Three years ago I’ve played the Trials of Mana remake which was my first introduction to the Mana (Seiken Densetsu) series. It was a very simple, but extremely fun and exciting action RPG that had the energy and ideas of the 90s redone with all of the experience and sensibilities of the 2020s. Countless games were inspired by Secret of Mana, and Ys and thousands of hack and slash games and their experience was poured into making Trials of Mana 2020, making it a fun experience a lot of modern players can instantly get into.
And now I’ve played Secret of Mana remake from 2018, which actually feels like a game from 1993 and it’s been a miserable experience throughout. Surprisingly, from what I’ve gathered, partially because some things in this remake made the game worse.
To understand what Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2) was for 1993 I decided to read up on some of its development history. Apparently, the development of the project started at around the same time as Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger were already in works and the whole “kind of realtime combat” mechanic that defined this game was originally considered for FFIV and probably evolved into the “Active Time Battle” system. It also was at some point considered to become an entry in the FF series and had the title of “Chrono Trigger” attached to itself, which isn’t entirely uncommon for game development but is curious nonetheless because a lot of the mechanical ideas and the visual stile of the game were clearly shared between all projects. And while Chrono Trigger eventually chose to use ATB system as well, the way you went in and out of combat was far faster and far closer to how it works in Secret of Mana.
Because, here’s the thing – while Secret of Mana is undoubtedly an action RPG and it’s combat is real-time, it doesn’t really feel like it by modern standards. It feels more like an ATB-based game, except without the clear “enter/exit battle” phase. You can move at any point, unless you are affected by specific status effects, casting a spell or are being cast a spell on, you can attack at any point (with the same exceptions) but in a lot of fights you will actually refrain from moving the character that much. For one, all of the dodging is automatic and triggers purely based on character stats. Same for the type of the normal attack that the character will use – there are several of them but which one will be triggered is random. You have more direct control over charged attacks, however, which always trigger the same animation, but that’s where the main “doesn’t feel like action RPG” thing happens.
Every time you swing the weapon, a bar empties and starts filling up. You can mash before it’s full, but your attacks will do only a low percentage of the full attack and will often miss. So, you wait. Like with an ATB system. To charge an attack you have to attack and keep pushing the button so it first fills to 100%, then starts charging to the level of the attack you want to get (the limit is set by weapon level and your proficiency with it), meaning that you wait more. And your charged attack might still miss. In fact, you will miss a lot in this game in general. Also, enemies, when they take a hit, are stuck in an animation and even if you land a hit on them and their HP is now 0, they still must get out of the damaged animation to then acknowledge the damage and then die. Which you have to wait for. Same happens when the enemies (or your characters) cast the spell – the caster and the target freeze, but the world moves around and can still deal and receive damage. And enemies can target you with spells from anywhere in the room, even if you don’t see them. They can also chain cast. So you wait. Until the enemy that has been dead for half a minute finally finishes their 3 spells in a row that can still kill you and accepts death.
As a result, the whole experience feels like you’re playing Chrono Trigger, but with really inconvenient combat controls, because you still can (and must) go through several menus and submenus to cast spells and use items, but instead of these options being just easily available to you contextually when combat starts, it’s always combat so there is no contextual time to change the controls so the menus have to be more complicated and tiresome to go through. Plus, everything (including spells) gets stronger via usage and you have to grind to have any luck with some of the difficulty spikes in the game, otherwise you will be dealing too little damage or missing too often to get past the damage race boss fight. And to grind, you have to go through all these cumbersome menus over and over again and wait. It’s odd – but I genuinely felt like grinding in this game was actually slower than in ATB-based titles that get all that extra battle scene transitions and cool animations.
Now, all I’ve been describing has been in the original game and has been kept as is with basically zero changes in the remake. There are quick access buttons added, but only 2. With about 1/3 of all other modern controller buttons remaining unused in the game. In fact, in a lot of ways I feel like the remake makes the whole experience worse in general. From what I’ve checked, the time your bar charges to 100% is ever so slightly slower than in the original. Your characters can no longer chain cast spells (enemies can). The overall presentation of the game makes it feel more like a modern action RPG, which is extremely at odds with how it’s actually meant to be played and, in fact, the game doesn’t ever teach you about half its features or how it’s meant to be played – in the original, I’d assume it was in the manual, which isn’t even available for the remake. In some areas camera angles don’t show important information that you must have to understand where to go next. A lot of really cool seamless panning transitions were removed in favor of a black “Now loading” screen. Which is especially horrible in the final dungeon of the game which apparently was almost one connected big area in the original, but in the remake is a confusing mess of rooms with the loading screen between each one of them. Some of the audio effects and tricks (like additional reverb in cave areas) is removed…
The additions that are supposed to be cool are not always good either. I didn’t mind the visual style of the game, but in Trials this style was utilized far better. More cinematically directed cutscenes for some story events are at times as awkwardly forced in as the animated cutscenes in the PS1 version of Chrono Trigger – in fact there’s at least one instance where a thing happens in this type of cutscene only to then switch to the normal game view and repeat the action again. Voice acting is mostly horrible, at least in English. There are additional scenes that can happen if you go to sleep, where characters talk about events that happened, but those happen in strict order. Meaning that if you don’t sleep often enough (which you don’t need to do in the remake as much – that’s how you save the game, but remake has auto-saves as well), you can be near the end of the story but the characters will be discussing something that happened right past the mid-point instead. Not that the story is important or any good, honestly, it’s extremely primitive and unlike Trials doesn’t have any interesting fun tricks up its sleeve like changing scenarios based on the characters. Even the re-arranged soundtrack sounds odd – I rather quickly switched to the original, which does sound quite good, very early and only occasionally switched to the new arrangements to give them a listen.
All in all, the remake of Secret of Mana is extremely odd and if you haven’t played the original game, most likely very unpleasant. It doesn’t explain much, even the basics (and there’s no manual to go with either, like there was with the original). It doesn’t try to sell the player on the idea of this extremely quaint by modern standards approach to an action RPG. Which, I think, might still have an audience today if done right, but this remake has definitely not sold me on the idea that this can be good today. Even by the end of the 90s we had Parasite Eve games and Vagrant Story which approached the same ideas with far more elegance and fun than this and today we have Final Fantasy VII Remake or, heck, even XV or Scarlet Nexus which also don’t fully embrace the hack and slash (like Ys), while being a fast paced and real time action RPG. I don’t love this approach, but the aforementioned games made me like it or even love it depending on the game. Whereas my time with Secret of Mana remake was miserable and all I wanted was for the game to finally end.
I hated Secret of Mana and it sucks to think that. I know how influential the game was and how much love it still gets. And I don’t know if my experience would’ve been better if instead of this PC had Collection of Mana and I’d play the original, or if, for my personal tastes, this approach to action RPG is just way too outdated, tedious and unfun. Which is a stark contrast with how much fun I had with Trials of Mana remake. If you want to check this classic out for yourself – maybe the version from Collection of Mana will be a better choice, if you have access to it. But do expect to play this more like an ATB-based jRPG, rather than a hack and slash game and if you don’t like that, probably don’t even give it a go.