Glory of Mana.
This year, and on the very same month, Square decided to remake
another of my favorite JRPGs of all time,
Trials of Mana. And just as with Final Fantasy VII Remake, they promised a
remake... and in
this case, that's
exactly what they delivered, to the point that this feels like a very 90's game made in 2020, the amount of care and love that went into translating everything into 3D is remarkable, dungeons, maps and animations are extremely faithful, so while the layouts are different, they still feel the same. The first few chapters of FFVII Remake had me smiling all the time since they were what I wanted, a remake that captured the original game's feeling, but that only lasted for so long. In this case? It kept me smiling the whole way through.
Just like before, the story is set-up in a way that you pick three characters between a total of six, the first character you pick being the hero of Mana. There are three main routes
depending on which character you chose as the hero: Angela/Duran, Kevin/Charlotte and Riesz/Hawkeye, and they mostly change the final dungeon and boss, although a
few events play out differently as well. That said, there are various small tweaks to a few scenes depending on which characters are in the party, so there are quite a few different dialogue variations. All in all, differences are quite minimal for the most part, but it's still a
neat addition. On the other hand... this was a SNES RPG, so characters are rather flat, and that hasn't changed, although a few steps were taken to make them a bit more
endearing. Now you can play every party member's prologue instead of the main character, and a ton of different post-battle voice lines referencing current events were added for every character, as well as small dialogue
exchanges every now and then while exploring. Heck, every time you enter a town your party disbands, and you can talk to them for a one-line insight into what's going on. These addition make characters a tiny bit better, but they are still fairly
plain for modern standards.
The game
clearly wasn't given even half the budget that Final Fantasy VII Remake had, but they did the most with what they had. It's a very good looking,
colorful game, but you can tell that some cutscene animations are very last gen and texture quality is a bit mediocre, thankfully, the style triumphs over its technicalities. Thankfully the game offers dual audio, because the English dub is very,
very bad. I mean, a few characters like Angela sounded amazing, but Duran and Kevin? Uh oh.... they gave Kevin this very odd cave-man speech, which sounds even worse than it looks, and it's so weird because no other beast-man speaks like that, so it makes
NO sense. Charlotte was also
terrible. There were also quite a few ocurrences in which the animations didn't match the emotions behind the voices, which was
SO jarring. When I replay the game later on Switch I'll be turning on the Japanese voices since there's no way they could get worse than these. As for the game itself, it runs at a smooth 60 fps, but loading times were a bit on the
lengthy side.
It's incredible how good of a remake this is, as the brunt of the game is pretty much
identical. It being an RPG you're to walk from town to town, talking with NPCs while battling in dungeons and open zones.There's one tiny little change that might
irk some people the wrong way... The game always tells you where to go and what to do, including the
exact, specific NPCs you need to talk to in order to
further the story. Yes, your hand is held the entire way through.... but honestly, I didn't mind it. Do you really want to talk to every single NPC searching for the one that will let you go on with the story? And it's not like there's no reason to talk to NPCs, some may
reward you with equippable Skills. Want to do the bare minimum? Follow the stars. Want to
involve yourself with the world of Mana? Go to town. It's not like there are invisible barriers preventing you from doing what you want to do. Want to visit places out of order? Go
ahead, try your luck.
Battling in this game is amazing, just like in the original, battles take place in real time, but the entire system was overhauled. Circle are your weak attacks, triangle are your strong attacks, that can be comboed into from weak attacks changing how they
behave, square is a dodge and X is jump. L1 can be used to select your super moves, by spending energy from the CS gauge, which fills as you land attacks and recover fallen gems from monsters, while R1 can be used to quickly select spells or items you've added to the
shortcut palette. Up on the digital pad opens up the ring item menu, to use items, while down on the digital pad opens up the ring spell menu. Lastly, L2 and R2 can be used to
swap the character you are controlling. It plays
fantastically, it really is fun. If the camera ever gets in the way, just press R3 to lock it onto an enemy. You can customize how the CPUs play, and to be honest, it's not perfect. I had Duran prioritize healing over attacking, but often times I found myself low on health with Duran preferring to attack enemies instead of healing me. I mean, I can order him to cast the spell, but I
wish they were a bit smarter. All in all, the game feels
SO good to play.
The level up system was changed too, it's a bit better in some ways, and a bit worse in others. You still gain skill points when leveling up, which is neat, and you can then put them on Stats: Strength, Stamina, Spirit, Intelligence and Luck,
however.... It's not a direct relationship
between your actual stat and these stats. Putting points into Strength, for example, means that you'll unlock passive strength bonuses as well as certain spells or Skills when you reach certain thresholds. There's a list on the right side of the screen showing you what things you can get and upon reaching what amount of points
invested. I wish it worked like in the original, but oh well, at least now we have skills. Each character can equip two skills, and gains two more every time you go up in Class, and these range from passive bonuses such as extra damage, to utilities such as spells sapping health from party members in order to make them stronger or even party-wide buffs! It's really neat, you could, for instance, make your glass cannon equip abilities to
strengthen him when his health goes low, or equip survivality skills on your spell caster so that she doesn't die so easily.
Upgrading your characters' classes works pretty much in the same way. upon reaching level 18 you can use any Mana Stone to either pick the Light or Dark class for your character, and then, upon reaching level 38 you can pick for the Light or Dark variations to the class you've got, but you need to get the right item from the ??? Seeds. What item you get is still random, but the game
guarantees that the first six ??? seeds you get will yield all the items you
need for either upgrade on every character in your party. And, in this game, you can reset your classes
and your stat points, so if you want to try something else...
you can. Every time you you upgrade your class you get
more basic combo moves, an extension to your CS gauge, a new super attack and a new innate passive skill, the last two being unique depending on which class you chose. Oh, and if you liked how your character looked before a class change... you can pick any costumes from the classes you went through. I kinda wish I could pick any costume from any route, since while I like Light Kevin I prefer his Dark costumes, but oh well, I'll take what I can!
After you finish the game you can partake in a new chapter that adds a 4th class change. Each character has to go through their own 1 on 1 boss fight and afterwards they can
upgrade into Class 4. There are two Class 4 per character, which depend on your very first class choice. This new final dungeon is made up of
recycled assets, but it's not too bad. Finishing the game unlocks New Game+ which retains your character levels and items, so you can try out new characters with your previously leveled characters or just try the other 3 characters you
didn't choose. The final new addition is a sub-mission finding Li'l Cactus, every 5 times you spot him you get a neat new bonus, and the final rewarding is the best skill in the game, so good luck
hunting.
When Square-Enix promised new remakes
THIS is what I wanted. No
overly pompous pseudo-sequel bullcrap divided into multiple installments, but rather a modernization of the entire game while being as faithful as possible to the original. This game manages to
capture what made the original
SO good while changing mechanics to make them more fun due to modern standards. What needed streamlining, like Kevin/Charlotte's final dungeon was streamlined, what needed tweaking was tweaked and what should've kept the same was kept the same. In my eyes, this game completely replaces the original, and I'm looking forward to playing it again on the Switch. Provided my girlfriend lays off Animal Crossing.
9.5 out of 10
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