Secret of Mana Remake

res7less

Jumpkin
In case anyone missed it (like me, who just happened to stumble upon it today by randomly googling), a remake of Secret of Mana will be launching on Feb. 15th and is already available for pre-purchase on Steam (39,99$).

What do you think? Hype or no hype? Square Enix has been disappointing with Final Fantasy since 13, but realistically, what could go wrong with remaking a game that was already made? Just wondering how close to the original they will be and what the fresh, new additions will be.

I played the "remake" of FF5 and it was quite okay. The sprite rework was really good, but the character portraits had some really weird art style I could never wrap my head around. The FF6 was done well, but wasn't quite something you would call a remake.

To be honest, I'm a bigger fan of the Seiken Densetsu 3 (my favourite game of all time, in fact, hence my avatar picture) game, so I'm not as excited about the remake as I would have been about the remake of SD3, but being a fan of old Squaresoft games in general the 40 bucks is a must. (especially considering that if it sells well, they may actually remake SD3 someday as well, although I wouldn't bet on that)

Thoughts on this anyone?
 
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Own

Moderator
The cheap mobile-to-PC ports of the early FF games made me sad. The quick, cash-in 'remasters' of FF5 and 6 made me extremely sad.

I'd rather download a Secret of Mana romhack than buy this. The Ancient Cave romhack for SoM is like Arcade Mode in SoG, it's pretty nice.

http://secretofmanaancientcave.blogspot.com/

Speaking of... hey, @Teddy or @Fred, let's see you play this on a stream. :)
 
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res7less

Jumpkin
The cheap mobile-to-PC ports of the early FF games made me sad. The quick, cash-in 'remasters' of FF5 and 6 made me extremely sad.

I'd rather download a Secret of Mana romhack than buy this.
Well, that's the thing: it's not a cheap port this time, but an actual remake, so I'm biased on the topic at hand myself. But while 40 bucks is clearly overpriced, I'm pretty positive, that if I had thought longer before buying, the only thing that would have changed, is that I would have regretted the purchase while purchasing, not after :p Also, I hardly remember what the original Secret of Mana is about, so it's probably gonna be like a new game for me.

What I don't understand, though, is how you can be that disappointed in the FF releases on Steam, since they're basically the same good ol' games, just on a different platform. :D What would have to be different to make you satisfied, for instance? Cutscenes? 3d graphics? Just curious.
 

res7less

Jumpkin
Well, I don't have a PSP, so I guess I missed that remake, but yeah, one can clearly see the difference in a direct comparison. Still, there is a difference between releasing a product for a device exclusively (and a small screen at that) and for a wide variety of different setups (PC), so there might be some more factors playing a role in the decision-making of using this or that filter. This is, however, not an excuse for not using an artist instead, of course.

In any case, that still doesn't relate to a remake from 2d to 3d.
 

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
Well, that's the thing: it's not a cheap port this time, but an actual remake,
eeehhhehehh... Not really. That's the same team that ported the DS version of FF3 to the PC and that was the same engine and is to this day an somewhat unplayable mess. I bought it, because I am a SoM addict and I already invited 2 friends to complete this at the day of the release. But seriously? My hopes are very low, because historically the team made horrible PC ports.

EDIT: It's more a FF3 PC mod than a complete remake. And that worries me.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/239120/FINAL_FANTASY_III/
This is a "HD remaster" (hahaha) from a 2006 DS game. Tell me how it doesn't look just like the new SoM...
 

res7less

Jumpkin
Yeah, I don't have high hopes either, I was just surprised by the choice to remake a 2d game this popular and fabled in 3d (which is by no means automatically a good choice), and thus wasn't sure if I should project the previous bad experiences with remakes onto this one. Thanks for sharing your opinion, though :)
 

res7less

Jumpkin
So, I played the game for a while now and judging by reviews in Steam, it's quite controversial, so I'm going to carefully explain how I perceived it and why.

First off, I wouldn't really trust reviewers, who played the game less then an hour and then go "the game is unplayable!!!11". No matter if you're a fan of the old game or not, judging an entire game by 30 minutes of play is complete nonsense. The game is definitely not unplayable - it does have its quirks and, from what I read, some technical issues (of which I encountered none during 8 hours of play), but it plays like any released game should play. Now, to the individual aspects.

Graphics

At first I was very skeptical at the art style. It's simple, unimpressive and reminds rather of portable games than a PC release. They did release the game for the PS Vita, so that might be where that comes from. The longer I played the game, though, the more I started to get used to and enjoy the graphics. It might not be new or innovative, but it's quite possible anything else could have been an overkill when thinking of what the old game looked like. The climax was reached when I got Undine and got to see how detailed her re-imagination in 3d was. Her icon was very neat and detailed and her 3d-model quite convincing. The mana spirits are very iconic for this universe and I think they actually did a nice job at the 3d representation of them. I only have 3 of them so far, so I have yet to see the others.

Overall the 3d models and textures are very neat, tidy and true to the original. There is sort of an album for monsters and characters in the menu and their models can be viewed and rotated at any time. Almost everything looks the way it's supposed to look: The Rabites do look cute and the Nemesis Owl's eyes are now going to haunt my dreams.

What I'm kinda neutral towards are the animations. There's nothing unique about them - they're neither good nor bad. Also, the mouths don't move when people talk. Although since the mouths are textures, it probably would have looked like South Park if they did. I will mention, however, that it's noticeable they put some thought into the animation, since Popoi has a different lie down-animation than the other two to match her mischievous personality. Although it also might have been there in the original already. Furthermore: Dancing traders remain! \ô/

What I don't like are the spells' effects. While I don't remember how they looked like in the original SoM, I know what the looked like in SD3 and they could have made to look much more awesome than right now. The way the mana sprites appear when casting a spell is great, but the effects themselves are pretty boring.

Gameplay


Now, I'm not sure how much of it is due to source material, so I'll just judge it by how I perceived it from a new game and apologize in advance for possibly deconstructing the original SoM, since I don't know which things were taken directly, and which ones reworked.

The combat is, to say it mildly, meh. For today's standards the combat is artificially delayed, unresponsive and sometimes random. If one character hits a monster, often subsequent hits from party members will miss for no reason. And even if they do hit, their hits are kind of registered a second or so later and cause the monster to be "stunned" one more time, again not registering hits from other characters. It's just very very unpolished combat with a lot of room for improvement.

The dumb AI doesn't really help here either. I remember getting Popoi as the second party member and going into the forest with her while she is at Level 1. She was constantly being killed by Porobins despite having a ranged weapon herself. I was trying to face-protect her as much as I could but there are some areas, where the archers attack from both sides, which resulted in her being two, or three-hitted. It got better when she leveled up a couple of times until the same thing repeated after getting Primm with Level 1.

Some other things are questionable as well, like for instance the weird slimes that you keep missing for some reason while they make more copies of themselves. I tried different weapons since I thought it might be a "right-tool-for-the-job" scenario, but nothing really worked. You needed to get lucky and land a good hit while there is only one or two slimes to finally end the combat. They could have been just ignored, but that would mean unfinished business and the feeling of leaving the room incomplete.

What I did like was how items and spells work now. They don't freeze the game anymore, but instead only freeze the character they're used on for the duration of the animation. This allows a party member to throw a candy onto another party member, while continuing with whatever task at hand. Although it sometimes results in the characters taking a hit during the animation, dropping to 0, playing the "me dead" voice over and transforming into ghosts, and then suddenly being healed and be alive again after the healing animation finishes. So, yeah, this is kinda weird.

Some other "minor", yet quite annoying issue is when buying new equipment, you have no way to see how the new gear will affect your stats. That results in sometimes buying unnecessary equipment and having to sell it again.

Overall the gameplay is something that takes a lot of getting used to. As soon as you stop "wtfing" every time you miss for no reason, it becomes okay.

Sound

The soundtrack has been great so far. There is an option to switch between the original soundtrack and the remade one, but I have been playing with the remade one so far and I like it. I guess this is very subjective though. If it's well done, I don't mind taking modern versions of 16-Bit music in favour of the old one. There was one instance, though, where my ears would have yelled at me, if they could, and that was the Dwarf Village. But from what I gathered, even dedicated SoM lovers hate that soundtrack.

The sound and VOs, however, are something, that takes getting used to. While the VOs themselves are mediocre at best, I have to give credit for actually providing EVERYTHING with a VO. Not only dialogues, cutscenes and main character have a VO, but also every NPC you can encounter, which pretty huge considering it's a Mana game. And while I'm usually the quality>quantity type of person, in this case having everything voiced is great. It's not like there are great VOs in japanese games anyway. Persona 4 english VO was bad back then, and modern anime and japanese games like Blade & Soul have the same type of mediocre VOs as well. The only really good one that comes to my mind right now, is the english version of Avatar - The Last Airbender, but yeah, different medium, different studio(s).

What was surprising, though, is hearing the dude's voice from The Walking Dead Telltale game as Gemma. I really liked him in his Lee role, but he was also in Mincraft - Story Mode, where it was meh. Here, it's just weird and I don't know if it's because his voice doesn't match the character, or because I recognized the voice, or just because he's not doing a great job because reasons. At least I'm pretty sure it's him, I have yet to google it.

Also, I gotta mention that a variety of dialogues between the main characters have been added, which appear when staying at an inn. I though they were part of the original game as well, but when watching someone stream the game, I was told they're new.

The SFX are fine, but I wished the monsters had more and distinct and memorable sounds they make. Currently, they are either completely silent or making as few noise as possible.

Thoughts

Okay, well, I think I pretty much covered everything.

Having read a bunch of Steam reviews, they range between players , who are not familiar with the original hating the combat and people, who actually find the VOs great, so there is no telling how someone perceives the game. There were people saying "I waited 25 years for this and this is shit", which I actually find amusing since they're basically saying that the moment they finished the game, they thought to themselves "Sooo.... when's the remake coming" and proceeded to think that for the next 25 years. Sometimes people just don't realize how dumb they sound, but hey, if not for dumb people, we wouldn't have anything to laugh at, eh? :D

The argument "they ruined the game" is invalid as well and to those people I'll say the same as to the people claiming the Game of Thrones series ruined the books: No it didn't - the books are still there, go read 'em, no one forces you to watch the series if you don't like it. Watching it despite not liking it only rewards Benioff and Weiss for doing the poor job they did. The same goes for Square Enix. So, simply out of respect for SoM fans, I won't say it's a worthy remake, but I will say, however, that it's a decent attempt at one.

For me, it was like "this is meh and this is bad, and I don't like this", but the longer I played the more captivated by the game I became. I don't know if it's because I'm generally hard to disappoint, because my expectations to everything and everyone are usually pretty low until proven otherwise, or because Square Enix did take something seriously for once. In any case, currently I'm glad I purchased the game and I'm enjoying it and looking forward to continuing to play it and to see what else it has in store for me.

I would not recommend buying the game if you're...
...a huge fan of the original game and aren't able to distance yourself from it in any way
...a huge fan of the original game and want to keep the warm and fuzzy feels alive
...not familiar with the original game and like combat full of action

I would recommend buying the game if you're...
...a huge fan of the original game, but are able to let your judgement not be clouded by it
...a fan of the Mana series and are able perceive it as a standalone game
...never played SoM, but are generally a fan of JRPGs
...not familiar with the original game and like a good story
 
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res7less

Jumpkin
How would you say it compares to Grindea?
Oh, wow, that... catches me completely off-guard. :D Woe is me!

I'd rather tread lightly and not comment on that too much and only say that Grindea's combat system was probably inspired by SoM originally, but after having been refined to the point where it's really fun, only the aspect of charging stuff remained. This was actually one of the few things, that I had remembered from SoM, is that you can upgrade and charge your weapons over 9000 times, while moving at the speed of a snail crawling backwards up a skyscraper during a storm. And no, SoM, does not have a skill-tree or anything else, that could affect your movement speed while charging. Or at least I haven't encountered anything, yet.

Also, in SoG, if you hit, you hit - there are no cases of charging something up to max and then having your strike disappear into the void for reasons unbeknownst to mankind.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
I'd rather tread lightly and not comment on that too much and only say that Grindea's combat system was probably inspired by SoM originally, but after having been refined to the point where it's really fun, only the aspect of charging stuff remained.
Ah right, so they're sorta in different ball parks when it comes to combat now. If that makes them difficult to compare, fair enough.

And yes, I do like the fact that a hit is a hit, both for the enemies and yourself :D
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
Also, in SoG, if you hit, you hit - there are no cases of charging something up to max and then having your strike disappear into the void for reasons unbeknownst to mankind.
Yeah, the hit detection was the worst thing for me when I played original SoM. Many people perceives the game as timeless classic, but the combat system was trash and Grindea did it muuuuch better (if we were to compare, but don't forget the Zelda influence). From what you say, the remake didn't improve any of this. Secret of Evermore was even worse though.
 

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
Soooo
res7less said:
So, I played the game for a while now[...] // some technical issues (of which I encountered none during 8 hours of play)
I also played, according to steam, about 8 hours (woot woot).

Graphics
res7less said:
I [...] enjoy the graphics. I think they actually did a nice job at the 3d representation of them [Elementals]. I only have 3 of them so far, so I have yet to see the others.
Overall the 3d models [...] are [...] true to the original.
Yes and no. The world, characters and monsters are generally really nice. But true to the original? Nope, they are not even true to the game in some cases... Example:
How the electro elemental looks in the original AND in the remake menu aka. fat and blue
2.png
How the 3D model in the remake looks aka. slim and green
1.png

I think the many changes they made in the design of the characters, monsters and world are really good, but they should have at least made it consistent.

res7less said:
What I'm kinda neutral towards are the animations. [...] Furthermore: Dancing traders remain! \ô/
Same. Animations range from amazing to bland.

Gameplay
res7less said:
The combat is, to say it mildly, meh. For today's standards the combat is artificially delayed, unresponsive and sometimes random. If one character hits a monster, often subsequent hits from party members will miss for no reason. And even if they do hit, their hits are kind of registered a second or so later and cause the monster to be "stunned" one more time, again not registering hits from other characters.
That is just how it was in the original. (the combat is artificially delayed, unresponsive and sometimes random) -> It is the active time battle system from Final Fantasy, but you can run around and attack(less effective) when it's not your turn. Which can be used to interrupt enemies, while teammates prepare their attacks.


res7less said:
The dumb AI doesn't really help here either.
That is just how it was in the original. But it shouldn't be. You can tweak AI behaviour in the settings, but they will never be useful or smart. The companion AI is the biggest gameplay problem for me.

res7less said:
Some other things are questionable like [...] the weird slimes that you keep missing for some reason while they make more copies of themselves.
That is just how it was in the original. (CopyAndPasteFTW) Slimes, TomatoMan and EggplantMan monsters have a huge evade rating. But magic (which you didn't have when first encountering slimes) has a 100% hit rate.
Bonus: EggplantMan and TomatoMan
eggplantman.gif
tomatoman.gif


res7less said:
Some other "minor", yet quite annoying issue is when buying new equipment, you have no way to see how the new gear will affect your stats. That results in sometimes buying unnecessary equipment and having to sell it again.
More expensive equipment is always better, but you are 100% right. They should have reworked howshopping works.

Sound
res7less said:
The soundtrack has been great so far.
Nooooooo
The soundtrack ranges from nice to garbage and show no consistency in anything. Not the quality, not the choice of instruments, nothing. It is as if they hired amateur remixers and a different one for each song. You mentioned the dwarf city music, but every city music so far has been atrocious. In the first city they changed the flute parts to accordion. Seriously, sometimes I really enjoy the new soundtrack, but most of the time it is just a mess. What annoys me most about it is, that there have been many better official versions already.


res7less said:
The sound and VOs, however, are something, that takes getting used to.
I only used the japanese VO and that is amazing. Love it and the fact that every conversation has VO.

res7less said:
Also, I gotta mention that a variety of dialogues between the main characters have been added, which appear when staying at an inn.
This is the best addition. It gives much needed character depth and doesn't feel like filler at all. It integrates naturally and enriches the world. 10/10

res7less said:
The SFX are fine, but I wished the monsters had more and distinct and memorable sounds they make. Currently, they are either completely silent or making as few noise as possible.
The SFX are nearly a 1:1 rip from the original, except that most sound are cut of at some point... for whatever reason.

Me own thoughts
Bugs that were in the game that still are (that I encountered)
- hits don't register
- enemies won't die sometimes
- enemies despawn when out of sight
- enemies spawn because they didn't spawn befor
New Bugs (that I encountered)
+ when you get lance it is refered to as javelin and vice versa, while the menues have it right...
+ game crashes under certain conditions, because someone didn't clean up debugging code in visual studio(wtf)
+ Sometimes rendering fucks up and models have a single colour. Had this in a cutscene where the main boy was completely blue
+ The game will always be either in a window or at max resolution. When you set it to window and then use tool to stretch that, then it will change the resolution accordingly. If you want to play at a lower resolution then you have to change your f'n display settings. (Which has been a problem when I wanted to play on the 4K TV with my Laptop.)

The game is definitly not perfect. The biggest problems are Soundtrack and AI. The soundtrack can be switched to the original so it's a minor issue. And the AI can be avoided when you play with friends.

But this is also where the problems are. Why is the quality of the OST so all over the place? Why do I need 2 friends to avoid bad AI companions? Why are bugs which have been known since 1992 still not been fixed? Why does this remake cost 40€ (or your local equivalent)? Why no online Co-op?

If you think about the options gamers have if they want to play SoM, then this game is one of the best, despite all the flaws. The mini SNES only allows 2 players and costs ~100€. Emulation is evil? The apple remake is singleplayer only and requires an iphone/ipad. Virtual Console version is bound to certain consoles + singleplayer only.

Fazit

It's the legal version you can easily obtain and play with 2 friends. Nice graphics, extra story bits, complete voice over and an ambivalent soundtrack. I wouldn't recommend it, but I also don't regret the purchase.
 

res7less

Jumpkin
How the 3D model in the remake looks aka. slim and green

Just to quickly interject: I also noticed the difference between icon and model, however the icon and spirit look like this in SD3, so there probably was some design confusion back then when the games were made. So it might just have been the decision to stay true to the source material (one, which is, like the combat, debatable). Also, in SoM the sprite is called Sylphid, while in SD3 it's called Jinn. SD3 never had an official translation, of course, but I think all the other spirits have the same name in both games except Jinn/Sylphid.

Nooooooo
The soundtrack ranges from nice to garbage and show no consistency in anything. Not the quality, not the choice of instruments, nothing. It is as if they hired amateur remixers and a different one for each song. You mentioned the dwarf city music, but every city music so far has been atrocious. In the first city they changed the flute parts to accordion. Seriously, sometimes I really enjoy the new soundtrack, but most of the time it is just a mess. What annoys me most about it is, that there have been many better official versions already.

Well, as I said, it's pretty subjective. I think both are fine, but you're right in the regard of the quality varying from track to track. There was actually one instance, where I liked the remade one more, and that was the desert music. But otherwise I wouldn't consider the choice of instruments horrible, since there are a lot of ways to interpret music, where instruments were only simulated. Artist's and listener's preferences and perceptions will always vary.

I only used the japanese VO and that is amazing.
I very much believe you! I was also considering to switch to the japanese VO very early into the game, but I kinda didn't want the game to feel like an anime, so I decided against it. At some point I had turned off the VO completely, to have the feel of the old game, but then cutscenes became kinda bland and empty, so I turned it back on again. I tried the japanese one out on several occasions though, for example to hear what Neko sounds like in japanese. I think it's also an empiric thing, where you preference varies based on what you're used to. But I'm glad we both agree on having a VO on everything in the remake is great! :D
 

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
ALSO a list of annoyances.
- Generally the player initiating a dialog also gets to progress the dialog. So far so good. This is not the case under two circumstances.
1. Dialog that isn't triggered by a single player. In most custscenes a random player is chosen to progress the dialog, which is pretty stupid because there are many moments when there was uncertainty who was in charge.
2. Only the 1st player can save. This means every player can talk to the innkeep and make every decision, but when asked if you really want to save over the save slot, then the 1st player has to aceppt once, and the player in charge, has to further progress the dialog...

- You can change the Voice Over at any point in the game between english and japanese (nice). You can never change the text language. You can choose the text language only once, when you start a new game and then never again.. WTF
I have now german text (I'm german) which is riddled with bad translations and complete disregard for the english version, or the original german. They changed everything and I cannot change the text language...

- Most weapons have secondary effects, which are listed nowhere, even though the game has a weapons compendium... (most effects cannot be easily seen, like bonus damage against certain enemy types)
Example:
Sword Lv. 1 boosts dodge% and hit%
Sword Lv. 2 +dmg against slimes and lizard types
Sword Lv. 3 +dmg against insects
There are only 4 weapons without any effect. Lance-1, Javelin-1, Bow-1, Boomerang-3

- When you travel per canon, then you no longer have a travel animation

- The camera is a little zoomed in too much, which is natural given the aspect ratio change, but it makes navigation and bossfight harder than they need to be sometimes.

- You can no longer switch between playing active and letting the bnot take over when playing multiplayer. In the original, you could at all point let the bots play again with the press of a button which was nice, when one player was doing chores, like stocking inventoring etc. also, you can not swap characters any more. Controller 1 is always player 1. You have to plug the controller in at the right order... stupid.

- One can no longer strafe. In the original you could walk sideways, or backwards while facing and attack fowards. That is no longer possible.

- The AI behavior settings have been reduced greatly.
 

MrChocodemon

Handsome Moderator
Just to quickly interject: I also noticed the difference between icon and model, however the icon and spirit look like this in SD3, so there probably was some design confusion back then when the games were made. So it might just have been the decision to stay true to the source material (one, which is, like the combat, debatable). Also, in SoM the sprite is called Sylphid, while in SD3 it's called Jinn. SD3 never had an official translation, of course, but I think all the other spirits have the same name in both games except Jinn/Sylphid.
There was no confusion in SD2 in regards to the design of the elemental.
 
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