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The patch that only affects movement speed and stunlocking doesn't allow you to build meter so I couldn't give that one a fair try.

So, this review is for the "standard" patch.

So in terms of damage, the hack feels on point. Stronger weapons feel powerful and all manner of enemies feel threatening. Bosses are downright intimidating.

The main issue is damage mitigation which is down right impossible at times. Most of the time, I found the only way to deal damage was to just trade blows with enemies. This would be fine, except enemies can still stunlock the you. This is a huge problem in areas like Lake Kilma where you are just going to be sitting there getting constantly stunned while you can literally do nothing to counter.

Now, there are a lot of abilities that can help you work around this. But unfortunately, this game kind of expects you to run around trying different abilities combos until you unlock them all.

Also, the nerfing to lunging attacks is way severe. You are going to be using them A LOT as a means of crowd control and them not dealing any damage is just brutal.

Right now this hacks just seems way in the enemies favor.

I feel like lunging attacks should deal some damage. Being able to stunlock enemies needs to be reintroduced.

EDIT: Upon giving this another shot it's actually quite great provided you keep this in mind. Always bring a companion or pet along now.

I have played through Legend of Mana numerous times, and am pretty decent at it by now. Yet, this set of patches does what I didn't think was possible-actually makes the game difficult without being cheap. At least, one of these patches does.

Let me explain: everyone playing LoM should absolutely 100% apply the patch that removes the hitstun from enemies and slows players lateral movement. This seems so simple, but it really does directly increase the difficulty so much more than I thought it would-when your enemies can hit you back, there are portions in this game that can be quite difficult, even if you know what you're doing!

That said, the damage increase patches are not for the faint of heart. I only made it to the second boss fight before I gave up on them, as the "8 hits" mentioned in the patch description were a pretty big overestimation-the Bud and Lisa fight mauled me, and there wasn't much I could do about it early on. Only start with these patches if you are a pro action-rpg player, because there is little room for error. This probably would have changed after you get forging and elemental coins to exploit, but that takes a bit of time to get.

Bottom Line: Use the base patch for you first run through, but definitely give the harder patches a shot on maybe new game+ or once you get access to all the game systems in normal mode.

NOTE: I don't think this was the patch creator's intent, but it seems to be impossible to build up your ST gauge outside of a continue when using the non-damage increasing patch. However, it is there, although I personally didn't mind not being able to spam the daylights out of the special weapon techs.