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Raiad
Feb 1, 2005

Without the law, there wouldn't be lawyers.


Phantasium posted:

Sword of Mana
A remake of the first game with some sprite designs similar to Trials/SD3. While I liked it at the time the main thing I think it screws up over the original is how bloated it is, there’s a ton of pointless dialog that doesn’t make the original game’s story any more interesting or complete, it just wastes your time. It’s also really really easy.

Also the bloated dialog tries to turn a one-dimensional good vs evil story into something deeper and more complex, and the attempt amounts to “sure you’re mad at anime Hitler because he murdered your parents, enslaved you and committed a genocide, but in his view you were all evil, shouldn’t you try seeing things from his perspective?”

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Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

Cipher Pol 9 posted:

Also I heard the Secret of Mana remake was kind of bad? Did anyone play it?

I'd call it divisive but I can't recall many other people that liked it other than, uh, me.

A lot of people don't like the graphical style, but that was the reality of a team that cut their teeth on mobile development and was slowly getting better at what they do. Adventures of Mana worked in that style because it was a remake of a game boy game and even those minuscule graphics were an improvement, and they were able to get new versions of the music from Kenji Ito and a more polished translation to spice it up.

Secret on the other hand already had good graphics and good music that Hiroki Kikuta only had to touch up a little, so they made the default soundtrack remixes of every song split between 8 different composers (including Kikuta himself and Yuzo Koshiro) and because of that they're not very uniform. There's some real bangers but there's also a town theme that just randomly has dubstep now.

There were lots of little details missing that fans couldn't help but notice, like the cannon travel animation going to a world map is gone, despite the fact that there's a world map coded in the game for Flammie travel. Grass is now a flat texture on the ground instead of something you can cut, tiny details like the pin-up models missing from the spellbooks, and zombies no longer moonwalk while casting spells. The final dungeon is no longer 3 large screens and is instead a bunch of load screens between each individual room. Not anything individually really wrong but kind of annoying when put together.

The gameplay touch ups took a lot of nuance out of the playstyle. Since your AI companions are no longer idiots, they will queue up behind you and take swings in time with when attacks will register, so you can just dogpile the gently caress out of enemies with basic attacks. This also meant that charge attacks were kind of made worthless since it was just faster to wail on monsters, and you had less AI routines to give your party members because they were just simply competent (only 3 options for them in the remake instead of a grid). Spells and items and weapon switching were able to be bound on two shortcuts, which helped highlight how you could avoid using spells outside of one good offensive spell and the one healing spell. At least the game doesn't pause when they're cast now! It made a simple game already even more simple.

And the worst is at launch it was buggy as poo poo! It was lucky they added autosaves after every screen transition because the game had a really obvious memory leak that would cause it to crash after about an hour of play. There's also an NPC if you got too close to you'd get trapped in his hitbox, too bad it's a guy that fully heals you and saves your game, huh? This stuff has since been fixed but it's easy to see why that would have piled up with the rest of it.

I uh, still Platinumed it.

timp
Sep 19, 2007

Everything is in my control
Lipstick Apathy
This screenshot in particular has me pretty excited for the Trials of Mana remake:



You can tell exactly where in Castle City Jad that is; right by the main set of steps. I bet Lugar is standing on that tall balcony just out of sight! I hope that most of the remake is 1:1 like that.

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

Adventures of Mana was faithful to the point of having the same exploit as the game boy game to get the ultimate equipment in the final dungeon.

Zoph
Sep 12, 2005

timp posted:

Not exactly sure if I understand what you're asking but the Secret of Mana included in the Collection of Mana seems to be a direct port from the SNES version as far as I can tell

I agree with you on the price, $40 felt a little steep for three old games, two of which I've basically already beaten about 3 times each. But as another poster mentioned above, I eventually just chalked it up to supporting the release of good classic games. I played SD3 for free for many years and hopefully at least some part of my $40 will go to the original developers.

For what it's worth, there's a lot of evidence that work went into this port beyond patching in an English translation. They greatly increased the length of the characters allowed when naming characters as well as what can be displayed in text boxes, which means they had to do some pretty heavy lifting in the actual game code to make that happen.

I also balk at the Square tax at times - I still don't think the SoM PS4 remake could justify $40, especially when held up against what they're doing for SD3 - but in this case I actually do think it's worth the price given what we already knew about how messy SD3's programming is.

timp
Sep 19, 2007

Everything is in my control
Lipstick Apathy

Zophar posted:

For what it's worth, there's a lot of evidence that work went into this port beyond patching in an English translation. They greatly increased the length of the characters allowed when naming characters as well as what can be displayed in text boxes, which means they had to do some pretty heavy lifting in the actual game code to make that happen.

Yeah I noticed that! The text is much smaller in this port than it was for the fan translation, meaning each character can elaborate much better. But to be honest, if anything it just makes me appreciate that fan translation so much more and how succinct they were able to be with their translations.

Other than that all I noticed during my playtime last night were really minor things:

- Menu screen icons changed a bit
- Lots of new names for locations, like Ferolia instead of the Beast Kingdom
- Wisp changed to Lumina like in SoM, but so far most character names seem to be pretty close
- God Beasts are now called "Benevodons"
- The word Holy is removed from locations & spells most of the time, but not always

Still very curious to see if Duran's shields are fixed along with the other stat glitches. For instance I also remember Kevin's Pressure Point move being broken (as in functionally useless, not gamebreaking)

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

I imagine a lot of the translation stuff is just making it more consistent with where the later games ended up. I know you fight Benevodons in Children of Mana.

I imagine most of the mechanical stuff hasn't changed, but I'm not necessarily as familiar with this game as the others, I could never get myself to play games emulated as often as I do the original versions and only have beaten Trials once.

God that name still feels weird.

Taear
Nov 26, 2004

Ask me about the shitty opinions I have about Paradox games!

timp posted:

Not exactly sure if I understand what you're asking but the Secret of Mana included in the Collection of Mana seems to be a direct port from the SNES version as far as I can tell

I agree with you on the price, $40 felt a little steep for three old games, two of which I've basically already beaten about 3 times each. But as another poster mentioned above, I eventually just chalked it up to supporting the release of good classic games. I played SD3 for free for many years and hopefully at least some part of my $40 will go to the original developers.

Basically what Phantasium said - the remake was really clearly made by the people who made the phone ports and controlled like a phone game.
I just want to know if this version is like that or not. Because it not, it might even be worth playing.

Zoph
Sep 12, 2005

Taear posted:

Basically what Phantasium said - the remake was really clearly made by the people who made the phone ports and controlled like a phone game.
I just want to know if this version is like that or not. Because it not, it might even be worth playing.

The Collection of Mana games are basically ROM dumps, barring SD3's translation re-coding. They are all exactly as they appeared/behaved on original GB/SNES hardware.

edit: If you mean the PC/PS4/Vita Secret of Mana remake, it plays just like the original game almost to a fault. Aside from the new art, the only other new assets are a retranslation and some new vignettes at Inns. It behaves virtually identical to the SNES game, weird hitboxes and glitches and all.

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

I still kinda don't understand your question. The Collection is just the original game boy and SNES games (except translated in Trials case).

The remake of Trials of Mana that's coming in 2020 looks and is going to play completely differently. The trailer showed someone doing air combos.

Cipher Pol 9
Oct 9, 2006


Phantasium posted:

I imagine a lot of the translation stuff is just making it more consistent with where the later games ended up. I know you fight Benevodons in Children of Mana.

I imagine most of the mechanical stuff hasn't changed, but I'm not necessarily as familiar with this game as the others, I could never get myself to play games emulated as often as I do the original versions and only have beaten Trials once.

God that name still feels weird.
Yeah. I posted this in the Switch thread but I'll repeat it here-

I was chatting with friends during the Direct so I was only watching the screen maybe 80% of the time. When I saw the first scenes of the Trials reveal, I lost my poo poo because I adore SD3 due to playing it so many times back on the ZSNES days. But even though it was obviously a remake, when I saw the name "Trials of Mana" I assumed it was some World of Final Fantasy nonsense spin-off game using various Mana characters and it must be a coincidence that they only showed SD3 stuff.

I was busy typing about this in my chat so I missed them title-dropping Trials of Mana as the new name for SD3 in the Mana Collection announcement so I didn't find out until well after the Direct that it really was a remake. It's gonna take a lot of getting used to, I've spent half of my life calling it Seiken Densetsu 3 or at least Secret of Mana 3 (2?) depending on the audience.

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


Zophar posted:

The Collection of Mana games are basically ROM dumps, barring SD3's translation re-coding. They are all exactly as they appeared/behaved on original GB/SNES hardware.

even sd3's modifications are entirely within the bounds of an snes, you would just need a beefier cart to hold the rom

Pollyanna
Mar 5, 2005

Milk's on them.


Raiad posted:

remember when they rereleased chrono trigger for the ds at full price and used the lackluster sales as the reason they don’t want to bother making a sequel

Honestly? Good. Square-Enix can’t make any Chrono games anymore. It should go to a different studio - sell the IP to Nintendo!

Yes, that implies it will never happen. 🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀🦀

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

Just redo Chrono Cross like they seem to be doing FFVIII. Slightly better textures and better performance is all I'd want.

timp
Sep 19, 2007

Everything is in my control
Lipstick Apathy

Cipher Pol 9 posted:

Yeah. I posted this in the Switch thread but I'll repeat it here-

I was chatting with friends during the Direct so I was only watching the screen maybe 80% of the time. When I saw the first scenes of the Trials reveal, I lost my poo poo because I adore SD3 due to playing it so many times back on the ZSNES days. But even though it was obviously a remake, when I saw the name "Trials of Mana" I assumed it was some World of Final Fantasy nonsense spin-off game using various Mana characters and it must be a coincidence that they only showed SD3 stuff.

I was busy typing about this in my chat so I missed them title-dropping Trials of Mana as the new name for SD3 in the Mana Collection announcement so I didn't find out until well after the Direct that it really was a remake. It's gonna take a lot of getting used to, I've spent half of my life calling it Seiken Densetsu 3 or at least Secret of Mana 3 (2?) depending on the audience.

Yeah it's confusing as hell, lol. That's why I propose sticking with SD3 when referencing the version that appears in Collection of Mana and sticking with Trials of Mana to describe the 3D Remake coming in 2020. What we used to know as SD3 is now just "the fan translation"

Phantasium posted:

Just redo Chrono Cross like they seem to be doing FFVIII. Slightly better textures and better performance is all I'd want.

And maybe either a few less allies or just a liiittle more depth and development to each one's personality. Oh and maybe some alternate battle music. The combat in that game was super fun but the battle theme got to be a bit grating after several repeats

Macdeo Lurjtux
Jul 5, 2011

BRRREADSTOOORRM!

Zophar posted:

The Collection of Mana games are basically ROM dumps, barring SD3's translation re-coding. They are all exactly as they appeared/behaved on original GB/SNES hardware.

That’s what made me the happiest with the collection. I must have played FF:A countless times as a kid and the remakes always tried to make it more like the sequels instead of the Zelda with RPG mechanics it was meant to be.

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

Adventures of Mana is basically the same game with a facelift though?

Like the world map is exactly the same.

kaleedity
Feb 27, 2016



critical hits don't work in the original sd3; that would be the first gameplay thing I'd think that would pop up

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

They showed a little more of the Trials remake a little while ago on the Treehouse stream and it looks pretty good. Looks like an actual remake instead of a facelift like the first two.

timp
Sep 19, 2007

Everything is in my control
Lipstick Apathy

SettingSun posted:

They showed a little more of the Trials remake a little while ago on the Treehouse stream and it looks pretty good. Looks like an actual remake instead of a facelift like the first two.

Thanks for the heads up! I found this rip of what I assume is just the Trials of Mana part of that presentation, get it while it's still hot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmnp-apjTjk

E: I'm only able to listen since I'm at work but I'm loving the arrangements so far; very faithful to the originals which is a good thing imo. Sounds like a lot of the recognizable sound effects are there too. Seems dumb to even comment on that but SD3 really does have great sound design which absolutely includes the constant beeps and blips of all the RPG sounds

timp fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jun 12, 2019

Unlucky7
Jul 11, 2006

Fallen Rib
I was wondering: Did Nassir have a hand in coding SD3? I mean, he is right there in the opening credits for Secret of Mana and I know he is able to do amazing things with hardware.

timp
Sep 19, 2007

Everything is in my control
Lipstick Apathy
English dub was just confirmed as well!

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

timp posted:

English dub was just confirmed as well!

That's not really surprising, despite what people see of the effort of Secret of Mana, that game made a point to give literally every character in the game voiced dialog, even going so far as to have at least one area with a guard on each side with the same dialog, but different voice acting/actors for each line.

timp
Sep 19, 2007

Everything is in my control
Lipstick Apathy

Phantasium posted:

That's not really surprising, despite what people see of the effort of Secret of Mana, that game made a point to give literally every character in the game voiced dialog, even going so far as to have at least one area with a guard on each side with the same dialog, but different voice acting/actors for each line.

Definitely not surprising, but I hadn't seen it specifically stated anywhere yet so I'm still a bit relieved. Also I haven't played the SoM remake so I wasn't aware of their dedication to voiced lines.

You have to imagine that Charlotte's going to be a bummer to listen to.

Rirse
May 7, 2006

by R. Guyovich

timp posted:

Definitely not surprising, but I hadn't seen it specifically stated anywhere yet so I'm still a bit relieved. Also I haven't played the SoM remake so I wasn't aware of their dedication to voiced lines.

You have to imagine that Charlotte's going to be a bummer to listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmMispgpUs0

Axle_Stukov
Feb 26, 2011

Stylin'

timp posted:

Thanks for the heads up! I found this rip of what I assume is just the Trials of Mana part of that presentation, get it while it's still hot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmnp-apjTjk

E: I'm only able to listen since I'm at work but I'm loving the arrangements so far; very faithful to the originals which is a good thing imo. Sounds like a lot of the recognizable sound effects are there too. Seems dumb to even comment on that but SD3 really does have great sound design which absolutely includes the constant beeps and blips of all the RPG sounds

Man even though it's quiet, what I can hear of that new rendition of Nuclear Fusion is amazing.

Arkeus
Jul 21, 2013

timp posted:

Thanks for the heads up! I found this rip of what I assume is just the Trials of Mana part of that presentation, get it while it's still hot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmnp-apjTjk

E: I'm only able to listen since I'm at work but I'm loving the arrangements so far; very faithful to the originals which is a good thing imo. Sounds like a lot of the recognizable sound effects are there too. Seems dumb to even comment on that but SD3 really does have great sound design which absolutely includes the constant beeps and blips of all the RPG sounds

This looks really good. Interesting that they don't have 'Agility' anymore, seems they streamlined the stats.

There are now jumps, and the combat system seems to flow really well, too, with 'tells' for bosses.

Kobogartimer
Mar 17, 2006




I just saw a crit in SD3, were they completely non existent before? The number was yellow. Wait maybe it was the boss healing itself.

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

Things I noticed:

You can stock up to two specials (probably upgradeable), and they don't go away after the battle is over (though they also take more to build up, it seems). I don't like having to pick them up in the environment though.

An objective marker.

You can charge your normal attack in addition to that, like in Secret.

Also two different attack buttons, and different chains have different properties (they mentioned knockbacks). In the air one button was comboing and the other was a helmsplitter.

Ring menu still pauses all actions, though I noticed you could set up to four shortcuts.

Areas in the environment that change to a fixed camera to make certain bits look like the original.

Lots of minor items hidden in the environment.

Moti innkeepers are gone?

There's an ring that shows up around battles once they start that you have to run through to escape like a Tales game.

Dodge roll.

Toggleable run on pushing down the control stick.

Boss health bar.

Heh, the tells remind me of Legend of Mana.

SettingSun
Aug 10, 2013

Kobogartimer posted:

I just saw a crit in SD3, were they completely non existent before? The number was yellow. Wait maybe it was the boss healing itself.

Honestly I don't even know what a crit is supposed to look like to confirm that.

Imaginary Friend
Jan 27, 2010

Your Best Friend
Man, can't help not feeling bummed out by the looks of the remake. The original had a really defining style that inspired alot of pixel artists and now it looks like a generic mobile game that would drown in every other game out there if it wasn't for the name. More companies should take a look at how capcom handled resident evil 2.

Ceyton
Oct 9, 2004

YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!
YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!
YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!

Imaginary Friend posted:

Man, can't help not feeling bummed out by the looks of the remake. The original had a really defining style that inspired alot of pixel artists and now it looks like a generic mobile game that would drown in every other game out there if it wasn't for the name. More companies should take a look at how capcom handled resident evil 2.

You took the words right out of my mouth. My reaction went from :neckbeard: to :smugjones: in 2 seconds flat after seeing the screenshots.

Phantasium
Dec 27, 2012

Ya'll are nuts.

Kyrosiris
May 24, 2006

You try to be happy when everyone is summoning you everywhere to "be their friend".



timp posted:

Thanks for the heads up! I found this rip of what I assume is just the Trials of Mana part of that presentation, get it while it's still hot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmnp-apjTjk

Holy poo poo that bit with Fullmetal Hugger has me hyped beyond reason, both for how good it looks and the idea of just how good the Dangaard fight/the rendition of Hightension Wire will be. :swoon:

I guess I'll just have to pass the time by playing the Collection version for now. :v:

PantsBandit
Oct 26, 2007

it is both a monkey and a boombox
Got to the first boss in Trials (the crab) and got punked, hard.

Vermain
Sep 5, 2006



timp posted:

Thanks for the heads up! I found this rip of what I assume is just the Trials of Mana part of that presentation, get it while it's still hot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmnp-apjTjk

Really cool how they decided to expand the combat system to be more action oriented. I'll probably pick this up whenever it comes out on PC.

Books On Tape
Dec 26, 2003

Future of the franchise
Is SD3 the type of game where each of the character's story is self-contained like in Octopath Traveller and each story ends up being pretty short? Or is there some kind of overarching story that you really need to play each character to unveil?

timp
Sep 19, 2007

Everything is in my control
Lipstick Apathy

Books On Tape posted:

Is SD3 the type of game where each of the character's story is self-contained like in Octopath Traveller and each story ends up being pretty short? Or is there some kind of overarching story that you really need to play each character to unveil?

The latter; this post sums it up pretty well:

Jazerus posted:

for people new to SD3/Trials:

most of the game is similar no matter what your party is, but the very beginning and the last dungeon are determined by your main character. the difficulty of the last dungeon varies (slightly) depending on your path

hawk and lise share a story. it's about witches and demons. their final dungeon is considered the hardest but hawk and lise are characters that routinely break the game across their knee so you should be fine
angela and duran share a story. it's about knights, sorcerers, and dragons. this is the middle-difficulty path but any party with angela is extremely strong so you're probably fine
kevin and charlotte share a story. It's about werewolves and clowns. this is easy by default because you're not going to lose with kevin or charlotte in the party

i feel like I'm doing duran a disservice but he is kind of the odd man out since his shields don't function (unless that was fixed) and he's strictly outclassed by kevin otherwise. any party composition is fine though - just keep in mind that your main character is the one that really matters. it's kinda nice to pair the characters that share a story together because they will both get relevant dialogue sometimes, but it's nothing huge especially for kevin and charlotte who aren't the most articulate folks anyway

tl;dr: there's essentially six different beginnings that converge about an hour into the game and three different endings starting with the last 2 hours or so of the game. The middle is p much all the same except for a mid-game shake up moment

Impermanent
Apr 1, 2010
the remaster looks like it will probably be different enough under the hood that the min/maxing for those used to the old version will need to be redone. for the version on the collection though party comp doesn't truly matter because the game is very breakable and not that hard in teh first place.

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MightyPretenders
Feb 21, 2014

Books On Tape posted:

Is SD3 the type of game where each of the character's story is self-contained like in Octopath Traveller and each story ends up being pretty short? Or is there some kind of overarching story that you really need to play each character to unveil?

No.

There are three simultaneous evil plots independently moving forward corresponding to two protagonists each. All of these factions are moving forward with their own interests and colliding with each other until one set wins out and triggers their endgame.
You select at the start who you play as and who will join your party, while the remaining three PCs do what they can solo without having a camera hanging over them.

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