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Collection of Mana (/showthread.php?tid=7192)Collection of Mana - Dark Jaguar - 15th June 2019
I picked this up the day I heard about it. There's no way I was waiting for the 3D remake (the past two 3D remakes have been kind of disappointing, losing a lot of the charm of the 2D artwork. Maybe the 3rd one will be better, but I opted for this.)
It's kind of unprecedented to see an official translation for a game THIS long after it came out, specifically the original ROM. It seems they basically hacked it, so they must have lost the source code. Still, it's done very well and looks nicer than the fan translation, with terms fitting what's been established in the series and a fitting title.
Well, that's all well and good, but there's two other titles here. Final Fantasy Adventure is an oddly titled version of Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden. It's weird the Japanese words I've picked up over the years. As you might imagine, they took the Final Fantasy subtitle and ran with it on the premise that it would sell better with that as the focus. It's a very fun single player game that makes that tinny GB speaker really sing. There's lots of surprising emotion pumped out of that system, and the soundtrack sounds amazing here too. This is the black and white original, not the JAVA colorized phone port, not Sword of Mana (The GBA reimagining), and not Adventures of Mana (the 3D remake). It's a shame it only includes this, but it's done very well. There's no Super Gameboy style options to alter the color scheme as you see fit, but it does at least provide 3 options. One is pure black and white, the second is "A1", the default color palette you see if you plug it into a SGB (Personally I'm not a fan of this scheme for the game and on the Super Gameboy I always switched it to something else) and the third is a yellow/green "dot pixel matrix" setup that goes for such accuracy it makes each "dot pixel" tiny with gaps around them to really push that original look, though I think the yellow-green affair is just a bit too strong. It also gives two screen sizes for each mode. One is a full screen look that does a slight bit of smoothing to make it blend at the higher resolution, and the other is a smaller window more like the Super Gameboy. Take your pic, but I looked very closely and honestly couldn't find any graphical oddities in the stretched mode. It does a VERY good job stretching the image in a smooth way. Other than this, the game includes 4 different regional versions, each with it's own save slot. For some reason, the Japanese original was left out. That's a very strange omission if you ask me, and I can't imagine why they bothered, considering just how tiny these emulated ROMs are. Oh, and the emulation is also very well done.
Secret of Mana properly supports 3 players on one console with linked controllers. No online mode however... If you can deal with that, it works great. Once again, the game is emulated in 4 possible languages (No Japanese), and includes two screen sizes. Other than the two screen sizes, it rotates between turning a smoothing filter on and off for four possible settings. I am not a fan of pixel smoothing personally, so I leave it off, but that leaves the two sizes. On 1080p screens, you're choosing between vertical or horizontal "shimmer" since neither fits smoothly into the native resolution of the screen. On the Switch's own 720p, shimmer seems to be eliminated in "full screen" mode. It may be best to play this on the switch for single player in that case. There's a quick save feature with 3 unique slots. This is also true of Adventure, but since that game lets you literally save anywhere already its not worth mentioning. Secret of Mana definitely benefits from it though.
Trials of Mana, here's the prize. No, it's not a 3 player game (against all logic and the will of the Goddess of Mana), but it wasn't in the original version either. I think a patch could hack it into the game properly if Square Enix wanted to take the time. The translation appears solid and professionally done, the font looking better than most SNES era translations in fact. (It's variable width, rare for SNES games.) The title is fine (much better than Secret of Mana 2, which was the internal name for Secret of Evermore anyway, not this one). The branching classes mesh well with the branching story based on which characters you pick at the start and in which order. The combat system also flows a lot more smoothly than in Secret. There's a reason that this one is the more popular of the two in Japan.
RE: Collection of Mana - A Black Falcon - 28th June 2019
On the subject of Final Fantasy Adventure, since I first got that game in '99 when it was re-released, and I had a GBC at the time, I mostly think of the game with the default GBC/A palette in mind, since I usually play GB games with the default red backgrounds, blue/green sprites look. So yeah, it's great that they have three palettes available here, either B&W, default-GBC, or green-toned. I wouldn't want to use the green-tone one, but either of the others is great.
As for the stretched (with side borders) versus smaller (display-accurate) views, yeah, the stretched one does look pretty good, I've been using that as well.
But yeah, I love Final Fantasy Adventure of course, it's an outstanding game and has remained my favorite Mana game ever since i first played it, because it's more Zelda-styled design is something I like more than the direction the series went in afterwards. On that note, I don't think I'll be playing Secret of Mana again, one version to drop halfway through (my SNES copy that I got back in like '06 or something) is enough.
Trials of Mana I haven't been playing as much as I should, yet, but I will for sure. I played the rom some back in the early '00s and loved the game (it's so much better than Secret! As you say, the hugely improved combat is a big part of why.) and this looks like it's the same thing but maybe better thanks to the expanded amount of text and such because of how they expanded the rom size to not have to cut any text. It looks great.
As for the upcoming Tirals of Mana remake next year, oddly they've said it'll be single player only. I'm not sure what I think of that, but I hope it'll be good. The first 3d remake, Adventures of Mana for Vita and phones, is okay but is just the original game, in 3d. I have it and it's good, but I'd rather play the original game than that. The Secret of Mana remake I don't have, but I've heard bad things. This looks a lot more ambitious though, so here's hoping it turns out well.
RE: Collection of Mana - Dark Jaguar - 28th June 2019
Its default SGB, not GBC.
RE: Collection of Mana - A Black Falcon - 28th June 2019
Yeah, I guess it is, huh. It's still probably my favorite of the three options though.
RE: Collection of Mana - Dark Jaguar - 29th June 2019
The Secret of Mana remake suffers from the same issues as the FF Adventure remake, namely that the art somehow looks less "alive" than the 2D sprites (the models don't deform and reshape enough during animations, so most monsters simply don't seem "animated" as they do in 2D). What makes Secret of Mana feel worse though is the voice acting draws a lot more attention to that fact, since no one's mouths are animated (not that characters even had mouths in the original art, but again if there's no voice acting you don't notice little things like that).
The controls are superior to the original, I'll give it that. Quick commands on the shoulder buttons make magic and item use a lot more streamlined. That said, the menus are somehow designed worse than the original. That's especially true of the AI configuration menu. What used to be a 2 Axis grid you moved the character around on has instead become a boring single dimensional drop down text list, which is both less customizable and harder to navigate.
There's also the matter of the music. I have a hard time really complaining all that much, but rather than do a pure remaster of the tunes in the way Adventures of Mana did they opted to completely reimagine them. Some do well enough, but most manage to miss the mark and intended tone of the original tune rather dramatically and many come off overproduced. There is fortunately an option to use the original SNES soundtrack, which is why I can't complain too much, but it's very telling all the same. Oh, and that voice acting is pretty painful to listen to. Switch it to Japanese and it's more tolerable.
Adventures of Mana has one odd detail, in that they picked two very out of place and rather dumb sounding "default" names for the hero and heroine. In the Japanese version, the defaults are just "Hero" and "Heroine". In newer games in fact they even went with names given to the characters in a Japanese comic adaptation (Duke and Elena). However, in the US version of Adventures of Mana they went with Sumo and Fuji. I think I understand the train of logic here. I think the localizers were desperate to find any trace of an official name from the original Gameboy game, and since the game itself never gives it, they scoured the manual. The manual never gives them names beyond "Hero" either, but if you look at the various screen shots demonstrating how to play the game, the hero and heroine were given the placeholder names "Sumo" and "Fuji". Those were clearly placeholders, not meant to be taken as official names, but the localizers didn't seem to understand that. Now the whole fan community seems dead set on accepting those names as canon when they make about as much sense as naming them Crash and Spyro. You're tossed into a gladiator's arena to fight for a dark lord and his right hand, Julius. Oh of course, your character is named Sumo. Fits perfectly. When in Rome do as the Japanese do, isn't that the expression?
The previews I've seen so far of Trials of Mana's remake surprise me as a result. I was expected a bare bones lazy "mobile cash in" style remake, but they really seem to actually be putting in effort this time. It may end up being the one to get.