This is a review for the Switch release. Trials of Mana is a 3D remake of the Super Nintendo classic Trials of Mana. Unfortunately, that's the most positive thing I have to say about the game. The biggest issue is the loading screens. In my 28 hours of playtime, I spent 3~4 hours in load screens. The game already had bad pacing, and the load screens only made it worse. There were several times where I would spend 1 minute loading into a room, only to watch a 30 second cutscene and immediately load into another. Dialogue drags on, with slow, forced delivery and 2 second pauses between each line. Nobody talks at the same time, and characters barely move, if at all, during delivery. Most of the voice acting is garbage, except for maybe one villain. This also killed any interest I had in the story. To its credit, it had an interesting premise, allowing the player to choose three of the six protagonists to follow on a personalized story. The premise takes a nose dive as the story fails to come together and you focus on one of three possible villains. The gameplay is alright, but extremely basic. You'll be spamming the same 4-button combo in every encounter. Equipment offers virtually no customization. Skill trees allow for some degree of specialization, but realistically everyone will max their strength to deal maximum damage. The party AI is stupid and dies constantly. The class system offered clear progression and powerful upgrades. There were flashy abilities to use in combat, but even on hard the game was a cakewalk. I wouldn't recommend this even to fans of the original. Its a piss poor excuse for a JRPG by modern standards.
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