TRIALS OF MANA PS4 REVIEW FULL
TRIALS OF MANA PS4 REVIEW TRIAL

During my playthrough, she never once said anything even remotely interesting. I have honestly never hated a video game character as much as I hate Charlotte.

I spent most of my time with Trials of Mana wishing that I could throw Charlotte off a cliff and watch her tiny body float face down in the surf below. Quick, Kevin! Grab that torch and set it on fire! Sure, you could choose other characters, but Charlotte is the only dedicated healer available – which pretty much means you are stuck with her unless you want to burn through healing items. So she says shit like “My gwandpa is weawy weawy angwy with me!”. Every “L” and “R” is replaced in the script with a “W”. She talks like Elmer Fudd would speak if someone bashed him in the mouth with a brick. It was almost as though they sat in a room and brainstormed ways they could make people hate videogames.Ĭharlotte is supposedly fifteen years old, but she looks and behaves like she is six. There is no earthly explanation for the decisions that Square-Enix made when designing Charlotte. “Oh really, Charlotte? How about you take a look at what’s on the other side of that railing. I also chose Charlotte, a healer who is quite possibly the worst video game character ever created. I chose Reisz, a nice Valkyrie princess who attacks with a trident and helps the party with buffs. In addition to your lead, you can pick two support characters. Whoever had to read this stuff out loud must’ve been drinking pretty early to get through their recording sessions. Stuff like “Go to see king! Find out next mission!” This would be okay if the dialogue didn’t have vocal accompaniment. Kevin also speaks in broken sentences, typically without a subject. I immediately regretted this choice, as the opening scene for Kevin involves him being tricked into murdering his only friend, a cute little wolf cub name Karl. This will alter the beginning of the game, as each character gets drawn into the quest in their own unique way. Let me elaborate: Players get to choose from one of six characters to serve as their lead protagonist. I was too busy wishing death on Charlotte. Or maybe the creatures living in the stones? Or were the creatures living in boss monsters? I honestly wasn’t paying that much attention. The Tree of Mana is withering, and it is up to our small band of heroes to gather a bunch of stuff from all over the globe and bring it back to life. The story is sketched out quickly at the beginning of the game.

TRIALS OF MANA PS4 REVIEW TRIAL

The Story In Trial of Mana Is Swamped By Awful Characters And “basic” describes everything in Trials of Mana, from the gameplay to the storyline. Trials of Mana isn’t an ugly game precisely, but anyone that is expecting a modern-looking RPG should look elsewhere. This is basically a 16-bit game that has been rendered in 3D with shiny new PS3-era graphics. The “remake” moniker is accurate only in the sense that the visuals have changed. Indeed, most townspeople and characters you encounter spout exactly one line of dialogue, just like any old school RPG. It doesn’t seem as though any scenes or dialogue have been added or changed from the original port released earlier this year in Collection of Mana.

TRIALS OF MANA PS4 REVIEW FULL

Behold the glorious detail, making full use of the graphical capabilities of modern consoles! Check out this sweet “travelling by ship” cut-scene.

Of course, for every nice visual moment in the game, there is something that is truly lame. Instead of thinking of Trials of Mana as a remake, perhaps contextualizing it as an “update” might bring expectations more in line with reality. Don’t expect a Final Fantasy VII Remake-level of production value here. Trials of Mana is a remake of a Japanese SNES RPG from the early nineties, and it shows. It doesn’t prevent your teammates from killing themselves in later boss fights like a gaggle of idiots, but it does help a bit in battles with trash mobs. We’re not talking Gambit-system-level instructions, just a couple of general “concentrate on healing” or “kill the same dude I’m killing” directives. To compensate for the lack of multiplayer, Trials of Mana does a decent enough job of allowing players to switch between characters in their team of three, and you can set some basic instructions for the AI to follow. So, really, what the hell? Why on earth would you create a Mana game without the one feature that differentiates it from a thousand other entry-level RPGs? The visuals in Trials of Mana, while simplistic, can be fairly striking, with some nice character design. Some nonsense about “focusing on the single-player experience” was spouted as the reason to not include multiplayer (local or online), which doesn’t carry a lot of weight, seeing as how the Secret of Mana remake came out last year and included the feature.

Trials of mana ps4 review