JRPGS!

I figured I'd come by this thread and offer my first impressions of Secret of Mana remake for the PS4.

For those that don't know, Secret of Mana was an action Rpg from Squareenix (Squaresoft at the time) that came out for the SNES in 1993. It's actually a very beloved game of mine, and I've been waiting years for a port. The graphics looks nice for the era and even the original graphics hold up pretty well today. I was very happy when it was announced that this game was going to hit the PS4.

Naturally I picked it up...and didn't play it much for a few weeks. Good thing I waited, because the inevitable patches dropped. It did make the game more stable and fixed some UI issues.

Anyhow, here's a general list of pros and cons about this game so far. I'm only about 7 1/2 or so hours into a 40-50 hour game.  I'll give my final thoughts once I finish it.

Pros:

The game looks fantastic. The sprite-work has all been nicely updated. Think of Final Fantasy IV DS, only cleaner. The colors really stand out and the animations are quite nice. So A+ for that. Now, if they could only do that with Final Fantasy V and VI instead of the eyesore that was the iOS/Steam port.

Another huge bonus is the autosave after every screen (i.e going in and out of buildings, moving to the next area in a zone, ect.) This is handy for both good reasons as well as unfortunate ones. I'll get the later in a bit but this can be nice for backtracking if you run into That One Boss that's kicking your tail.

They added small little dialogue scens when you sleep at an inn. They don't repeat either. It's a nice touch and adds some (much needed) character development for the party. A lot of it is pretty amusing too.

The music for the remake is very hit and miss. The remixes of the track are fairly noisy and distracting. However, Square thought of this and added in an option to change to the original soundtrack. It sounds completely true to the original music as well as nicely clean. So that's a big plus for me.

Weapon and magic grinding has also been a bit streamlined. Now you can level up your weapons per hit instead of per kill; and you no longer have to level up individual spells.  Just pick your favorite spell in the element you wish to level, stay close to an inn and you'll be getting those magic levels in no time.  It's still a little grindy, but not nearly as bad.**

**That being said, you really don't have to grind up every single weapon to max on every character.  In fact, using the weapon charges can be a risky gamble.  I'm more than a bit nuts though.  I've played this game several times over the last 25 years (holy crap) and I always get magic/weapons maxed for my entire party.

Cons:

The voice acting is not great. It's rather poor, to be honest. The three party members are okay, but the rest is not. Everyone is voiced, from the random NPC telling you what area you're in to the merchants to the freaking innkeepers, which are your primary save point. Thankfully, the game does give you the option to shut all the voices off. I did that within a 1/2 hour of game time. The bits of  voiced party dialogue aren't worth the constant chatter.  It's also a little immersion breaking to hear major NPCs asking me if I want to save my game. 

Hit detection on enemies is still wonky, with enemies occasionally gaining the ability to suddenly dodge every hit. It can happen regardless of the level difference between you and it. This can be dealt with by flanking or getting behind an enemy to turn them. However, this is something from the original game that should have been fixed.

Magic spam is still quite easily done. Whether or not this is a good thing depends upon the player, but personally I'm not going to abuse it. It'll turn every boss into a cakewalk, up to and including the final boss.

Finally, there is the bane of my gaming existence. The one thing that can ruin any game for me. Crashes. Ugh.

I was fine for about the first 5 hours or so into the game. Then, when I hit an area known as the Ice Country, it crashed. Fired it back up and it worked for about another 90 minutes before it crashed. This is something Square is aware of and trying to get fixed. The autosave feature comes in real handy, so you won't lose several minutes or more worth of progress. Still, it's a little heartbreaking for me that this is an occurrence for the time being.

From what I've seen the Steam version has a lot of the same problems as well. I had been curious to see why it had a relatively low user rating of 6.5, but the cons I listed above probably had a lot to do with it.

I will be completing this game and going for a few of the extra trophies, like max weapons and spells. I'm hoping for another patch while I'm playing. Er, one that doesn't break a bunch of stuff just to fix the crashes.

For now, I'd recommend either waiting for a sale, or keep an eye on the patch cycle. It's on 1.02 at this point. However, once the game has stabilized some more, I'd highly recommend any old-school JRPG fan to pick this gem up.