Trials of Mana
Trials of Mana is a remake of the third game in the Mana series originally for the Super Famicom. I was at the rich people library again looking over Switch games with my daughter when she caught the cover. Pretty anime girls and fairies is all it takes to grab ahold of her imagination so we checked this out. I've been aware of this series forever but have never played one outside of a few minutes of the original Final Fantasy Adventure on my Gameboy Everdrive a few years ago which didn't go anywhere. We finally sat down to play this game together and it has knocked our socks off so I figured what better use of my time tonight at work could there be other than writing a review for my website?
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We started the game on my daughter's profile and she was firmly in the driver's seat. You begin the game by selecting three of the six available main characters. Naturally she gravitated to the pretty anime girls and selected the girly looking thief boy because he looks pretty girly himself. With that we were on our way! The plot starts with the Princess graduating as the commander of the Amazon guard and needs to find her brother. He has wandered off and gotten mixed up with some OBVIOUSLY EVIL looking magicians. They trick him into shutting off the magic wind rock that protects the kingdom so the thief clan can use sleepy spores to knock out the Amazon guards and cause some mayhem. As the castle full on burns to the ground and the evil traveling magician guys kidnap the little brother our heroine sets off to Wendel (sorry guys I didn't bother remembering all the names lmao) to seek guidance. Along the way she meets up with a fairy at night who is on a mission to help the Mana tree. By this time my daughter was HOOKED. Through the game you will run into every playable character and see bits and pieces of their story but for the full experience you will have to play the game multiple times which is honestly pretty neat! We've both decided that we will be buying this game and adding it to the game hoard.
The gameplay is pretty rock solid too. This is an action RPG with combos and the ability to switch between the three characters in your party which is pretty cool. I'm still pretty early in the game (about 10 hours in) and have spent some time leveling up our guys and assigning skill points but I still don't have a firm grasp on how deep the combat is. So far I've just been relying on rolling around and dodging. Playing at normal level seems a bit easy for me but is just right for my seven year old daughter. There were a few times where she burned through all of the healing items and I had to take over adding a bit of tension during these boss fights where I didn't have any more healing items (or spells as far as I know) and had to rely purely on my skill (I am not skilled at video games btw). Perhaps I need some solo hands on time to see how the other characters play? So far we've only died once though so I would say the game is honestly on the easy side but like I said it's mostly been my daughter playing and she is having a blast.
The visuals are alright but it doesn't look like a AAA big budget title and it definitely doesn't look like a cheap POS either it's just OK. I've heard other people say the performance on the PS4 is much smoother which is to be expected but to be honest I always prefer the Switch for the ability to play anywhere at any time. If it weren't for the portability I'd basically never get to play games at all so if graphics are a big concern you may want to play this on another platform but it's alright. The voice acting isn't top tier either but it's not annoying to me personally but I could see these squeaky girls getting on some peoples nerves. The music is pretty upbeat and jaunty and honestly just about every member of the household has been caught humming a tune or two while we've been playing.
Overall this has been a great experience so far and I may update this review after beating the entire thing but I know I've played enough to know I am going to buy a copy. As a matter of fact I've been mapping out the entire series and planning on what to buy next. My next move may be The Collection of Mana which has the first three titles including a translation of this games Super Famicom version. I've also been eyeing up the GBA remake of the first game The Sword of Mana and Children of Mana which is described as a dungeon crawler and has a multiplayer mode, who knows maybe I will grab two copies so me and my daughter can work our way through that one. The real treasure is having an awesome kid that has top tier video game taste at such a young age.
My daughter noticed you could see her underpants when she rolls and this bouncing.
