It is the beginning of my third day of remote work and I already have no clue what day of the week it is. In theory this should mean that it is Thursday, but I am also deeply skeptical that time still moves in the same fashion that it used to. The weirdest part about working from home is how phenomenally busy I seem to stay, because I am having to exert so much effort to keep tabs on everything that is going on as opposed to news just finding me randomly. I spent most of yesterday on conference calls for various reasons and I think for the most part things are working as intended. My crew, also working remotely appears to be successfully knocking out things so I think the experiment is more or less working.
My evenings on the gaming front have been completely all over the place. Yesterday during the day I saw that Trials of Mana released a demo, and more important than that one that allows you to continue your progress in the full game. I have been exceptionally excited for the release of the remake of this game, largely because I have been waiting to play this game for legitimately decades. Back during the Super Nintendo era there were two games that made me want to learn Japanese so that I could play them. The first of these was Final Fantasy V, which I have played through several times now as part of the four job fiesta and attempted to play an early fan sub during the late 90s on an emulator. The other of these was Seiken Densetsu 3 or as we eventually came to know it in the west Trials of Mana.
The fan subs for this game were always lagging behind because the game proceeds in a manner that isn’t exactly like its predecessors in the “mana” series. Instead of having a fixed party you choose three characters to focus on and then that dictates what sort of quests and content you experience along the way. I remember there being a “golden” path translation that allows you to play specific characters, but even then… the game required way too much horsepower to be able to run on a Super Nintendo emulator at the time I was messing around with such things circa 1997/98. After that it was filed away in my brain as a game I would love to play if I ever got the chance and was quickly forgotten about as I transitioned mostly into PC gaming.
In June of 2019 the game was re-released as part of the Collection of Mana, but at that same time was announced that a fully 3D remake was on its way. Instead of playing the original 2D sprite based game I decided to bide my time and wait for its eventual release on the Switch in all of its shiny new glory. As a result last night I legitimately played through the entire battery on my switch poking around the demo and I have to say I am fully on board with this game. I legitimately loved the “Mana” series back in the day and Secret of Mana is among my favorite Super Nintendo titles. I even enjoyed the quirky Secret of Evermore that I still think is a hidden gem among the Super Nintendo era titles.
So far I have to say that the transition from traditional 2D Seiken Densetsu gameplay works pretty freaking well. The combat feels good and fluid and the jumping mechanics are functional for both getting to aerial enemies and traversing the 3D set pieces. I am enjoying the scavenger hunt aspect of the world in finding all of the hidden treasure chests, glowing items on the ground and pots to smash. The world map is adequate and combined with the in screen messaging does a good job of directing you towards the objectives you need to be paying attention to. On some level this feels like maybe a throwback to the Playstation 2 era of Action RPGs like Dark Cloud, but with significantly better visuals.
The demo allows players to get to level 7 and I believe through the initial story of each of the characters you have chosen. I fully expect to play my way through all of that and then continue into the full release when it comes out on the Switch on April 24th. My hope is that I can get Animal Crossing out of my system enough to give it some free reign in a month when it officially is available. This game feels like I had been hoping the most recent Dragon Quest game would have felt like, which I realize doesn’t mean anything to anyone other than myself. Since I played the original game with the Sprite as my healer, the girl as a dragoon and the boy as a sword wielder… I figured going for Duran, Charlotte and Riesz was the closest I could get to that sort of a setup.
In other news that absolutely made the world feel better for a little while… we saw Tripod last night. For those who have not followed the blog for long we have a community of neighborhood cats that we feed. We have super original names for each of them, but the most important one to us is the three legged female calico cat that we refer to as “tripod”. We promise we would give her a proper name if we could ever befriend her and get her into the vet. She comes and goes irregularly and is also way the hell too stealthy to get caught on the front porch video camera. This is a horrible quality photo take from my wife’s phone, but after a few months of not seeing her and fearing the worst we saw her up on the porch going for the food dish. It does my heart good to know she is okay and has made it fine through the recent cold snaps. We have a feeling that both her and the cat we refer to as “three” are actually living in our backyard, but any attempts to locate where they are staying have been unsuccessful. I believe however that they might be living way down underneath our slightly elevated wooden deck.
By the time I was in high school (early 2000s) there was a full fan-translation of this game. I did pick it up as part of the mana collection but decided I’d mostly wait for this. That seems to be a correct choice, since the game plays a lot better here.
That said: Bel, the game has a werewolf. Why is the werewolf not in your party? (He can even eventually be your healer if you want.) I almost went for the same party as you, but with Kevin instead of Duran as main character.
I bought the collection of Mana as soon as it came out and started with this one with the same party except with Riesz as main instead or Duran. I love this combo of characters. I don’t know yet if I want the remake since I already have the original, but I’m going to try the demo this week. Maybe that will help me decide.