i would rather work up my classes and class change someone else to a heeler than use Charlette. I cant stand her voice .every other voice in the game is ok. cant stand her voice in English. Japanese is good but the English voice of her sucks. i think they were going for we are going to annoy you a lot and put it on the best healer in the game route
Never used her in the SNES version and despite that she gets just as much story progression as the 2 secondary characters that you pick. If I were to have her in my party the game would have just been the Charlotte show.
I know I'm late, but in my first playthrough of the game, I had Charlotte as my third and while I was all like "oh sweet lucifer" when she first opened her mouth, she definitely grew on me throughout the game. In my third go I think I'm going to have her as my protagonist, partly because I'm not sure she can even get the leverage required to pull the sword out due to being so short, and that sounds really funny to me.
You know, I wish more games focused on this level of visual fidelity. It's perfectly fine to look at, much easier to maintain a smooth level of consistency throughout the game (I saw like three total muddy/blurry looking textures throughout an entire clear in Trials while I saw countless pixelated and/or blurry assets in the FF7 Remake) and it allows for smaller dev teams resulting in better communication and less brutal development cycles. I understand the appeal of super shiny graphics (I'm typing this on a PC that already has higher graphical benchmarks than the PS5), but it's not everything.
Tell me about it. This obsession with making games look as realistic as possible is a total money pit that is destroying video games. Just make the game look like a cartoon. It's fine. Even the Last of Us still could have delivered the same punch without it's realistic graphics.
Beaten the game 3 times, each 30+ hour playthroughs. There something really nice and comforting about the game and I like the characters, especially Angela and Hawkeye.
You know a game is good when it genuinely leaves you with desire for more games like it. I loved the remake as well, a bit rough around the edges, but you can tell the people working on it understood the original enough to fix some of the issues with it (and unfortunately leave some of the as well)
I never knew this game existed until I saw it a month ago on the PS store. and I absolutely love it. a shame that I never herd of this game until its release. Angela is my main btw. she's absolutely BROKEN and her Lucient Beam +, nuff said
Kevin's VA tried to anime act instead of reading it like a caveman as the script clearly intends, and it's the best shit ever. Also the ??? seed grind is replaced with run around all the dungeon areas and grab the chests grind, and I'm fairly certain all 6 chests will result in unique items, so I class change at 38 by just running around all the endgame areas running from battles until I get what I need.
Well the fact that there is NG+, all 6 playable characters are present and accounted for, KAGGY IS IN THE GAME, looks great, remake OST is soild AND it is only 50 bucks at retail.........OH HELL YEAH I AM BUYING THIS. Since the game was out at around the same time as FF7R and Persona 5 Royal, it is obvious that this game will get overlooked to high hell, BUT I am sure as hell interested in playing it, especially since again it is only 50 bucks and it also has all of its content in the damn game.
@Kitsune Baka I am talking about KaggyFlims here on UA-cam aka the same man who voices not only Hawkeye in the Trails of Mana remake but also Yuri from Fire Emblem Three Houses recently.
That sigh at the end...I felt that. I've been in love with the Mana games since I was a teenager, and Trials of Mana was the game that ultimately sucked me back in. Sometimes I don't even do anything in the game, I just boot it up and listen to some of my favorite tracks. It's a beautiful game. It's a FUN game. Janky AI aside, it was a wonderful experience to get back into a series that, to me, was always very charming. I just hope that there are new Mana games in the future.
I just played Secret and Adventures shortly before FF7R came out and yeah...both games would've been a lot better if they altered the combat a bit like they did with Trials...especially Adventures (it was just not fun to play at all that halfway through i gave up on playing it and just watched the rest of the story on UA-cam...story was a meh too). Secret was a bit better than Adventures but it wasn't until the last few dungeons that i even figured out that you had to hold the attack/charge button to use different skills based off the weapons level that do loads more damage so i was primarily relying on normal attacks and magic to kill enemies (and the normal attacks took forever lol). I thought the way skills worked in the game was similar to how it worked in Adventures where you had to wait until the charge meter under your characters name was completely filled to do maximum amount of damage (which technically was right...if you spammed attack you'd do about single digits damage for most the game) and didn't realize if you had held the button down until a straight line appeared in the gauge and kept holding it the attack would level up and change the attack after a while which dealt a lot more damage for weapon attacks...granted holding it til the attack you wanted (especially for the level 6 or higher attacks) was ready took way too much time that it wasn't really viable since you got hit a lot...and you could still miss due to rng deciding the attack didn't hit. Also i had to look up how to use magic when i started getting spirits cause at first i didn't realize you had to swap from the item wheel to the weapon and magic wheel by pressing up or down on the D pad since i figured they'd do something simiar to Adventures where the weapon and magic wheel rotated by pressing the Square (think it was square...might have been another button though...might have been L1 after pressing square to open the item wheel now that i think of it) after opening up the item wheel...the game gave very little help in telling you how to do some things and left it to either experimentation or looking things up online (for example i had to look up online to learn i could only manually save in inns but the auto save activates after each time you leave a building/enter a new zone/map). Trials on the other hand had a much more fluid combat system, made normal attacks actually viable, no rng included to determine what attacks hit or missed, and just a better camera/faster and more exciting pace going for it. On top of that it actually gave tutorials on how to do things in the game unlike the other 2 remakes. Only honest issue i had with the game was eng voicework was worse than meh and they decided to go with the 1.1 copy of the story and dialogue for the remake which imo was a mistake because the biggest weakness created by doing this was the story and dialogue were the exact same as the SNES version which by today's standard is very meh and the characters (especially characters in the party) barely interact with everyone else besides maybe Farie...imo they should've altered and added more scenes where the characters actually interacted with each other more to give the whole party a stronger cohesive feel because this final product makes it feel more like it's just the chosen character and Farie while the other 2 are sitting in the background most of the time and only there to contribute to battle or their own related cutscenes (mainly the prologue cutscenes or scenes that deal with their faction...and in those scene the chosen MC and other companion winds up taking backstage isntead of really contributing to the dialogue). Ya i know fans wanted a completely faithful remake but by doing so they really wound up bringing a mostly decent, even if cliched, story that was pushed by fairly bland characters (the MCs, npcs, and enemies) due to using SNES era dialogue (which let's be honest here...the dialogue for the SNES era will never win rewards nowadays...it may have been considered good back then but nowadays it's mediocre).
It's ok, the sequel was a bigger and better game in every imaginable way. It may not have the nostalgia effect for you, but it is objectively a superior game, and I am glad they stayed true to it.
@@user-vi3tb3bw5t If the Secret of Mana remake was any good instead of just a port that changed next to nothing gameplay wise, bugs included, then Trials would be getting more love and attention and Square-Enix might even consider making more.
Im actually hapyp the way things are, as SoM overshadowed its previous japan only sequel so hard that blind fandoms didnt wanna get into its sequel. And now after hope being shattered for SoM, Trials of Mana came (just like the 90s, so its a reaccuring event) to fix up the issues and mess SoM left (even if it was widely praised, but because there were no alternatives back then).
I don’t understand why people get their panties in a bunch when a game doesn’t have a bunch of well known voice actors? I enjoy hearing new voices in games, hearing all the same voices is boring.
@@waterking74 that games story was a mess no amount of well known voice actors would have made it work you could honestly get the entire cast of mass effect 2 and it still would have been a trash story
It's the sense of familiarity. A voice actor can make or break for a person. It doesn't have to be well known in my opinion as long as they did their best. A voice actor can solidify that character and stick with the person so change is hard for most people. At the end of the day, it's a preference
About the bosses... I actually struggled with most of the Benevedons even though it was just on normal, but I did handicap myself by putting my party members ai to solely support during the fight with Kevin's rival, just because I thought if this wasn't a game that he'd challenge him to a duel or whatever the beastman equivalent would.
All you have to do is save before opening the treasure box that has a class upgrade seed. If you don't get the seed that you need, all you have to do is reload the file you had before you open the treasure box and repeat the process. Thats how I got all 3 classes faster that way XD
In fact, if you plant 6 ??? seeds without upgrading your characters in between, you’ll receive one of each upgrade item. I would’ve expected kbash to know considering he name drops gamefaqs and mentions reading forums when talking about hard mode. This stuff was known within a week.
@@Mr3DLC Before you upgrade to Tier 3. With the exception of the Wind Benevodon (which still reuses Gust Hall as his dungeon) each of the Benevodon dungeons contain a ??? seed. Meaning if you don't upgrade until after you collect 6 seeds, then you have all the options for your current classes. (Which puts you in line with when you get Tier 3 in the original game.)
And you can grind out ??? Seeds in the post game dungeon which all carry over to your next playthrough. Spent a little extra time on playthrough 1 and I never had to grind for 2nd and 3rd run
I actually really like Charlottes voice actress. She sounds just like I always imagined the character and I’m just glad they didn’t try to make story telling more serious but I can understand how she could be way too cutesy for a lot of people
I prefer the japanese voice over the english one. Because the actress from the english dub for Carlie sounds like a adult who try to talk like a baby and is so annoying to hear. At least in the japanese dub, she sound like a actual child. Edit : Also, if Carlie is really act like a child, then why they didn't engage a actual child to made her voice?
@@MidoseitoAkage because child actors are a massive pain to work with when it comes to directing and scheduling, and considering this is a budget title they really didn't have time for all that.
@@TheCulab Pain or not, If a child can dub Ike from South Park, then why they're simply can't take only one for made a good voice for Carlie? Also, a child around of 10-13 years can be better with this role.
It’s nice to see someone love Trials as much as me lol. I 100% agree though this game was everything I wanted it to be, despite it’s flaws, but that may not be enough to revive the series.
Just finished this game 6 separate unhealthy times with every character endings and classes there are. Time to finish it again 6 separate times again in NG+. This game is soo good im gonna hunt down a physica, copy to keep it in my glass cabinet.
I LOVE this series! I'm glad it's getting the chance at the love it really does deserve. Edit: As someone as else that is a huge fan I will say it was rewarding to see Anise make an appearance. Also it would be great see some Heroes of Mana content more in DLC. Maybe more info on Pedda or it coming back as well as the mains making cameos maybe?
I'm actually amazed how much more fun I had with Trials of Mana over FF7Remake. I'm on my 4th play through of Trials and i barely got through my second play through of FF7remake before i deleted it off my PS4. Despite how corny and cheesy Trials of Mana is with it's voice acting and writing, it's still a fun game! Yeah it doesn't have a serious narrative like FF7 but i'm kinda sick to death of the leather coated belt constricted dark world of FF7. This game is FUN and campy as hell but at least it knows how to be fun! I love trying out different character combinations with my party to see how the story changes and how the game play will balance. My only gripes i had with this game however is the disappointment I felt when it comes to character interaction with the main party you choose. You could tel they didn't wanna spend the extra money on more character interactions like they attempted in the Secret of Mana remake with the INN conversations so they made all the group talks very "Neutral" if your characters weren't from the same storyline. I was really hoping there could have been fun social events depending on what team combinations you had. Like an all guy party having a guys night out, or maybe Hawkeye tried to teach Kevin how to peep without getting caught, or maybe an all girls team has talks about their interests over tea? Something Square! These are (for the most part) interesting characters! Having just a few scenes while resting at the INN would have been enough for me to see them talking and maybe having some fun down time between the main storyline. Aside from that I did have fun with this game and I can see myself going back to play it from time to time even after I platinum it on PS4. I really hope this means that the Mana series has a chance of getting a new game in the series or a possible remake of one of my favorites, Legend of Mana.
Agreed. FF7R's battle system has many little 'rocks in shoe' problems that Trials doesn't have. One of the things that steer me away from a second FF7R playthrough is bosses interrupting and wasting your limit break and magic/summon when they go through a phase transition. Trials has been more consistently smooth
I really enjoyed this game as my first foray into the mana series. Its 90s through and through and I don't think that's a bad thing. The one complaint I have isn't with the game but with Square Enix. The thing I cannot wrap my head around is why would square release this so close to Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I feel that was setting up for critical failure and I think that's where a lot of the criticism people have about it is coming from. I feel like a lot of people are comparing the two because they're both remakes of 90s JRPGs from square, and, to an extent, I think that comparison is a logical leap given how close their releases were to each other. Pushing it back a month or two just to give it some distance from FF7R would have done wonders for its reviews IMO.
I'm glad it's so good. After that secret of mana remake, I was scared they'd ruin this one. But even the trailer looked amazing, I'll definitely be picking this one up.
Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana) was my gateway drug back in the late '90s to the wonderful world of fan-translated roms of games that never made it to the U.S. So it's always had a special place in my cold, shriveled, cynical heart. When I heard about the remake, I was leery. I'd heard bad things about the remake of Secret of Mana (a game I liked on the SNES, but not my favorite.) Then I tried the demo and about two hours later, broke my "don't preorder anything' rule and plopped down cash for the full game. The game is everything I want in a remake. A faithful recreation that improves on the original with the new tech being brought to bear. I love the combat. I love the depth they added to the characters. The combat feels fluid and fun and if the AI didn't need to be babysat to make sure they did their jobs (Angela makes a great secondary character because you can just keep telling her to spam her spells instead of standing there like an idiot), it would be perfect for the type of game it is. I like the story, but I always have. Yeah, it's basic as hell, but for its time, it was fine. I wouldn't have minded more fleshing out, but I can live without it. I'd rather them keep to the original than trying to create from whole cloth new sections that screw up the pacing. I do have complaints. I agree the seeds grind is awful. The class change seeds, until you find out they're on trash in the forest area, are frustrating. Not being able to break out your full power team until you're walking into the endgame because you couldn't get enough seeds to pop the right items is awful. Just as bad is when the game stubbornly refuses to give you your endgame equipment off the other seeds. Not that you need that equipment. The game isn't that hard. But when you get your fifth or sixth staff for Angela and haven't even seen a weapon or armor for Reisz … Yeah. My other big complaint is that it's almost too faithful to the boring travel busywork in the early mid game before the world opens up a bit. Trekking through the same zones over and over just to have to go back where you were just because the plot says so wasn't fun in the '90s and isn't fun now. Overall, Trials' remake suffers most from its budget. The texture problems I can live with. I mean, I'm sure it's a lot to do with it being on the Switch, thus being built for that as the lowest common denominator. I can live with the voice acting. After plying the game through all three routes, I agree. Most of the problem there is the script as much as the actors. The ones not being forced to do stilted or cutsey voices do a good job. I think its biggest problem for succeeding more so than it has is its marketing, or lack there of. It's a remake game that never made it to the U.S. in its heyday that released in the same month as FF7's long-awaited remake. It was never going to get much past being a niche game, but I feel like they could have given it a boost with those who didn't already know about it if they had wanted to.
Honestly, I played Trials back when I first discovered the Emulation and English Patching, and it has become my 5th favorite game of all time, I threw money at the Collection just to get Trials day one, and grabbed the remake as soon as I found out it released, it's now my 4th favorite of all time. I honestly adore both versions of this game, and sincerely hope that the Mana series as a whole doesn't just, die out.
Never touched a Mana game in my life. Saw the demo on PS4, downloaded it and I fell in love. I had to wait forever for the game to come in but its here! Getting ready to do my first play through.
I agree, i tend to overpower always in rpgs but somehow i felt that i wasnt even tryin that and yet it was still easy, i must say i really like the gameplay but i still remember the first time i faced dark mana beast and i felt the boss lasted like hours
Unpopular opinion: Charlotte is fun. I usually listen to music or podcasts while playing, but I actually enjoy listening to her, so I pause whatever is running in background and listen to her preach.
Agreed. There are some VAs that were obviously struggling with the script (the lack of direction certainly didn't help), but Charlotte's VA knocked it out of the park.
First game I ever decided to platinum, and I have been on the PSN since launch day PS3. Fully agree that it needs a difficulty increase, because everything else was spot on.
The only English voice that I recognized is Hawkeye's VA Alejandro Saab who plays Yuri (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Uno (Nanbaka), and Scythe Hero (Rising of the Shield Hero).
THAT INTRO. LOL. I love it. Also, I'm loving the more constant stream of releases. I really like your way of covering VGs. Looking forward for the next ep.
I'd say the game's difficulty is just about right. Some areas are a little too easy, while others are a just a tad too unforgiving, but there are no steep curves in this game, which I am grateful for. Not once did I feel like I was getting my ass handed to me. It was just the right amount of challenge. And the end-game dungeon, while there are some reused areas, I didn't mind it. If anything, I'd say it's too short. The highest level enemy in the dungeon other than the boss is probably level 71/72. Kinda makes the grind to 99 a bit too long.
I loved the remake, it was a game that I've always wanted to play through and ended up platinum-ing it on PS4. It is a strange mix of retro and modern, which can be jarring, but overall the experience is worthwhile. After 2.5 playthroughs I started getting tired of the combat, but with NG+ it was easy to breeze through.
Cyrus K Trails has even more talking than Golden Sun. It’s excessive and it’s usually not about important lore or details, mostly just anime overtalking in circles. And in the case of Cold Steel, it’s definitely all anime tropeyness and dopeyness, not quality. Yea yea opinion this opinion that but Cold Steel literally starts off with a girl falling on you and then her calling you a pervert, holding a grudge over you for most of the game afterwards. I rather have no story or dialogue than that trite shit.
It does have more than golden, sun, but it's well written and builds off of itself instead of contradict itself. You QQ about an anime trope that happens early in... the 6th game in the series? oh no, one trope after so long. it's instantly bad.. that's your best example? Even if you're right and it has flaws, kbash can express it much better than you, so you should encourage it regardless.
I thought this game was like a fever dream or something when i saw it on the steam page yesterday. Heard Hawkeye talk about how isabella saved the king in the desert. 10/10. Also, you have no idea how much i loved you hating on Duran. 10/10 review.
Charlotte has several benefits (none of which outweight her awful look lol) such as getting your 3rd member earlier or not being in the special olympics category of healing til your class change (also not making Kevin, Duran or Angela your main healer) but each of her final classes can straight up replace a party member. Bishop now her/kevin's final boss is a cakewalk and is a better paladin than Duran, Sage is a better swordmaster than duran, Necromancer is better than all of Reisz dark path classes, and evil shaman makes angela pointless.
FYI, if you go to the God Beast dungeons and collect all 6 seeds from them (don't fight the bosses), and plant them all at the same time, you get a full set of class change items. No doubles.
This game actually brought more discussions between me and friends. All of us were EAGERLY awaiting the remake, and even introduced me to others that like the OG game too, that love the remake. I think the phrase, "It's everything I needed it to be." is the perfect sentence for the game.
This game was my introduction to the series and it feels so good. I've been playing hard mode and I've seen my ally stand still but that was cause I set her to support only so she didn't get busy attacking when I need a quick heal. I love my team so much so far Sage on support, Starlancer on support/dps, and my duelist on dps. 60% bonus damage from taking damage and 130% hp and buffs to avoid being one shot.
Thank you so much for your videos on Mana and especially Trials of Mana, my favorite game of all time and this remake makes me so happy because it really is like the original. Something I never thought was possible.
Dude, I just want to say that sometimes I don't agree with your opinions, but I always fucking adore your videos. They are always so fucking entertaining and i always really like your takes. You're genuinely maybe the only video game reviewer who I genuinely think is effortlessly funny. Love your stuff man, keep it up!
The game is nostalgic. Not because it's a remake of a classic (though that too), but because it makes me think of the kind of jrpgs that were coming out toward the end of the PS2's life span. Back when we had the technology to start fully realizing the kind of beautiful fantasy worlds developers had been making since the late SNES except in 3D, right before that dark period where console JRPGs started dying off. I don't much like Dawn of Mana, but looking at the time it was created in from the lense of the modern day, the fact that square would even consider releasing games like that and Musashi Samurai Legend seems insane. They just don't make games like that anymore. It'd be nice if this remake lead to more non-major releases from square. I'd like to see more games with a low but sufficient budget that allows the developer to take some creative risks without blowing up the IP. I think that era of games coming back's just a good thing for the industry right now too.
Angela in the remake is somehow even more busted than Kevin in the original, I got sub-40 seconds on hard mode Anise by standing still and spamming Lucent Beam + with Mystic Queen Angela. Awesome game regardlessly, I've done five playthroughs since launch.
Played this on emulated snes as a kid with my older brother. So many memories. This game was my childhood. Still can't believe this remake exists. Playing it currently and it's really awesome
I am not a gamer and I’m not good at games at all. I’d never heard of the mana series but decided to buy this trials of mana remake after playing the demo on the eshop! I absolutely loved it and finished the story in 4 days! It’s actually the only video game I have ever finished! I usually don’t finish games because I find them too difficult and get stuck but this one I really loved! I did play on easy mode and still died a few times but I really loved it! Although, I will say I am currently stuck on the anise battle 😢 I just can’t seem to beat her!
I had to play through the game with Charlotte while having Kevin as the main character, I was so glad when I used new game plus and didn’t haven’t to hear her every single time.. had a ton of fun with Kevin though
I found a good combination for the AI. Set them to prioritize defense, so that they'll use healing and support spells when necessary (Otherwise they just don't, and that's frustrating), and just let them use their abilities and spells regardless of how much spell power and/or Ability Power they have left. By the time running out of either starts to matter, you'll probably have ways to regen it anyway.
I really hope they release an extreme difficulty later that requires you to optomise gameplay to be beat. Even on hard your first time through, it's hard af to die as long as you're paying attention.
I'm just about almost finished my first run (just got the post game stuff now, got done the original game's story for the Riesz and Hawkeye route (Riesz was my MC while Hawkeye and Kevin were my companions) and imo it was a very solid and fun game. Combat felt good (a huge step up compared to the Adventures and Secret of Mana remakes which were...too similar to their original games that it hurt the experience imo...especially for Adventures), music was great, class system fun to think about how you want to develop your characters, differnt choices for party synergy was great, and graphics more than satisfactory for me (i honestly don't care much for graphics though, i'm fine with 99% of all jrpgs that release for the most part). With that said i will say the main issues i had were: -much of the voice work really needed more work when it came to expressing the characters feelings (Riesz being the most monotone of the 6 main characters) -the dialogue and story itself being a literal copy and paste of the original versions honestly hurts itself imo because they could've (and probably should've) added some new cutscenes and dialogue between the main characters to give them a better, more realistic feeling of comradarie because if i'm to be honest there was very little interactions between the party members throughout the game (in this aspect i consider FF7R a better remake because they added more stuff to help out flesh the characters...outside of that though i like Trials more than 7R). Yeah they wanted the game to be very faithful to the original version but in this aspect i think they could've made some sort of leeway with adding new stuff since 90% of the conversations seem to be between the chosen character and fairy, fairy and a npc, the chosen character and enemies, etc while the other 2 companions mainly only seem to be relevant during their prologues, epilogues, class 4 related cutscenes, and ghost ship (if you don't swap them for the mc). -Like you said the difficulty is a joke for the most part and from what i heard you keep your level in ng+ while enemies stay at the same level which makes pretty much 90% of a ng+ run a few hour free ride. A patch to either scale enemies to the players level or reset levels is imo pretty much needed for a 3rd NG+ onward (mainly so you can see all 3 possible routes and for the 2nd run you'll likely choose the 3 you didn't so the leveling issue should've be an issue for that run). So far i'd say this is one of the few games i had a lot of fun with that came out this year, ya even more fun than 7R imo. After i beat all 3 routes i'll be moving onto Sakura Wars and I'll see how that goes. At the moment though the games that will likely be my favorite will either be Tales of Arise (since it's my favorite series and outside of Zesty every game has been solid imo) or Trails of Cold Steel 4 (2nd favorite series but favorite video game story as well and i really want to see what happens next) unless they both get delayed to 2021. The recently announced Scarlet Nexus also looks interesting (don't think it'll be this year though...but it already has a dubbed trailer so it may be coming sooner than i think) and is one of the games that came out of nowhere that drew my interest so i'm hoping to see a few more come out of nowhere.
Your perspective is pretty much in line with my own thoughts. Fun game with lots of potential, and outside of the opening hours of Secret, this is my first Mana game and I'd love to see more. Who knows if it will happen, though. Well done!
I love this game. Coming from someone who never play it and couldn’t get an emulator but wanted to play it, this is a god send. This game is really good, like really GOOD. I hope they make some form of DLC but knowing square, that isn’t all to likely.
Sega doesn't give the fans what they want tho, they just make awful business decisions until someone (like their fans) steps in to help them. (not a hater, I like Sega's IPs a ton, they just either don't think or hate money, not sure which honestly)
Finally a real review not blinded by nostalgia. I agree with everything you've said. Currently on my 2nd play through and I also love the game but it's barely a "good" quality game and not challenging at all. I hope they really polish this games system up and give us something much nicer.
I never played the originals as a kid but I saw this in the Nintendo shop on my switch and tried the demo a few weeks before it came out and really enjoyed it. Fast forward a couple weeks and I bought the game and have had multiple playthroughs through it and loved it!
Square seemed to be testing the waters with Mana slowly. They did that weird 3D-2D Secret remake, that was whatever. But when the Collection came out, I got a little excited. Not just for the games, but the possibilities it represented. The Trials remake was greenlit and now, the prayers of Mana fans have been answered: Visions of Mana is coming oh so soon.
Been playing through this one recently and I know the feel. This would be a great foundation upon which to rebuild the Mana IP, especially if the character interactions were expanded. EDIT: I went with the same initial team choosing Riesz as my primary.
Charlotte is a risk reward mechanic. If you don't go insane from her uwu, then you get the best healer in the game.
i would rather work up my classes and class change someone else to a heeler than use Charlette. I cant stand her voice .every other voice in the game is ok. cant stand her voice in English. Japanese is good but the English voice of her sucks. i think they were going for we are going to annoy you a lot and put it on the best healer in the game route
Never used her in the SNES version and despite that she gets just as much story progression as the 2 secondary characters that you pick. If I were to have her in my party the game would have just been the Charlotte show.
I know I'm late, but in my first playthrough of the game, I had Charlotte as my third and while I was all like "oh sweet lucifer" when she first opened her mouth, she definitely grew on me throughout the game. In my third go I think I'm going to have her as my protagonist, partly because I'm not sure she can even get the leverage required to pull the sword out due to being so short, and that sounds really funny to me.
Just skip the cutscenes they're the worst part of the game anyway
You know, I wish more games focused on this level of visual fidelity. It's perfectly fine to look at, much easier to maintain a smooth level of consistency throughout the game (I saw like three total muddy/blurry looking textures throughout an entire clear in Trials while I saw countless pixelated and/or blurry assets in the FF7 Remake) and it allows for smaller dev teams resulting in better communication and less brutal development cycles.
I understand the appeal of super shiny graphics (I'm typing this on a PC that already has higher graphical benchmarks than the PS5), but it's not everything.
Tell me about it. This obsession with making games look as realistic as possible is a total money pit that is destroying video games.
Just make the game look like a cartoon. It's fine. Even the Last of Us still could have delivered the same punch without it's realistic graphics.
Too bad. My shit PC wouldn't be able to run it anyway xD
Ahmen
The game its a total success in japan.
Also its selling really well in the switch AND Is in the top 10 games in the eshop.
This screams for a AAA remake of Legend of Mana.
I'm really happy it's selling so well. It has rough spots for sure but it's a great game.
@@dennisg.517 If Legend of Mana gets a remake with a higher budget than Trials, I quit.
Dennis G. Max Nut
E-!
"This IP could be legendary." - How I Met Your Mana.
Literally the series in nutshell
Legend of Mana remake incoming.
@@drugsilove2364 it ended up being a remaster instead...
Beaten the game 3 times, each 30+ hour playthroughs. There something really nice and comforting about the game and I like the characters, especially Angela and Hawkeye.
You know a game is good when it genuinely leaves you with desire for more games like it.
I loved the remake as well, a bit rough around the edges, but you can tell the people working on it understood the original enough to fix some of the issues with it (and unfortunately leave some of the as well)
I never knew this game existed until I saw it a month ago on the PS store. and I absolutely love it. a shame that I never herd of this game until its release. Angela is my main btw. she's absolutely BROKEN and her Lucient Beam +, nuff said
Kevin's VA tried to anime act instead of reading it like a caveman as the script clearly intends, and it's the best shit ever. Also the ??? seed grind is replaced with run around all the dungeon areas and grab the chests grind, and I'm fairly certain all 6 chests will result in unique items, so I class change at 38 by just running around all the endgame areas running from battles until I get what I need.
I think the same was true for his Japanese VA too! And it somehow works!
"Real time JRPGs are my jam"
*Prays in Tales Series*
McM Qsmith yess! I have tales of the abyss
@@solodecade tales of vesperia was one of my favorites
I'm playing Vesperia right now
@@solodecade Abyss is where it's AT
@@DanielSantosAnalysis Yes Abyss is the best
These games lead me to the Tales series, and I love them both.
Charlotte: _Exists_
Us: _Places her on a Podium_ Pweach, Sister.
Well the fact that there is NG+, all 6 playable characters are present and accounted for, KAGGY IS IN THE GAME, looks great, remake OST is soild AND it is only 50 bucks at retail.........OH HELL YEAH I AM BUYING THIS. Since the game was out at around the same time as FF7R and Persona 5 Royal, it is obvious that this game will get overlooked to high hell, BUT I am sure as hell interested in playing it, especially since again it is only 50 bucks and it also has all of its content in the damn game.
@Kitsune Baka I am talking about KaggyFlims here on UA-cam aka the same man who voices not only Hawkeye in the Trails of Mana remake but also Yuri from Fire Emblem Three Houses recently.
That sigh at the end...I felt that. I've been in love with the Mana games since I was a teenager, and Trials of Mana was the game that ultimately sucked me back in. Sometimes I don't even do anything in the game, I just boot it up and listen to some of my favorite tracks. It's a beautiful game. It's a FUN game. Janky AI aside, it was a wonderful experience to get back into a series that, to me, was always very charming. I just hope that there are new Mana games in the future.
I still ponder how wonderful the world would be if the Secret of Mana remake was this good.
I just played Secret and Adventures shortly before FF7R came out and yeah...both games would've been a lot better if they altered the combat a bit like they did with Trials...especially Adventures (it was just not fun to play at all that halfway through i gave up on playing it and just watched the rest of the story on UA-cam...story was a meh too). Secret was a bit better than Adventures but it wasn't until the last few dungeons that i even figured out that you had to hold the attack/charge button to use different skills based off the weapons level that do loads more damage so i was primarily relying on normal attacks and magic to kill enemies (and the normal attacks took forever lol). I thought the way skills worked in the game was similar to how it worked in Adventures where you had to wait until the charge meter under your characters name was completely filled to do maximum amount of damage (which technically was right...if you spammed attack you'd do about single digits damage for most the game) and didn't realize if you had held the button down until a straight line appeared in the gauge and kept holding it the attack would level up and change the attack after a while which dealt a lot more damage for weapon attacks...granted holding it til the attack you wanted (especially for the level 6 or higher attacks) was ready took way too much time that it wasn't really viable since you got hit a lot...and you could still miss due to rng deciding the attack didn't hit. Also i had to look up how to use magic when i started getting spirits cause at first i didn't realize you had to swap from the item wheel to the weapon and magic wheel by pressing up or down on the D pad since i figured they'd do something simiar to Adventures where the weapon and magic wheel rotated by pressing the Square (think it was square...might have been another button though...might have been L1 after pressing square to open the item wheel now that i think of it) after opening up the item wheel...the game gave very little help in telling you how to do some things and left it to either experimentation or looking things up online (for example i had to look up online to learn i could only manually save in inns but the auto save activates after each time you leave a building/enter a new zone/map).
Trials on the other hand had a much more fluid combat system, made normal attacks actually viable, no rng included to determine what attacks hit or missed, and just a better camera/faster and more exciting pace going for it. On top of that it actually gave tutorials on how to do things in the game unlike the other 2 remakes. Only honest issue i had with the game was eng voicework was worse than meh and they decided to go with the 1.1 copy of the story and dialogue for the remake which imo was a mistake because the biggest weakness created by doing this was the story and dialogue were the exact same as the SNES version which by today's standard is very meh and the characters (especially characters in the party) barely interact with everyone else besides maybe Farie...imo they should've altered and added more scenes where the characters actually interacted with each other more to give the whole party a stronger cohesive feel because this final product makes it feel more like it's just the chosen character and Farie while the other 2 are sitting in the background most of the time and only there to contribute to battle or their own related cutscenes (mainly the prologue cutscenes or scenes that deal with their faction...and in those scene the chosen MC and other companion winds up taking backstage isntead of really contributing to the dialogue). Ya i know fans wanted a completely faithful remake but by doing so they really wound up bringing a mostly decent, even if cliched, story that was pushed by fairly bland characters (the MCs, npcs, and enemies) due to using SNES era dialogue (which let's be honest here...the dialogue for the SNES era will never win rewards nowadays...it may have been considered good back then but nowadays it's mediocre).
It's ok, the sequel was a bigger and better game in every imaginable way. It may not have the nostalgia effect for you, but it is objectively a superior game, and I am glad they stayed true to it.
@@user-vi3tb3bw5t If the Secret of Mana remake was any good instead of just a port that changed next to nothing gameplay wise, bugs included, then Trials would be getting more love and attention and Square-Enix might even consider making more.
Im actually hapyp the way things are, as SoM overshadowed its previous japan only sequel so hard that blind fandoms didnt wanna get into its sequel. And now after hope being shattered for SoM, Trials of Mana came (just like the 90s, so its a reaccuring event) to fix up the issues and mess SoM left (even if it was widely praised, but because there were no alternatives back then).
I don’t understand why people get their panties in a bunch when a game doesn’t have a bunch of well known voice actors? I enjoy hearing new voices in games, hearing all the same voices is boring.
It’s usually a hit or miss... sometimes it can be good with an amazing script and direction. But if u have none of that you get mass effect andromeda
@@waterking74 that games story was a mess no amount of well known voice actors would have made it work you could honestly get the entire cast of mass effect 2 and it still would have been a trash story
It's the sense of familiarity. A voice actor can make or break for a person. It doesn't have to be well known in my opinion as long as they did their best. A voice actor can solidify that character and stick with the person so change is hard for most people. At the end of the day, it's a preference
the japanese voices are great
the english HELL NO they sound terrible
the story was good, in 1995
I love how much watching the combat gives me modern Tales vibes. It looks as much fun here as it is in Tales.
About the bosses... I actually struggled with most of the Benevedons even though it was just on normal,
but I did handicap myself by putting my party members ai to solely support during the fight with Kevin's rival, just because I thought if this wasn't a game that he'd challenge him to a duel or whatever the beastman equivalent would.
All you have to do is save before opening the treasure box that has a class upgrade seed. If you don't get the seed that you need, all you have to do is reload the file you had before you open the treasure box and repeat the process. Thats how I got all 3 classes faster that way XD
That’s called poor game design
In fact, if you plant 6 ??? seeds without upgrading your characters in between, you’ll receive one of each upgrade item. I would’ve expected kbash to know considering he name drops gamefaqs and mentions reading forums when talking about hard mode. This stuff was known within a week.
@@JRDad do you mean like before level 38 upgrades or before even level 18 upgrades?
@@Mr3DLC Before you upgrade to Tier 3. With the exception of the Wind Benevodon (which still reuses Gust Hall as his dungeon) each of the Benevodon dungeons contain a ??? seed. Meaning if you don't upgrade until after you collect 6 seeds, then you have all the options for your current classes. (Which puts you in line with when you get Tier 3 in the original game.)
And you can grind out ??? Seeds in the post game dungeon which all carry over to your next playthrough.
Spent a little extra time on playthrough 1 and I never had to grind for 2nd and 3rd run
I actually really like Charlottes voice actress. She sounds just like I always imagined the character and I’m just glad they didn’t try to make story telling more serious but I can understand how she could be way too cutesy for a lot of people
I prefer the japanese voice over the english one. Because the actress from the english dub for Carlie sounds like a adult who try to talk like a baby and is so annoying to hear. At least in the japanese dub, she sound like a actual child.
Edit : Also, if Carlie is really act like a child, then why they didn't engage a actual child to made her voice?
@@MidoseitoAkage because child actors are a massive pain to work with when it comes to directing and scheduling, and considering this is a budget title they really didn't have time for all that.
@@TheCulab Pain or not, If a child can dub Ike from South Park, then why they're simply can't take only one for made a good voice for Carlie? Also, a child around of 10-13 years can be better with this role.
@@MidoseitoAkage
Maybe they wanted english dub Charlotte to sound like an adult who acts like a child because she is an "adult" who acts like a child
Charlotte's actually 15. lol
The dub is cheesy but honestly it started growing on me after a while. It has this 90's anime feel to it that I kind of dig
Lance Baddical same
I liked Angela's VA, really gave her the sassiness of the original
It reminds me of the old Disney animated movies with a mixture of Japanese anime
It’s nice to see someone love Trials as much as me lol. I 100% agree though this game was everything I wanted it to be, despite it’s flaws, but that may not be enough to revive the series.
Just finished this game 6 separate unhealthy times with every character endings and classes there are. Time to finish it again 6 separate times again in NG+. This game is soo good im gonna hunt down a physica, copy to keep it in my glass cabinet.
I LOVE this series! I'm glad it's getting the chance at the love it really does deserve.
Edit: As someone as else that is a huge fan I will say it was rewarding to see Anise make an appearance. Also it would be great see some Heroes of Mana content more in DLC. Maybe more info on Pedda or it coming back as well as the mains making cameos maybe?
I'm actually amazed how much more fun I had with Trials of Mana over FF7Remake. I'm on my 4th play through of Trials and i barely got through my second play through of FF7remake before i deleted it off my PS4. Despite how corny and cheesy Trials of Mana is with it's voice acting and writing, it's still a fun game! Yeah it doesn't have a serious narrative like FF7 but i'm kinda sick to death of the leather coated belt constricted dark world of FF7. This game is FUN and campy as hell but at least it knows how to be fun! I love trying out different character combinations with my party to see how the story changes and how the game play will balance.
My only gripes i had with this game however is the disappointment I felt when it comes to character interaction with the main party you choose. You could tel they didn't wanna spend the extra money on more character interactions like they attempted in the Secret of Mana remake with the INN conversations so they made all the group talks very "Neutral" if your characters weren't from the same storyline. I was really hoping there could have been fun social events depending on what team combinations you had. Like an all guy party having a guys night out, or maybe Hawkeye tried to teach Kevin how to peep without getting caught, or maybe an all girls team has talks about their interests over tea? Something Square! These are (for the most part) interesting characters! Having just a few scenes while resting at the INN would have been enough for me to see them talking and maybe having some fun down time between the main storyline.
Aside from that I did have fun with this game and I can see myself going back to play it from time to time even after I platinum it on PS4. I really hope this means that the Mana series has a chance of getting a new game in the series or a possible remake of one of my favorites, Legend of Mana.
Agreed. FF7R's battle system has many little 'rocks in shoe' problems that Trials doesn't have. One of the things that steer me away from a second FF7R playthrough is bosses interrupting and wasting your limit break and magic/summon when they go through a phase transition. Trials has been more consistently smooth
@@Melchiorblade7 Agreed, none of the Bosses in Trials of Mana had CUTSCENE POWER that FF7 remake suffered from.
I really enjoyed this game as my first foray into the mana series. Its 90s through and through and I don't think that's a bad thing. The one complaint I have isn't with the game but with Square Enix. The thing I cannot wrap my head around is why would square release this so close to Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I feel that was setting up for critical failure and I think that's where a lot of the criticism people have about it is coming from. I feel like a lot of people are comparing the two because they're both remakes of 90s JRPGs from square, and, to an extent, I think that comparison is a logical leap given how close their releases were to each other. Pushing it back a month or two just to give it some distance from FF7R would have done wonders for its reviews IMO.
I'm glad it's so good. After that secret of mana remake, I was scared they'd ruin this one. But even the trailer looked amazing, I'll definitely be picking this one up.
Seiken Densetsu 3 (Trials of Mana) was my gateway drug back in the late '90s to the wonderful world of fan-translated roms of games that never made it to the U.S. So it's always had a special place in my cold, shriveled, cynical heart. When I heard about the remake, I was leery. I'd heard bad things about the remake of Secret of Mana (a game I liked on the SNES, but not my favorite.) Then I tried the demo and about two hours later, broke my "don't preorder anything' rule and plopped down cash for the full game.
The game is everything I want in a remake. A faithful recreation that improves on the original with the new tech being brought to bear. I love the combat. I love the depth they added to the characters. The combat feels fluid and fun and if the AI didn't need to be babysat to make sure they did their jobs (Angela makes a great secondary character because you can just keep telling her to spam her spells instead of standing there like an idiot), it would be perfect for the type of game it is.
I like the story, but I always have. Yeah, it's basic as hell, but for its time, it was fine. I wouldn't have minded more fleshing out, but I can live without it. I'd rather them keep to the original than trying to create from whole cloth new sections that screw up the pacing.
I do have complaints. I agree the seeds grind is awful. The class change seeds, until you find out they're on trash in the forest area, are frustrating. Not being able to break out your full power team until you're walking into the endgame because you couldn't get enough seeds to pop the right items is awful. Just as bad is when the game stubbornly refuses to give you your endgame equipment off the other seeds. Not that you need that equipment. The game isn't that hard. But when you get your fifth or sixth staff for Angela and haven't even seen a weapon or armor for Reisz … Yeah.
My other big complaint is that it's almost too faithful to the boring travel busywork in the early mid game before the world opens up a bit. Trekking through the same zones over and over just to have to go back where you were just because the plot says so wasn't fun in the '90s and isn't fun now.
Overall, Trials' remake suffers most from its budget. The texture problems I can live with. I mean, I'm sure it's a lot to do with it being on the Switch, thus being built for that as the lowest common denominator. I can live with the voice acting. After plying the game through all three routes, I agree. Most of the problem there is the script as much as the actors. The ones not being forced to do stilted or cutsey voices do a good job. I think its biggest problem for succeeding more so than it has is its marketing, or lack there of. It's a remake game that never made it to the U.S. in its heyday that released in the same month as FF7's long-awaited remake. It was never going to get much past being a niche game, but I feel like they could have given it a boost with those who didn't already know about it if they had wanted to.
Honestly, I played Trials back when I first discovered the Emulation and English Patching, and it has become my 5th favorite game of all time, I threw money at the Collection just to get Trials day one, and grabbed the remake as soon as I found out it released, it's now my 4th favorite of all time.
I honestly adore both versions of this game, and sincerely hope that the Mana series as a whole doesn't just, die out.
Never touched a Mana game in my life. Saw the demo on PS4, downloaded it and I fell in love. I had to wait forever for the game to come in but its here! Getting ready to do my first play through.
This game was great but I also have to agree that it was far to easy. I DO hope that this game serves as a proof of concept for an actual Mana Sequal!
Forrest Hecker-Johnson yes! 👏👏👏
I started on hard and yes is easy if you know what you are doing. Same thing goes with Ff7r its easy also even on hard if you know what you are doing.
I agree, i tend to overpower always in rpgs but somehow i felt that i wasnt even tryin that and yet it was still easy, i must say i really like the gameplay but i still remember the first time i faced dark mana beast and i felt the boss lasted like hours
This was pretty much what I was going to comment so i'll give a like.
What would they go from here?
already on my 3rd playthrough, love it so much, I knew you'd make a video about this one soon enough ^-^
It passed the million copies sold mark a few months ago. Whoo! Get ready for a Rebirth of Mana!
What a coincidence, this is also my favorite game I've played this year, and that's going up against FF7R and P5R.
Unpopular opinion: Charlotte is fun. I usually listen to music or podcasts while playing, but I actually enjoy listening to her, so I pause whatever is running in background and listen to her preach.
Warms my soul to know I'm not the only person who actually likes Charlotte, arguably the most enjoyable personality of the six next to Riesz.
Agreed. There are some VAs that were obviously struggling with the script (the lack of direction certainly didn't help), but Charlotte's VA knocked it out of the park.
@@Coltonh65 there were some really bad ones like the fire spirit
I love Charlotte's VA. It's adorable
cant stand her babyish high pitched winey voice
First game I ever decided to platinum, and I have been on the PSN since launch day PS3. Fully agree that it needs a difficulty increase, because everything else was spot on.
The only English voice that I recognized is Hawkeye's VA Alejandro Saab who plays Yuri (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Uno (Nanbaka), and Scythe Hero (Rising of the Shield Hero).
Might explain why he's the best voice in the game!
I'm glad they increased the amount of difficulty levels
You need to try the new difficulty modes added they're really good
First mana game and I’m honestly enjoying it. That said whoever translated for Kevin and Charlotte... just why?
THAT INTRO. LOL.
I love it.
Also, I'm loving the more constant stream of releases. I really like your way of covering VGs. Looking forward for the next ep.
So I was never into popular culture. What song is he parodying?
I liked that dark-dark Angela and Riesz run around naked.
When it comes to a subset of certain character fanbases, priorities…
Hot werewolf main character?? I'm sold
"Cynical UA-camr bullies uwu loli for 15 minutes"
Never played the series, found this video randomly in my feed, and I'm now subcribed. Thank you for your hard work!!
"This IP could be legendary." Couldn't say it better. Damn man........
KBash, bud, absolutely thrilled by the Dear Evan Hansen bit, thank you
I'd say the game's difficulty is just about right. Some areas are a little too easy, while others are a just a tad too unforgiving, but there are no steep curves in this game, which I am grateful for. Not once did I feel like I was getting my ass handed to me. It was just the right amount of challenge.
And the end-game dungeon, while there are some reused areas, I didn't mind it. If anything, I'd say it's too short. The highest level enemy in the dungeon other than the boss is probably level 71/72. Kinda makes the grind to 99 a bit too long.
I’ve never had any interest in mana before. I still loved this game.
I loved the remake, it was a game that I've always wanted to play through and ended up platinum-ing it on PS4. It is a strange mix of retro and modern, which can be jarring, but overall the experience is worthwhile. After 2.5 playthroughs I started getting tired of the combat, but with NG+ it was easy to breeze through.
Fingers crossed for Ys and/or Trails someday.
Everyone needs to play trails.
Trails is a visual novel with occasional jrpg mechanics. Ys would be way more interesting to have a video about.
@@backlogrob8358 oh no, heaven forbid a jrpg have storyand dialogue in it
Cyrus K Trails has even more talking than Golden Sun. It’s excessive and it’s usually not about important lore or details, mostly just anime overtalking in circles. And in the case of Cold Steel, it’s definitely all anime tropeyness and dopeyness, not quality. Yea yea opinion this opinion that but Cold Steel literally starts off with a girl falling on you and then her calling you a pervert, holding a grudge over you for most of the game afterwards. I rather have no story or dialogue than that trite shit.
It does have more than golden, sun, but it's well written and builds off of itself instead of contradict itself. You QQ about an anime trope that happens early in... the 6th game in the series? oh no, one trope after so long. it's instantly bad.. that's your best example? Even if you're right and it has flaws, kbash can express it much better than you, so you should encourage it regardless.
The Trials of Mana remake is my first game in the series, and I loved it. I want a new one!
Finished my first playthrough in 2 days after work I adore this flaws and all
And here I am, waiting for the crono trigger remake :'(
I thought this game was like a fever dream or something when i saw it on the steam page yesterday.
Heard Hawkeye talk about how isabella saved the king in the desert.
10/10.
Also, you have no idea how much i loved you hating on Duran. 10/10 review.
keep it upppp dude. your overall production is getting so good
I chose Charlotte as one of my allies. Ugh! Looks like imma change my party again lol
I got to the intro. Heard her voice. Restarted the game
the moment i herd charlotte voice i started over after a few hours, i will buy the game on the steam summer sail
That intro was great, need more like it
Trials of mana is my game of 2020. I have plat this game in 44hours and now im working on speedrunning it with the community! Best game ever! =D
That dear evan hansen reference eye-
Triasl remake is the perfect example of doing the best you can with what little you got.
Charlotte has several benefits (none of which outweight her awful look lol) such as getting your 3rd member earlier or not being in the special olympics category of healing til your class change (also not making Kevin, Duran or Angela your main healer) but each of her final classes can straight up replace a party member. Bishop now her/kevin's final boss is a cakewalk and is a better paladin than Duran, Sage is a better swordmaster than duran, Necromancer is better than all of Reisz dark path classes, and evil shaman makes angela pointless.
Kevin's fight against the Beast King is pretty tough though.
Rewatchin these again after Vision's announcement I'm so happy
FYI, if you go to the God Beast dungeons and collect all 6 seeds from them (don't fight the bosses), and plant them all at the same time, you get a full set of class change items. No doubles.
I liked your Ben Folds style intro
This game actually brought more discussions between me and friends. All of us were EAGERLY awaiting the remake, and even introduced me to others that like the OG game too, that love the remake. I think the phrase, "It's everything I needed it to be." is the perfect sentence for the game.
This game was my introduction to the series and it feels so good. I've been playing hard mode and I've seen my ally stand still but that was cause I set her to support only so she didn't get busy attacking when I need a quick heal. I love my team so much so far Sage on support, Starlancer on support/dps, and my duelist on dps. 60% bonus damage from taking damage and 130% hp and buffs to avoid being one shot.
Thank you so much for your videos on Mana and especially Trials of Mana, my favorite game of all time and this remake makes me so happy because it really is like the original. Something I never thought was possible.
“Enemy won’t commit sudoku” LMAO
Omfg the Evan Hanson reference
Dude, I just want to say that sometimes I don't agree with your opinions, but I always fucking adore your videos. They are always so fucking entertaining and i always really like your takes. You're genuinely maybe the only video game reviewer who I genuinely think is effortlessly funny. Love your stuff man, keep it up!
The game is nostalgic. Not because it's a remake of a classic (though that too), but because it makes me think of the kind of jrpgs that were coming out toward the end of the PS2's life span. Back when we had the technology to start fully realizing the kind of beautiful fantasy worlds developers had been making since the late SNES except in 3D, right before that dark period where console JRPGs started dying off.
I don't much like Dawn of Mana, but looking at the time it was created in from the lense of the modern day, the fact that square would even consider releasing games like that and Musashi Samurai Legend seems insane. They just don't make games like that anymore.
It'd be nice if this remake lead to more non-major releases from square. I'd like to see more games with a low but sufficient budget that allows the developer to take some creative risks without blowing up the IP. I think that era of games coming back's just a good thing for the industry right now too.
Angela in the remake is somehow even more busted than Kevin in the original, I got sub-40 seconds on hard mode Anise by standing still and spamming Lucent Beam + with Mystic Queen Angela.
Awesome game regardlessly, I've done five playthroughs since launch.
Played this on emulated snes as a kid with my older brother. So many memories. This game was my childhood. Still can't believe this remake exists. Playing it currently and it's really awesome
I am not a gamer and I’m not good at games at all. I’d never heard of the mana series but decided to buy this trials of mana remake after playing the demo on the eshop! I absolutely loved it and finished the story in 4 days! It’s actually the only video game I have ever finished! I usually don’t finish games because I find them too difficult and get stuck but this one I really loved! I did play on easy mode and still died a few times but I really loved it! Although, I will say I am currently stuck on the anise battle 😢 I just can’t seem to beat her!
I had to play through the game with Charlotte while having Kevin as the main character, I was so glad when I used new game plus and didn’t haven’t to hear her every single time.. had a ton of fun with Kevin though
Hey bro, good news, the developers added two new difficulty modes in the game :D
Also, great video man
Great Evan Hanson tribute in the beginning
I found a good combination for the AI. Set them to prioritize defense, so that they'll use healing and support spells when necessary (Otherwise they just don't, and that's frustrating), and just let them use their abilities and spells regardless of how much spell power and/or Ability Power they have left. By the time running out of either starts to matter, you'll probably have ways to regen it anyway.
I really hope they release an extreme difficulty later that requires you to optomise gameplay to be beat. Even on hard your first time through, it's hard af to die as long as you're paying attention.
I'm just about almost finished my first run (just got the post game stuff now, got done the original game's story for the Riesz and Hawkeye route (Riesz was my MC while Hawkeye and Kevin were my companions) and imo it was a very solid and fun game. Combat felt good (a huge step up compared to the Adventures and Secret of Mana remakes which were...too similar to their original games that it hurt the experience imo...especially for Adventures), music was great, class system fun to think about how you want to develop your characters, differnt choices for party synergy was great, and graphics more than satisfactory for me (i honestly don't care much for graphics though, i'm fine with 99% of all jrpgs that release for the most part).
With that said i will say the main issues i had were:
-much of the voice work really needed more work when it came to expressing the characters feelings (Riesz being the most monotone of the 6 main characters)
-the dialogue and story itself being a literal copy and paste of the original versions honestly hurts itself imo because they could've (and probably should've) added some new cutscenes and dialogue between the main characters to give them a better, more realistic feeling of comradarie because if i'm to be honest there was very little interactions between the party members throughout the game (in this aspect i consider FF7R a better remake because they added more stuff to help out flesh the characters...outside of that though i like Trials more than 7R). Yeah they wanted the game to be very faithful to the original version but in this aspect i think they could've made some sort of leeway with adding new stuff since 90% of the conversations seem to be between the chosen character and fairy, fairy and a npc, the chosen character and enemies, etc while the other 2 companions mainly only seem to be relevant during their prologues, epilogues, class 4 related cutscenes, and ghost ship (if you don't swap them for the mc).
-Like you said the difficulty is a joke for the most part and from what i heard you keep your level in ng+ while enemies stay at the same level which makes pretty much 90% of a ng+ run a few hour free ride. A patch to either scale enemies to the players level or reset levels is imo pretty much needed for a 3rd NG+ onward (mainly so you can see all 3 possible routes and for the 2nd run you'll likely choose the 3 you didn't so the leveling issue should've be an issue for that run).
So far i'd say this is one of the few games i had a lot of fun with that came out this year, ya even more fun than 7R imo. After i beat all 3 routes i'll be moving onto Sakura Wars and I'll see how that goes. At the moment though the games that will likely be my favorite will either be Tales of Arise (since it's my favorite series and outside of Zesty every game has been solid imo) or Trails of Cold Steel 4 (2nd favorite series but favorite video game story as well and i really want to see what happens next) unless they both get delayed to 2021. The recently announced Scarlet Nexus also looks interesting (don't think it'll be this year though...but it already has a dubbed trailer so it may be coming sooner than i think) and is one of the games that came out of nowhere that drew my interest so i'm hoping to see a few more come out of nowhere.
The one thing I noticed is that normally when a review mention the easiness being an issue yet they still love it in spite of it.
Your perspective is pretty much in line with my own thoughts. Fun game with lots of potential, and outside of the opening hours of Secret, this is my first Mana game and I'd love to see more. Who knows if it will happen, though. Well done!
I love this game. Coming from someone who never play it and couldn’t get an emulator but wanted to play it, this is a god send. This game is really good, like really GOOD. I hope they make some form of DLC but knowing square, that isn’t all to likely.
Last month they added 2 extra difficulty modes. And well they’re actually are difficult this time!
Musical KBash? Good stuff.
making a great game on a budget.
Sega should Do that when they remake sonic adventure 1 and 2.
edge lord yes!
Yes please
Sega doesn't give the fans what they want tho, they just make awful business decisions until someone (like their fans) steps in to help them. (not a hater, I like Sega's IPs a ton, they just either don't think or hate money, not sure which honestly)
Sega should put all the budget on SA1&2 Remake
Just hope they don't find a way to mess everything up XD
Man I love when Square Enix puts nearly THREE TIMES the regional pricing for their games.
if you think its too much for this game wait for a sail. I am waiting on the steam sail. the remake has sold 1 million units world wide
You totally sold me on this game and I’m totally gonna buy it now!
Finally a real review not blinded by nostalgia. I agree with everything you've said. Currently on my 2nd play through and I also love the game but it's barely a "good" quality game and not challenging at all. I hope they really polish this games system up and give us something much nicer.
I'd love for David Cage to take a crack at the Mana series. Would it really be the weirdest direction the series ever took?
I never played the originals as a kid but I saw this in the Nintendo shop on my switch and tried the demo a few weeks before it came out and really enjoyed it. Fast forward a couple weeks and I bought the game and have had multiple playthroughs through it and loved it!
I loved this game. It's so much fun. After completing the game 100% I got Ys viii and it's also fun.
Man do your vids hit different during quarantine
That Mr. Blue Sky parody was more than enough to make this a wonderful video from the word go lol ^_^
Kevin can one shot Anise's second form in hard mode with his "final flash" skill strike
Daaaaaaaaaaamn XD XD that is disrespectful
Cant wait to dive into this game, Seiken Densetsu 3 was amazingly my first jrpg 😮
Square seemed to be testing the waters with Mana slowly. They did that weird 3D-2D Secret remake, that was whatever. But when the Collection came out, I got a little excited. Not just for the games, but the possibilities it represented. The Trials remake was greenlit and now, the prayers of Mana fans have been answered: Visions of Mana is coming oh so soon.
9:02 Relevant to new Pokemon games
And a sentiment that should actually be taken into consideration.
Been playing through this one recently and I know the feel.
This would be a great foundation upon which to rebuild the Mana IP, especially if the character interactions were expanded.
EDIT: I went with the same initial team choosing Riesz as my primary.