izigame.me

100%'d the game and my opinion of the game didn't improve.
Let's start with what i think a few of the problems with this remake are coming from: The original...
Clearly basking in the success of Seiken Densetsu 2 (What we know as Secret of Mana) the devs were prolly like: let's make a sequel and let's make it bigger!
The devs decided they should up the playable character count from 3 to 6.
And although i want to commend this choice, i cannot.
Mainly because with all the things the game tries to do with these characters, the game suffers from this choice quite a bit.
And since the remake uses the same concept, you get a small butterfly effect.
Since EACH character has their own story, the game ends up trying to tell a story that is too big for it's own size and due to this the 6 individual stories feel like they are shoehorned together to make a whole, which in the end does not pan out nicely because the goals of the 6 characters do not properly meet up at the end of the game.
What seems to not help the story either is that the game seems to suffer from a less then perfect translation, this could be me but i've noticed a few things off about both the english text and voices.
The text and English voiceovers match eachother word for word, but i'm going to leave that out of this mention for a bit longer because it doesn't matter with what i'm about to say first.
I've had several conversations where the next "objective" is mentioned, not just once, but up to 3 or more times in the timespan of a few lines of dialogue and to me this feels as if the devs/translators are worried we as players would lose track or they think we are stupid or something.
What doesn't help either in this regard is that you cannot go for 3 fights without either Faerie or one of your characters making some kind of comment on what your current objective is, over and over and over again to the point where you want to completely turn off the voices altogether.
That brings my rant to the English Voiceovers, which are downright horrible in a multitude of places.
Certain conversations sound and progress so ackwardly you'd think the voice actors were given ZERO background information on what the scenario of their conversations are about, this leads to ackward tone changes, weird pauses and horrendous punctuation.
If it was just that, it wouldn't be so bad, but it gets a tad worse:
There is a small cutscene where a couple of faeries are flying away from the mana tree near the start of the game.
The Faeries are supposed to sound tired and exhausted, but the sounds i heard would have been more at place behind a closed bedroom door.
And no it wasn't just me hearing this, My wife was reading a book and reacted to them as well and said that if she didn't know any better she'd think i was playing an Adult game.
The Characters themselves are bit of a mixed bag, i picked Duran as my main character for my first playthrough and it took him less then an hour to piss me off
He want's to get stronger so he can defeat a certain enemy, but he doesn't want to put ANY effort into it whatsoever.
Then i met Charlotte, my 2nd character, the game claims her to be 15 years old, but talks as if she's still in kindergarten, heck my 4 Year old son has better pronounciation then she does... (i know it's a personality, but i would have done it differently)
And last but not least: Angela, owh BOY...
Angela is pure fan-service, skimpy clothing and an attitude to match, Multiple mentions on how "sexy" she is in dialogue and what's the first thing she does when i meet her? Abuse her looks to help the party out of a tight spot...
Then we get to the following cutscene and here stuff goes wrong some more, where Angela tells her story of how she got there etc (The game even tells you she told EVERY DETAIL) only for Duran to completely IGNORE almost everything of what she's told to berate her for coming from the same kingdom as the Jerk he's chasing, having to have Angela YET AGAIN tell Duran why she's not in her own kingdom anymore...
I am not sure if this is the translation, the devs trying to be funny or just a plain plothole that was overlooked, but it wasn't charming.
I've got not much to say about the graphics in the game.
They fit the style of the game nicely, but i did notice a few tiny clipping issues and sometimes the textures take too long to stream which makes stuff looks blurry and this even happens with the game on an M.2 SSD which is just plain bad...
The Combat is a mixed bag too, where in the original (and in Secret of mana) you had to "time" your attacks to maximize damage, Trials of Mana throws that out of the window and lets you spam attack your enemies to death without any penalty whatsoever.
The first few bosses were facerolled by pure buttonmashing, didn't even need to do much aside from a dodgeroll here or there.
Then in other instances, mobs become damage sponges and it takes way too long to kill them even with magic and summons.
Speaking of which, your combat options at the start are quite limited and just plain leveling your characters doesn't help this much.
The game hints at you every time that you obtain an elemental that you can use them for a variety of spells, providing you put points into the respective skill.
What the game fails to explain is that you have to progress further into the game before you can actually do this.
Last but not least is the sound and music, which is a trip down nostalgia alley.
I can't really fault the devs for doing the same thing the devs of the original did in the past: Reuse the same music for 2 games, but in this day and age it just feels lazy...
Don't get me wrong, i TRIED REALLY HARD to love this game, but in the end i wasn't able to love it as much as i wanted and hoped for, i hope Square does better with Visions of Mana because this game just struck too many nerves...