LogFAQs > #896128866

Alright, I played about an hour of Secret of Mana this morning so here we go.

- I never thought the art style they chose for this was that bad, and I think it ends up looks pretty good in motion. Does the game look like it could probably be a mobile game? Yeah, it does, but I'm not of the mind that that's an automatic negative. It can get a little copy+pastey with the environments, but that's how the original game was too. If there was one complaint I had about how the game looks, it's that the character models don't always stand out as much as they should against the background, so certain monsters can get a little lost at times.

- Combat seems mostly intact. The feel of a few weapons isn't exactly the same as the original game, but none of the ones I've tried so far feel bad. It does seem like the monsters have a slightly slower recovery time after getting hit, so it feels like you can keep them stun-locked easier than usual. It has made the game a bit easier (not that it was that hard to begin with). There is a bit of a disconnect, though, given that the combat does feel mostly the same. There's still plenty of junk like homing attacks and your own characters getting stunlocked that was in the original but feels jarring in what should be an updated version. I don't mind it because I know how the game works, but I suspect someone who never played Secret of Mana would think it feels sort of broken.

- Music is really hit or miss. Some of the tracks are nice little arrangements of the original soundtrack. Some of them feel like the composer was given a quota of instruments to use and tried to cram in as many sounds as possible to meet said quota. None of them are as good as the original versions, but you can always swap to the SNES soundtrack in the menu, so no harm done there.

- Voice acting is very bad and I turned it off after about 5 minutes.

- I wish the camera perspective was a little higher. Some of the maps get obscured in unfortunate ways due to the perspective - towns and indoor environments specifically. It's not game breaking, but it doesn't look good.

- There are some really easy QoL improvements that are missing here. Just things like being able to see if new gear is going to be better or worse from the shop menu would have been super simple to implement. The things they did add - like the minimap - are totally superfluous. You can change the inventory limit in the options from the original 4-per-item limit up to 12-per-item. It's totally bizarre that this is an option rather than the default but whatever.

- The one 'major' thing they did add was a bestiary of sorts. It's kinda neat because I like looking at the 3D models of all the NPCs and monsters. It's also super half-baked because it's really just a checklist. Some info would be nice - EXP or gold counts for monsters, weaknesses, drop rate for rare items. The later would have been especially appreciated given there are trohpies for collecting all gear. There isn't even a tab for armor, only weapons! Plus, the movement in the bestiary is overly sensitive. If you tap on the d-pad for more than a fraction of a second, it'll scroll like two or three entries over.

- All that being said, I've enjoyed what I played so far and I see no reason why I wouldn't finish and probably platinum this. I don't begrudge any of the less than stellar reviews though, from what I've played so far it seems like you can get mostly the same experience from just playing the SNES version, which you can get for a lot cheaper than $40 right now. The dynamic PS theme is pretty neat, though.
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