Thank you to Square Enix for sending a review code for Trials of Mana.
Is Trials of Mana the perfect remake?
I’d like to thank Square Enix for providing a copy of Trials of Mana for review, and to let you guys know that while Square Enix provided this copy for review, this review consists of my own thoughts and opinions on the game and is not being reviewed by Square Enix before going live. So with that out of the way:
Welcome back to The Game Collection! I am SuperDerek and this is Trials of Mana, and it might just be the best remake I have ever played.
Trials of Mana is a remake of Seiken Densetsu 3, an action RPG Squaresoft released on the Super Famicom back in 1995. It was only just recently brought to the West by Square Enix in the Collection of Mana on Nintendo Switch, which I just reviewed a couple of weeks ago. If you’re interested in the whole history of that game and its 20-year long journey to the West, make sure you check that out. And if you like RPGs make sure you get subscribed because that’s pretty much all we do here.
Trials of Mana follows all of the same basic story beats as the original release on Super Famicom. And just like its predecessor, the game opens with a choice between 6 characters: Duran, the noble swordsman, Hawkeye the cunning thief, Kevin a beastly berserker, Angela the Princess Magician, Reisz the Amazon warrior, and Charlotte the powerful cleric in training. You can pick three of these characters, and the first person you pick will become your main character for the playthrough, and will determine which of the 3 paths through the game you will take. I picked Reisz as my main character this time around, not realizing hers would be the same story as Hawkeye from my last playthrough. This worked out pretty well though because it helped me see just how closely the remake matched up with the original release, and I think I did spot a few subtle differences.
The story of Reisz picks up with her looking for her kid brother, Elliot, who ought to be starting his training any minute, but he’s nowhere to be found. As it happens, he’s been tricked by a couple of ninjas, Bil and Ben, into turning off their fortress’s defenses. Reisz finds Elliot just a moment too late, and a slaughter ensues. Her brother is kidnapped, her father, the leader of Laurent is murdered, and the Laurent fortress falls to the Nerval thieves. Reisz survives the catastrophe, and sets out on a journey to avenge her father, and rescue Elliot from his captors. Eventually Reisz meets up with Faerie, who tells her about the Sword of Mana, which she may be able to use toward her ends. And all this happens within the first hour of the game, and what follows is a story of epic proportions!
This is just one of the six unique character backgrounds that the game has to offer, and each one is just as interesting! And seeing the whole thing play out in fully voice-acted and motion-capped cut-scenes was absolutely awesome, and a lot more emotionally impactful, I think. Again, I love that this is another relatively low stakes start to the story that snowballs into much larger proportions. And the motivation of setting out to save your brother and avenge your fallen father is nice and simple too.
The overall story hasn’t been changed all that much from the original release, but I did notice while playing this time around that your secondary characters do get a lot more time to shine during cut-scenes than I think they did upon the original release. Even some of the characters who I didn’t put into my party each got a small bit of spotlight for a few moments during scenes that interconnected with their stories, which I thought was a really nice touch. I’m not entirely sure if these scenes were newly added, or if they just happened to be more impactful due to the way they were presented in this remake, but the difference was definitely noticeable.
During my playthrough on the Super Nintendo version, I of course enjoyed myself a whole lot, but I think that one of the biggest differences with this release is that this time around, the game made me care a lot more about the stories of the characters themselves. I didn’t expect to feel this much of a difference in the translation from 2D to 3D, but I definitely do feel it. There are probably a multitude of reasons for this, maybe it was the voice-acting that did it, or the cinematography during cut-scenes, or just the less abstract way in which details of each story was conveyed? I’m not positive, but I can say that at the end of the day, Trails of Mana benefitted heavily from the update to modern consoles from a narrative perspective, which I had marked as one of the game’s weaker points in my previous experience.
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