And that's that. Complete with platinum trophies in about 28 hours of playtime. Not quite a "perfect file" because I didn't max every single weapon and magic, but I don't care about that and it's not remotely worth the time. It's 100% as far as I'm concerned.
So, my thoughts on the remake for anyone who cares. While I enjoyed it for what it was, and didn't hate the music and voices like most people do... (I find the Japanese voices to be equally annoying as the English ones, and why bother buying a remake in the first place if you want to turn off as much of the new content like music or revamped graphics in it as possible?) ...I do feel like it was a bit underwhelming.
Where I'm probably going to diverge from the actual Mana fans is that in my opinion they should have changed MORE than they actually did, not less. Revamping the game systems, changing and adding content, just keeping largely the same story and general gameplay concepts of the original game. Essentially rebuild the game completely instead of just adding a new coat of paint, making it unique on its own and giving both this and the original equal reasons to be played separately; as it is, there's no real point in playing both in the present, and I can't really recommend this version over the original even though I think it's fine.
But of course, if they had changed things like that, the fan backlash would have been immense and would have made the present whining about music and graphical style look like a mere whisper. (Keep an eye on the reaction to FFVII Remake, if it ever actually comes out, for the kind of thing I'm expecting. Although admittedly it might be a lot more justified if they turn out to have messed with the actual characters as much at it seems like they will.) So I can definitely understand the reason for why it ended up being done this way.
"Coat of paint" remakes aren't necessarily a bad thing in any case. For example, the PS1 remake of Tales of Phantasia and the PS2 remake of Dragon Quest V are generally considered to be the definitive versions of those games. My opinions differ somewhat, but that's neither here nor there. (I personally say the DS DQ5 is superior due to better-sounding music and extra content, and ToP's PS1 version strangely falls down on some music despite being better in every other way. A few tracks sound better even in the much-maligned GBA version for some reason even though that was basically just a port of the PS1 version, and a lot more are better on the SNES. The SNES version also has some uniqueness to the game's style - visual and otherwise - that sets it apart, while ToP PS1 is basically Tales of Destiny redrawn into being Phantasia. It doesn't matter much to me anyway because I think ToP isn't a very good game no matter which system its on, mainly due to the story which is very poorly-executed in a similar way to Star Ocean 2's.)