Long long ago there was a tale that was much older than the birth of the Mana
Goddess itself. It tells of one witch who brought Darkness upon the world in a
distant dimension. Her name was Anith.
Anith was later defeated by the Guardians of the Tree, but her spell of
Darkness managed to travel through to many other dimensions, descending upon
the worlds.
Following on, another legend is told...
When the world was once engulfed in Darkness, the Mana Goddess managed to
defeat the Sacred Beast who was born to lead the world to its doom. With the
aid of the Mana Sword, she sealed them in 8 keystones. Thus, it was so that
Darkness was banished and the world was created anew. Afterwards, the Mana
Goddess changed into a great ancient tree and settling herself in a sacred
place that no one knows of, she continues to watch over the world together with
the Mana Sword.
Now many years later the world has settled down in peace but, the terrifying
shadow of Darkness descends.
In the old town of Peddan in the southern seas Darkness was ready to tear
its cold claws through the peaceful slumber of the world.
Seiken Densetsu: Heroes of Mana is the second game from Square-Enix's Seiken
Densetsu series on the Nintendo DS, and is developed by the company Brownie
Brown, partly comprised of several former Square-Enix employees who worked on
Seiken Densetsu 3.
The game is set 19 years before the events of Seiken Densetsu 3, a game which was never released outside Japan, although a very complete and excellent fan translation did do the round on the web. As such, there are several characters in HoM that are either related to characters and events in SD3, or who appear as NPCs in the aforementioned predeceasing sequel (anyone else notice that strange tremor in the force?).
The nature of the game is that of a Real Time Strategy game, the same genre as worldwide PC successes Warcraft (the original, not "World of"), Starcraft and Command & Conquer. There are a few differences, which will be detailed later in the guide.
The game is heavily touch-screen based (to the point where buttons are rarely used), so have your screen protectors ready (don't worry, it's not as bad as Lost Magic in that respect... I still have the mark of several consecutive Fire Runes on my screen guard).
