I'm in the same boat here, thinking it was badass having this warrior chick in heavy armor! Then the remake came out and... It was so far off my head canon.
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I'm playing through the classic Mana games! Let's all go plant trees!(Trials of Mana complete!)
- Thread starter Second Duke Revier
- Start date
It is time.
People were relatively lukewarm on Riesz's choices, but Dragon Master won, with three votes to Fenrir Knight's 1. In a way, I'm glad it did, because I am intrigued by the possibility of statusing the enemies to death without losing XP for it.
By contrast, they were pretty supportive of letting Hawk continue doing his thing, but with better spells(hopefully!). Not that the Ranger's spells were bad, they just kinda fell in effectiveness once the game started getting tough. Nomad got four votes to the Rogue's 1, so he donned its bright blue robes and struck a dramatic pose!
Kevin's classes got the closest votes by far, with Enlightened at 3 votes barely winning over Fatal Fist and its 2 votes. Besides Fatal Fist sounding a lot cooler, there are concerns that the life draining enchantment won't be as good or as effective as I think. Well, we'll see!
The last accessible beast was in a lush forest. It was populated by a selection of foes very similar to that of the elven forest, give or take some mushroom enemies. Those didn't pose much of a threat though, and the party comfortably carved their way through the forest, barely noticing any of the encounters for more than a few seconds.
The wood beast was a huge, sentient pumpkin that vaguely resembled the pumpkin boss of Secret of Mana. It was....almost as pathetic as that boss, often choosing to throw a bunch of MP leeching pumpkins that did very mediocre damage. Kevin's enchantment leeched back a decent amount of HP, and the party had little difficulty cutting it down. Riesz and Kevin's third special moves did rather poor damage to it though, despite looking really deadly. Might have to test them in other encounters, hmmm.
Upon its defeat, the party wonders where the shadow beast is, and Hawkeye complains about his equipment not being up to par. They decide to go to Pedan, a city the cat twins had recommended for its equipment. Though, Pedan barely deserves the title, being just a long abandoned settlement, with just two buildings standing.
That quickly changes though, with the entire city springing up once the party leaves the inn! They find a shopkeeper selling good, though extremely expensive weapons, an oracle reading a prophecy about the fate of the world from an old tablet, and a researcher who thinks the dark stone could be somewhere in an island north of Laurent.
In fact, the people talk a lot about prophesies, and curiously even talk of the Dragon Lord threatening to invade them, even though he has been defeated. I pick up the armor upgrades, as they are good and within affordable range, though expensive, test out Riesz and Kevin's third special moves against the local wildlife and then set off for the island. They do work effectively against the wildlife...is there perhaps an element attached to them, which made the plant resist them?
The island has ominous music, and quickly leads them into a dark cave populated by ninjas, beholders, and other creepy crawlies. The ninjas have a nasty multitarget slice, and also a bunch of spells that cause obnoxious status effects. The beholders miniaturize my characters and halve their HP, causing me untold annoyance. Up ahead, I run into dragons that spam multitargeted lightning spells, and the sheer attrition was crippling the team, forcing them to retreat for a refill. They sure dropped a lot of seeds though, including seeds that sprouted into the class change items and top tier gear!
They were mercilessly felled on a second try, but on the third, I hit upon a seemingly clever strategy - open with Hawkeye's sleeping spell(which was now multitarget) and then bombard them with Riesz's summon. This worked quite nicely, and the summon did immense damage to every enemy around, making them weak enough to die within the next hit. Which was usually dealt by the poison, making these fights quite convenient!
They ran into the dark stone up ahead, which had somehow restored itself. However, as soon as they stepped ahead, it shattered, and teleported them to the dark beast! Or shall we say, beasts? It took a while to debuff both of them, and even with the debuffs, they were hitting quite hard, and debuffing magic defense on top of that! I also discovered the mystery behind Riesz and Kevin's special moves doing low damage - it turns out, the life leech enchantment always does 1 damage to targets resistant to it. The dark beasts were resistant to it for some reason, and it tanked Kevin's damage against him. But, thankfully, a Stardust Herb fixed that, and with a combination of Riesz's summon and Kevin's third special move, which was a multitarget kick and hit hard, they won!
But then a third head showed up, revived the two heads, and added powerful multitarget dark spells to the mix! This was the most intense battle the team had fought yet, but, thankfully, their new tools were up to the task, and after burning a considerable number of a variety of consumables, they pulled it down with great triumph.
But horror of horrors, the villains had been absorbing the beasts into the sword! Even though they were using a sword that had previously rejected them? What? Wouldn't giving a sentient sword more power be detrimental to them?
Oh, and after that boss, the party was unceremoniously wiped out by a regular encounter.
Thankfully, redoing this portion didn't take too long, especially since I had the wisdom to retreat and restock after defeating the beast! Reentry wasn't too difficult, I simply had Hawkeye sleep or transform the encounters in rooms I had already cleared before. He had to do it multiple times, the cave had quite a few one way passages that looped back to earlier rooms. But thankfully, they found a save point ahead, though it had been quite vandalized.
It still worked as normal, though, and so I used it to save, and ended the session here. See you next time!
People were relatively lukewarm on Riesz's choices, but Dragon Master won, with three votes to Fenrir Knight's 1. In a way, I'm glad it did, because I am intrigued by the possibility of statusing the enemies to death without losing XP for it.
By contrast, they were pretty supportive of letting Hawk continue doing his thing, but with better spells(hopefully!). Not that the Ranger's spells were bad, they just kinda fell in effectiveness once the game started getting tough. Nomad got four votes to the Rogue's 1, so he donned its bright blue robes and struck a dramatic pose!
Kevin's classes got the closest votes by far, with Enlightened at 3 votes barely winning over Fatal Fist and its 2 votes. Besides Fatal Fist sounding a lot cooler, there are concerns that the life draining enchantment won't be as good or as effective as I think. Well, we'll see!
The last accessible beast was in a lush forest. It was populated by a selection of foes very similar to that of the elven forest, give or take some mushroom enemies. Those didn't pose much of a threat though, and the party comfortably carved their way through the forest, barely noticing any of the encounters for more than a few seconds.
The wood beast was a huge, sentient pumpkin that vaguely resembled the pumpkin boss of Secret of Mana. It was....almost as pathetic as that boss, often choosing to throw a bunch of MP leeching pumpkins that did very mediocre damage. Kevin's enchantment leeched back a decent amount of HP, and the party had little difficulty cutting it down. Riesz and Kevin's third special moves did rather poor damage to it though, despite looking really deadly. Might have to test them in other encounters, hmmm.
Upon its defeat, the party wonders where the shadow beast is, and Hawkeye complains about his equipment not being up to par. They decide to go to Pedan, a city the cat twins had recommended for its equipment. Though, Pedan barely deserves the title, being just a long abandoned settlement, with just two buildings standing.
That quickly changes though, with the entire city springing up once the party leaves the inn! They find a shopkeeper selling good, though extremely expensive weapons, an oracle reading a prophecy about the fate of the world from an old tablet, and a researcher who thinks the dark stone could be somewhere in an island north of Laurent.
In fact, the people talk a lot about prophesies, and curiously even talk of the Dragon Lord threatening to invade them, even though he has been defeated. I pick up the armor upgrades, as they are good and within affordable range, though expensive, test out Riesz and Kevin's third special moves against the local wildlife and then set off for the island. They do work effectively against the wildlife...is there perhaps an element attached to them, which made the plant resist them?
The island has ominous music, and quickly leads them into a dark cave populated by ninjas, beholders, and other creepy crawlies. The ninjas have a nasty multitarget slice, and also a bunch of spells that cause obnoxious status effects. The beholders miniaturize my characters and halve their HP, causing me untold annoyance. Up ahead, I run into dragons that spam multitargeted lightning spells, and the sheer attrition was crippling the team, forcing them to retreat for a refill. They sure dropped a lot of seeds though, including seeds that sprouted into the class change items and top tier gear!
They were mercilessly felled on a second try, but on the third, I hit upon a seemingly clever strategy - open with Hawkeye's sleeping spell(which was now multitarget) and then bombard them with Riesz's summon. This worked quite nicely, and the summon did immense damage to every enemy around, making them weak enough to die within the next hit. Which was usually dealt by the poison, making these fights quite convenient!
They ran into the dark stone up ahead, which had somehow restored itself. However, as soon as they stepped ahead, it shattered, and teleported them to the dark beast! Or shall we say, beasts? It took a while to debuff both of them, and even with the debuffs, they were hitting quite hard, and debuffing magic defense on top of that! I also discovered the mystery behind Riesz and Kevin's special moves doing low damage - it turns out, the life leech enchantment always does 1 damage to targets resistant to it. The dark beasts were resistant to it for some reason, and it tanked Kevin's damage against him. But, thankfully, a Stardust Herb fixed that, and with a combination of Riesz's summon and Kevin's third special move, which was a multitarget kick and hit hard, they won!
But then a third head showed up, revived the two heads, and added powerful multitarget dark spells to the mix! This was the most intense battle the team had fought yet, but, thankfully, their new tools were up to the task, and after burning a considerable number of a variety of consumables, they pulled it down with great triumph.
But horror of horrors, the villains had been absorbing the beasts into the sword! Even though they were using a sword that had previously rejected them? What? Wouldn't giving a sentient sword more power be detrimental to them?
Oh, and after that boss, the party was unceremoniously wiped out by a regular encounter.
Thankfully, redoing this portion didn't take too long, especially since I had the wisdom to retreat and restock after defeating the beast! Reentry wasn't too difficult, I simply had Hawkeye sleep or transform the encounters in rooms I had already cleared before. He had to do it multiple times, the cave had quite a few one way passages that looped back to earlier rooms. But thankfully, they found a save point ahead, though it had been quite vandalized.
It still worked as normal, though, and so I used it to save, and ended the session here. See you next time!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I always liked the Dark Benevodon fight. It's so wonderfully creepy.
I also thought this was a nice touch for showing that you're going into a bad area. Yes you still need save points but of course the bad guys aren't going to just leave them alone.
Haven't had much to say, but here is your global Mana update or something
So a couple of things about The Ancient Kingdom of Pedda. First of all, you're dealing with a ghost city or something here, and that is the coolest thing ever, and why didn't you note that is the coolest thing ever!? Nothing like a good Brigadoon. Maybe you weren't impressed by this undead(ish) town because you are on the one route that barely has anything to do with Pedda. On Angela and Duran's route, you are attempting to halt the revival of the Dragon Lord, so seeing a living(ish) example of what Dragon Lord will do to the world is significant. On Kevin and Charly's route, the nearby Jungle of Visions and Mirage Palace have revived thanks to necromancer shenanigans, so Pedda is central on your path. But your gang just needs to stop by to get directions to the next stop, so that's that.
Additional Pedda information! Heroes of Mana is a TRPG and a rare Mana direct prequel to Trials of Mana. The whole game takes place a generation (19 years) back from Trials of Mana. A lot of the game is dedicated fanservice for Trials of Mana (playable characters include Duran's dad, the Hero King [who is technically someone's dad], and Kevin's dad), and you deal with random winking scenarios like rescuing a pair of new parents who decide to name their kid Hawkguy. But the "serious" plot is that you are a soldier of Pedda, Pedda management has gone all in on worshipping an evil, cross-dimensional anti-goddess, and you eventually break off to fight against your former homeland. In the end, Pedda is wrecked in the global war that they themselves started. Except... it kind of conflicts with Dragon Lord canonically wrecking up the place a few years later. So Pedda got double destroyed? Whatever.
Regardless, Heroes of Mana is a fairly lousy tactics game (I would much rather play FF Tactics Advance), but I do appreciate that it casually fills in the backstory of Trials of Mana's prologue of "there was a war that depleted Mana", as you (as the hero!) are constantly expending mana resources and exploiting the benevodons to clear stages. Way to waste resources, pointless war!
Also, I would spoil-mask this section for anyone that wants to play Heroes of Mana for themselves, but I cannot in good conscious encourage playing Heroes of Mana for any reason.
Visions of Mana does a cool thing where Light and Dark elements aren't just "good and evil", but "truth" and "facts" respectively. The light area has a theming of being a theatre town (because truth can be found in the "illusion" of art), and dark is all about libraries and books and a bunch of scholars possibly using data for good and ill. Anyway, just taking note because Zable Fahr, the Dark Benevodon, appears there again, and the two unicorn heads are distinctly noted as "false". So theoretically Zable Fahr is just that middle head, and thus singular.
Fun Fact: Zable Fahr appears in Echoes of Mana, the 2022 (terrible) mobile game, as a tutorial boss. Talk about a downgrade.
And I guess we'll get into it later, but this is the point where you are now on a route that is Hawkeye/Riesz exclusive. There are three wholly separate final dungeons. So if you don't like this spot, you can play through the whole game and choose a different main character.
That quickly changes though, with the entire city springing up once the party leaves the inn! They find a shopkeeper selling good, though extremely expensive weapons, an oracle reading a prophecy about the fate of the world from an old tablet, and a researcher who thinks the dark stone could be somewhere in an island north of Laurent.
In fact, the people talk a lot about prophesies, and curiously even talk of the Dragon Lord threatening to invade them, even though he has been defeated.
So a couple of things about The Ancient Kingdom of Pedda. First of all, you're dealing with a ghost city or something here, and that is the coolest thing ever, and why didn't you note that is the coolest thing ever!? Nothing like a good Brigadoon. Maybe you weren't impressed by this undead(ish) town because you are on the one route that barely has anything to do with Pedda. On Angela and Duran's route, you are attempting to halt the revival of the Dragon Lord, so seeing a living(ish) example of what Dragon Lord will do to the world is significant. On Kevin and Charly's route, the nearby Jungle of Visions and Mirage Palace have revived thanks to necromancer shenanigans, so Pedda is central on your path. But your gang just needs to stop by to get directions to the next stop, so that's that.
Additional Pedda information! Heroes of Mana is a TRPG and a rare Mana direct prequel to Trials of Mana. The whole game takes place a generation (19 years) back from Trials of Mana. A lot of the game is dedicated fanservice for Trials of Mana (playable characters include Duran's dad, the Hero King [who is technically someone's dad], and Kevin's dad), and you deal with random winking scenarios like rescuing a pair of new parents who decide to name their kid Hawkguy. But the "serious" plot is that you are a soldier of Pedda, Pedda management has gone all in on worshipping an evil, cross-dimensional anti-goddess, and you eventually break off to fight against your former homeland. In the end, Pedda is wrecked in the global war that they themselves started. Except... it kind of conflicts with Dragon Lord canonically wrecking up the place a few years later. So Pedda got double destroyed? Whatever.
Regardless, Heroes of Mana is a fairly lousy tactics game (I would much rather play FF Tactics Advance), but I do appreciate that it casually fills in the backstory of Trials of Mana's prologue of "there was a war that depleted Mana", as you (as the hero!) are constantly expending mana resources and exploiting the benevodons to clear stages. Way to waste resources, pointless war!
Also, I would spoil-mask this section for anyone that wants to play Heroes of Mana for themselves, but I cannot in good conscious encourage playing Heroes of Mana for any reason.
They ran into the dark stone up ahead, which had somehow restored itself. However, as soon as they stepped ahead, it shattered, and teleported them to the dark beast! Or shall we say, beasts?
Visions of Mana does a cool thing where Light and Dark elements aren't just "good and evil", but "truth" and "facts" respectively. The light area has a theming of being a theatre town (because truth can be found in the "illusion" of art), and dark is all about libraries and books and a bunch of scholars possibly using data for good and ill. Anyway, just taking note because Zable Fahr, the Dark Benevodon, appears there again, and the two unicorn heads are distinctly noted as "false". So theoretically Zable Fahr is just that middle head, and thus singular.
Fun Fact: Zable Fahr appears in Echoes of Mana, the 2022 (terrible) mobile game, as a tutorial boss. Talk about a downgrade.
The island has ominous music
And I guess we'll get into it later, but this is the point where you are now on a route that is Hawkeye/Riesz exclusive. There are three wholly separate final dungeons. So if you don't like this spot, you can play through the whole game and choose a different main character.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Oh yes, Visions of Mana was overall just okay due to the chattiness but I loved how they did Light and Dark. Just the reinterpretation/spin on the elements overall was pretty cool.
Well that's a damning indictment.
I'm not a big tactics fan, but I enjoyed FF Tactics Advance for what it was. Like, I had fun with it, even if I wouldn't play it again. Heroes of Mana I would not play again.
You can see it in action here:
Though, in further damning indictments, I squared it off on the side of the screen with A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past playing beside it, because I figured it was just that boring to watch.
You can see it in action here:
Though, in further damning indictments, I squared it off on the side of the screen with A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past playing beside it, because I figured it was just that boring to watch.
The party ventured forward, after a long, tedious trip to cash in another gear seed. I really don't understand why the developers didn't just spread the ultimate gear around the climactic, potentially final dungeon. These seeds were more trouble than they were worth!
Seeds aside, they spotted the vampire from earlier, and followed him down a pit, landing with the full force of gravity and no sense of grace whatsoever.
The vampire taunts them, and reveals the villains' grand plan - turn earth into hell, and resurrect their dark emperor to lord over everything forever. Then he begins battle, with a succubus and a blood wolf backing him up. He is a pretty stereotypical vampire, relying on lots and lots of potent spells, many of them multitarget. Of course, by now the characters had grown strong enough to return the favor, with Riesz's summon and Kevin's third special move making mincemeat out of him!
Btw, Riesz's summon explains why this class is called the Dragon Master - she literally summons Jormungandr, the world spanning snake, to raise hell upon her foes! Quite nasty when you think about it!
Anyway, falling down the pit sent the party quite a ways back, so they retreated, restocked, and then pushed on.
The path ahead was unclear, so I ended up a little lost until I stumbled upon these light bridges, which had spontaneously formed! Huh. Weiiiiirrrdddd....
Anyhow, they reached Isabella's castle's first floor, which was filled with denizens of the underworld, like demons and dark knights. By now Hawkeye had picked up a spell that rendered anyone enchanted invisible, causing all enemy attacks to automatically miss them! This was a great spell indeed, and ended up making battles noticeably easier. Of course, the dungeon was still long enough and challenging enough to extract its fair share of resources, but things ended up flowing a lot more smoothly from that point on.
They reached the throne room...and were immediately tossed down a pit! Which led them to a strange refight with...the very first boss of this game? Why?
His stats had definitely scaled up, and he was doing considerably more damage, but well, he was now facing a full team that had grown vastly in power, and so stood little chance of defeating them. He did, however, exact a noticeable toll on my supplies, and I was starting to get worried.
Then Hawkeye unlocked Nature Aura, letting Kevin do his powerful area wide special move. That worked amazingly well...until a dark knight decided to unleash his own special move and kill everyone, because my party was at half HP.
At that point I decided to go hog wild with the stockpiling, and used my money to get vast swathes of honey elixirs, poto oils, cups of wishes and the works.
This went better, and the team eventually got to their second boss refight - the...sentient fireplace? Sure, let's go with that. This time, Hawkeye had unlocked a technique that reduced max HP by a quarter, and used it against all bosses. This considerably sped them up, and while it couldn't be repeatedly applied, its existence was highly appreciated.
The fireplace...didn't really stand a chance. The team had acquired powerful aoe moves, removing the one major advantage it had. It still had some tricks, like miniaturizing them or casting Hawkeye's max HP debuff on them, but in the circumstances, these came off as cute, desperate attempts to inflict some kind of damage.
Then Hawkeye got a spell that halved current enemy HP. While this obviously didn't work on bosses, it did work on the enemies around, who provided much more interesting and dangerous fights than these snoozeworthy bosses. Though, in the process of fighting them, I ran into a rather nasty bug where lining up "big" moves too close to each other locked up the game. This bug forced another restart and made me resort to savestates for probably the first time in this entire series, which dampened the experience a bit. The fights themselves were entertaining, it's just that I would have liked to enjoy them without any showstopping bugs getting in the way.
But wait! The refights didn't end there! The harpy was their third rematch, and it was the worst of the lot, being even more of a chump than the crab! Its only trump card, its massive evasion, was completely negated, and it went down in a hurry!
The party finally came face to face with Isabella in her chamber. She sarcastically congratulates the heroes for making it this far, and then fiercely insists on protecting her dark emperor, no matter what. Hmm, maybe I'm reading a bit too much into this, but is there a thing between them?
Then she turns into a weird cat woman.
What.
Once I get past the shock of fighting one of the major antagonists as an anthropomorphic cat, the actual battle is....weirdly underwhelming. She's mostly a melee attacker, and while she does decent damage with her fists, that's easily mitigated by this team, who doesn't spend a lot of time fighting her in melee. Funny how far they've come...In hindsight, this also means that the life draining enchantment was largely wasted, and it would've probably been better to go for the class with slightly higher strength, and thus, more raw attack power. Ah well.
At her death, she mutters about how she cares for the dark emperor because he was originally an innocent boy who was wrongfully painted as an harbinger of doom by a prophecy, and subjected to torture. This upbringing made him hate humanity, and he brought ruin upon the kingdom that had wronged him, before being forced into the underworld. Huh. So...did they have a thing for each other? We may never know. That aside, this feels like a really abortive attempt at writing a sympathetic villain, and doesn't really go anywhere.
There is no respite for our heroes, however - it turns out they had been successful in summoning the dark emperor, and he intends to use Elliot as his vessel. Then, to spite the party, he breaks the Mana sword and taunts them...but is quickly halted by an intense flash of pain. The Goddess is still alive, and still intends to stop him. Furious, he vows to defeat the Goddess and destroy her sanctuary, and flies off with Elliot!
The party hurries there, but, judging from its appearance, they are already too late! The holy land revisit is as beautiful as it is bleak, and the experience is only accentuated with its foes: shapeshifters that are quite creative and delightful, if not particularly hard.
Up ahead, they confirm their worst fears, as they stumble on the dark emperor gleefully looking at the ruined tree's husk. The fairy charges him, but is sharply thrown aside and killed! He then reveals his grand plan: turn earth into hell, punish humanity, and establish demonic superiority over other species for all of eternity.
He knocks the party down when they oppose him, but the fairy expresses her trust in Hawkeye and revives them! Apparently she and the Goddess are still alive, despite being kicked down. I dunno, this feels too much like a major contrivance to justify a climactic final battle between the party and their arch antagonist, despite the antagonist defeating God itself and becoming all powerful.
Speaking of, he is the final boss, and he's...honestly quite underwhelming. He mostly throws big multitarget spells of all sorts, like every lazily made JRPG final boss ever. The party thankfully has enough damage and bulk that this barely phases them. On occasion, he throws out a nasty curse that debuffs all statuses, which is actually more concerning, as my magic dispels are a lot more limited than my heals.
As is customary of all JRPG final bosses, he has a second form. And, as is also customary, it's just as boring as his first. There was one moment where he was curiously spamming attack and defense buffs on himself, but aside from that, it was more of the same, and just padding for the final fight. It's a bit funny how all the bosses after the shadow beast were such massive downgrades, but so it goes sometimes.
On his defeat, the fairy reveals that, despite the tree being gone, the world still had a chance - she would become the new Goddess, and would return in full splendor after a thousand years! It turns out, she and all the other fairies were seeds of the tree, and would continue its legacy. Huh, neat. Sure beats sacrificing women from a clan to keep the world alive!
The party dissolves, each returning to their home for a homecoming. These scenes are pretty cute, especially the one where the leader of the Nevarl thieves, Flamekhan, promises to learn terraforming to transform their land! Kevin's homecoming has a few confusing bits from his dad, but still reads as very wholesome, especially with his dog friend being alive the whole time!
And with that....
So, how did this stack? It was a pretty fun game, clearly having more sophistication and intrigue than its predecessor. I do have some minor complaints about some of the game's idiosyncrasies, like not being able to run in combat or all "big" moves freezing all action, and towards the end the game did start to drag a little, but on the whole it was a great time, and its structure lends itself well to replays. Hell, I am tempted to start a new playthrough with the leftover characters already!
Well, that takes care of this game, and this project as a whole. It was, on the whole, a very entertaining and enlightening experience, and I certainly hope I can have more experiences like in the future. See you all next time!
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
This was always a really striking change to me.
The party hurries there, but, judging from its appearance, they are already too late! The holy land revisit is as beautiful as it is bleak,
Glad you liked it! And this was fun to follow along, great idea.
Responses n' stuff.
I agree. The game wasn't particularly good at integrating the save statues into the world and narrative(hell, I'd daresay they didn't even try, for the most part), but the desecrated statues at the center of evil itself was a nice touch.
Huh, I see. Looks like I missed out big time on Pedda's history and significance. Lol.
Not a bad premise, honestly. But I'm sure they fucked it up somehow. Also not sure I want to play Heroes of Mana, given your rather...creative description of it. Lol.
That does sound cool. Shame that Visions of Mana itself seems like a rather mediocre game, at least, going by its general reception. I would be willing to try it...if it wasn't a 3D game with middling models.
Noted, should be interesting to see how the other two dungeons pan out.
If you have infinite time and money, you have the opportunity to do "another run" on Trials of Mana 3-D with your unused party. There are obviously differences between the two versions, but playing them one after the other would reinforce their similarities, too. And from there, if you enjoy Trials of Mana 3-D, moving on to Visions of Mana would make sense. That is basically Trials of Mana 3-D-2, and inarguably an upgrade in the gameplay in every way.
Play Mana forever.
Play Mana forever.
I think, actually, Legend of Mana might be a good next step if for no other reason than (as I recall) it doesn't have an end-dungeon string.
While some of the final zones are long, the game very clearly marks where an episode begins and ends, or at least, no point where the game says "go get all the doodads and no story until you do"
While some of the final zones are long, the game very clearly marks where an episode begins and ends, or at least, no point where the game says "go get all the doodads and no story until you do"
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FelixSH
(He/Him)
Glad you enjoyed it. So, how is your final ranking of the three games? I would guess it's SD3 > FFA > Secret of Mana?
I even bought that weird tactics game, back then, and only remember not playing it much. I remember, before that, I thought the touch screen and stylus might make it so tactics games could be played like on a pc now, with the stylus as the mouse. I guess not (and I'm not really into trpgs anyway, so maybe others might have realised that earlier). But I guess the creators had the same thought.
I can't add much, aside from again suggesting that you give Legend of Mana a chance. Whenever you are in the right mood for it. I haven't really played any other Mana game.
I even bought that weird tactics game, back then, and only remember not playing it much. I remember, before that, I thought the touch screen and stylus might make it so tactics games could be played like on a pc now, with the stylus as the mouse. I guess not (and I'm not really into trpgs anyway, so maybe others might have realised that earlier). But I guess the creators had the same thought.
I can't add much, aside from again suggesting that you give Legend of Mana a chance. Whenever you are in the right mood for it. I haven't really played any other Mana game.
If you do another run of Trials, the 3D remake would be a good way to go through again while keeping things a little fresher.
If not, I'm personally looking forward to Legend since it's the one I played and liked back in the day but don't remember a lot of.
If not, I'm personally looking forward to Legend since it's the one I played and liked back in the day but don't remember a lot of.
I went back and dug up my review of Heroes of Mana, which I played around the same time as Final Fantasy 12: Revenant Wings and Wild ARMS XF, all of which were tactical twists on existing franchises, and all of which weren't that great. But then as now, I objected to calling Heroes of Mana a tactical game because it's really in the Real-Time Strategy genre. You need to create worker units and send them to gather resources, which you use to create fighter units to help out your heroes. It's not even an rpg in the sense that grinding can get you anywhere; managing the multiple layers of rock-paper-scissors combat attributes is what allows you to win each battle. Yes, there are bonus items to find, but this isn't a game about overcoming things by getting stronger. I do remember the plot being really tied in to Trials of Mana, but at the time (13 years ago) Trials didn't have a US release or an official translation, and it had been a decade since I played it, so there were a lot of references that were lost on me.
Anyway, of the rest of the Mana series, I think trying Legend is worth your time and I think you should also try Sword while all of this is fresh in your mind. The rest of the series is interesting but deeply flawed; they never really recaptured their early magic but boy did they keep trying.
Anyway, of the rest of the Mana series, I think trying Legend is worth your time and I think you should also try Sword while all of this is fresh in your mind. The rest of the series is interesting but deeply flawed; they never really recaptured their early magic but boy did they keep trying.
More or less. Trials of Mana, at least with the bugfix patch applied, really is among the greatest SNES games made. Final Fantasy Adventure was a good first entry and a nice blend of Zelda and Final Fantasy, and that's kinda big coming from someone who normally doesn't enjoy the Zelda games. Lastly, Secret of Mana was clearly ambitious and had a nice concept behind it....but it was just too clunky to realize it.
I will be considering Legend of Mana, although it will be a while before I make an LP of it. LPs, even "psuedo" ones like this one, are a big time commitment! I will also be considering Sword of Mana sometime in the future, from what I understand it's a weird remix of FFA, which should be an interesting look if nothing else.