Review: Trials of Mana

3 years 11 months ago

Remakes, no matter their quality, are always a tricky business. How much of an old game's ideas or mechanics do you preserve? What do you update, reinvent, keep as-is, or discard outright from an old game that won't betray its essence, or rile up its fans, while still making it appealing to people new to the experience? After all, the stated purpose of most remake projects is to bring that old experience to new people.

I'm one of those "new people." As I mentioned in my initial impressions of Trials of Mana, I have effectively no experience with Secret of Mana or its SNES-era sequels, knowing them only as Squaresoft games considered by many to be timeless classics.

Now that I'm done with it, the question remains: How did Square Enix's attempt to bring the legendary Seiken Densetsu 3 to modern platforms and contemporary audiences (read: people like me) work out? Does Trials of Mana pass its own trial?

Review: Trials of Mana screenshot

Read more...
Author
Josh Tolentino