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Secret of Mana Remake - Review
What happens when a widely-cherished Super Nintendo RPG gets a remake that doesn't change much? The result will doubtless be different for everyone, but here's a review abundantly demonstrating one reaction.
Dissatisfaction will result.
It's not what he's eating, but what's eating him that makes it ... sort of interesting.
Comments
Now, as you said, we need a remake of Seiken Densetsu 3 that actually gets released in the west.
how is completely replacing the graphics and engine not a remake?
Yeah, it is more in the vain of FFIII and IV's remakes for the DS. It is structurally the same game as the original but re-built and in some places, reworked. That said, the Mana remakes are definitely more conservative in implementing changes to the original.
Yeah, comparing slapping some smoothing filters on a PS2 game to completely redone graphics, regardless of how dated they look, is pretty absurd.
While the graphics and sound track are an improvement from the Super NES version, the biggest complaints are poor hit detection as hitting an enemy doesn't always generate damage, and let's not forget the frequent "Blue Screen" crashes which makes it a disincentive to grind out your spell, weapon, and experience levels.
Not even the updated patches, like Version 1.02, seem to work. If it did, I wouldn't have experienced at least seven "Blue Screen" crashes so far and counting.
If it wasn't for the auto save feature, "Secret of Mana" would have been a disaster.
For a company with a reputation for producing high quality games like Square Enix, they should have known better than to produce a game with "Blue Screen" crashes and bugs like "Secret of Mana".
Let's hope future remakes and new titles, including "Final Fantasy 7" and "Dragon Quest 11", won't have any "Blue Screen" crashes.
The inn scenes were rather amusing but didn't add much to the overall gameplay.
Magic is still overpowered and can carry you through most fights. (not a gripe, just an observation)
I think I had a handful of game crashes, but the autosave was extremely helpful for getting back to where it stopped.
I find it might be harder for a newer generation of gamers to get into this. The people that played the original understood its quirks and would probably come to expect those things to re-surface, but anything less than smooth gameplay nowadays is likely to turn people off. There doesn't seem to be much tolerance for "cell phone game graphics" either. (a common complaint on the Steam boards)
A big complaint of the original SoM is the hit detection as well. Like it was mentioned, for better or worse they replicated the old mechanics. Wouldve been nice if they had cleaned it up.
For me, it was more a matter of how often the little MISS icon kept popping up. In other words, not a problem with hit detection, but instead with how the game didn't seem to want my weapons to do anything. Even really high-level charged attacks that definitely connected with a boss's hit box would whiff that way.
Magic seemed to be nerfed some as well. I had issues with getting any spell to hit hard enough to make a difference for much of the game, even with higher skill levels attained through a lot of pointless casting. Bosses which I clearly remembered nuking to death with fireballs and other assorted effects were taking single-digit (often 1) damage from everything including the element they were supposedly weak against. And the fact that Magic Reflect never seemed to wear off actually screwed me over a few times.
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28 years of gaming and still going strong
and now a mostly annoyed Father with first son. And now a father again to a second son
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