Secret Of Mana remake!! !

Post Reply New Topic

Square-Enix is making a cute 3D remake of Secret Of Mana; hope Final Fanatasy VI is next.

Seems like a weird title to remake. I enjoyed it a lot back in the day, but that game has not aged well. Stilted combat based around timing hits around a meter, mechanics that rarely make sense to use (powering up melee hits), and late game combat devolved to spamming spells that pause the action. I feel like they would really have to modernise it to make it a game worth returning to today.

On the other hand, I like that it's a game that feels fun and light hearted and that that has carried through to the new art style. Yes, it's a game that has the cliche of your home town being destroyed in the first half hour, but it's also a game where you carry barrels around for the sole purpose of wearing them in combat to grant you immunity. Square Enix's first party titles seem to do much better at this type of game than their attempts at 'serious' settings, like latter day Final Fantasy games.

I hope it ends up looking better than this though. This looks like it's replacing a lot of decent sprite work with some very mediocre 3D visuals.

The last time I tried replaying it, I thought the combat got a little repetitive, also. But I also think that a proper English re-translation would really do this game a world of good. Ted Woolsey had very little time to translate the original, and it really shows.

I'd probably get this if it came out for the 3DS (granted it even comes out in English), but I think if that was going to happen, Square would've announced it.

I'm not usually excited for remakes, but this is an exception. Secret of Mana was one of my favorite childhood games, but I felt it really didn't age well as an RPG (sprite reuse, not much dialogue, etc). I hope it gets some of the extra love it deserves.

My hope is that this will spur Square to release the Seiken Densetsu collection overseas so we can finally play the direct sequel to this wonderful game.

...some of us already have...

Seiken Densetsu 3 was one of my favourite games for the SNES. Beautiful artwork, better combat system (if still overly simple), lots of variation between playthroughs in terms of builds you could make or characters you could play through as. IMO it was much better than Secret of Mana.

I feel the same way. I agree with everything you said but I'd like to add: It wasn't half-finished.

Well, if it's better than the original, I'll be super happy. That's a really low expectation, I know, but SoM had so much potential and a lot of it fell through because of circumstances beyond Square's control. It'll be nice if Square-Enix finally gets to make the game they wanted to make, though. I'll be happy for them.

Well, they threw a lot of that stuff into Chrono Trigger, didn't they?

...one of these days I need to play through that game... ¬_¬