Shoot, I forgot to post here last night.

Anyways. Believe it or not, I hold the Seiken Densetsu series as high up as I do FFVI. So yeah, we can say that's REALLY high up in my opinion of things.

FFA is one of my favorite games, Sword of Mana, less so. FFA withheld most of the things you see in SD2 and SD3, while Sword of Mana goes INSANE with lore that tends to run with the "World of Mana" series which.. well is a crap load of extra stuff needed to make very very lorey based video games, gameplay is okay, graphics obviously better SD3-like, just.. it explains alot that you wouldn't need to know or even care about. (Unless you're like me who likes to connect all the games together via lore.. but saddly this lore contradicts the original games lore to some lesser extents).

FFA's story is simple, you don't really need to know too much to be able to like the game.


Seriously, spoilers. xD
(SPOILER)You have hero, who was captured at some point and forced to fight for the entertainment of "dark lord", who eventually breaks free and goes to find an old Gemma knight, and you have the girl, who hero finds along the way to find the old dude. Her guide/bf/lover thing is slain by the mushrooms (clearly he was only lvl 1) and she tags along with Hero because they are both going to find the same person. Things happen, she gets captured multiple times, you end up gaining other allies, find out that Julius is the badest bad guy and Dark Lord isn't. Go to the mana tree and find out that girl is the next in line to be the mana goddess, get all emo 'cause she turns into a tree to save the world. PRETTY FREAKING SIMPLE. But, the way the story is done keeps you pretty busy. It's like in lord of the rings, they spend like 6 hours just finding Merry and Pippin. That's what this one tends to do.

Sword of Mana on the other hand, takes about the same thing, except splits it in two. You got the girl and the guy, the story line is full of.. well to be honest annoying stereotypes and things that really have nothing to do with the original SD games. Personally, and I say this will all the annoyance in the world, Sword of Mana was made to promote and make sense of the "World of Mana" series, which includes the DS games and SD4. I believe they killed the story, by making an over abundance of story.
If you don't know by now, the world of mana series believes the best game is the game that's so full of information and storyline that it's nearly unreasonable. And.. well SD, SD2, SD3 try to keep things pretty simple, like a book you could read through and never have to question, the other games, yeah you'll be going back looking to figure out why this thing is doing that and in what game did that thing take place.


Then again, like I said, I hold the series up very high and I could have EASILY complicated my love for the games because of my love for the concept and background of the series.

It depends on your personal preference. If you like massively over done storylines (perferably the storylines in the "World of Mana" series), go with Sword of Mana. If you like something that's pretty simple, easy to understand, and has the basic concepts of SD3 and down, go with FFA.

Again, I prefer SD3 and down over the "World of Mana" series, because of that, I tend to lean towards the simplicity of FFA.