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Secret of Mana! Remade! Hype!
Reserving a general thread for this glorious nostalgia wave. Bonus points if they never fixed the Mana Sword glitch. I've watched a few YouTube videos; Primm is annoying and a total roastie with cutscenes devoted. The remixed soundtrack is mediocre so far, but there's lots of potential for greatness. Namely Meridian Dance.
Anyway! Fun game!
This game came at a time when I am flat broke, so I'll have to hold off for awhile unfortunately. :cry:
Super excited for this game. Especially since it retains 3-player co-op meaning it's the first game I can play with my two kids!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Del Murder
Honestly, I prefer the graphics on the original. The new visuals seem a little...basic. At least for the characters (the innkeeper doesn't even dance any more!).
That said, I'm very excited that the game is getting a remake. Wish it was coming to the Switch, but oh well. I'll probably get it for Steam eventually.
Good news, you can switch to the original SNES soundtrack at any time, and the shopkeepers defintely dance.
I bring dark news.... no cannon animations. :colbert:
Also one of the main female voice actors (who plays Luka among others) hasss a horrible lisssssp and it drivessss me inssssane.
The colour palette is crazy bright. I really like it, it's something a bit different to most current gen games.
Couple of other points: It's made my PS4 crash a couple of times and doing a cheeky Google reveals I'm not the only one. Ugh.
Also the voice acting, particularly for NPCs, is bad. I mean really, really bad. King Truffle's kingdom is the absolute pinnacle of awful. Like, there's a dozen voiced NPCs there and it seems every single actor received the direction "talk like an imbecile". Bloody hell.
Can you turn voices off?Quote:
Originally Posted by Psychotic
You can control the volume of them yeah.
Really, really frustrating how much this game crashes, especially when you've just got a rare drop. It's atrocious that they released it in this state, the only PS4 game I've played that was this bad was Mass Effect Andromeda.
Ouch. I wonder if the PC version is more stable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Psychotic
When I was looking into this to see if it was just me (and it really isn't) a lot of people were complaining about crashes on the Steam version too sadly.
Wonder if it was rushed out on people. Honestly I’d rather wait a few extra months for a game then have it be nothing but bugs and crashes.
Well at least it's getting a patch finally. Despite the complaints, I'll likely still pick this up.
I'm sure you'll enjoy it, it's a very faithful remake of the original and does little to innovate or change things. I beat it at the weekend and it was fun enough, though the crashes - and I'm sorry for mentioning them again! - killed a lot of the momentum and enthusiasm I had for it, so it's somewhat hard for me to try to take an objective view.
As someone who has never played the original, which version do you think would be better to play for a first time experience? This is assuming they fix the crashes of course.
It's practically the same game so it wouldn't really make much of a difference which one you play. I guess it comes down to personal preference for 2D SNES or 3D graphics and voice acting. If you do play the remake then I definitely recommend switching the soundtrack to the original one though! They made some bizarre instrument choices for the remake versions.
I guess I already have the original on the snes classic so that’s probably what I’ll play. I keep forgetting it’s on there.
only crashed once in ice country. the remixed soundtrack sounds like whales being murdered. :(
Just picked this up yesterday cause my local Gamestop had one of the Limited edition Physical Copies. I'm playing through SaGa but this won't be far off, especially since I finally picked up the original soundtrack earlier this year. Game has been on my mind for awhile.
Talk to everyone in King Truffle's kingdom.
Oh I plan to. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Psychotic
To be fair, the VA work has been the only element I've seen from the trailers that I didn't care for. I'm not even a huge fan of the party's VA work, so I am pretty sure the rest will be worse.
Just booted this up tonight and wow, this is laughably bad. The VA work feels like an early 90s anime dub and the animations are pretty stilted. You can tell this was likely a Vita title that SE chose to port to console. Yet despite all of this, it works. I mean while SoM certainly has it's dark and endearing moments, this is also a game with a literal mushroom kingdom, a recurring goofy super villain team based off an old 70s anime group, and you get to kick the trout out of Santa Claus. So these cut corners on the remake gives this a certain B-Movie factor to it that makes it delightfully endearing despite them. Then again, I probably needed something like this after finishing Nier:Automata. Itt's a pretty lopsided affair, and I feel SE would have done themselves more of a favor if they only voiced important people instead of everyone.
The music isn't really that bad so far. Certainly a few questionable arrangements like Cry of the Heavens, but overall, I've been digging the remixed OST. I am a bit put off by Randi's new characterization, I guess I always figured he was a bit more together, but the little skits have shown him to be both pretty childish and more of a goofball. Primm is about how I always imagined her, and I just recruited Popoi, so we'll see about them.
So I'm roughly halfway through, at the empire and getting ready to deal with the wonderful Sage Joch the Fetch Quest King.
I was lucky enough to play this after they patched a lot of the bugs, so I've yet to deal with the constant crashes many fans complained about. The VA work is bad, but in a goofy kind of way that fits with the less serious elements of the story. The actual drama sequences are handled well enough though I feel the game really needed one VA actor who could do a decent deep or old man voice. Thanatos sounds menacing, but if he had a deeper voice, he would be almost perfect. The main trio's VA have all grown on me though.
I'm not exactly sure what the fuss is about the Remix OST. Overall, it's been pretty good and in most cases the only difference between it and the OSV is that you're hearing the tracks with their real instrument equivalent instead of the MIDI version, so only a handful of tracks have actually been really played with.
The game side of things is largely the same with only a few changes here and there. I don't like using the Quick Item feature cause the way it screws with the UI is annoying. Other minor things like having your weapon visible by the controlled character feels completely redundant cause it has always been easy to tell what you're using. The silhouette element when you're wandering under certain buildings and trees feels partially unnecessary until I remember the Pure Lands and how such a feature is likely going to make that dungeon less of a hassle.. The best new feature is that if your party members get stuck on terrain due to their awful tracking, and are no longer on the screen, instead of being forced to backtrack to "unhook" them, you can simply open the menu and they'll teleport to your player characters location. Also the ability to switch between party members using the d-pad is a nice touch. Swing animations are a bit slower, but that's normal for transitions between 2D to 3D.
Some of the redesigns in the game are weird. The main trio and most of the major story characters got some pretty detailed redesigns with multiple expressions. The minor NPCs and others are simple 3D models of the 2D sprites which is jarring. What's more annoying though it only pops up every once in awhile and when you use the Whip or beat a boss; the blocking in the game is the exact same as the 16-bit version. The most jarring example is Sage Luka. Her new sprite has a detailed walking animation, but she has no turning animation just like her original 16-bit sprite, so when she turns, she simply switches quickly from back to front which is simply made odd due to other parts of her model having animations. I stand by my assessment that this was a Vita title first and then got ported to the PS4 with no real budget to fill in the power gap. Some of the monster redesigns also range from faithful, to questionable, to being an actual improvement from the original. The Mana Spirits have all been redesigned to fall in line with their World of Mana redesigns but that's pretty okay actually. Spell animations could have used a bit more pizazz though.
Now, despite all of these gripes, I don't really have any issues with the game as a whole. I was worried it would have larger problems and my tardiness in playing it seems to have saved me from the most glaring issues it initially had. With that said, I can see how a less mellow fan or someone who has never played the series before could be turned off from it, and there is where I will say the devs should have done more to fix it. Could it have been a better remake? Oh yeah, but the core game is still great. My favorite addition to the game is actually the party conversations when you stay at an inn. It really helps flesh out the group, especially Randi who was more of a blank slate in the original. I'm still having a blast replaying one of my all time favorite games.
I still have my fingers crossed this game did well enough for Seiken Densetsu 3 to get a port.
Finished, even got all the trophies.
Overall, Secret of Mana still holds up as a pretty good game and a few of the changes did actually lessen some of the more frustrating aspects of the original. The actual remake elements are a mixed bag. While I'm sure it cost a lot to remake the title, it did feel like the game was sort of short changed and could have gone further, but as I've said a few times already, this was a Vita remake that got ported to the PS4 as an afterthought.
I was disappointed that they couldn't do more with some of the character models and even more sad that certain sequences couldn't have been properly animated like the cannon travel or watching the Mana Tree get destroyed. In a lot of ways, SoM Remake sort of shows the finicky nature of fan reaction to remakes. The game tries way too hard to not really change anything from the original that you find yourself wondering why they remade it in the first place and not simply just port the original over. The core game upholds well, but I'm a fan, so I can see how newer gamers would be turned off by all of this. The VA work is bad, but you can always switch to Japanese if the English work annoys you and similar, the remixed OST isn't bad, but you can always switch back to the original one if it doesn't do it for you. I wish the Journal gave you more information than just a model viewer though, I was spoiled by Legend of Mana's comprehensive encyclopedia that tells you a crap ton about most of the game's cast and world. The new party skits at the inn are easily the best new element in the game, and really help flesh out the cast better which made the trauma conga line at the game's end that much more impactful. I also think it was neat how the Mana Sword's true form still follows the World of Mana's design, which was a nice touch.
Finishing this game has incited me to remember a certain black spot on my classic gaming record, I've never actually really played Seiken Densetsu 3, and I plan on rectifying that now.