Thread of [Mana]

captaink

I picked up the Trials of Mana remake on Switch today and I am really liking it so far. I never played the Secret of Mana remake from a couple years ago, but this seems to be a much better product. Combat is pretty fun, it's now got a light/heavy attack combo system. Aerials, charge attacks, etc. The voice acting is...not good. Technically the graphics are just ok, but artistically it is really cool to see all the 2D assets translated to 3D. They made everything look exactly the same but also 3D.


I'm running Duran (Light) Angela (Dark) Hawkeye (Light) which were some of the more busted classes in the original. I haven't gotten to second class change yet but so far so good.

Feel free to talk other Mana games in here. Lil' Cactus shows up this one, so the Legends of Mana fans will be happy.

Polaritie

Reisz (Dark), Hawkeye (Light), Duran (Light) is my current team.

Those giant AoE class strikes are real nice when I get to erase 4+ mooks and get +18% xp for the fight doing so.

El Fantastico

#notalllegendofmanafans

Fuck that creepy looking L'il Cactus thing.

I'm enjoying the game though, and I'm slowly desensitizing to Charlotte's bastardized characterization.

Polaritie

I don't think I like the class change items stuff...

Mainly because it took a while to get everyones.

Fenrir Knight, Rogue, Liege. I find the fact that they give me a class that says "debuffs never wear off" the ability to debuff every enemy at once a bit curious, but sure why not. 15 MP = everyone else sucks for the rest of their (short) lives.

Hard is a decent challenge... but make sure to tweak AI settings for it, because they default to stupid things like "don't spend mana" on Hawkeye. And I'm like... I'm finding MP refills before every boss, yes, spend all the mana and melt enemies please.

klemming

I would like a mod that mutes Charlotte and only Charlotte.
I would also pay for official DLC that does that.

Frozenzen

Charlottes VA does a pretty good job with what she had to work with in my opinion. I'm leaning towards going Angela/Duran/Charlotte for my first playthrough as to not use Hawkeye/Kevin every time.

Sadly my PS4s blueray drive broke, which somehow stops me from updating my console, which stops me from accessing PSN to download trials of mana . Thus, it will have to wait a week or whatever it takes to get a PS4 fixed.

Enlong

My first run is going to be Kevin, Angela, Charlotte. That was my team the first time I played the original. I think I’ll have Kevin go Dark, so that he can learn moon magic. No idea where to go with Angela and Charlotte, other than I want Charlotte to learn to cast Healing Light on everyone.

RonTheDM

On Collection of Mana I was doing an Angela Riesz Kevin run because it's the princess princess prince team

I think for Trials of Mana I will go back to my old favorite of Duran Hawkeye Charlotte.

El Fantastico

Enlong wrote: »

My first run is going to be Kevin, Angela, Charlotte. That was my team the first time I played the original. I think I’ll have Kevin go Dark, so that he can learn moon magic. No idea where to go with Angela and Charlotte, other than I want Charlotte to learn to cast Healing Light on everyone.

Charlottes first class change, whether you go Light or Dark, gives her Healing Light+ either way, and that never goes away.

I think only Duran has a choice of learning Healing Light+ on his second class change, requiring Light/Light.

Hard mode is a good challenge for some bosses.

The wall boss of Laurent is some bullshit.

Polaritie

Ahahahaha.... I had been using Riesz and Hawkeye AoE class strikes for clearing trash as I explored.

Riesz no longer needs that. Summon magic is delicious megadeath AoE.

captaink

I'm up to the ???? Seeds part of the game. Haven't planted any yet.

What is the class reset item? I tried and the game said I didn't have it. Nothing obvious at the Night Market, and it apparently hasn't dropped or been in a chest so far this game.

Enlong

El Fantastico wrote: »

Enlong wrote: »

My first run is going to be Kevin, Angela, Charlotte. That was my team the first time I played the original. I think I’ll have Kevin go Dark, so that he can learn moon magic. No idea where to go with Angela and Charlotte, other than I want Charlotte to learn to cast Healing Light on everyone.

Charlottes first class change, whether you go Light or Dark, gives her Healing Light+ either way, and that never goes away.

I think only Duran has a choice of learning Healing Light+ on his second class change, requiring Light/Light.

Hard mode is a good challenge for some bosses.

The wall boss of Laurent is some bullshit.

Kevin is also capable of learning group-cast Healing Light. In the original, he learns Healing Light with his Light job (Monk), and learns to group-cast it with his Light/Dark job (Warrior Monk)

klemming

Frozenzen wrote: »

Charlottes VA does a pretty good job with what she had to work with in my opinion. I'm leaning towards going Angela/Duran/Charlotte for my first playthrough as to not use Hawkeye/Kevin every time.

Oh yeah, I don't have any ill-will towards her VA, or any of them. I know perfectly well that they're doing exactly as directed.
But a cawacter who constanwy tawks like an adowabwe baby has eawned a pewmanant pwace off my sqwad, I don't cawe how good a heawer she is.

Fiatil

Yeah Square is terrible for localizing Charlotte the way they did. It feels like they were trying to intentionally do something different than the fan translation or something, either way it's silly! The fan translation did a great job of conveying her being fairly childish, kind of annoying, but not soul crushingly annoying.

But I decided to just work around that for my first party, and it's made the voice acting a lot more tolerable! No more Charlotte healers for me -- I went with Angela, Duran, Hawk and all three of them sound decent enough that I've been able to stick it out with the english VAs this time around.

The game is pretty great! The combat keeps you going, the music will always be fantastic, and it's bright and colorful and fun. I decided to just go all in on the new combat and give Angela main a shot, and so far the new spells are a lot of fun. I like the little platforming bits they added -- nothing annoying or too challenging, but it makes the world feel more interactive.

captaink

I did my second class change.

Duran went Light-Light to Paladin. Gets him Holy saber and some good tanking abilities. His 3rd level tech does crazy fullscreen damage. He still sucks at healing though. It's really only useful as a top-up between fights.

Angela went Dark-Dark to Magus. She gets buffs when her friends die. She also has an upgraded ability where she takes 2% HP from everyone to increase spell damage by 30%. Worth it.

Hawkeye went Light-Light to Wanderer. I like the random buff at the beginning of combat ability. I haven't gotten any of his new spells yet because they're all in the Spirit tree, where he had 0 points. Not sure I'd recommend this class.

Enlong

Uuugh. I want to play this, but the download to my switch has failed two nights in a row now.

Polaritie

captaink wrote: »

I'm up to the ???? Seeds part of the game. Haven't planted any yet.

What is the class reset item? I tried and the game said I didn't have it. Nothing obvious at the Night Market, and it apparently hasn't dropped or been in a chest so far this game.

Goddess' Scales. From what I've heard, there's only 6 of them per playthrough in the postgame.

Tcheldor

captaink wrote: »

I did my second class change.

Duran went Light-Light to Paladin. Gets him Holy saber and some good tanking abilities. His 3rd level tech does crazy fullscreen damage. He still sucks at healing though. It's really only useful as a top-up between fights.

Angela went Dark-Dark to Magus. She gets buffs when her friends die. She also has an upgraded ability where she takes 2% HP from everyone to increase spell damage by 30%. Worth it.

Hawkeye went Light-Light to Wanderer. I like the random buff at the beginning of combat ability. I haven't gotten any of his new spells yet because they're all in the Spirit tree, where he had 0 points. Not sure I'd recommend this class.

I also did angela dark dark.

Wound's hp drain from allies + some +5% magic bonuses + the 5% wound drain from herself has made her basic spells do 700 dmg to weakness, and her big ones do 2k.

Now she's finally wrecking house.

It just took all game.

Unfortunate that outfit...............

Enlong

Isn’t there a feature where you can swap to a previous class’s outfit?

Tcheldor

Enlong wrote: »

Isn’t there a feature where you can swap to a previous class’s outfit?

Yep.

Polaritie

This may be the first NG+ I'm not really sure about.

There isn't any postgame stuff to come back stronger for because you have to beat the postgame to get NG+. Nor any extra difficulty tiers to justify the utterly broken chain abilities (lolwat +50 base luck? +300% xp gain?) Um... now granted even with the postgame classes 8 slots ain't enough. But I mean, there's nothing to challenge yourself against at that point. There's no reason to go for level cap, or anything... I beat the hardest enemy in the game with a deliberately suboptimal Riesz (I was goofing off, I figured if it was hard I could go set her back to silly debuff goddess mode but it didn't matter)

Also: Permanent debuffs to all enemies with bonus 17% reduction and you get 15% CS per enemy when casting one, even if they're already debuffed? Oh god endgame Fenrir Knight is stupid. Five enemies and I can just debuff all stats and then Aerial Lance for a total of 15 MP from 0 CS meter.

El Fantastico

The AOE effects are unfortunately no longer full screen guarantees like they were on the SNES. For healing, they'll always target the whole party, but for damaging enemies, they're really more like wide range based on the target's location.

You have to do some camera angling with Hawkeye for example to get the class action skill to hit the most amount of enemies. Better hope the arena isn't too big because those enemies hiding in a corner won't get sliced up.

On my next playthrough, I need to play Riesz, Duran and Kevin and this will probably be a solid party. Mostly physical damage, Riesz stat-ups will be party wide, very little messing about with weaknesses. Might take Duran to be a party buffer with the elemental swords because they're just very MP efficient ways of dealing with bosses.

Polaritie

I don't think it's possible to have a bad party with Riesz in it. No matter what you do she'll be able to do physical damage, AoE magic damage, and tip stats in your party's favor.

captaink

I beat the main game, started the postgame stuff. I got all the Class 4 stuff, do I go to the Mana Sanctuary to change or just keep following quest markers? The solo Angela fight was pretty tough, I died a few times, first time that's happened all game. My damage was fine, the boss just double-casts spells and if you get caught by both, Angela doesn't have enough health to make it through. Fun fight though, glad for the challenge.

Paladin Duran is great. His class move is a fullscreen and hits twice. It just destroys regular encounters. Now that I've got the Cactus ability, I can use it almost every fight.

Magus Angela is a great glass cannon. Ancient Curse does crazy damage in a good size area. I've got enough abilities to keep her MP high and buff spell damage, it's working out great.

I think Wanderer Hawk is pretty bad for an AI companion, I'd only go that way if you want to control him. He has so many weird buffs and status effect spells, the AI won't use most of them and can't use many of them effectively. I've been maining Duran, and he keeps casting Lunatique when it doesn't do any good.

I'll do a NG+ of the other three characters, then I'm not sure. Running through the whole game as high level tricked out characters doesn't actually sound very fun. I hope they patch in some more NG+ options: either resetting your level to 1 or leveling enemies way up.

El Fantastico

For what its worth, High Cleric Charlotte has some problems in her AI too.

She really likes casting Magic Shield for trash fights. I have her set to Protection is Paramount and not to use MP when she goes under 75%, but she'll get there by just spamming Magic Shield on everyone uselessly every fight.

Enlong

So what are those bonus jobs like? Do they take into account which second job you took, or do they combine both?

captaink

Enlong wrote: »

So what are those bonus jobs like? Do they take into account which second job you took, or do they combine both?

There are 2 Class 4 classes for each character, one dark one light. You get the same as your Class 2 choice. (as I understand, not quite there)

Enlong

Right. But do the bonus jobs give you access to the stuff from the rank 3 job you didn’t pick (since there’s only one light and one dark bonus job), or is it just entirely new stuff added onto your rank 3 job?

H3Knuckles

Apropos of nothing, I was skimming the Mana wiki to see what the new character models look like, and I feel like Duran's light path models should've been switched around. Like, the Light tier 4 seems weirdly mundane compared to the tier 3s, and just visually speaking the Paladin's design looks like a compromise between the Liege's and the Divine Hero's. Images spoiled for page scrolling convenience.

Polaritie

Enlong wrote: »

Right. But do the bonus jobs give you access to the stuff from the rank 3 job you didn’t pick (since there’s only one light and one dark bonus job), or is it just entirely new stuff added onto your rank 3 job?

My understanding at the moment is that the rank 4 job is new stuff, but there's just one set per initial branch. So L/L and L/D get the same new skills and bonuses on rank 4, but since the rank 3 differs their final options are different in the middle tier.

Edit: For Hawkeye I did Rogue for his rank 3, and that worked nicely. He gets a large selection of attacks in his luck tree, including some elemental ones. Basically all single target, but I'll take it.

Enlong

I like dark path Hawkeye, but I’m a sucker for stat manipulation.

Fiatil

I just wanted to take some time to mention how absurdly amazing the english voices for all of the mana spirits are. It's the hammiest thing I've ever heard but I kind of love it.

Enlong

https://twitter.com/About20Donuts/status/1254170156583940096

Stuff like this is why I will definitely be going with English voices.

Fiatil

Enlong wrote: »

https://twitter.com/About20Donuts/status/1254170156583940096

Stuff like this is why I will definitely be going with English voices.

Here is Yosemite Sam Gnome:

https://youtu.be/trD2r1jCYYQ?t=1355

captaink

I liked the VA choices for Gnome and I wish some of the other spirits had as much personality.

El Fantastico

Lumina is gay and fabulous.

Hawkeye has the best sarcastic VA.

As others have mentioned, Charlotte's VA does the best with what she was given, but she was given a flaming turd of a script and that's not her fault.

The other big "did they really do that?" for localization is with the cats. Nico and the two shopkeeper cats in the back half of the game have to force mew/meow into words because CATS, AMIRITE?

Mew will definitely meowtice how they talk, purrhaps.

El Fantastico

Enlong wrote: »

https://twitter.com/About20Donuts/status/1254170156583940096

Stuff like this is why I will definitely be going with English voices.

This particular section of the game is great. Two treasure chests on the ship contain:

666 and 444 quantities of lucre.

666 being the number of the devil.
4 is synonymous with death in most Asian cultures, so its extra superstitious.

Fiatil

El Fantastico wrote: »

Lumina is gay and fabulous.

Hawkeye has the best sarcastic VA.

As others have mentioned, Charlotte's VA does the best with what she was given, but she was given a flaming turd of a script and that's not her fault.

The other big "did they really do that?" for localization is with the cats. Nico and the two shopkeeper cats in the back half of the game have to force mew/meow into words because CATS, AMIRITE?

Mew will definitely meowtice how they talk, purrhaps.

Yeah, the more I play the more I feel that the english voice acting is generally fine (not great but it's fine), just some of the translation decisions were super dumb. My initial reaction to the voice acting was with Charlotte in my party, and it just hurt a lot. Her voice actress is actually pretty cool, and would do a great job with the fan translation as a base.

I think the most egregious "we're going to intentionally translate it differently than the fan patch" movement is freaking "Von Boyage" and his family. I'm trying to convince myself that my preference for God Beasts over Benevodons is just nostalgia (come on they sound like benevolent dinosaurs), but I can't explain away Von Boyage and family. Like fine, Von Boyage works on his own as a kind of dumb pun thing, but then you just wind up with "Von Jour" and "Von Soir" and all of his relatives not making any sense even as a pun. Just stick with Bon Voyage and Bon Jour and stuff, we can handle it!

Enlong

“Benevodons” is a translation choice from way back in 2006, when the DS game Children of Mana was the first game featuring them to be localized. In that game, (a looooong-ago prequel) they actually were benevolent, and fought only after being forcibly fused together and driven mad by the game’s big bad. The four fused monsters were called “Malevodons”, because of course they were. I don’t know if “god-beasts” was more accurate; I don’t know what the original text was.

Similarly, the character that was called “Deathjester” in the fan translation of Trials is called “Goremand” here, after a similar (probably the same) character in Sword of Mana. The character’s name in Japanese just means “devourer of death”, so either name was an interpretation.

Fiatil

Good to know! Yeah I was assuming most of it just came down to different interpretations when translating. I'm 99% just lamenting that the fan translation sounded much cooler. Lotta nostalgia in there, and I'm slowly getting used to some of the stuff. I am....saddened to hear that the series also used the word "Malevodon". Ahh well, gotta take the bad anime with the good anime I guess.

Wyvern

I haven't bought this game yet, but I feel like I've been mentally rehearsing to play it for years, so I'm sure I'll cave soon.

Preeeeetty sure my party will be Reisz (Light), Hawkeye (Dark), and Kevin (Light). Should be able to handle itself pretty well, and the inverse party of Angela/Duran/Charlotte will be at least kind of serviceable if I play through twice.