Introduction

About the Game

Trials of Mana was an action RPG released in 1995 on the Super Nintendo by Square. Surprisingly, despite its popularity and the popularity of its predecessor, Secret of Mana, Trials, titled Seiken Densetsu 3, never saw release in the West.

It did, however, gain a cult following. Translated by fans shortly after its release, Trials gained high praise owing to its solid gameplay and unique features. A co-op mode, a rarity in most RPGs ensured that friends could enjoy the story together and a set of 6 characters, with varying storylines allowed for a level of replayability rarely seen in other RPGs of the day.

I was one of those fans, playing the game more times than I could count to see all the different plot variations and gameplay elements that had been lovingly woven into Square’s story.

I even went as far as to seek out romhacks for the game and chose Trials for my first ever Let’s Play, as I tackled Sin of Mana a Hardtype mod of the game.

And with that most fans were content, the game was great and a Western release, whilst pleasant, never seemed realistic.

However, almost 25 years after its release, Trials finally saw a true Western release and translation, with the announcement that the game would be released on Switch and PS4 in 2019.

That was not the only treat however as Square unveiled a full 3D remake of the game. Trials of Mana (2020) was announced to release on the game’s 25th anniversary, to the delight of many fans and the tremendous excitement of your truly.

About The LP

This will be a solo video LP. Owing to the global situation with coronavirus, my erstwhile colleague and best friend Yorkshire Tea can’t come and record with me, so I’ll be going it alone this time, which perhaps is appropriate given that Trials of Mana’s remake is single player only.

I’ll be running through the game on its “Hard” difficulty. I think I should be able to handle it with my knowledge from prior games, but we’ll soon see and I can turn it down if need be.

Spoiler policy is that you can mention things inside spoiler tags, but try to keep it at a minimum, the game has a neat story that I wouldn't like to see new people spoiled on.

Art is handled by the wonderful Bifauxnen.

Prologue

In case you want to know more about the characters I’ve created a series of Prologue videos so that you can get to grips with them.

Episode 0 is a quick run through, but in each of Prologue 1-6 I pick a character and run through their introduction so you can get an idea of what they’re like. The videos are around 20 minutes in length, which hopefully is enough that you can get to know who you’re voting for.