ride to the desert.  Got captured, tricked idiotic guards into releasing me, defeated a guy on a landspeeder easily (wait for him to come on screen, cast Thunderbolt, wail on him with other characters until he leaves, repeat), and got into Kakkara proper.  Fun thing about Kakkara, the only thing to do when you get there, other than getting new armor, is cannon travel to the Ice Country.  So I did both.

Ice Country was a great place to grind, and boy did I ever need to grind.  You get most of the level 4 weapon orbs there.  Seemingly defying all sense of logic, the Ice Country is where you get the Fire elemental, Salamando.  After that, you venture to the Ice Palace and get, you guessed it, the Fire Mana Seed.  I did both, and ground Salamando up to level 3 on both the girl and the sprite.

Returned to Kakkara, placed the Fire Mana Seed in its resting spot, and activated it so I could get its power.  I haven't actually levelled the elementals up to level 4 yet, but I'll take care of that next time I play.  By the way, the boss at the end of the Fire Palace was pathetically easy.  I don't know if I was overlevelled or what, but I went in with the sprite having a max MP of 32.  The whole place is fire-themed, so naturally everything in it is weak to ice, right?

Well, Undine's Freeze happens to have the chain-casting mechanic.  Cast Freeze on an enemy, then just after the elemental disappears, you can cast it again.  And again.  And again.  Done correctly, you won't see any damage numbers until you stop casting.  Well, I got to a point where even though the boss was still targetable (he couldn't exactly move while I was casting Freeze over and over again), and I had enough MP, it wouldn't let me cast Freeze again.  I backed out of the menu and the boss died.  Easiest boss ever.

After that, you find out that Kakkara still doesn't have any water, so for whatever reason it's off to The Empire by way of cannon travel.  Man, when am I going to get a better method of world map travelling than shooting myself out of a cannon?  I rescued the white dragon, and King Truffle said he'd raise it...  When can I go back and get my transportation?

Anyway, I got to the Empire, and decided to grind the last two weapons I needed to be level 4, the Axe and the Javelin.  Fortunately, sneaking in through the resistance's sewer passage, I encountered some Blue Drops.  The thing about these is that if you don't kill them quickly enough, they divide.  Annoying when you just want to get through an area, but very handy for levelling up.  When you get down to just one, stop and let it divide back up to three, and resume killing.

So now I'm in the Empire's Northtown, with the best equipment available to me at the moment (Frosty Ring x3, Tiger Suit x2, Tiger Bikini x1, Tiger Cap x3), and the only thing I need to do before continuing the story is levelling up all four elementals to level 4 on both the girl and the sprite.  The girl has a little progress in that respect on Undine, since I use Cure Water periodically.  Everyone is level 41 and I'm rolling in cash.

According to the FAQ I'm following just because I don't know the game like the back of my hand as I do Chrono Trigger, I'm just past the halfway point in the game.  This would make sense given that I have level 4 weapons and can get level 4 elementals, and they only go up to 8 (well, technically the weapons go to 9, but it'll say 8:99 in the menu instead of 9: 0).

I really do wish I had friends who were interested in playing this game with me, as it would definitely make some parts easier.  Secret of Mana, like the Tales series, is part of an extremely small minority in video games: the cooperative offline role-playing game.  It's a very good concept, and it's a shame that more developers haven't done games like it.  Fortunately, the game's Virtual Console version supports the three-player mode, so if you have a Wii and the points (and some interested friends), well, there you go.