Review #700: Collection of Mana

 Finally, FINALLY an official translation!!!

 Seiken Densetsu 3, christened as Trials of Mana for Collection of Mana has been one of my favorite JRPGs of all flippin' time ever since I first played it through emulation, and I, nay, we, never had an official way of playing it outside of Japan. I must've played that darn translated rom over a hundred different times, and at least once been a victim of the horrid patched alternate colors. But now I've got it, I've finally got a honest-to-goodness officially translated copy of the game, and it feels SO good. It also comes with the first two Seiken Densetsu games, Final Fantasy Adventure, the one I never played and even forgot existed, as well as Secret of Mana, the one I started a few times but never finished because I got distracted by the next shiny new thing.

 As far as the collection goes, it's a bit skimpy. Each game has its own 'manual', which is not a digital version of the original instruction booklet but rather a dull mini 'controller explanation' thingie. No in-game art gallery, but at least there's a music player, and trust me, these games have fantastic music. There are also Save States and Load states, praise the gods, which makes playing each game more comfortable. Each game has a few 'display' modes to make up for the aspect ratio, there's no stretched mode, but the borders are decent. Finally, you can pick different 'versions' of each game, so, for instance, if you pick the UK version of Final Fantasy Adventure, it'll turn into Mystic Quest!

 Final Fantasy Adventure/ Mystic Quest/ Seiken Densetsu

 The game that started everything. The 'Final Fantasy' on the title isn't just for show, as the game used Final Fantasy as a crutch. You'll ride a chocobo, get turned into a Moogle and even come across sprites that resemble white and red mages. That aside, the game borrows more from The Legend of Zelda than Final Fantasy, being more of an Adventure game with real time combat.

 The story is very crudely told, it is an ancient vanilla GameBoy game after all, but it follows your character, who would later be called 'Sumo', who escapes a gladiatorial-like city and finds himself embroiled with a damsel in distress, who you get to name, as the Evil Lord and Julius want to kidnap. What follows is a rather lengthy adventure which sees Sumo becoming the chosen one and wield the Holy Sword Excalibur. Simple story, for a simple platform, the game took me over 5 hours, which is pretty lengthy. I found it pretty endearing to see where a lot of mechanics from the Mana games, like the charge gauge, started.

 Basic gameplay is like your classic Zelda game, in which you move from area to area, having an overworld, towns and dungeons. The in-game map is absolutely useless, so don't count on it. That said, this game has proper RPG mechanics, so as you defeat enemies you'll earn experience points, and upon leveling up you can increase any of your desired four stats. If you alternate between Power and Wisdom you'll max your stats by level 99, by the way, however it's very unlikely that you'll reach that level on a normal playthrough so just focus on what works for you. You'll also come across shops where you can buy armor and weapons, however, there's no way to know if what you're buying is better than what you're wearing. Like, every time you reach a new town the weapons and armors will be better, but there's no way to know until you buy it. Besides, Attack Power isn't a surefire way to tell if your weapon is any good...

 ...for you see, enemies have weaknesses, so sometimes it doesn't matter how much you hit an enemy with the sword, you won't be able to kill it, so you might want to swap for the Morning Star or maybe an Elemental Lance. By the end of the game I was entering the menu every 3 seconds to switch weapons for something that worked, which was pretty annoying. You need to play with the speakers on so that you can tell if enemies are getting hit or if your attacks are doing no damage, which sucks for a handheld game that's supposed to be played outdoors. There's a charge bar below your HP/MP display, which fills as long as you don't attack, if you attack it'll reset, but once it's full your next attack will be a special attack, or your spell will be more powerful. Early in the game it takes too long for it to fill completely as you fight enemies, but in the latter half of the game it'll charge quicker, so you'll be able to use it if you want. As for me, I only used special attacks when I happened to have a charged bar before combat, otherwise I didn't care too much about waiting, I'm too impatient for that. Magic and items share a slot, since either is used with the B button, so swapping spells with other spells or items can be a bit cumbersome too. That said, despite these annoyances, a lot which has to do with how limited the hardware was and how ambitious the game was, I actually liked slaying enemies and getting levels. I was having more fun than I should've.

 On a few dungeons you'll have allied NPCs with you. They are rock-dumb and you can't rely on them. At least, some of them have useful abilities, like the heroine that restores your health, so they are not completely useless. On another note, until I got the hang of the controls, I accidentally used a few items by pressing the B button. Whoops.

 Well, hilariously enough, the worst parts about the game... are the Zelda elements. Where to start with? Let's start with the fact that at times it can be a hard to know where to go. As soon as you get your running-on-water Chocobo, exploration becomes a bit of a mess since you're given little direction of how to get to where you have to go. As a matter of fact, I accidentally skipped an entire Town(Wendel, I think?) because I found the town you're told to go to in Wendel first, so I finished the game without ever setting foot in Wendel. Remember, you can't trust on the in-game map for directions, so you'll be aimlessly running on water searching for where to go next. Funnily enough, I also came across the Lich boss as SOON as I got the Chocobo, but somehow managed to beat him then and there, which gave me the best spell in the game pretty early on. Speaking of explorations, towns can be the worst! NPCs randomly spawn on the map, so you may enter an area and be right in front of one, and just TOUCHING them triggers the conversation. That's right, TOUCHING them, not even pressing the darn A button. And they move in random patterns, so they could be blocking the way to where you want to go! You can attack them to force them to move, but there's no guarantee that the irregular terrain will let you push them far enough for you to move, so you might have to exit and re-enter. Lame!!

 And then, we've got the dungeons. On the plus side? Most weapons have some sort of use. Te sickle cuts grass, the ax cuts down trees, the chain acts as a grappling hook. While it means entering-and-exiting menus, it's kinda neat. What isn't neat is that you have to BUY Keys and Mattocks to progress through every single dungeon. You could totally progress up to a certain point in a dungeon only to find out you're out of keys or wall-breaking mattocks, so either try to force enemies to respawn and hope they drop whatever you need, or run back to town. Completely idiotic. Sometimes the game likes to troll you, and hidden behind a wall or a locked door is a dead end, so, congratulations, you just lost a valuable resource! And the kicker? Walls and locked doors RESET as soon as you go through another exit. Oh, and by the by, you can only recognize breakable walls by hitting them and hearing their sound, so you NEED the sound turned on. Just swinging the mattock wastes a use, so you can't just swing willy nillly. Later in the game you get the morning star, which lets you break walls for free, so you can stop buying mattocks. Dungeon design is pretty bland too, rooms feel repeated between dungeons(Sometimes, you'll find repeated rooms inside the SAME dungeon) and a lot of times it feels like they were designed pretty haphazardly, with no rhyme or reason. Oh, and the keys and mattocks? They occupy space on your very limited inventory. Fun times. If you've got a full inventory you can't open a chest, and if a chest spawned over the road? You just might have to reset the room or waste an item. Heck, if you're curious you'll just have to waste an item to see what was inside the chest, since the game will just tell you that 'you can't carry it'.

 I'll be completely honest, I think Final Fantasy Adventure is rather bad. I mean, I won't deny having fun with the game, because I had fun, I enjoyed the game. But I enjoyed it despite how archaic its design is, how many little flaws and poor design choices the developers made. I can understand that it was made for the Gameboy, and thus they had to settle for its limitations, but the best games work around their limitations, not despite them. I'm sure that it was more tolerable at the time of its release, but I don't see myself playing this game again anytime soon. That said, I think it's worth a playthrough for fans of Mana, like myself, since it sets the tone for future games, and it's neat seeing how everything began!
 5.0 out of 10

 Secret of Mana/ Seiken Densetsu 2

 Secret of Mana feels like a much more polished take on what they wanted to do with Final Fantasy Adventure. Freed from its Final Fantasy roots, this game codified what a 'Mana' game should be like, 8 different elements, ring menus, cannons as means of traversal, candy and chocolate as healing items, etc. It's also oftentimes considered a SNES classic, and for good reason!

 You play as a boy, "Randi", who happens upon the Sword of Mana when a walk in the woods goes awry. Now monsters began attacking the village that raised him, and soon he must become the new Mana Knight. On his travels to obtain the 8 different Mana Seeds he is joined by a girl, "Primm", who is looking for her kidnapped fiancee, and a Mana Sprite, "Popoi", who finds Randi the fastest tickets towards regaining his memories. The story is pretty basic, but a few unexpected things happen here and there. The translation is a bit wonky, but it gets the job done, even if it sounds a bit rough at times, it probably has something to do with how little time Ted Woolsey was given to translate the entire game.

 The game is one large RPG-Adventure romp, battles take place in real time, a la Zelda, but we get experience points, like any proper JRPG. The basic gameplay loop is what you'd expect out of the genre in the 90s: Explore, find a town, purchase new equipment, upgrade your weapons, talk with the NPCs, learn where to go next, rinse and repeat. Most of the game is pretty straight-forward, so you'll often know where to go and how to get there. Except after the Lumina Temple. An NPC directs you towards said Temple, and you're supposed to figure out that you have to return to the same NPC, that was the only stumbling point in my playthrough.

 Combat can take a little time getting used to. You've got a gauge below each characters' HP bar, which goes from 0% to 100% in less than a second. Attacking resets the gauge back to zero. And so does sprinting, but that has nothing to do with combat. Any attack done at less than 100% will deal pathetic damage, if it hits at all. This was done to prevent spamming basic attacks. On paper it sounds kinda dumb, but once you have all three party members it's not too bad. Hit enemies also have a few invulnerability frames, so if you hit it right as another member hits it, one of those attacks won't register. There's another type of move, Charge attacks. As you enhance your weapons and raise your proficiency you'll be allowed to charge your attack, the higher your proficiency, the higher the level of your charge attack. Each level performs a different attack, but the really strong ones take TOO long to charge, and they could always miss, so they are pretty much worthless.

 As you collect Mana Seeds you'll also come across the 8 different spirits who'll bestow Primm and Popoi with magic, Primm gets support magic while Popoi gets attack magic. You can take control of any character, and swap at any point by tapping -, or another players can play as the other characters, regardless, casting magic is as simple as entering the menu(Y if you are gonna order a CPU to cast it, X if you are the caster) and then selecting your target. There's a bit of an exploit in that you can change magic attacks by casting another spell before the last one finishes, although damage caps at 999. Also, bosses can chain cast magic on you, and it hurts like hell if you're not prepared. The way magic works, bosses can be done with in a few seconds flat.

 Leveling up in this game can be complicated. Besides your traditional level ups, you also get to buy armor, which is fine, although you cant't check their defense numbers until you buy them, so you could potentially buy worse items than the ones you are using. As a matter of fact, there are no explanations for items or magic, so its trial an error, but a few equipment pieces and weapons have added benefits, only that you have to check online. Some armor pieces make you immune to sleep, for instance, but there's no way to know in-game! But I digress, I was talking about leveling up. Besides your health and your equipment, there are 8 different weapons in the game, and each has their own level. You raise their level by finding Orbs, usually dropped by bosses, some are hidden in dungeons or towns, and then going to the blacksmith. At first you have to return to the Dwarves' hideout, but it's not long before the Blacksmith starts travelling around. There's a little bug, the only way to actually get the stat boosts for the enhanced weapon you actually have to unequip it and then equip it again. Once enhanced, it gains more attack power, but it also lets you level up your proficiency with said weapon up to its highest upgrade level. which is done by using said weapons. Honestly, there's a remnant of its Final Fantasy Adventure DNA: The Axe and the Whip have exploration uses, so I made Randi keep the Sword, Primm got the Whip and Popoi got the Axe. There was one flaw with my plan, however, nobody will tell you, but your attack power during the final battle depends on Randi's proficiency's with EVERY weapon. My Randi had only used the Sword. Needless to say, what was supposed to be a very easy battle quickly turned into a frantic fight for my life as I was dealing 0 damage unless I cast support magic to upgrade my attack power.

 Magic is upgraded in the same fashion, the more you use a type of magic, the stronger it grows, the maximum level being dictated by how many Mana Seeds you've recovered. This is easily the most time consuming aspect of the game, by the time I obtained the final two types of magic, Luna and Dryad, I didn't care anymore, but at least Primm had a fully leveled up healing magic. I can see how keeping your magic up to date can be a drag, but I had so much fun with the game that I didn't really care too much, at least up the final parts of the game when I was ready to be done with it.

 One last complaint, if I may... the AI is absolutely idiotic. You can somewhat customize their behavior in battle, but they aren't as useful as you want them to be, sometimes they just won't understand that you are trying to run away. Plus, at times they may get stuck on corner or uneven terrain, and you aren't allowed to leave your teammated behind, so the camera will lock unless you three get in close proximity again. The Grapple points, for the whip, are a bit bugged, and a couple of times one of my characters got stuck on thin air. I think they got hit while jumping? Regardless, don't fret, just get close to the grapple point again, with the character using the whip(If the whip user is the one stuck, just swap weapons) and the game will regroup your entire team, no need to reset.

 Secret of Mana is a fun game. When approaching, one has to keep in mind that this is a 90s JRPG, so grinding is pretty much the name of the game, luckily, the game is pretty fun, so it's not too bad, the story is pretty simple, but it's such a whimsical, colorful game, that it fits pretty well, while keeping the same feeling of bittersweetness from the first game. It's a good time, and a nice foundation upon which the third game will improve upon, but maybe I'm getting ahead of myself...
 8.0 out of 10

 Trials of Mana/Seiken Densetsu 3

 Well, let me tell you about one of my favorite games of all time. I happened upon it one time I was trying out different roms, and it was love at first sight. For the longest time, Seiken Densetsu 3 was a Japanese exclusive that never saw a release outside of Japan, chances of it getting a port or a remake were null since it was such an old game. But Square-Enix, the absolute madmen, not only announced a full remake(which looks gorgeous, by the by), not only did they make an official translation... but it also came with a physical release. Which also contained the first two mana games. Suddenly, I'm starting to love Squeenix as much as I loved Squaresoft back in the 90s.

 AI teammates that would get stuck and prevent you from advancing? Fixed, you can leave them behind. Having to wait between attacks lest they deal negligible damage? Fixed, now you can attack as much as you want, no penalty. Sprinting locks you in a direction and consumes your attack gauge? Fixed, now you can sprint for however long you want, and change directions while doing so.  No item/spell/armor explanation? Got you covered, fam, now we got those as well!.Proficiency levels? Gone completely, if you want to grind you only need to care about your level. Simple storyline? Try six different characters, each one with the potential to be the protagonist of the story. I don't know how to best say it, but Trials of Mana polished Secret of Mana's foundations to a sheen, making it a better game in every way, shape and form. It comes with a few bugs, however, so it's not entirely perfect: Every in-game-day should have buffs and debuffs over certain elements, but you never get the benefits, the Dexterity stat is completely useless, and critical hits don't happen, even though they should. But, BUT, despite all these bugs, the game is pretty much excellent.

 The story is one of the game's biggest novelties. There are six different characters, but you can pick three to from a party. Whichever character you pick first will become the hero of the story, you'll play through their prologue and then as you advance through the story you'll meet the other two, who'll brief you on their backstory and motivations. You don't get to play as the other three, but you'll cross paths with them every now and then throughout the story. There are three different main story branches, which change who are the final bosses, tied to Kevin/Charlotte, Duran/Angela and Hawkeye/Liese. Regardless, this makes the game very replayable, and it's always fun to see how different parties interact with each other. That said, I'm not even gonna lie, every single time I played this game(This must be the eighth or so) I use the same exact party: Kevin, Duran and Angela, in that order. I just grew too fond of these characters! Once again, the main objective of the story is to gather the different spirits and get the Mana Sword in order to save the world. And fulfill their personal objectives, of course.

 If there's anything to gripe about this is that you don' get much information about what each character can or could do, so crafting a good party could be made a bit easier. Kevin looks like a brawler, but did you know he has the ability to turn into a Wolf at night and double his attack power? And that he is the only character with 2 special attacks per class change? Riesz, Hawkeye and Angela are the only characters that don't get healing spells, so maybe you'd avoid that party. Class changing is an important part of the game too, you need to reach level 18 before your first class up, and for the next one you need to reach level 38 and find the appropriate item. On your first class change you get to choose between Light and Dark, no rollbacks, but you don't know how either will affect your character. For instance, Light Kevin will learn healing magic and a spell to get his wolf strength bonus during the day, while Dark Kevin won't learn a single spell but will become much more powerful. Light Riesz will learn spells to buff your party, while Dark Riesz will learn spell to decrease the enemies' stats. Of course, there's absolutely no way to know this. There's also no way to know how to get the items required for the second class change, the best way being to defeat 4-5 Benevolons before tackling the one in Shimmering Ruins, and then farm the Mamapotos that spawn Papapotos, then create a savestate before opening the chest the Papapoto left behind until you get the '??? Seed'. That said, I can forgive them for the lack of information, because Class change is brilliant, and your characters even get new color palettes! I love how the six different characters can evolve in different ways, and getting new colors felt very rewarding. Plus, it's a SNES game, they used to be this way, so it kinda comes with the territory. Hopefully the remake will be more forthcoming with information on how each class works and how to get the second class change.

 The basic gameplay loop is pretty similar to any other JRPG of its era: Follow the story to get into new towns, purchase the newest equipment, talk to NPCs to get leads on your next objective and then go through the dictated dungeon. It works well, and getting into new towns and new dungeons is pretty fun. The latter third of the game has you returning through trod ground in order to find and defeat the Eight Benevolons, but it's not as bad as it sounds. I mean, the worst part about this sidequest is figuring where you can land and how to get to where the game wants you to, plus, it usually involves a new mini-dungeon inside the old dungeon, so you'll be facing new enemies and going through a few new areas.

 The combat has been polished and it's SO good, even if a bit dated. It plays in real time, so you move around and press A to perform basic attacks. While you don't have to wait for a percentage gauge, your character has to wait a tiny little while before attacking again, but the wait is much shorter than Secret of Mana's percentage gauge. That said, there's a new gauge below your health bar, which fills as you land attacks, once full you can press B to perform a hard-hitting special move! With each class change the gauge grows longer, granting you a new special move, although you can just fill part of the gauge and perform the old ones. You can also set the AI to perform whichever special move you prefer. You can switch characters at any time by pressing "-", or you can hold L or R to control one of the other two characters, returning control to your selected character as soon as you let go, which is a fantastic idea. Basic combat is fun and fast, it feels great and looks great. Even grinding is fun! Heck, I remembered that you get your first chance to change your class before you're supposed to hit level 18, so I made sure to level up twice every time I entered a new dungeons just so that I could level up as soon as I could. And I had fun!

 That said, as enjoyable as it was, spells are a bit of a showstopper. You have to enter the ring menu, pressing X, to select a spell, and every time a spell is cast, either by you or the enemy, the whole game freezes while its cast after its charge time. Normally this isn't much of an issue, but bosses LOVE chaining their spells, so sometimes you'll find yourself mashing the X button, trying to prime a healing spell, but being unable to as the boss/bosses chain their spells and decimate your health. I was in luck since I only had one spell caster, Angela, but when I had to heal with Duran and pick spells with Angela I found myself pausing the game and entering menus too often while the spells also went off pretty fast, so I only had time for one or two attacks with Kevin before I was pressing X again to pick a spell or had to wait for a spell to go off. It's not horrible, not in the slightest, but I think I had more fun with normal battles, in which I stuck with basic combat and the occasional spell every now and then, than during boss fights when I was spamming spells with Angela.

 What can I say? Trials of Mana has been one of my favorite games ever for a long time, and now we have an official translation and easy access to an official release, trust me, I am a happy camper. While the combat system isn't as mind-blowing as it once was, it's still great fun, and the whole concept between creating your party and class changing is pure brilliance.
 9.5 out of 10

 Trials of Mana, even with all its original bugs left in their unfixed glory, would be worth its price alone. Alone. But with Collection of Mana you get the first three games, perfectly replicated, with the added boon of savestates. And d'you know what the best part about it is? All three games are fun. Sure, Final Fantasy Adventure is pretty dated, but I can't deny how much I enjoyed my time with it. Secret of Mana is a bit rough on a few areas, but it's a quality game through and through. There's absolutely no going wrong with this collection. And now, with game #700 out of the way, let's continue with the Halloweenfest.
 10 out of 10