Review: Trials of Mana

cre: Review: Trials of Mana

Benevodo or Benevodon’t

Remakes, no matter how good, are always tricky business. How many ideas or mechanics from an old game do you keep? What are you updating, reinventing, keeping as is, or deleting from an older game that won’t betray its essence or excite its fans, while making it appealing to newcomers to the game? ‘experience ? After all, the stated goal of most remake projects is to bring that old experience to new people.

I am one of those “newbies”. As I mentioned in my first impressions of Mana TrialsI actually have no experience with Mana Secret or its SNES-era sequels, knowing them only as Squaresoft games considered by many to be timeless classics.

Now that I’m done with that, the question remains: how did Square Enix’s attempt to bring the legendary Seiken Densetsu 3 to modern platforms and contemporary audiences (read: people like me) does it work? Made Mana Trials pass sound own test?

Mana Trials (PS4 [Reviewed on a PS4 Pro]computer, Nintendo switch)
Developer: Square Enix
Editor: Square-Enix
Released: April 24, 2020
MSRP: $49.99

It took me a few hours to finally notice it, but a bit after complaining about the AI ​​NPC in the previous room, I noticed the “Strategy” tab in the options menu. This tab allowed me to tweak the behavior of the entire party, including sliders that adjusted how often magic, healing items, and special moves were used. It made my party – mage Altenish Angela, hot-blooded fighter Duran, and polite Amazon Rieze – much more resilient in most situations – although I sometimes had to jump back and forth between characters to make sure that ‘they would stay out of the monster bosses’ dangerous areas.

The zones are emblematic of where Mana TrialsUpgrades work better – its sleek new action combat system. With simple and fast combos, instant dodges and quick access to special moves mapped to shoulder and face buttons, Mana TrialsCombat is responsive and airy. In standard battles, things move quickly, with characters doing a lot of damage (provided they’re in the right level range) and the system rewarding more experience points and money for ending fights quickly. . Boss battles merge this light character action with MMO-style raid logic that relies on protecting party members from the dreaded red circles and rectangles while maintaining presence of mind to exploit elemental weaknesses and guard everything. the world in good health.

Underpinning it all is a simple but well-tuned progression system based on customization and classes. As with the old game, the six playable characters in Mana Trials have a specific class. Leveling up beyond a certain threshold unlocks two more upgradable classes, each with a different playstyle.

For example, upgrading Duran to Knight gives him the ability to equip shields for a defensive stat boost and adds a healing spell to his move list, but opting for Gladiator instead increases his damage and unlocks spells that add elemental damage to its normal. attacks. These upgrades are further blocked by awarding training points earned by leveling up. Subsequent class upgrades are influenced by both previous choices – choosing a class locks you into a different set of choices unless you reset your progress with a special item – and the acquisition of certain items.

All of this allows for a fair amount of customization even within the relatively static classes themselves, as well as a satisfying sense of min-max power growth. By the end of the match, my work had largely paid off. Angela was a magic powerhouse, basically able to spam high-powered spells non-stop and never worry about running out of MP. With Duran healing her and Rieze boosting her stats, I could make quick work of almost anything that wasn’t expressly immune to magic attacks, even bosses.

As satisfying as combat in Mana Trials think, however, that the narrative didn’t quite hold up so well to my jaded eyes. I’m old and I’ve played a lot of games, so my preferences have drifted away from Trials’ sincerely simple story of good guys saving the world from the bad guys. For one thing, not all games – or remakes of a game – need to be “in dialogue” with themselves and the world at large. On the other hand, game narratives still need Somethingand by my lights Mana Trials lacks the strong, endearing characterization that makes a game stick in the mind, especially so far removed from its initial influence or the nostalgia of childhood memory.

It doesn’t help that the good bits are straight up missable or have unfortunate rough edges. Picking the wrong combination of parts can lead to a strange and disjointed narrative experience, as storylines are resolved and quest steps advance without clear transitions or connections between characters. The English localization, especially the voice acting, doesn’t do itself any favors either. I cannot claim to know the circumstances affecting production, but in places, Mana TrialsLocalizing feels like a case where not having it at all might have been a better choice. Some voiceovers sound like they were recorded during a Skype call, with odd volume normalization. Other choices, like writing all of Charlotte’s lines in a baby-talk effect, make the characters almost intolerable. The Japanese dub, while not amazing on its own, is at least more cohesive and features voice actors that anime fans may recognize.

The story also loses narrative steam about two-thirds of the way. It throws players into what amounts to a long boss rush, followed by a less interesting boss rush inside a dungeon. Finally, the extra content added for the remake is also somewhat awkwardly implemented, coming off as a DLC pack intended for post-launch release folded into the main game. Accessing it requires completing the main story, but charging it teleports players to just before the final dungeon, saddles players with a 2-3 hour side quest and a single long dungeon, culminating in a large boss fight that has little narrative substance, and no impact on the narrative beyond the addition of some fun character development wrinkles to prospects. The new classes are at least powerful, though, and the character models look good, so it’s worth playing if you’re having fun with the combat.

Ultimately, remaking old games can be difficult, but at its core, the goal is pretty simple: bring the best bits of an old game to life in a way that a new audience can enjoy. Mana Trials achieves this goal easily. In a sense, it’s an ideal remake, sticking to the core of what made the original game (and the mana series as a whole) so compelling to so many at the time, while bringing newness and freshness to appeal to neophytes like yours truly.

_{[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]}

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