Secret of Mana (Remaster)

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

When I heard that Secret of Mana, one of the first real action RPG's on the SNES was getting remade, I was very excited. I played it when I was a child and I loved it. Though, I never beat it I remember renting it off and on and really enjoying what I played. As I grew up, I never got around to playing it even though I wanted to, so the idea of a SNES classic being remade really excited me. Then I played it. So, first of all, it's not a horrible remake, after all, I'm giving it a 7/10 so it's not broken or anything like that, the issue is that the game feels very low budget. It's obvious Square Enix must've outsourced most of the work for the remake. The visuals are pretty bad by PS4's standards. While it's most likely just a port from the PS Vita, the problem is the PS Vita itself can do better. The character designs are very low quality. They barely animated and while they probably didn't want to change the original's art style too much, it looks to be very jarring. The environments are okay. There are some low-quality textures but I found the environments were done well enough. They could've been better, especially some of the grass textures but the one thing the remake does right, visually is the enemy design. It's funny how the characters can look pretty low quality but the enemies somehow look pretty good! I'm not sure why there is a bit of inconsistency with this but it's there. The overall visual design of the locations is nice but had it spent another 3-6 month making the graphics even better it would’ve overall improved the quality of the game. Of course, graphics are not everything but when the original game has better character design you know that the game made a serious error. One touch I love is how there is a mini-map and the mini-map has the original’s graphics. It’s a neat touch and helps to navigate the environments. You, of course, can turn this off if you don’t like it. The music is… pretty bad. Thankfully you can play with the original OST, which is a great OST. I highly recommend that. The voice acting is almost Resident Evil 1 ps1 bad. It’s good for a few laughs but I turned it off and thankfully there was that option. What saves the remake from being a 5 instead of a 7 is the changes they did to the core gameplay. It plays the same, has that meter that you have to get to 100% to do an effective attack but they made some smart changes that really improve the feel of it. There is an autosave feature which is a lifesaver considering that most of the dungeons didn’t have the option to save in them, including a rather long final dungeon and you can map skills to L1 or R1 which helps out a lot in boss fights since magic is the best way to do damage mid-late game. It still has the quirks where enemies have super high evasion and about 30-40% of your attacks will miss post-mid-game. It’s annoying but once you get in the grove you get used to it. I would’ve loved for an option to decrease this to close to zero because all it does is make combat more annoying than it has to be. It’s something they didn’t change but it is what it is. It would’ve made it better, or at least an item you can equip that would help out with that. I’ve noticed a lot of reviewers claimed it gets too hard about halfway through. The difficulty does jump up about then, but I didn’t have any trouble. I feel that good advice is to fight most battles and buy the best equipment, spend an hour here or there grinding and you’ll be good to go. At the end of the game I was overpowered, and I just ran from battles in the final dungeon because I knew I’d take on anyone and I was right. It was a cake walk. Of course, if you forget to buy new equipment, it will make it much harder. The plus about this is if you want a challenge, there’s an idea to get one. It felt a bit easy, especially with powering up magic, which is very easy to do. The story is also improved. There is more dialog added and it works nicely. The original script was fine but I did like what they did to add more character development. It helps. There are these skits whenever you rest in an inn. The problem is that sometimes they’re not synced with what you do. I found myself seeing them talk about an event that happened way before I rested at this inn. A patch to keep them more with what is going on with the plot would work wonders. Not a huge deal but sometimes it’s a bit jarring. All and all, it’s not a bad remake. I’ve heard people say it ruins the game for them. I don’t see how. If you ask me, if you wanted to try out Secret of Mana, the remake is the best way to do it. Though, there is a problem here. With how much of a budget title this feels like, I can’t really justify telling someone to spend 40 USD on this. It’s a good game and a good way to play the SNES classic but it’s overpriced. I'd either rent it or wait for a sale. It took me 15 hours to finish it.

Not a terrible game like some will say. The combat is fun; the music, though some of the tracks do sound butchered compared to the original, is not terrible. The dungeons and over world are fun to explore, and I love they added a model viewing bestiary. There are some difficulty spikes, but they are aren't too time consuming to overcome. I would rate the game higher if so many game crashes didn't occur and a glitch didn't make some enemies immortal. Overall not terrible, it is rough around some edges, and really enjoyable around others.

With remakes there comes the opportunity to convert nostalgia into modern-day success without cheaply remaking a near-identical game to the original. Unfortunately, Secret of Mana on the PS4 appears to be latter. The graphics are the most noticeable remade feature. They are far from cutting-edge, but their anime style is charming and full of character. The downside is that they are still quite minimal; character’s mouths don’t move properly when they talk, and the proliferation of loading screens are a bother, in that going from one room to the next requires a black loading screen, as does entering and leaving every single building. They could have worked to make this more fluid like many modern games. The gameplay is where this gets very divisive for me. Each time you swing your weapon there is a little charge bar on your HUD and you’re encouraged to wait until it reaches 100% before swinging again. Failing to do so results in less damage dealt. This is nice in theory, but in practice it slows combat down greatly and builds frustration. Since this makes up a good 80% of the game, if you don’t like it then it’s going to be a massive problem, as it was for me. The magic system also has me bewildered, in that just casting two or three spells can often drain my MP, leaving a long stretch until I can get it recharged at the next stop, or a long retreat back to an Inn for a recharge. This seems unbalanced and very monotonous to have to backtrack a lot. The magic was a massive help in counterbalancing the dull combat mechanics, but it falls rather flat instead. The enemies are also very strange and unpredictable, in that some of them can wipe you out it just a couple of hits, whilst at other times they will wander around as if you don’t exist even though you’re slaughtering them slowly. Some enemies, particularly bosses, can be very unbalanced and spam a high-damage move randomly, making battles a test of luck as opposed to skill. The story and characters are what you’d expect from any JRPG – good, but in this case not outstanding either, which probably is a sign of how old the original game is. It’s a familiar old trop well-established in games like Zelda; visit all the temples and collect all the power needed to wipe out a final boss. Unfortunately, this all adds up to make Secret of Mana a rather bland game that sees you tangling with its combat mechanics rather than the game itself. I found myself constantly thinking “hurry up!” as I watched the charge bar reach 100% just so I could swing my sword. This is a common gimmick seen even in SoulsBorne games these days, but it’s not executed well here. I got this game because I was eager to play Trials of Mana later this year, however that was a bad choice. Unless you have a very good reason to play Secret of Mana, hold off for Trials of Mana. I’ve played the demo and it seems a lot better. They could have done so much to improve this game but took a lazy and cheap option instead.

A game with totally broken gameplay, milions of bug and glitches, an awful graphic and unplayable in all of the aspects. One of the worst game ever played...