ManaRedux Plays the SoM Remake

October 19, 2024

This was originally published on the Secret of Mana: Redux blog on February 23, 2018.

I’ve been playing the remake. Here’s my thoughts:

1)While certainly detailed, the style of the new prologue is not effective on several levels, and makes me wonder what kind of feel they were going for.

The original SNES prologue was downright stygian. First, we see hints of some massive structure with all kinds of electronic goodness hovering over dark clouds. We learn that it’s the Mana Fortress. Right off the bat it’s like man, I have to play on and find out what this Mana Fortress is. The next picture is now the interior: the huge room we’ll see here and twice later. This dark image and the preceding hint at the scope of the Fortress and the depth of the original conflict. Then, we end up with a dimmed overview of the Pure Land, and are told of a war that wrecked havoc over the world. The only sign of life here is the occasional moving waterfall as the camera pans right.

Darn.

Next comes the image of a tree dwarfed by a dark sky in the background, with mountains too. What is the meaning of this one lone tree in the midst of the massive landscape? It seems to be quite impressive on its own with those rivers well beneath it. Then the most famous line from the entire game, haunting and poetic in its own right:

“But time flows like a river, and history repeats…”

Hold that thought.

Finally, we get an overview of a vast intricate world backed by an angelic choir.

This is amazing. Must play all the Secret of Manas.

25 years later, the remake was released…

…and they decided to eschew this epic concept of the opening for some avant-garde line drawing. Note that in the SNES version, we actually see the areas as they would be played. In the remaster, the Mana Fortress looks like an evil troll’s castle rather than a sharp nightmarish figure. It’s quite an intricate illustration, and is very cool and very well done, but doesn’t nearly have the impact of the original opening. Then, here comes the Mana Beast. Why give this away here? Part of the original experience was seeing what the Mana Beast actually looks like well into the game.

The animated fire transition to the next image is extremely well done. But the illustrated fire on the next page is again part of a line drawing in pastel, and doesn’t convey a powerful impression like the SNES version did. We haven’t come close to the mood of the original.

And we’re already at the final image, which is a closeup of the Mana Sword next to flamingos and a rather ornate background implying the landscape.

But here it is:

“But as time passes…so history repeats…”

…what?

The most famous line from the game…changed. This is like when they retranslated “You spoony bard!” from Final Fantasy IV. You don’t fuss with Tellah and his Meteo and his trash talk, just like you don’t mess with one of the most memorable lines in video game history.

Of course, time and history have been spoken as a river many times outside of SoM but at that moment, in that place, it really meant something. That, and the nostalgia factor. If you’re going to make a game that’s so much of a tribute to the original as to include doors that don’t actually go anywhere, then you must keep the most important line exactly as it is.

Additionally, the voiceover sounds like something out of an IMAX nature film. The voice actor is extremely talented, but I wish they would have had him go for a more solemn delivery to fit the tone of the war.

2)The waterfall sequence is an example of why this version is flawed. Considering the pause between text boxes, the voice acting doesn’t come off as very natural. We’re not getting a continuous, fluid scene; we’re basically just getting voices for the text, and not very effective ones at that. As a result, the delivery comes off as disjointed, and voices such as Elliot’s don’t really match the character. Also, in an effort to be close to the original (or save resources), certain actions don’t look right in 3D. Like when Randi falls off the log into the waterfall. Elliott’s motion doesn’t imply the slightest reaction, and the fact that Timothy and Elliott just look at each other and run may have worked in the SNES version but here, it looks very underwhelming.

This is not as much the case with a top down view, but during the more “cinematic” sequences such as the one above, the flaws are quite obvious.

3)I’m torn between whether I like the characters running off the screen at scene transitions, or if I like the fade out when crossing a boundary. I understand that it has to be that way for longer loading times.

4)The trees, flowers, and lilies constantly moving back and forth…uhh…

5)The animation of the characters getting out of bed at the inn was downright adorable. Very well detailed, and a vast improvement over the original.

6)As many have lamented…no being launched out of a cannon on the world map and landing somewhere.

“Time flows like a river…” may be the signature line, but if there was a signature touch to the original game…

I think I know the reason for this—recall how detailed the original world map was with regards to the active view. That’s not the case here, so it wouldn’t have been as effective and would have been expensive to produce.

Doesn’t mean we can’t miss it though.

7)You kids and your auto-saves. If I didn’t have them in my day, why should you? If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to yelling at a cloud.

8)Following up on what I said earlier, there’s a certain mystery and feel to the SNES version that isn’t present here. Transferring the game to 3D means that locations such as fields and towns had to be small in scope given the memory size of a cartridge—there simply isn’t enough material to create a vast world, and more wasn’t developed. It’s the reason that the size of the world map was reduced, as we’ll cover below. The sweeping feel of the original is diminished. Somehow, even though it’s clearly a remaster, it feels like its own game.

9)The world map is quite intriguing. They’ve added many locations which can’t be accessed. In fact, there’s almost as many of these as there are actual places!

Take a look at this:

This road is coming from Northtown (no spinning whatever). One leads to the bottom part of the continent near Southtown, the other goes to a defunct location. In the next image, we have a phantom village near Kakkara and the Fire Palace:

Perhaps most interesting is this:

Tasnica 2018. Note that instead of a castle, there’s roads everywhere, including roads that lead to some palace of sorts. Not to mention a bunch of other locations, indicating a large kingdom. Hmm…where have we seen something like this before?

The world map, while certainly condensed because so much space was unused in the SNES version, seems to be closer to the intended concept for the game. Will any of these locations be part of extra DLC in the future? Or are they just there for scenery? A lot of new players state that it’s too hard to find things on the world map. These dummy locations don’t make it easier, especially with no minimap. Time will tell…

Finally, I find it amusing that the Lost Continent isn’t the unsettling place it used to be:

10)Like zhaDe, I really like the inn conversations. There’s quite a few, but I think that that’s a good thing considering the lack of character development in the SNES offering. This is certainly something that was intended for the original game that couldn’t be realized. The inn makes sense as there aren’t any new locations to have these take place in, and they may have wanted to leave the original script alone. New players may not be able to appreciate it as much, but it’s one of my favorite parts of the remaster.

11)Some parts of the design seem like afterthoughts (like Tropicallo, wow), but some are very well done. I like the fact that everything is 360 degrees now, instead of being limited to four directions. At Gaia’s Navel, the ability to show height in three dimensions really paid off. Water and fire are very well depicted in the remaster, as they are in most games these days. To someone who played this some time ago, it’s a nice update. The Water Palace feels like one. The lighting of interior locations is a striking enhancement to the original. The same thing goes for the Enchanted Forest; being up on a hill is now being up on a hill.

12)There are some serious bugs/annoyances in the game, which at times summate to boycott level:

-A glitch where my main character turns a strange color and stays that way. Can be fixed by resetting.
-The game crashing (hurray for auto-saves after all)
-An extremely annoying mechanic that makes it difficult to switch between allies.
-A very strange glitch where a character is actually dead, but the game treats it as alive. They have 0 HP, but are still able to fight, though they can’t bring up any menus. You can cast Cure Water on them and give them some HP, but then they arbitrarily die again at some point.
-I’m not sure if this is a glitch, but the game seems to have a lot of trouble making up its mind as to which battle actions come first. Magic, healing, attacking, and dying all seem to happen in a different order given the occasion.
-This may be intentional as an homage to the original but come on, it’s 2018 and our characters are still getting stuck being collision tiles.
-Characters continue to take damage with medical herbs when poisoned.
-I don’t know why we have to wait so long for enemies to die, or find out if they’re dead for that matter.

13)There’s some issues with camera angles. The Water Palace stairs almost look like the Water Palace ladder, for example. Throughout playing, I consistently wanted the camera angle to be lower; it feels as if it’s too far overhead. That would also allow more view of the backgrounds, which are nicely done.

14)The retranslation is much closer to the original Japanese, and have led to things like Mara’s box being depicted. Several nuances that we uncovered in the blog are there again. I’m trying to find a script dump to compare…

15)It may have been best to ditch the battle concept, and go with a more Zelda-like approach. It gets a bit monotonous charging up to 100% over and over again, more so than the original. By the way, what happened to the allies’ gauges? If attacks were instant, one-on-one combat with enemies would be more interesting, and it may actually give you a reason to charge your weapon. Speaking of which, I see no incentive to do so. The remaster seems to have a problem targeting after you charge, and it takes long enough to begin with.

Combat seems unbalanced at times, with some fights too easy, some too difficult, and some downright tedious and annoying. Chobin Hoods inflicting heavy damage at long range in the Enchanted Forest is ragequit fodder. Being endlessly engulfed in the Fire Palace is too. Sometimes, the boss AI seems to box one character into the corner and endlessly attack them, ignoring everyone else. And man, are those Gold Palace bosses unusually tough.

On the other hand, battles like the Werewolves when we get Purim, or Spikey Tiger in the witch’s castle have become laughably simple.

16)There are many animations that were almost certainly supposed to be part of the original. For example, I enjoyed seeing Watts working and the transports in the Haunted Forest.

17)They really should have scrapped the ring system. I know that we want to be true to the original, but it’s quite cumbersome to maneuver by contemporary standards. Also, why isn’t the ring not over the ally it applies to?

18)I’ve been saying, “Dyluck” right all these years!

19)Neko’s voice—yikes…

20)It’s 2018, and the character AI seems worse than the original. I wish I could just set them to attack whatever’s around. So many times they just stood there as they were being rent apart by the enemy. You should be able to set the priority, and then have it fall back on something other than do nothing.

21)The stage room at the Underground Palace is above ground…

22)I’m reminded yet again how dense the first part of the game is, up until defeating Geshtar’s monster in the Water Palace. Nothing is this detailed or complete for the remainder.

23)Speaking of 2018, they worked at least one “oof” into the dialogue.

24)The Empire’s “lauded” Southtown still consists of…four houses. It’s quite comical in 3D.

25)Serge asks you to hit him up when you might need a pirate like him. Hmm…

26)Geshtar sounds like an old arcade villain during his boss battles. Makes me want to play X-Men ’92.

27)They’re still doing the thing where even though you know the element of an orb, you need to guess which particular spell works.

~

For what it’s worth, I’m enjoying the remake. There are certainly things lost from the SNES version, but it’s fine for what it is. When I started playing, I figured I’d be bored since I know where everything is, and was sad that I wouldn’t have the fast forward button of an emulator. But there’s enough new material to keep me interested. I’m looking forward to the rest.