Ah. I couldn't remember where he was exactly but I knew it was his shop.
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I was wrong for 20+ years, I'm sorry. Secret of Mana is a good game.
- Thread starter Kazin
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Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Oh, yeah, Neko's body armor is the best you'll see for a while. The Griffin Helm in the Pure Land is the best helm for the boy in the whole game, but obviously since it's a drop can be missed. I think all the accessory drops in the Pure Land are better than anything that can be bought too, and I remember those showing up fairly frequently. Again, great place to grind.
Ugh, they hid the shop where some of the best armor can be bought? That's annoying. I was absolutely sick of the Tree Palace when I finished it, too, so I couldn't wait to get out of there, and didn't explore it after talking to Jema (who, hilariously, showed up literally the next time I booted the game up after my original post in this thread, assuming he dropped out of the narrative lol).
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I don't know if I'd call it hidden, but it's an area where there's nothing obvious to do. Another thing that supports the "there was going to be more here" theory.
Well, I hadn't known to look for him. But, I got some cash together and went and kitted everyone out, then took on Pure Land which wasn't too bad when the enemies were doing 30 damage instead of 200+ lol. Then I healed up, ground all of the Sprite's magic to level 8 (I wasn't sure what would be in the final dungeon, and what the bosses in there would be weak to. They had a couple different weaknesses, turned out, but I didn't need to grind EVERYTHING to 8. Still, it wasn't THAT time consuming, really). And, result:
I beat Secret of Mana! I have wanted to finish this game for like two decades, and never got around to it/never powered through it. It'll probably be a while before I play all the way through it again, but I do like it overall. Yes, it has some odd design choices and in places feels unfinished, but it's a charming game that plays well once you learn its myriad quirks.
I do have a couple questions for series vets (spoilers for Final Fantasy Adventure and Secret of Mana):
So is Serin, the Boy's dad, the hero from Final Fantasy Adventure, or possibly a descendent or something? If I remember correctly, in FFA, the girl who becomes the Mana Tree at the end of that game doesn't have any children, and I don't know how a Mana Tree reproduces, so I'm thinking it's probably just some unrelated person.
What is with the Sprite disappearing at the end, and how did the Boy know he was going to? It may have been spelled out somewhere in the game and I missed it, but that felt like it came out of nowhere at the end lol. Poor Ted Woolsey.
So. Trials of Mana. I know there are a lot of tips to be had about that game. What are some good choices for my playthrough? I don't mean in the sense that I just want to steamroll the game, but it'd be good to have a nice mix of healing, attacks, and story or whatever. I know there are apparently class choices as well. If any of you could tell me some good options without spoiling too much, I'd appreciate it.
I beat Secret of Mana! I have wanted to finish this game for like two decades, and never got around to it/never powered through it. It'll probably be a while before I play all the way through it again, but I do like it overall. Yes, it has some odd design choices and in places feels unfinished, but it's a charming game that plays well once you learn its myriad quirks.
I do have a couple questions for series vets (spoilers for Final Fantasy Adventure and Secret of Mana):
So is Serin, the Boy's dad, the hero from Final Fantasy Adventure, or possibly a descendent or something? If I remember correctly, in FFA, the girl who becomes the Mana Tree at the end of that game doesn't have any children, and I don't know how a Mana Tree reproduces, so I'm thinking it's probably just some unrelated person.
What is with the Sprite disappearing at the end, and how did the Boy know he was going to? It may have been spelled out somewhere in the game and I missed it, but that felt like it came out of nowhere at the end lol. Poor Ted Woolsey.
So. Trials of Mana. I know there are a lot of tips to be had about that game. What are some good choices for my playthrough? I don't mean in the sense that I just want to steamroll the game, but it'd be good to have a nice mix of healing, attacks, and story or whatever. I know there are apparently class choices as well. If any of you could tell me some good options without spoiling too much, I'd appreciate it.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I swear that this was written up in a magazine that way at some point because I played FFA specifically because I thought it would be interesting to play his father's story. But I've never been able to find it in the last 10 years or so, so maybe a retcon, or the magazine said something unofficial?
This is noted in the game and I think is something the remake makes clearer, but I honestly can't remember at this point. I don't recall it being entirely out of left field. Could be something where you have to talk to an NPC.
The main thing to know is that the first character you pick sets the beginning and end setting/bosses of the game and swaps certain characters in and out along the way. I am in the minority in that I hate Angela and Duran, both in terms of how they play and in terms of their shared story. My preferred party is Hawk and Riesz, either one is fine as first or second since I like their storyline the best. For my third party member it's between Kevin and Carlie. Kevin is more fun to play as but Carlie gets some great spells.
Class changes are quite complicated and you want to choose that based on how your party balances each other out. For your first playthrough I wouldn't recommend worrying about it in advance, play the characters up until the first change to decide what your playstyle is, then revisit the class change FAQs and pick at that point.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
Great job! I haven't cleared Secret of Mana since back in the day. I like it a lot, but I do like SNES ARPGs like Zelda or Terranigma more. I'm probably due a replay here at some point. I definitely had a blast with it back in the day, and the Nintendo Power entries on it that were written like a travel journal were awesome.
Ah, okay, good to know, thank you. I ended up booting the game up to see what it was like, and picked Riesz on a whim, along with Kevin and Charlotte (who, sadly, talks with an exaggerated "baby" accent, like "sowwy"). Ended up intrigued by the way the game feels - quite different from both Adventure and Secret, in a way I'm not able to describe at the moment besides saying it feels good on my first impression.
Ooh, I may have to track down some scans of those old Nintendo Powers. I didn't start reading that magazine until the N64 days, and stopped during the early Wii era (I was an Ultra Game Players kid, you see).
I don't know where/if this game spells that out, but this kind of thing in particular (Mana and magical beings disappearing from the world) is a series-wide trope that happens in basically every game.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
You can get them on RetroMags, among other places. The issues you want are 62-64. The coolest thing that I almost forgot was that it features a ton of Katsuya Terada art. Good, good stuff.
IIRC, the hero worries that destroying the Mana Beast will cause the Sprite to vanish because it's a magical being and destroying the beast will end magic in the world. Earlier in the game when you go to the Sprite village they've all disappeared. I think the implication is that Sprite crosses over to wherever their people went and is fine there, with that ending scene.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
Please tell me there's a book containing his art, because it's incredible. The detailed inkwork with the relatively flat colours really pop tooYou can get them on RetroMags, among other places. The issues you want are 62-64. The coolest thing that I almost forgot was that it features a ton of Katsuya Terada art. Good, good stuff.
As a kid, I thought that maybe if you went through the entire game without using any of the sprite's magic, the ending would change. So I did that.
(It didn't change)
I also never figured out that you needed to cast Mana Magic with both characters, so the final boss was always a bit of a slog for me.
(It didn't change)
I also never figured out that you needed to cast Mana Magic with both characters, so the final boss was always a bit of a slog for me.
That's... possible to do? How did you beat some of those bosses? My lord, the grinding you must have done...!
The only reason I figured it out is because I'd been wondering the whole game why the magic level menu had blanks for both the Sprite and the Girl, and if they'd ever be filled in. The first thing I did when it said Dryad's Mana magic was unlocked was look at those menus, and lo and behold, the Girl had Dryad in there (and I'd been using Burst a lot with the Sprite, so I saw the new spell in there for the final boss), so I was lucky to realize they both needed to cast it.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
I only played through this game one time, and then got stuck at the very last boss, because I didn't understand what I had to do, and only did single-digit damage.
While I don't think that the game is bad (not anymore, I never liked it that much, and always found the sequel to be straight-up superior), I still don't get much out of the series. The only game that I like is the very first one, for the Gameboy. But something about having to wait for the weapon to, uh, recharge (you know what I mean), despite the game being an action game and not turn-based, always rubbed me the wrong way.
It's fine, if you enjoy it, you enjoy it. The series just isn't for me. Except for the first and, oh, nearly forgot, the fourth game. That one is just too interesting and weird.
While I don't think that the game is bad (not anymore, I never liked it that much, and always found the sequel to be straight-up superior), I still don't get much out of the series. The only game that I like is the very first one, for the Gameboy. But something about having to wait for the weapon to, uh, recharge (you know what I mean), despite the game being an action game and not turn-based, always rubbed me the wrong way.
It's fine, if you enjoy it, you enjoy it. The series just isn't for me. Except for the first and, oh, nearly forgot, the fourth game. That one is just too interesting and weird.
Secret of Mana's big weakness is its relative UI unfriendliness, and its mostly this big one:
You won't know if you missed due to execution error or to bad dice rolls.
Somehow, as a kid I managed to grok (or just level past) when it was due to RNG or when it was due to misplay, but when I went through it back in 2015 with my bud and his spouse this became clear.
We also cleared Secret of Mana 2 with 3 player mode dummied back in. It is LESS buggy than you might expect, but almost buggy to the point where I would sit out.
Trials of Mana is much more of a single player game than Secret of Mana, and it includes some mechanics to try and punish people trying to cheese bosses the way they could in Secret of Mana (to varying degrees of success). We ended some evenings with boss fights where the RNG would just decide to roll us, and those were especially sour. We eventually started levelling past those barriers, but it was pretty obnoxious for a while.
I don't know what version you're playing, but there's versions out there where many stats just don't matter.
For example: If you're not using AGI to unlock ninjutsu, it has no impact on your game.
Also: Don't stare too long at the level up screen. You will come to realize that you are not much-at-all locked into your decisions level-to-level.
One of the things you are expected to have foreknowledge of is the way the class tree breaks down. Once you change class, there's no going back. They are all described and lovingly illustrated in the manual, but I don't know where you'd find one... So find the class tree for your character online and use that to decide what "look" you want for your characters at least.
Something else that I realized on trying to replay in the 2010s...
Trials of Mana, indeed, most of the mana series, is very horny. And Trials of Mana is perhaps the horniest.
You won't know if you missed due to execution error or to bad dice rolls.
Somehow, as a kid I managed to grok (or just level past) when it was due to RNG or when it was due to misplay, but when I went through it back in 2015 with my bud and his spouse this became clear.
We also cleared Secret of Mana 2 with 3 player mode dummied back in. It is LESS buggy than you might expect, but almost buggy to the point where I would sit out.
Trials of Mana is much more of a single player game than Secret of Mana, and it includes some mechanics to try and punish people trying to cheese bosses the way they could in Secret of Mana (to varying degrees of success). We ended some evenings with boss fights where the RNG would just decide to roll us, and those were especially sour. We eventually started levelling past those barriers, but it was pretty obnoxious for a while.
I don't know what version you're playing, but there's versions out there where many stats just don't matter.
For example: If you're not using AGI to unlock ninjutsu, it has no impact on your game.
Also: Don't stare too long at the level up screen. You will come to realize that you are not much-at-all locked into your decisions level-to-level.
One of the things you are expected to have foreknowledge of is the way the class tree breaks down. Once you change class, there's no going back. They are all described and lovingly illustrated in the manual, but I don't know where you'd find one... So find the class tree for your character online and use that to decide what "look" you want for your characters at least.
Something else that I realized on trying to replay in the 2010s...
Trials of Mana, indeed, most of the mana series, is very horny. And Trials of Mana is perhaps the horniest.
As far as I can gather, Serin is one of the Mana Knights who can wield the mana sword, and the boy's mother is also a member of the mana clan. In Final Fantasy Adventure I think they were called Gemma Knights; it's not really clear if they're the same faction.
Leveling up stats is a whole thing... like, I think it's Dex that is completely worthless? Except where needed for advancing a class.
Also, Trials is a lot more esoteric when it comes to progressing the plot; sometimes involves talking to random NPCs within a village/town, in a specific order, to advance things along. Would be good to keep a walkthrough handy, I got lost many times trying to play the original.
The remake of Trials is excellent, by the way. I'd argue that's the better game if you're going for solely a single-player experience.
I do own the remake, but I want to experience it on SNES first. It's gorgeous, first of all. Second, I like the combat so far - I'd gotten past the first boss with Riesz, which was cool looking. I'm still coming to grips with the battle system, and will look up a FAQ when I need to no problem (I did for Secret a couple times, I'm not wandering around lost in that one dungeon where you have to activate all those switches with specific magic. Tree Dungeon, I think? Eff that).
4-So
Spicy
Pretty sure this is mentioned by the Elder at the Sprite village. I want to say he mentions very specifically that if Mana disappears, the Sprites vanish along with it in the remake but in the original it's just implied; the Elder says that the Sprites depend on Mana as a life source, so it's implied that if Mana disappears the Sprites cannot survive.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I can't remember who posted it here originally, but these piano arrangements of the music are lovely.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
I don't know, but if there isn't, there needs to be. I fell in love with his art before I even knew it was his illustrations to begin with back in those days. Stylistically, the stuff he did from that era is what I wish I could pull off.
I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED
Katsuya Terada - Wikipedia
The original version was busted to hell and back. There's a tryhard romhack that fucks up the difficulty and makes the game unfun (like most romhacks do) that _also_ includes a bunch of bugfixes. After being dragged for making an unfun piece of shit, the dude grudgingly released a bugfix only patch, but then later deleted it. If I find it, I'll post it.
The 2020 remake fixes pretty much all of these. It's a ground up remake. Japan loved Trials way more than Secret, and the scuttlebutt is that the US could only get Trials or Chrono Trigger at the time due to resource allocation. I don't know if it's true but even coming from me, I feel Chrono Trigger was the right choice.
Hiroo Isono. He did that art, and he is sadly no longer with us, but he released several artbooks, all filled with that vibrant rich forest work. Dude loved his forests, and according to an Art of Mana interview, a LOT of the visual style of the Mana Games was influenced and driven by a fervent desire to replicate Isono's artwork. The birds that fly by on the title screen of Secret are a direct result of the artwork Isono showed Koiichi Ishi and Hiromichi Tanaka. They have effusive praise for Isono's art in their interview, and it's easy to see why.
Other notes, since I've lost this post twice now:
Popoi, the Sprite, is canonically nonbinary. Their pronoun is officially "They." The sprites do not have concepts of gender, and this is reflected in the translation of Secret of Mana 2018. It was an error to refer to them twice as "he" in the SFC translation because - with no slander to Woosley - translation at the time was much more, shall we say, chaotic and by the seat of your pants. I genuinely don't feel Woosley had any malice or any hatred when translating, he just didn't have the time to sit down and examine, and gender in Japanese words is already a very, very fraught field that I don't besmirch someone for mixing it up when they're in a hurry. As the story goes, Woosley famously had thirty days to translate Secret of Mana, and his starting equipment was literally a JP cart - so he had to work out how to insert the text himself. Supposedly after badgering SE for a few days he got a bit more equipment, but that's still a nightmare.
Ishii states that the sorrow and deaths of FF Adventure were a deliberate choice to "Cross taboos at the time" - he "Is a contrarian." He states his explicit goal with Amanda was to make you feel sorrow and pain.
Secret of Mana's original gameplan was functionally what Trials of Mana is. They wanted multiple characters and multiple paths. Trials of Mana is very much the game they "wanted" to make with Secret, before Secret-CD had to be chopped to bits. Trials still isnt' up to what their original goal is (Since, you know. Cartridge vs CD space), but it was made with a cartridge in mind from the start. This is why a lot of the two games feel so similar, because Secret is, in a weird way, Trials-Prototype.
Dawn of Mana happened because they wanted to make FF11 but with Mana, as per the Art of Mana interview. Because infecting the world with FF11 once wasn't bad enough, they tried to do it again.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Oh dang that would be fascinating.
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
A bug fix for Secret of Mana sounds incredible. Video games have to be one of the few artforms where the artist can botch the execution and third parties can restore the original intent with a fair degree of confidence. In other media, the cock-ups might actually be deliberate, but here we can be fairly sure they're not.
This was, for 20 years, my feeling on the game, near verbatim. I've come around to it, partially because it's not quite a full action game like it's often described, it's a weird hybrid of action and turn based. Even though I like the game now, it still feels weird haha
Phantoon
I cuss you bad
Exactly. It's ATB 3.0 or something. Chrono Trigger is its sister game for deeper reasons than being developed at the same time, they're different answers to the question "how do we make ATB more real time?"