Secret of Mana: Remake (PS4): Revisiting a familiar path.

When explaining to idiots who think I hate the Legend of Zelda franchise, I usually have to explain that I love the best Zelda game: A Link to the Past, (Yes, best. Ocarina is average at best. Fight me) But while this icon title is pretty much a masterpiece on the SNES, it wasn't the first of this top-down exploration adventure game I actually played on this console.

When they announced a remake for this one, I was pretty amped. And despite Jason Schreier of Kotaku's attempts to suck the joy out of everything in his reviews (he seriously hates every remake), I was pretty excited to play it again. I haven't played through this game in a long time, but it's always been one of my favorites as a kid so it will be interesting to see how the game has changed, and what is the same in.....

SECRET OF MANA(PS4)

Secret of Mana opens with a brief prologue about the world of this game. Human civilization prospered and advanced by utilizing magic and energy powered by Mana. They used this power to make a massive floating super weapon called the Mana fortress. In order to stop potential destruction, the world unleashed a Mana Beast to destroy the fortress.  As they clashed, a man wielding the Sword of Mana appeared riding a white dragon and defeated the beast and fortress. The world was safe, but as mana started to fade.

We flash to now, where Randi is exploring the falls with two other village children looking for a sparkling treasure they had seen below.  Randi slips on a wet passage and falls to the bottom, where he finds a Rusty sword embedded in stone. After hearing his name and yanking the blade free, he catches a glimpse of a ghost for a moment before heading back to the village.

On the trip home he notices that monsters are a lot more violent and active. Upon reaching the village he learns that he actually has pulled the legendary mana sword and it was what was protecting the village from monsters.  The Village is attacked by a larger monster called a Mantis ant, and Randi manages to fend it off. However, due to the monsters attraction to the sword the village exiles him from home. With nowhere else to go, Randi takes the advice of a knight named Jema to take the sword to the shrines to reactivate the power of Mana.

Jesus Christ. It's actually shorter to play through that sequence than it was for me to describe it. This remake is a modernization of the 1993 release. It is actually a pretty faithful rebuilding of the game from a map perspective and from a mechanics perspective. While the game is functionally exactly the same as it was before, they did make a number of quality of life improvements to the game overall.

Obviously and most notably this game got a complete graphical overhaul. Now this isn't an upgrade to make it super new and modernized like a lifelike rendering like Final Fantasy 7 is currently getting. They basically upgraded this game from the SNES graphics to a more polished version of say a gamecube era Zelda game. It manages to keep the art style from the original promotional and concept art from the original game so the overhaul doesn't feel like it's departing from its original aesthetics.

The game is now full of voice acted dialog as well, which was a surprising addition to the remake. This has been a big point of contention to the remake as a whole because whenever they announce something new or good that people want, it immediately turns into complaining about not being the same. Now admittedly it's not exactly the greatest bit of voice acting by any stretch, and it's pretty much reduced to major characters and scenes (and the innkeep for some reason) but ultimately I was not that put off by it. I played Star Ocean: A New Hope. That game is the eff'n gold standard for bad voice acting.

So functionally, the game operates pretty much exactly the same as the previous SNES iteration of the game did. Secret of Mana is a top down hack and slash adventure game with RPG elements in the vein of Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and can be played up to 3 players. It still operates with the endurance mechanic so when you swing your weapon you have to wait for a quick 0-100% counter to fill up before you can take another swing at full strength.

You still can charge up your 8 weapons depending on their level for special attacks that deal increased damage. Your support characters Primm and Popoi still can use the various types of magic they learn during the course of the game. And this is still done by the ring menu system which can be just as slow and cumbersome as it always has been. It is certainly original and unique to the series but when you are trying to level up your magic it never flows as smoothly as you would like it to, even if you have it memorized.

This is somewhat abated by the addition of a pair of hot keys that you can now program. For a veteran player like I am to this series, this is very handy to have Undine's healing spell mapped to one and whatever spell I was leveling or using for dungeon or boss to the other. This cuts down a significant amount of delay having to navigate the menu every time I want to cast a spell, which makes this a very welcome addition to the game.

This clip show's the significant difference from casting with the ring system, to the hot keys.

They have also included a little mini-map in the upper right corner of the screen, which was a nice little add-on. You can turn it off as well, which I did since I know this game like the back of my hand. But a cute little visual thing that they used for the mini map is that it uses the original SNES sprite graphics for it, which is a nice little nod to the original. When using it though, it did feel like it quickened the pace of the game because you could see a lot more of the map.

As I mentioned previously, There is additional voice acting to the game and it's usually kept to primary scenes. But they added a bit of story flavor for when you go use inns. Inns in this game were originally required to save, so when you to use it you are treated to a scene of the main characters interacting with each other about some of the previous experiences of the game. All of these are completely new and original. Some of them are cute, some are funny, some drag on much too long. To the game's credit these can be skipped, but I don't know why you would since this is new content. I will say that if you don't keep up with them, the team will talk about events you did hours ago.

The music in this game has completely remastered as well to make use of PS4s expanded memory and quality. I found the modernized orchestral iterations to be very good, but again, this is something I have seen a significant number of reviews and comments to complain about. It seems like Square-Enix was concerned about this too so the game does have option to set it back to the original SNES version of the soundtrack, which still actually holds up pretty damn well, really.

I would say that the biggest annoyance I had with the remake was the change to the AI control system. In the old version of Secret of Mana, you had a 4x4 grid based on how close to monsters you wanted your team to get, and how aggressive they were in attacking. It was pretty stellar, because I could have weaker character hang back, but still attack like crazy if something got too close.

It's now a more simplified AI control menu and I don't feel it's for the better. Because by simplifying to "attack the same", "attack another", "do not attack" or whatever they are called, I feel now attacks are wasted by hitting an enemy I've already gotten well in hand, or making some map travel frustrating because I can't get the team to keep up with me because they are chasing another monster or refusing to run past. It's happened a number of times and admittedly a minor frustration. But minor frustration that you notice a lot, becomes a major one.

This simple gird allowed for a lot of character nuance in combat.
I do not understand why they got rid of it.

I will say that in the defense of the menus, they did simply down the list of meaningless statistics that don't actually play a factor into the gameplay. It was just additional information for the sake of having it. Now it's just down to simple, easy to understand terminology with much clearer indicators of progress while you are leveling. So while I miss my grid, it's not really all bad as far as menu changes go.

The voice acting is.... acceptable, I suppose. I am always kinda taken aback when I play a game that has some bad voice acting because at this point it feels like with how many actors are in the VO scene this shouldn't happen anymore. But after some initial cringe at some lines, I am sure you would be like me and eventually the voices will sort of just fade into the noise and not bother you. I will say that some of the Inn cutscenes can be phenomenally bad. It's always usually one that runs too long.

With the rework of the menu, there is now a much more significant indication
of progression of skills, or benefits to items used. 

They also made the strange decision to not animate the mouths in this game other than a few exceptions. It gives it more of a puppet show feel if that makes any sense. Major scenes will fully animated and drop to a 30fps frame rate to give it a more cinematic feel to it, but while characters are talking and moving, the mouth is shut, or open and not moving. It's strange and feels out of place. This is also the norm for any other non-animated cutscene. It basically shifts from pose to pose rather jerkily. This feels like it would not have been much work to fix.

A lot of the old game annoyances are back too. The could have really tweaked up the combat system so that the percentage for attack could have greater influenced the damage dealt. Instead it still feels like you either get full damage, or next to no damage. If I have 40% stamina when I take a swing, wouldn't 40% damage make sense? Another combat annoyance is the "miss" rate is still ridiculous. Even at full stamina your likelihood to miss an attack is why higher than it should be, leading to combat where you are constantly taking a swing at a baddie to kill them and just constantly whiffing for no reason. This is even more frustrating when you wasted time charging up an attack.

To be fair, you far less likely to miss on a charged attack. But it still happens too frequently.

Leveling magic is still a chore. Like the weapons, you level up their efficiency by using them. That makes sense, rotate your higher weapons around so everyone is good at everything. But even with the addition of the hot keys, magic still takes an arduous amount of time. Pick your spell, wait for the cast animation, wait for the spell animation, wait for the damage to drop so you can recast it again. MP is pretty sparse in this game so you need to carry MP recovery items if you are going to grind spells for any reason.

They did add a feature that you could increase the amount of items you could carry. Typically you could only carry up to 4 of every specific item and I personally felt that somewhat added to the challenge of the game. When you learn magic it really doesn't become the inconvenience it feels it should be, but none the less you can increase that amount so it helps for grinding spells without having to constantly go back to the Inn to recover your MP.

But the flat out biggest problem of the game is the exact same one that I bitched about in my Death's Gambit review and that is that this game crashed a fucking lot. It would crash mid battle seemingly for no reason, during boss fights, during screen transitions. It was patched multiple times and I still found myself with the game constantly crashing on me. It really was souring my entire experience of the remake as whole.

Unlike Death's Gambit though, Secret of Mana has also added a very generous autosave that basically saves every time you enter a new room.  So even if the game does crash on you, you really aren't inconvenienced any more than just needing to reload the game back up and bam, you are right back where you left off just a room away, or at the start of a boss fight. It really is something that should have been taken care of immediately but honestly I don't even know if that ever got addressed.

So that leaves us with the final question: is the Secret of Mana remake better or worse? From where I stand, it comes to a matter of preference. The original holds a special place in my heart and I can always go back and play it. But it's not available to everyone now, so if you have never played Secret of Mana before I would give this a recommendation even with the problems I've cited.

Sure, a number of things could have been done better or improved upon, but it still captures a lot of the old magic that made me love the game before, and quality of life adjustments added do make for a more streamlined experience. It's only 40 bucks and it's a reminder that classic, simple mechanics can still hold up.

I am still saying "One night is 50 GP"
in old man voice

Gravity Rush Remastered (PS4): A Charming Case of Vertigo.

This is one of those games I took a flyer on. I didn't own a vita until way late into its cycle, so really all I knew about this game is what the Title was called, that gravity was involved, and that the main character appeared in an iteration of hot shots golf. Cute blonde character who also dresses like a Maid. Worked for me.

But then I started hearing rumblings about it getting a PS4 HD release (because apparently they don't make "new" video games anymore), and I started seeing articles about what a darling this game was that didn't get the love or respect it deserved. I also hear similar reviews from some friends who have played it, so I decided why not give it a shot.

GRAVITY RUSH: REMASTERED:(PS4)

The story of Gravity Rush is confusing. We start off with the Amnesiac trope as we take the role of a girl named Kat who plummets to a floating city called Hecsville and wakes up knowing nothing about herself. In her ambling confusion she comes across what appears to be a spectral cat she dubs "Dusty". This cat somehow gives her the ability to shift the direction of gravity for her giving her a makeshift ability to fly.

In the opening moments of the game, a gravity storm threatens to further pull apart the city, with a small child clinging for dear life. Kat uses her new found ability to try to rescue the child before he is pulled away into the abyss. Kat manages to succeed in saving the child, but was unable to save their home. Instead of being grateful, the father and rescued son vilify her for not saving their home, showing an intense disdain for "shifters". 

Kat gets mixed reactions from the people in the city, and decides that before she starts anything she needs to find a place to stay and clean. After situating herself, she sets out into the city to try to find out clues of who she is, and hopefully fend off the gravity monsters (called Nevi) that stand in her way and rescue and assist the citizens who cannot defend themselves.

Gravity Rush I guess can be consider to be sandbox game at its core. You start off on a section of the world map with pretty much the freedom to explore it at a whim. On the map you find number of locations where you can do quests or missions, and as you play through the game the map continues expand giving you new locations and more missions to do. I wouldn't say its as expansive as the Grand Theft Auto universe but its a pretty sizable environment for what was a handheld game. 

Gravity Rush is one of those bizarre enigma's of a story. From the base onset I find the amnesiac trope to be kind of a weak starting point because its just been so overused and played out. Very early Kat decides that she wants to be helpful to the people of the city, who for the most part do nothing but shun and berate her, or take her for granted. Its sporadic because it feels like it is constantly throwing various story elements at you as you play it, but many of them feel like they deviate away from the main story of finding out who she is rather than complimenting it.

Apparently, she doesn't remember that this is a major plot point either.

That being said? There is something incredibly charming about Kat as a protagonist that I found myself really liking. She's got an adorable little voice that matches the cutesy facial expressions she makes in cutscenes. It sounds vaguely french but I am fairly certain it is just gibberish with french accents. But she's earnest, playful, helpful, even sarcastic at times. She is also flawed as she is easily distracted and manipulated, so I wouldn't consider her to be a "Mary Sue" either. Actually with all honesty, if she didn't have Dusty the only thing separating her from the day to day citizen would be her clothing (which people love to point out to her).

Much of the main story seems to be delivered by means of comic book stills for the major point of exposition and questing, and actual animated cutscenes for the major pivotal moments of the game or scenes meant to increase tension such as the appearance of an adversary or a giant monster of some kind. Honestly I think it kind of adds to Kat's charm when it was told this way. It also produces some hilarious out of context screenshots. Also, for one of the more useless features you can rotate the controller to tilt the pictures a few degrees in any direction. 

It works as a means to frame the story, without cut scenes getting too long winded.

As mentioned once you have the freedom to explore, the game turns into a sandbox and you are free to do missions and challenges at whim. But it would be a good idea take some time to just fly around the city and explore. One: because the flight controls can be a little wonky since you aren't actually flying, but falling in different direction. And Two: You need gems to upgrade your abilities and unlock additional challenges.  Thankfully there are hundreds of them scattered all about the city for you to collect, some worth more than others. 

The real place to make gems though is in the challenges. Many of them are basically variants of time trials or races. Some of them require you to fly from point to point, some of them only use the gravity slide mechanic, some of them are moving items to a specific zone within a certain time period, and some of them are more combat centric. When you complete them you will be rewarded depending on how well you did. There is a bronze, silver, and gold tier reward so it is in your best interest to try to hit that gold in each one.

Once you master the Grav-Kick. you master death.

There is an abundance of abilities for you to learn. Sadly though, there is is really only a few things that you need are of any actual use, which seems like a shame considering all the nifty tricks you should be able to do with gravity based abilities. There are really two things that are immediately useful to you: Gravity Gauge Usage, and Gravity Kick. Both of these should be obvious. Usage lets you stretch out how long the gauge lasts while you suspend in gravity, and the kick basically fires you like the dart at your aim point while you are suspended.

The Kick especially because as long as you are partially decent at aiming up your shot, you can basically use your gravity kick like a yo-yo and be constantly bouncing back and forth at targets without ever needing to hit the ground. I have played through what seems to be nearly the entirety of the game with this ability. It's one of the strongest attacks you have, its the easiest to use, it functions as a dash. It's just the most broken ability in the game and you get it at the onset. 

There are a handful of abilities you might want to level later, but they are all window dressing.

Some of the abilities seem like really good ideas but then end up just being really stupid. One of them is basically a telekinesis that allows you to lift, carry, and throw things. Sounds great, but you basically trigger it which causes a singularity to makes you hover and float in the air, so you lose the level footing you had, so you have to try to re-aim a drifting camera which is already difficult, and the shot is never as precise as the reticle makes it seem. The challenges that force you to use this ability are the hardest ones. 

Really, after you max out Usage and Gravity Kick, the only other things I found worth getting was more health and anything that affected my movement or flying speed. Since most of the challenges will require you to slide or fall as fast as you can, it makes sense to bolster the speed. You can upgrade some of the carrying challenges so you can pick up multiple things at once, but 100% honesty? I played through the majority of the game without ever needing to upgrade my health. Usage and Grav Kick first, everything else is secondary.

Maybe it's just a personal preference but for some reason, I find that falling is more fun that flying. I noticed it's something I enjoy in almost any sandbox game I play. If I have the ability to get the highest point of elevation in the game, the first thing I do is get up there so I can take the plunge. To cite an even older example, there is a PS2 game you've probably never heard of called Kya: Dark Lineage that used a number free falling mechanics where you had to control the velocity and direction of your descent. They were some of my favorite parts of that game.

Which is probably why I got so wrapped up in playing Gravity Rush because that honestly is the game's major mechanic. I'll try to keep it as spoiler free as I can, but there is a segment of the game later one where you are being pursued by a rival trying to stop you to reach your goal. In it, you have this massive free fall segment which makes you feel like you are falling down to the core of the planet. You have to shift and dodge attacks, pick up collectibles along the way, and make landings on platforms to recover your ability to shift. It wouldn't say it was difficult, but it was certainly a memorable and satisfying mission to do.

Raven makes several appearances during the course of the story, because each
good heros needs an antagonist, even if Raven doesn't really have a reason to be one.

If you are like me and you purchased the HD remaster on PS4, you are also treated to the extra DLC missions included in the full game, which is a gesture that I appreciated. They could have left it off and sold it separately, so I appreciate when a game makes a definitive edition.

Being a vita port there is only so much I can say about the graphics. They were glossed up a bit and cleaned to look much nicer on the PS4 and I'm sure the frame rate is improved as well. Although the I will say the overall design of the game is kind of flat and boring. Because the game reminds me of steampunk, I find the color pallet to be boring. It's washed with greys, browns, bronzes, and off yellows. The only color that really stands out is Kat's hair. All the environments are interchangeable brown buildings so even though I travel to new area's of the map, it feels like I've already been there.

Your choice of locale is: Generic steampunk town, other generic steampunk town,
ANOTHER generic steampunk town. or under generic steampunk town.

So what didn't I like about the game? Well, the control of this game is loose at best, and that's if I am being generous. Basically you hit one of the shoulder buttons to go into stasis as I call it. You hit that button and you start to hover in place, but since there is no center of gravity you begin to spin or flip. So the camera doesn't stay put which makes it a headache if you are setting up your fall. You then hit it again and the direction you are facing becomes the next downpull of gravity, causing you to plummet that direction. It's essentially how you fly, and this is what the races are usually based around.

But because you are falling and not flying, you have very little control of your aim sans using the grav kick. And since that is the direction of the gravity, anything you hit then becomes the floor. This can make for frustrating situations where you will be trying to thread a tight needle and find yourself suddenly tight-roping a street lamp or fence. If you are doing a time trial this will completely fuck your run, and there is no quick restart outside of finishing the race and doing it again.

The game can be disorienting. especially in combat. So remember that when you
land on a surface, the direction Kat's hair moves is where down actually is.

Combat can also be frustrating. They give you a base kick to use on the ground which isn't a horrible alternative, but some of the enemies are huge and all of them only have one exposed weakness. So it doesn't make any sense to level your base attack doesn't work on half the enemies, and as we established the telekinesis isn't worth using either. So that leaves you with the grav kick, but even that can be frustrating as if you miss your target it basically sends you rocketing past the combat, scrambling to remember to stop your flight. You can find yourself disoriented, far away from solid ground, and without any more gravity usage to keep you afloat.

I feel they could have done more with the monster design. The Nevi aren't inherently bad looking, but they fall under a kind of generic trope. Shadow monsters with minimal features outside of a glowing weakness is kind of played out and over done. But thankfully this prevents them from using pallet swaps for the most part. You can tell by their weakness if its a standard baddie or elite level monster, but outside of those two it forces the game to at least design all the Nevi differently so you have a varied difference of flying and land monsters.

All enemies have exposed weaknesses, but some of them don't get exposed immediately,
Some you have to wait to expose, others appear as you take out other weak points. Stay offensive. 

The music is... ehh... It's not great.  I suppose the best compliment I can give it is that its not grating and annoying. It's just uninspired, generic. I couldn't hum a single bar or melody for you of any of the songs in the game because its so plain you don't even notice it. The only song that you will be able to recognize is the little melody you hear when you get the results of doing a challenge. Because you will probably be retrying them a few times so you can get the gold level prize, you will probably be hearing it every minute or so.

One of the biggest issues is the story never seems like it goes anywhere. As I play through the game I seem to keep getting introduced to new plot threads and while little side quest plots get wrapped up, I never feel like I am getting closer to getting any explanation to the main story. What is happening? Why are there gravity monsters? Why does Kat seem inexplicably ok with not knowing who she is? Why is every single citizen in this fucking city an absolute twatknot? Seriously, no amount of good deed you do seems to end with anything other than the person you helped being shitty in response.

As you can see, they gave the graphics a real nice gloss over for the PS4 port.

For all the mysteries and plot threads they lay down, a very surprising few of them ever seem to get solved. There is no explanation of who two of the major antagonists are, we never get any indication of who Kat really is outside of one throw away slide in the final credits and even that isn't explained. There is no explanation for why the timeline suddenly jumps ahead just before the last chapter of the game. Maybe these will all be answered in the upcoming sequel, but considering this came out in like 2012, that's a long time to wait for some story closure.

The biggest problem that I have with the game is that it was very easy to put down. When I close a stream I keep saying that I am going to go back to it, but then I never end up doing so. Because of the constantly spawning plot threads, I never seem to be getting any closer to the finish and while I am enjoying the game its inadvertently causing fatigue. And with each game release it gets pushed a little further down the pile. As it turned out, I put it down for several weeks with only about an hour or so left of game play. Live and learn.

The actual context for this image is a lot less funny than its screenshot

Ultimately though, despite all the flaws I was able to find in Gravity Rush, I wouldn't go as far as to say it was a bad game. Far from it really, no game is perfect and what I didn't like wasn't game breaking. I felt it laid down a foundation for what could possibly be a very good series of games. It has a good original concept, it was fun to play, and has a charming protagonist. This game feels like it just needs a little more direction and a bit more polish to really make it shine. Now I know that they recently announced that there is going to be a Gravity Rush 2 coming out for vita and PS4, so that gives me hope that they can use this as a starting point.

I probably wouldn't have paid 60$ for Gravity Rush, but at it's currently price of 30$ (and often on sale for less than that) it was absolutely worth the jump. It took a little bit of extra prodding to get me to finish it but I did enjoy my experience with it. I think with a little more direction, focus, and commitment to a coherent story this game can really be something special. Here's hoping they learn from this game and improve on it for the sequel. 

I'll play any game that has a maid costume in it, won't I?...
Ugh.. I'm such a creep.