Sword of Mana

Sword of Mana, originally released in Japan as Shin'yaku Seiken Densetsu (新約 聖剣伝説, lit. "Legend of the Sacred Sword: The New Testament"), is a 2003 action role-playing game developed by Square Enix and Brownie Brown and published by Square Enix and Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance. It is an enhanced remake of the original Game Boy game Final Fantasy Adventure, which was released as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan and Mystic Quest in Europe. Final Fantasy Adventure is the first game in the Mana series, and Sword of Mana is the fifth released game in the series. Set in a high fantasy universe, the game follows an unnamed hero and heroine as they seek to defeat the Dark Lord and defend the Mana Tree from enemies who wish to misuse its power.

While incorporating gameplay elements from the original game and generally following the same plot, Sword of Mana has new gameplay mechanics and a much more involved story. It removes elements of the Final Fantasy series present in the original game as a marketing ploy, while adding in gameplay elements and artistic styles from later games in the series. The plot is modified to allow the player to follow the parallel stories of either the hero or the heroine, and the backstory and dialogue is expanded from the original. Sword of Mana was produced by series creator Koichi Ishii, directed by Takeo Oin, and largely developed by employees of Brownie Brown who had previously worked on the series for Square.

Final Fantasy Adventure

Final Fantasy Adventure, originally released in Japan as Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden (聖剣伝説 ～ファイナルファンタジー外伝～), and later released in Europe as Mystic Quest, is a Final Fantasy spinoff and the first game in the Mana series. Published by Square in 1991 on the original Game Boy, it later saw a North American re-release by Sunsoft in April 1998.

Originally being developed under the name Gemma Knights, features gameplay roughly similar to that of the original The Legend of Zelda game, but with the addition of role-playing video game statistical elements. Along with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, Final Fantasy Adventure was the first Final Fantasy game to be released in Europe. A remake, Sword of Mana, was released in 2003 changing the plot and many gameplay aspects. A second remake was released on mobile phones in Japan which only improved the graphics and music of the original version. A third remake, Adventures of Mana, was released for iOS, Android, and PlayStation Vita on February 4, 2016.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy (ファイナルファンタジー, Fainaru Fantajī) is a science fiction and fantasy media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, and developed and owned by Square Enix (formerly Square). The franchise centers on a series of fantasy and science fantasy role-playing video games (RPGs). The eponymous first game in the series, published in 1987, was conceived by Sakaguchi as his last-ditch effort in the game industry; the title was a success and spawned sequels. The video game series has since branched into other genres such as tactical role-playing, action role-playing, massively multiplayer online role-playing, racing, third-person shooter, fighting, rhythm and anime.

Although most Final Fantasy installments are stand-alone stories with different settings and main characters, they feature identical elements that define the franchise. Recurring elements include plot themes, character names, and game mechanics. Plots center on a group of heroes battling a great evil while exploring the characters' internal struggles and relationships. Character names are frequently derived from the history, languages, pop culture, and mythologies of cultures worldwide.

Mana

Mana is a word found in Austronesian languages meaning "power, effectiveness, prestige," where in most cases the power is understood to be supernatural. The exact semantics depends on the language. The concept is a major one in Polynesian cultures. It is part of contemporary Pacific Islander culture. The term came to the attention of western anthropologists through the reports of missionaries in the islands. Its study was included in the topic of cultural anthropology, specifically in the anthropology of religion. Links were seen between it and an earlier phase of western religion, animism at first, then pre-animism.

Etymology

In recent decades the staple method of reconstructing a proto-language, or ancestor of a group of languages that seem related because of their similarities, in the tree model of historical linguistics; that is, the comparative method, has been enhanced by the application of phylogenetic method. In it, as applied to linguistics, linguistic features take the place of molecular sequences. In biology, the goal of comparing genetic sequences is to determine a percentage of similarity between the chromosomes of two species, which may then be hypothesized to have branched from each other in the tree at a time that is consistent with the rate of change of each. In linguistic "phylogenetic" comparisons (which have nothing to do with genes), the desired result is percentages of similarity between languages, from which a tree structure may be reconstructed. Each branch may be termed a "level" and represents a proto-language.