Patrick Waring at GameCloud writes: "This isn’t a bad remake, per se. The game functions without crashing, and it’s a close approximation of what the original Secret of Mana had on offer. The problem is that in recreating the game, Square Enix forgot what the point of a remake is. Very little in this remake can have a serious claim to being “better” than the original, and in some cases, it’s arguably worse. Once the nostalgia wears off for returning players, your enjoyment with it will go downhill fairly quickly. It’s also hard to recommend to anyone that hasn’t played Secret of Mana before since there isn’t anything noteworthy you would get out of this version that you couldn’t experience in the original. If more time, money, and effort had been put into this project, this remake could have been something truly special. As it stands, however, it feels like a cheap attempt to cash-in on a sudden resurgence in popularity of the original, brought about by the recent re-release of the SNES version. If you have the money, get yourself a SNES Classic if you want to see what the fuss is about. Or… You know… Any other number of methods. Secret of Mana came out in 1993, after all."
Are you excited for the forthcoming Visions of Mana? This retrospective of the Mana series will tell you all about the franchise thus far.
After 20 long years, can Square Enix finally give us the coveted cover-art version of the game?
I'm still waiting for a proper Final Fantasy game that looks exactly like Yoshitaka Amano's art. Dissidia proved how ridiculously amazing that would look like but it was still not close enough. They need to go for broke on Amano's art style and design.
I don't care if it's a remake of 5 or 6 or a new entry, just make it happen at some point in this life time SquareEnix...
Secret of Mana recently turned 30 years old in Japan, and to celebrate this seminal action RPG's anniversary, Alana of Nintendo Life is reminiscing about how the game's use of colour inspired a fascination with RPG worlds...