I never had the chance to play the original Secret of Mana. It’s somewhat before my time, and not one of the games I’ve ever gone back and played despite having heard good things about it. It seemed to me that getting to demo the remake on PS4 at PAX was as good a chance as any to change that. The demo I played was roughly 15 minutes in length, going up to the cut-scene following the first boss fight.
The game was still clearly in an early state. There’s an obvious lack of optimization, with the game slowing down and stuttering frequently and a clear delay between attacking and enemies taking damage. As a result, combined with the slowdown and stuttering, combat has an awkward feel to it, with a disconnect between attacking and enemies actually feeling the effect of that attack. The 3D graphics are fairly standard fare for this type of game, but something rather off-putting is that, at least in the build I played, characters’ mouths don’t move when they speak.
Once you get used to the technical problems, Secret of Mana plays fairly well. Combat is action-based, with a meter that builds up over time and is drained fully when you attack, with the power of the attack determined by how full the meter was. It’s quite straightforward, especially when your party has only one member, but unfortunately the demo didn’t include parts with multiple members to show off the system in more detail. From what I understand, it’s largely the same as the original, so those who played that will likely be in familiar territory with the remake. I assume that the ring menus, which mostly just confused me in the demo, will make more sense when I have more time to figure it out in the full game.
An interesting touch about the game is that there’s a display in the corner of the screen that shows the immediate area around the player as it looked in the original version of the game as a minimap of sorts. The visuals are clean, and somewhat similar to those in other recent Square Enix games such as I am Setsuna or the Bravely Default games. Not the most overwhelmingly beautiful game ever, but the art style works well with the relative lack of detail.
Assuming the game gets properly optimized and finished, Secret of Mana looks promising. It may be a good choice for those like me who missed out on the game, or for people who are looking to play through it again when it releases on PS4, PS Vita and Steam next February.
