The Legend of Mana is just as obtuse today as when it was released in North America 21 years ago. For those coming from the Trials of Mana port or remake who have never played it before and were expecting something a little more obvious from Legend of Mana's ability and technique systems.
Abilities are movement skills that you can equip two at a time in the skills menu and are tied to two buttons or keys. What they are depends on your platform, so here's an image that just shows what we're talking about here.
Abilities are learned by having the required abilities equipped during combat, with each battle victory adding a hidden value to that ability's counter to learn a more complex ability. For example, winning a few battles with Defend equipped will eventually prompt you to learn Counter Attack after a battle.
The exact values ​​of the requirements are never seen, but they are not particularly high. You may need to have an ability equipped for maybe 20 battles, at most, to learn a new ability.
When trying to learn an ability with two required abilities, you don't need to equip them both at the same time. The hidden values ​​of each ability are stored even when swapped.
You want to unlock all of these not only to use them individually, but also to unlock special abilities for your weapons.
Legend of Mana Ability Unlock
You start Legend of Mana with eight abilities to choose from, some more useful than others.
That's all you really need to know about abilities, although their real strength lies in unlocking special techniques. We'll soon have a Legend of Mana special moves guide here on GameSkinny.