Quick Look: Collection of Mana

Oh boy

Longer remake gameplay from E3 Treehouse

I don't think Brad know that OLED TV's can get burn in too. Though saying that to an OLED owner often results in them getting real angry and foaming at the mouth in denial that it's a possibility.

Though one would probably finish these games before that becomes an issue.

I'll break you like a dry noodle.

I played so much Secret of Mana with the Multitap. It came with Bomberman which was also great. This game was so fun with 3 players.

I also used the SN ProPad controller which was the best.

having played 2 of the 3 games in this collection I rather wait for the remake of the last game which looks better than buy this.

It’s a shame this isn’t a more reasonable price. I guess they know people really want that 3rd game so they can charge whatever they want

Wow, are some are some of the screens from FFA just straight-up copied from Zelda 1?

Somewhat off-topic, but I started playing CrossCode recently and it's a pretty good modern take on Secret of Mana gameplay. It's also included in Xbox Game Pass on PC, so it's potentially much cheaper than paying $40 for this collection.

Is burn-in still an issue? I bought my Samsung Plasma in 2016 because it was the best TV when factoring in input lag. Input lag on OLED was awful. Maybe that improved over time? I don't ever want to buy an OLED until the input lag stuff is fixed but I've been more than happy with my Plasma, though I understand they are becoming hard to find now.

Common wisdom is that the localization for SD3 was finished but Squaresoft USA refused to release it due to the original japanese game being extremely buggy which they thought US gamers would not be so tolerant of.

None of these bugs have been fixed for this release, but the snes rom is extractable and works wonderfully on emulators including the switch's own retroarch port........ so I hear I mean :P

I also heard the upcoming remake is using the DQ11 engine, and does indeed look fantastic.

Now all we need is a Collection of MOTHERs to end this Nintendo-based RPG translation nonsense! (though part of what makes Mother 1/Earthbound Beginnings palettable is the optional easy mode in a fan patch, the big boy Mother 3 is just splendid)

But seriously, it's cool they went and did the work for this, but I have this all on my SNES Classic and the remake looks and sounds pretty worthwhile. Between that and the new Tales of game (first one that looked good to me in forever) this genre is suddenly in an exciting place.

Kikuta music + Haccan art is a match made in heaven

@lonelyspacepanda: My plasma is a 2012 Panasonic, and the Destiny UI and a cable news channel bug are permanently visible in the lower left and right corners respectively. Maybe it varies between models but it's definitely an issue for me.

I'm still hanging onto this TV for dear life though because not only does the image quality still look fantastic, but plasma is also the only low persistence panel type available right now afaik -- it's super clear and sharp during fast motion (because it refreshes the image at 600Hz) which is obviously extremely good for games. LCD and even OLED don't come close in that dept. and it's gonna be really hard to give up that kind of clarity if I move to a 4k set.

Honestly, that translation may be too late for me. Having been a fan of the Mana series since Secret came out (Still have my cart), I already played through Seiken Densetsu 3 several times using romhacking.net's fan translation.

Also, Legend of Mana, for the PSX, is a hidden gem. Great music, too.

I dream of the day Legend of Mana gets ported to all modern platforms. That is a game I would rebuy 20 times.

It is great finally playing through Trials of Mana. I do think Secret of Mana is better now though. There are some really weird design choices with Trials. Still loving it though.

The Secret of Mana remake gets a bad rap. It's not perfect (there's some highly questionable music choices - but the original OST is included, so whatever) and it launched severely buggy (most since fixed) but as a diehard fan of this franchise who has played through the SNES original a dozen times, I had a great time with it. I really loved all the skits that played when you rested at inns. Also the voices of the mushboom people of Matango are hilarious and have to be heard to be believed.

A lot of the negative narrative surrounding its release was about how it played too much like the original, rather than trying to fix/modernize some of its jank, but I'm glad they kept it intact. I've seen too many remakes of classic RPGs try to properly modernize it to some disastrous results (go check out the remake of Lufia 2 that came out on the DS for a perfect example of what can go wrong in trying to update a classic). If your only exposure to the SoM remake is passing mentions from people who haven't played it but like to parrot the opinion that it was bad, I say check it out.

Trials looks visually like a cross between chrono trigger and secret of mana.

I played the fanslation of this and it was a good game buuuuut Tales of Phantasia is hands down the best jrpg, with the best combat, best story, best characters, best graphics, and your characters equip every item they see so all armor and weapons shows up on the char models. It's Very very good game.

The combat is essentially a 2d fighting game with all your characters and there's on the battlefield. It's so flashy and fun especially since you got a traditional fantasy party with healer tank and dps.

It's the only game I ever stayed up for 36 hours to play from start to finish, I ended up with like 92 hours in game time but I used fast forward to get through transitions and grind.

The crazy thing is Tales of Phantasia is the last mode 7 SNES game. It sucked we never got it in the states because it still is one of the most beloved jrpgs that doesn't get as much love in America. The fan translation is good too.

I really hope we get something like this for the old tales games but it doesn't seem likely.

As much as I love SD3, it's really disappointing to see that they didn't bother fixing the original's bugs in this version. For example, Duran (the character that Brad picked) has the big advantage of being able to wear a shield, which raises your evade significantly. Except... evade is bugged and has no effect, making Duran pretty underpowered. This game is still great, but Square really did the bare minimum for this.

Also, Kevin/Hawkeye/Riesz = Best party

Breaking Brad - Vagrant Story. Make it happen!

Also, this looks fucking rad. Loved secret of mana, and never thought 3 would come out.

I played FFA back when it came out and I knew then it was not a Final Fantasy but a S.D. game instead. I don't know how I knew that since I didn't have internet back then. Maybe they mentioned it in Nintendo Power?

Bunch of OLEDs also have burn-in issues. Plus I just hate frame art in general. I really want them to add a toggle to this.

EDIT: Haven't checked how many people call this out, but the reason they did this now is they're doing a remake of SD3, so localizing the old one and releasing this collection probably just fits as a marketing action for *that*, never mind that they'd need to translate it for the remake anyway.

EDIT EDIT: Also, I kinda wish this had the DS remake and the weird US Mana game in it, too.

I'm still using a Panasonic TC-P50S60 and it has the HUD from Gran Turismo Sport burned into it. It's pretty faint though. I even ran the screen wipe thing for half an hour after playing a few hours of it and it still stuck. I wouldn't play this on it for sure lol.

Played through all of FFA this week, it mostly holds up, would have loved it back in the day. This was my brain every time I needed to break a wall.

I really hate it when they ruin beautiful pixel art games with ultra high res button prompts.

I think it's insane how much they are charging for this, but most of the stuff on Switch is overpriced so at least they are consistent.

Rip no Secret of Evermore :(

I was going to say, "well, Secret of Evermore is ten times buggier than that damn game, and U.S. gamers tolerated that just fine," but, no, Secret of Evermore was not tolerated even in its day. I'm skeptical of the "SD3 was buggy" explanation, because it was apparently first advanced by, um, the lead programmer of Secret of Evermore. (For those not around then: Secret of Evermore was a Mana-alike released by Square's then-new USA dev team in the States one day after SD3's Japanese release. The public perception at the time in the U.S. was that Seiken Densetsu 3 was held back from the U.S. market to promote Evermore. That Evermore was buggy as all hell - think game-killing lockup bugs; think guns with shells that don't expend themselves, resulting in unintentional infinite ammo that made the final area a joke - only led to even greater enmity toward the game.)

I think the most plausible explanation here is a combination of trouble fitting an English script in the rom + prohibitively-expensive cart size for the then-precarious U.S. RPG market on a sunsetting system + lackluster sales for SD3 in Japan. (Japanese Wikipedia puts SD2's SFAM sales at 1.5 million, whereas SD3's are only half at that 800,000.) This debate has been poisoned by bad actors and a ton of hard feelings over the years, though, and we'll probably never get the truth of the matter.

You are speaking my language. The only version of Tales of Phantasia I have played is the shit GBA port, but even then the game's greatness was enough that ToP is one of my top 5 favorite games. I would love a remastered version so I could play that gem in all its glory. To this day Arche and Rhea's storyline remains one of the most moving and impactful stories I have ever experienced in a video game.

This is the best pickup I've had on the Switch all year thus far (expecting that to change very soon, maybe even this week). The Game Boy game holds up surprisingly well too though, I had a good time with it. Don't feel like $40 was too much to ask considering this is the first time Trials has had an English release and they are meaty games.

I feel like Secret of Mana is the game I have a ton of nostalgia for, but every time I look back at it I'm profoundly disappointed by how weak the gameplay is. I credit for helping kick off the action RPG idea on the SNES, but that's about it. SD3 I'm interesting in getting into in an official way for the first time, but the remake seems to make more sense as a venue for that.

I mainly hope this collection does well so companies turn to the weirder and more interesting stuff in this genre from the Square/Enix or adjacent family, a lot originating out of Quintet at the time. Illusion of Gaia, Secret of Evermore, and Terranigma are all games that are largely lost, but were doing some really interesting things in terms of story and gameplay.

Impressions of the games:

1: They really were trying for Final Fantasy Zelda with this title, and it's so weird to see the familiar FF1 Red Mage/Black Mage/etc. sprites in that milieu. They had no idea what they were doing with dungeon design, though. It's really impressive how sheerly big the game is for a Game Boy cart, but the game kind of loses track of its plot. I wandered off the farm about 3/4 of the way through because it was just going on and on with no point.

2: People natter on about bugs in this game, but I really like it. I didn't initially because it seemed too simple storywise compared to Square's other titles, but it knows what it is - an RPG beat-'em-up - and doesn't get in the way of that. It's just so colorful and so much fun.

3: I think this game plays horribly. They upped the importance of the Mana weapon-charging system to the point where the game often won't let you attack if your weapon isn't fully charged, and they also apparently added some sort of new auto-defense system that won't let you attack if the A.I. thinks you should be defending. By the time I got to the midway point of the game, in that werewolf castle, combat got utterly unmanageable for me, because the game just wouldn't let me attack. I started counting button presses at one point, and my Valkyrie was actually attacking in only one of every nine button presses. (My Beastman was managing to attack in a staggering one of twopresses, so make sure he's in your party if you play.)

I think one of Mana's big problems is that the designers' apparent idea that, "Hey, if we're an RPG, we need numbers and systems, right?" and began putting more and more stuff between the player and that SD2 combat experience. In 3, it's the broken guard system. In Legend, it's splitting combat up into instances with huge status reports at the end. I think Mana is the series I've given the most chances with the least return.

Chock me up as another fan of Sword of Vermilion. It gets it's fair share of criticism, but is indeed quite the, as Brad puts it, 'Metal game?'

I've watched brad play secret of mana twice.. He doesn't know about the level up mechanics on weapons and charging your attack by holding the attack button. Of course the game doesn't surface that very well.

A bit short of a video for a collection like this. I was hoping to learn something about Final Fantasy Adventure and Secret of Mana since I never played them and haven't seen much of them, but maybe Brad's played them a lot in other videos so I'll have to look for them later.

@brad: You guys were close on that orange/purple color scheme for the first game. It's the default palette for the Super Game Boy. Can't say I expected to ever see it again (especially in a non-Nintendo product).

Watching a GB playthrough of Vagrant Story sure would be something.

I owned a LG OLED and I can tell you the very reason I got rid of it was due to burn in. It's a very real thing. Yes obviously not as bad as plasma, but OLED burn in can and will happen.

@resist2exist: The two times Brad played SoM (in this and in the SNES Mini Quick Look), he's started as a Level 1 character with a Level 1 weapon. There's no real functionality to the "charge up" mechanic until you played for a few hours and gained a few levels.

(In fact, I'm pretty certain you *can't* charge up unless you unlock Weapon Orbs by defeating bosses.)

Honestly, the announcement of Trials of Mana being shadow released in this collection (plus being remade) during E3 was the high point of the entire week for me, besides maybe seeing that the Her Story guy was making a new game. I played the third Mana game on an emulator in college (2001-ish) and really loved it, even though I didn’t finish it. It was one of those things that I would constantly restart, play for a while, then let life get in the way, then restart again when I realized I had been away from it for too long.

The only problem with this is the cost. I went onto my Switch within a day and saw that they were charging 39.99 for it, and that price point is just a bit too high for me. Even 29.99 (10 per game) would make more sense. It would still be high, but it would be logical and I could convince myself to spend that amount on it. But with where it is and with the remake coming, I can’t buy it.

Also, I bought the Secret of Mana remake and have been playing that, so there’s no reason to re-buy that game again.

Still, it’s amazing to me that they decided to do this. It blew my mind and, again, was a high point of E3 for me based on pure nostalgia. There are so many games that I wish would be released in a form that I could have that is completely legit, besides tracking down the cart or disk. There are games going back the the Commodore 64 that I fondly remember but can’t play anymore that i would literally pay 5-10 bucks for in digital form if some company offered them. I kid you not, I would freak out if someone during a conference said “Hey, remember Deceptor on C64? We’re releasing that shit on Switch for 5 bucks!” I want more of that. It’s silly but that is where I am right now with games. I love new stuff, and new stuff gets me excited too, but I definitely can be easily won over with a cool, surprise retro release.

Super cool they did this but there's no way I'd spend 40 dollars on this. I didn't grow up with these games so they're more of a curiosity for me. Glad people at least have a way of getting at it.

@anderswarming: thank you for this, i am now 100% interested in checking out that remake when it comes out!

"I can taste the mana!"

Oddly "trials of mana" was my first mana game.. I was in middle school when the fan translation was online I think and played through the full game on a PC keyboard multiple times. Maybe it is nostalgia speaking but I would but it in top 3 snes games probably at 1. It's just a stupid good game.

My OLED phone screen has burn-in of Tap Titans 2. I blame Jeff.

@dasakamov: but he never mentions that mechanic in the ql

Huh, surprised by Brad's comment on "this was cool box art in a time when box art was bad". I'm not a huge fan of the SNES, but I find that picking a game title at random from that time, you usually find pretty rad box art. Can't really think of many games from that time that had poor covers. If anything, I'd say that cover art took a fucking nose dive around the PS2 era and never recovered (there of course was some very bad stuff on the PS1 too, but almost no thing good after the first few years of the PS2). Almost every game on the PS3/360 had absolutely awful box art, and like the only decent looking stuff I can recall from the last 10 years would be Breath of the Wild.

OLED's are prone to burn in as well. Microled is the new technology that we eventually should move towards to get rid of that issue. Cool to see some Tales of Phantasia love in this comment section. I'll keep that game in my mind.