YMMV / Trials of Mana

A-R

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • The Dark Lich is the easiest of the final bosses owing mostly to the fact it's a slow moving wall of health who fires off spells on occasion. Never mind the fact that one of the heroes who's linked to it (Charlotte) can gain an ability which does max damage to the boss. He is more aggressive in the remake, but he's still by and large the easiest final boss - especially since you don't have to wait between attacks.
  • The Dragon Lord gets hit hard by this in the remake for the simple fact that he still somewhat plays like he did in the original (slow to actually attack you, spends large amounts of time sitting there while you give him the business end of your spells or weapons, etc), meaning he's a sitting, defenseless duck if Angela is in the party, which she more than likely is. By this point, even without the Black Rabite's ability to null the cost of spells, Angela will have so many ways to conserve or restore MP and will have a bunch of abilities (Like Limit Break II, which raises her magical power by 25% and can be compounded with other abilities to make her magic even stronger) that rip through the Dragon Lord's HP like butter, especially if she uses the best spells she gets from each Class 3, at which point she'll hit every point she can damage on the Dragon Lord for more than four times what she could do if she could only hit his head. And he'll just sit there and take it.
  • In the 2020 remake, Duran's Duel Boss fight with the Golden Knight for his Class 4 item. It's one of three Duel Boss battles for Class 4; one of the others is That One Boss against Shadow Angela, and the third — Kevin's fight against the Beast King — isn't quite as hard as Angela's, but it's still pretty rough. By contrast, the Golden Knight is nowhere near as hard as the other two Duel Bosses. The Golden Knight's area-of-effect attacks are massive, but they take so long to fire off that Duran can easily dodge out of the way because of how much the Golden Knight telegraphs his moves. Given that it's a Duel Boss, the Golden Knight's counter isn't nearly as devastating as there are no party members to trigger his counterattacks unpredictably. And even if the attacks land, Duran's a Stone Wall; the boss's attacks don't hurt that much, and what damage they do cause can be recovered easily with a casting of Heal Light or Moon Saber. Even equipping a low-level skill to recover MP means that Duran will recover enough magic to cast Heal Light virtually at will. Story-wise, it also lacks an emotional impact for Duran, since the spirit of Duran's father Loki is the Golden Knight, back from the dead after being killed as the Darkshine Knight for one final fight to see if his son is truly worthy of the next class change. After losing, Loki says a few final words to Duran before suddenly fading away, leaving a lot of questions and little emotional payoff. This all adds up to a Duel Boss that can feel rather underwhelming once it's over.
• Ass Pull: At the very end of Kevin's storyline, it's revealed that the death of his dog, Karl - his entire reason for going on the quest in the first place and something that, contrary to what he was told, the Sword of Mana wouldn't actually be able to fix - was "an illusion created by evil magic", allowing him to have a happy ending. There was no hint of this in the original version; you could see the Beast King pay a visit to Karl's grave during the opening credits of the remake if you started with Kevin, which suggested he may not be there just to pay respects.
• Awesome Music: See here.
• Best Boss Ever: Oh so many..
  • Most of the Benevodons that aren't That One Boss fit into this. Especially Dangaard - who you literally fight on Flammie.
  • The True Final Boss Anise in the remake. Unlike most of these types of bosses... you actually only need to just go through a Marathon Level to reach them. When you do, all you need to do is know how to dodge attacks, keep an eye on your health, prevent and heal status ailments, heal your party, and deal with the blue targets when they charge up. They are far more aggressive than the other final bosses, yes, but after the amount of RPGs whose True Final Boss requires tactics and preparation that most players never find themselves doing during a standard playthrough, one that doesn't actually feels quite like a breath of fresh air that preparing for the True Final Boss isn't ungodly tedious.
• Camera Screw: The 2020 remake's targeting system is poorly implemented. It allows you to focus the camera (and your character) on a single target, but in practice it acts like a "Lock the camera" button because the thing that let you change your camera angle — and, say, get it out from behind a wall — is now the "change target" ability. You cannot switch to an enemy that the camera can't see — for instance, the one that's actually attacking you — and you cannot change your camera angle. Changing targets to a specific option doesn't work half the time, as the game's logic as to what constitutes "the next target in line" is opaque and depends on things like your camera angle — which, again, you cannot change. And, once the foe in question is defeated, the game will not auto-switch to targeting someone else; you have to press it again, at which point all these problems come back into play. This results in the bosses of the final chapter getting a major Fake Difficulty boost: you could handle them easily if the game worked as intended and let you destroy the things that stop a Charged Attack. But it doesn't.
• Complete Monster: Besides the return of Stroud, Goremand is the right hand of the Masked Mage. A sadistic jester-like being, Goremand convinces the beastmen of Ferolia to start a war with humanity, seemingly turning prince Kevin's beloved pet Karl into a monster to trick Kevin into killing him. Goremand later attacks and kidnaps Heath in front of Charlotte right when the two have just gotten reunited, and over the course of the story, kills others to reap their souls, intending on taking the Masked Mage and using him to create a world of war and death so Goremand can glut himself on souls forevermore.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Polterbox, one of the chest monsters, can be this early in the game. They have a ton of health compared to your characters, can be outright hard to hit, and hits pretty hard in turn. And Mana forbid one drops a chest and you get stuck fighting another one!
  • Near the end of the game, there are a number of foes who are essentially the enemy version of some of the playable characters' final classes. For example, the Nightblade can use Split-Image Slice (Hawkeye's Nightblade class), and the Grislwolf can use Suzaku Aerial (Kevin's Dervish class). These techniques are full-screen and can easily wipe out the entire party if you are at low health. This is a significant contributor to why fans are so fond of the Star Lancer and Night Blade classes, as both have the ability to silence enemies, preventing those attacks from even being used.
  • The aptly-named Death Machines and packs of multi-healing Silverwolves will give your heroes a fair fight.
  • Shadow Zeds copy your characters down to the last stat point, and they're affected by the same Health/Damage Asymmetry as your party, which lets them deal boss-killing damage to your party's still PC-level health. And it only gets worse if you used cheats or Level Grinding to strengthen your party past what the game expects.
  • In the 2020 remake, Queeneebs in Woods of Wandara. Not only are they flying enemies, making them tedious to hit with regular attacks, they also have a nasty tendency to spam their Spear of Light attack, which deals a lot of damages in a huge area. And they can be found in packs of 3 to 4, meaning that anyone caught in their simultaneous attack is as good as dead. Were it not for the fact that they drop the very sought after ??? seeds, one would be better off running away from them. You better have a character able to use a powerful area of attack technique to engage them and kill them before they can act.
  • Also in the remake, Tremorkin. They're rather fast, have a rolling attack with a very short charge up that they will spam constantly and will knock your character down if you can't get out of the way. And if that's not enough already, they're Armored, which means it can be very difficult to knock them out quickly. Oh, and they like to spawn alongside Queeneebs in Woods of Wandara.
  • Shapeshifters. What's super annoying about them is that they can take the form of most enemies in the game... and doing this restores their health.
• Even Better Sequel: Thanks to the remake, Trials is one of the few works to do this twice.
  • The gameplay, music, and graphics of the Super Famicom version were highly-regarded at the time of its release, with the latter two being some of the finest quality work ever produced for the console. Trials also has replay value, since it requires three playthroughs to see even most of its content, and due to the almost limitless number of parties and class changes, it'll likely take more to see all of it. (Character interactions do change depending upon who's in your party, and the characters who aren't in the party will still appear from time to time as NPCs.) Though it remained obscure to general audiences for decades due to its lack of official translation and release, it was something of a Cult Classic among fans of the Mana series, and it could be found on more than a few "best action RPGs" lists, particularly those focusing on the 16-bit era.
  • The 2020 remake was a big step-up from the previous Mana remake in Secret of Mana, released in 2018. The remake of Secret was mired down by control issues, corny voice acting, extra fluff that doesn't contribute to the story, poorly-programmed bosses, Schizophrenic Difficulty with regular enemy mobs, unreliable AI for your allies, freezing, crashing, save corruption, Game Breaking Bugs, and other issues that didn't exist in the SNES version. It was still a pretty decent game all-around, but it came with a number of caveats to that. The 2020 remake of Trials still has some Narm-y voice acting in places, but the AI (both ally and enemy) is much smarter and responsive, the technical issues with saving and crashing are entirely gone, the difficulty is more consistent across all levels, and the bosses are more challenging for the right reasons. This all led to the Trials remake being received much better than the Secret remake.
  • Also applies to the soundtrack remakes - the 2018 Secret of Mana soundtrack diverged wildly from the original arrangements on some songs (although not as many as reviews might suggest), with mixed results. The 2020 Trials of Mana soundtrack sticks much more closely to the original arrangements on the whole and tends to be much better regarded overall.
  • For that matter, this may apply to the original versions' soundtracks, too, depending who you ask: the first game in the series, Final Fantasy Adventure, had a well-regarded soundtrack, but was limited by the capabilities of the Game Boy's sound chip; Secret of Mana's soundtrack, in turn, was regarded as one of the best on the SNES due to its memorable melodies and skilled use of the console's moderately more advanced sound chip, and then the Trials soundtrack added even more diversity to the arrangements and sound voices while containing just as many memorable songs. It probably helped that Hiroki Kikuta created the synth voices for both games himself, and composed with exactly those voices in mind.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Even though Hawkeye already had a love interest, many fans prefer to ship him with Riesz. Their stories are related to each other, and the game put in some minor Ship Tease in there (nor does it help that Hawkeye's girlfriend basically has zero screen time). This was strengthened when Heroes of Mana revealed that Hawkeye's 'girlfriend' is his mother's half-sister.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Despite what some websites say, Elliot does not become the next host for Dark Majesty. (Elliot is seen lying on the ground next to Dark Majesty when you first meet him.) Doing this is his Evil Plan, but you do get there Just in Time to save Elliot.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Any team which doesn't include any healers is referred to as a "suicide team" because any mistake can lead to a party wipe. They're also tremendously fun to play, because they rely on a lot of debuff spells and high-damage output (usually by stacking the party with Dark classes), leading to quick deaths both ways. To go even further, a team comprised of Angela/Hawkeye/Riesz is sometimes called a "Final Destination team" because there is no skill-based healing available no matter what class you pick.
  • "The One MP Wonder" for a Ninja Master Hawkeye's Shruiken. It was fairly fast to cast, cost only one MP, and hit all targets for a fair amount of damage. Since it was non-elemental damage, it was effective against anything.
  • "3MP Ancient" is a term for Aura Wave, which a Nomad Hawkeye or a Godhand Kevin could cast. It would fill the CS bar to full, allowing the use of a Level 3 tech immediately. Since they tended to be very powerful and most hit the whole field, it could wipe random mobs easily, just like Angela's spell Ancient, which cost 12 MP.
  • "Koren", for the Crimson Wizard. It comes from a shortened version of his title: Koren no Madoshi, which means Wizard of the Crimson Lotus. This comes in part from the fan translation noting that using "Crimson Wizard" all the time would never fit into allotted text boxes and the rom size otherwise^note expanding rom size at the time of the fan TL's release was much harder and would have been especially rough due to Trial's compression, so the team realized "Koren" could reasonably work as a name and used it as the character's sole name. Thanks to how long the fan TL was the main English text of the game, the name stuck.
• Genius Bonus: The Koropokkur are an actual mythological race from Ainu folklore.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Chobin Hoods!
    1. In the original, they can use dart attacks that pause the action and are guaranteed to hit the target for a good amount of damage.
    2. In the remake, those dart attacks do 20-30 damage at a time when you have less than 200 HP, and the AOE marker doesn't show up until it actually throws it, which takes a while. If you see one stop moving and turn to face you, get out of its line of sight immediately.
  • Silverwolves aren't terribly dangerous on their own, but they just love to spam Heal Light, and also have a move which severely reduces your attack power. If you don't have a way to fix it and/or lower their defense, you're going to be stuck fighting them for a long time. (Or not, if there are Grislwolves around, too.)
  • On a related note, there are the Silver Knights. Like Silverwolves, they're not particularly harmful on their own; unlike Swordsters who, like the Grislwolves, have a full-screen attack which hits the entire party for massive damage. But they can heal themselves pretty much endlessly, so unless you can mob them, they can take some time to wear down. They also have a single-target tech which hits fairly hard.
  • If you choose Charlotte or Kevin as the main character, you'll face Death Machines in the late game. They almost always reduce the entire party's defense, making weaker enemies dangerous and stronger ones downright mental.
  • Magic Tezlas in the Shimmering Ruins. Again: Not particularly dangerous by themselves, but they can be an incredible pain if paired up with other enemies. Their Sly Dance will knock a good chunk off the target's maximum HP. (It's usually the one you're controlling.) And the effect lasts until you leave the area or clear out all of the enemies. On top of that, they have a lightning attack which doesn't cause damage, but inflicts Moogle on the entire party at once.
  • The Wizards primarily encountered when fighting Altena's army. They love to open a fight by blasting you with an elemental spell as soon the screen loads.
  • Petit Poseidon appears extensively throughout the Labyrinth of Ice on your second visit, and will almost always open a fight with an ability which reduces the target's attack power, making it much more difficult to clear out the room. Worse yet, they occasionally spawn with Swordsters.
  • The Guardians and Shamanions outside of Pedda. The former have an ability which will sap your defense, and they'll often hit you with it the instant you spawn into the screen and before you can take action. The latter will constantly spam Healing Light even if you haven't hit them. They'll also spam it on the other mobs. If you don't stun-lock, them you may find yourself waling on them forever.
  • Related to the Guardians are Kettle Kin, whose lightning attack Silences the entire party. Which, like the Guardians, they tend to hit you with the instant you spawn into the room.
  • In the remake, virtually any enemy with a shield as they won't flinch or take a lot of damage unless the shield is broken. Duran's "Armor Break" ability lets normal attacks wear at the armor faster, but you're going to need that Charge Attack or a Class Strike to destroy it in one go.
  • Ladeebs in Lampbloom Woods are prone to using Lance Surge (aka Valkyrie Riesz's Class Strike) to harass you, and in the chaos of combat it's difficult to see it coming in the split-second before the first wave hits you. They're also flying foes, which when they're not using the aforementioned attack makes it a pain to knock them down. Consider them a preview of the Queeneebs, with everything that implies.
  • Golden Knights are an upgraded version of the Chess Knight with all the same attacks Which they use a lot more frequently, and can make them very tough to hit. They're also Armored, and because of how frequently they spam their special attacks it can be very tricky landing a charged hit to break it.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Excepting stat buffs and debuffs, the Status Effects (i.e. Poison, Moogle, Shrink, Petrification, and Silence) don't stack; the most recent one takes precedence. Over the course of the plot, you get an item called the Minor Mallet, which either inflicts or cures the Shrunken status on your party. So, if a party member gets hit with one of those other statuses, just hit them twice with the Mallet (once to Shrink them, and again to cure it), and he/she will be right as rain. No need to waste inventory space or mana on any status-curing items or spells. This was fixed in the remake, as the Minor Mallet is a key item, and can't be used in battle.
  • The Warlock's "Dispel Magic" spell will, in addition to dispelling status buffs, cause enemies who absorb certain elements to no longer do that. It's unclear whether that was intentional or not.
  • When transforming into a Werewolf, if Kevin is the target of any attack or spell (which includes healing spells), he gets a ridiculous attack boost.
  • Whenever a monster takes a few moments to realize that they're dead, occasionally landing a final hit (or a screen-encompassing Tech!) before they croak. On the other hand, this also works to the player's advantage, as you can save a character from death if you feed them some healing sweets while they're stunned.
  • Bringing up the menu can cancel out damage, which allows for ridiculously low-level speedruns for those with good timing.
  • Clearing a screen full of enemies when you're close to leveling-up and then walking into the next screen screws up the way game's ability to calculate levels. This allows you to boost your stats beyond the caps the game otherwise imposes on level-ups.
  • Magic spells charge even when the ring menu is open. So, you can start to cast one, open the menu, wait a few moments, then fire off a spell. That said, enemies can do the same thing, so it still carries some risk.
  • The 2020 remake has a bug with the game's hardest Superboss, the Black Rabite. After the Black Rabite enters its "Hard Mode", the enemy may suddenly freeze in place after a class strike, not doing anything else for the rest of the fight but sit there and let your party wail on it. This turns what ought to be the hardest battle in the game into a complete joke.
  • In the remake, changing Hawkeye's class to Ninja lets him learn his elemental Diversion moves as soon as he meets the stat requirements, rather than needing to find the corresponding elemental spirits first like in the original game. Furthermore, Ninja's "Ninja SP Boost" ability increases his CS gauge whenever he deals damage with one of his Diversions. The bug is, Thunder Diversion hits twice and Fire and Water Diversion hit three times, and the ability triggers off of each hit, and off of each enemy hit if he takes Ninja Master and learns to multitarget his moves.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A guy named Heath is captured by and eventually joins forces with a Monster Clown. He also shares a game with a character named the "Dark[shine] Knight."
  • Likewise, one of the Benevodons is named Dolan. Depending on who you ask, they could be thinking of a different Dolan as well.
  • There are characters named Hawke(ye), Eagle, and Jess(ica) involved in the same story. Perhaps they should take a visit to Wars World...
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: The 2020 remake is utterly broken in your favor, leading to some criticism about how easy it is, even on Hard mode. Some of it is quality-of-life improvements — the removal of Fake Longevity from the original, leveling up being much faster, quest markers and essential NPCs being marked on the map, and the ability to dodge means you're not forced to just eat special attacks. However, thanks to the new abilities that characters can equip, the new items that can be used, virtually no party makeup (even no healing/"suicide parties") is inherently disadvantageous. Especially since New Game Plus just breaks the game into pieces. You barely even need to use most of the items on the page to break the game. Version 1.1 introduces Extremely Hard and No Future difficulty levels, neither of which are available right away; let's just say you're going to need every edge you can get, especially in the latter.
  • The original SNES version wasn't that hard either, especially if you take into account all the various glitches that worked in your favour. Knowing about the "ring magic" exploit in particular could break the game wide open.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: Most of the Fake Longevity from the original was removed in the 2020 remake — dungeons are now one screen, you no longer have to wait between attacks, magic no longer freezes the screen, and so forth. But a lack of optional content, as well as a very direct and no-frills approach to storytelling, it's possible to beat the game within twenty hours, not counting the postgame scenario against the True Final Boss. There is some replayability with different characters and classes, but it's not much.
• Mis-blamed: No, the game was not kept in Japan because of Secret of Evermore. The amount of work needed to fix the bugs and prepare the game for an international release would have been too costly, and likely put the game's release date well after the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation hit shelves.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Twials of Mana!" ^Explanation Courtesy of Charlotte's English script and voice. This is how many people have started referring to the game, especially after hearing it in the title screen.
  • "Ooo! Wow!" ^Explanation When Bil and Ben impress Elliot with some tricks in Riesz's prologue, he responds with this line twice, and it's very obviously a recycled sound clip. When people began streaming the game, both streamers and their chat who heard this started using it to respond to everything in the game.
  • "Eeek!" ^Explanation Courtesy of Angela's English voice shouting that when jumping or dodging. Fans have started to overlay it onto characters- both male and female- in other games that feature dodge rolling. Tifa in Final Fantasy VII Remake is a popular target.
  • "Is this it? Where are you looking?"^Explanation In the boss fight against the Tainted Soul on Kevin&Charlotte's route, he will shout those quotes when teleporting and attacking - sometimes in rapid succession since on higher difficulties he will flat out spam it.
• Moe: Dryad in the remake is very, very cute. Even her Self-Deprecation tendencies don't stop players from wanting to hug her.
• Narm: The English and Japanese voice-acting leaves... much to be desired. Charlotte is the biggest offender.
  • Riesz's speech pattern is intended to sound refined, but when she barks, "Hostile entities! Be careful!", it can come off as having a Borg drone in the party.
  • In the English dub of the remake, Angela can sometimes shout "EEK!" whenever she jumps or does a combat roll, and it's as goofy as it sounds. Her Japanese VA also makes this sound, but not to the same extent as in the English dub.
  • Regardless of the language, the voice filter applied to characters cursed into becoming ghosts on the Ghost Ship have received similar reactions. The rather tense and eerie atmosphere of the level is completely undermined once the cursed Matelo starts speaking with a laughably distorted voice though his casual dialogue implies this may have been the intent. Afterward, your own characters get cursed, with the same filter applied, mostly griping about their curse and trying to pass it off on the other characters. Cue several comparisons to Vinny Vinesauce who uses a very similar voice filter for comedic effect. When Vinny himself got to that point in the game, he had a field day with it.
  • If Angela is in the party, Angela sees her mother after either the party has defeated the Crimson Wizard in battle, or during the ending sequence, and thus the True Queen is no longer under mind control. Angela is supposed to sound like she's on the verge of crying after seeing what's happened, but the line read makes it sound like she's mildly annoyed.
  • Every cat merchant in the game peppers their dialogue with an excess of some very spotty cat puns. Niccolo is a notable example since he's a supporting character in Hawkeye's story as well as sounding disturbingly like Gilbert Gottfried. There's also two cat merchants Chikeeta and Josephine who start appearing after defeating the Benevedons who have some rather tough to swallow cat pun-heavy dialogue too, especially Josephine who's overall delivery may even be considered a low-point in the game in terms of hilariously poor voice acting.
• Narm Charm:
  • Depending on whose story you chose, Darkshine Knight/Belladonna/Goremand gives a short speech in which they lament their imminent death at the hands of the Big Bad. If you picked Hawkeye as a supporting character instead of your lead, it's an especally anti-climactic end to his arc! (In spite of the campy voice-acting, Belladonna manages to sound genuinely heartbroken and having nothing left to live for.) It's oddly-touching to see all these despicable people suddenly facing their mortality. And your party just kind of stares at them since, well, at least you don't have to fight them later.
  • Charlotte's inexplicable Guys and Dolls accent combined with her Baby Talk method of speaking. While undeniably silly to listen to, it nevertheless makes her a distinctive character that fans seem to delight in making fun of rather than genuinely finding annoying.
  • Late in the game, if Duran is your main character, there's a scene in Pedda where he meets the past versions of his father Loki and Prince Richard, gearing up for their expedition to Dragonsmaw. Duran calls out to his father and pleads with him not to go, only for Loki to brush it off, remarking that his son is only five years old. Is the voice acting the best? No. Are you going to care? Probably not.
  • Every word out of the Crimson Wizard's mouth makes him sound like he took acting lessons from Albert Wesker in Resident Evil and Cyrus Albright in Octopath Traveler. Large Ham doesn't even begin to explain how over-the-top the Crimson Wizard acts in every scene he's in. He's smiling like a maniac, and the player will too while listening to him.
• Popular with Furries: Belladonna's cat form seems to have gained a fair bit of popularity with furries the moment the remake came out. It helps that prominent Japanese furry artist, Ryota Murayama (better known as Ovopack), worked on her redesign in addition to a few others (including Kevin's werewolf form).

S-Z

• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Being hit with an attack which causes multiple effects... and not being able to do anything until you finish clicking through them! This can actually get you killed in some of the final battles in the original version.
  • The ??? Seeds, which are necessary for the second class change. You can't control which item you get, so you may get an item you've already obtained or an item to change to a class you don't want. The class items at least have in-battle effects so they're not completely useless outside of class changes, but it's a small comfort. Also, there's a good chance that after two of your characters have changed classes, the third character has to wait for their class change because the seeds aren't playing ball. And it's not the Random Number God toying with you; in the remake, which item the Seed gives you is determined as soon as it's picked up, so Save Scumming won't help^note In the SNES version, it is technically possible, but you have to go to an area with enemies and take/do damage in order to advance the RNG to get a different result.. Considering how much of a boost that the third-tier classes are over the second-tier ones, it can be frustrating to be forced to wait because of something outside of your control. The remake makes up for this by rigging the slots to drop items that you don't currently have or have lined up from an existing ??? Seed, so if you don't use up or sell the items, the first six Seeds are guaranteed to be six different items (the most that they can ever give a particular party.)
  • The Rainbow Seeds, which have the highest chance to get the top tier gear^note Gold and Silver Seeds also drop them but at far lower rates, are no better. And in the Remake may be even worse! Not only is the drop rate rather low, with only certain enemies dropping them and only occasionally, you're also at the mercy of the Random Number God when you use them because the item is always random, unlike the ??? Seeds which will mercifully give you all six class items if you wait to use them. It's entirely possible to have maxed out your inventory capacity and still not get all of your gear because it just hands you duplicates of stuff you already have. Even more frustrating is that the Rainbow Seeds also generate mundane useables. Nothing like planting 60 Rainbow Seeds only to get 40 pieces of chocolate. And like the ??? Seeds, the item is determined when the Seed is dropped so you can't boost your chances with Save Scumming. And you have to go through the whole thing twice since Class 3 and Class 4 gear only drops from Seeds! The fact that there's no way to simply buy said gear while the Lucre bank keeps on growing as a result of sold duplicate gear is just more salt in the wound. This process can be improved if you get the Lil' Cactus reward that greatly enhances the quality of Seed Drops - making the equipment drop more often even from lesser seeds - but the reward is only given if you find the little cactus 45 times. If you've not been paying attention to the Lil' Cactus quest as you played through the game, good luck remembering which locations you haven't found him in yet.
  • Some will lament that there is no way to distribute exp to single members of your party, as this game follows the rules of only active combatants receiving exp. This becomes all the more apparent during the ghost ship chapter where one of your members becomes cursed and cannot fight, as well as the postgame Duel Boss fights for three out of the six playable characters that must be defeated to gain access to the artifacts used to unlock Class 4.
  • The capital cities of the aggressive nations are inaccessible unless they're the primary villains for the hero to face off against, or if a party member from that nation is in the current party, in which the gates will be unlocked for them to access their postgame side quest. If you lack these prerequisites those areas may as well not exist, much to the chagrin of explorers. A duplicate copy created by Anise to trek to her just isn't the same.
• Self-Fanservice: In half the art, Riesz's figure is shown to be on par with Angela, who receives a startlingly small amount of fanart despite her Ms. Fanservice characterization in the SNES version (contrast with the similarly fanservicey Tifa).
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Interestingly, you can complete this game without ever having recruited a mage or healer. Magic isn't indispensible like it was in Secret, and you can scrape by with healing items, but the latter makes boss fights a lot tougher. There are a number of other challenges that can be done with this game, such as single character, or no class-changing.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop:
  • Weapon Orbs aren't a thing anymore. No more paying astronomical fees to reforge your weapons constantly; just buy them from shops. When you get to Pedda, you may find their assortment of weapons and armor too prohibitive, since it chews through your bank account; but they aren't essential, and you can farm better weapons for free if you locate seeds.
  • It's not necessary to level up your weapons or magic. Each character is limited to a specific weapon type, which they've already mastered.
  • The frequency of treasure chests is a lot higher than in Secret of Mana, probably as a consequence of the expanded inventory.
  • There is no real item limit: You can only carry nine of an item in battle, but your backpack holds (effectively) endless reserves. And the merchants at Beiser sell sword/armor buffs in the form of Scales and Claws; a well-stocked team should be prepared for anything.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Despite the above, this is probably the hardest of the Mana games.
  • The enemies hit considerably harder and more frequently than Secret, making it much more difficult to get past regular mobs without needing to heal afterwards. This is spiked even further since regular spawns in some dungeons may have attacks that can potentially one-shot the entire party.
  • Enemies may also level up along with the party. Enemies within a given area have a specific cap, but if they reappear in new areas, you won't necessarily be able to steamroll over them.
  • Executing Techs and casting magic spells locks out your controls and freezes the on-screen action until they're complete, meaning it's no longer possible to Stun Lock mobs (and especially bosses) by spamming magic at them. This also occurs when the enemy uses spells and special abilities. It's entirely possible for three on-screen enemies to all use special attacks in sequence, subjecting the player to a stun lock and preventing them from acting, resulting in a total party kill without even being able to take an action to prevent it.
    • This is averted in the remake as all actions happen in real time, but later bosses compensate for this by having enhanced damage, huge AO Es, and sometimes mechanics with tight timing where you have to destroy items they summon before the bosses use a strong and unavoidable AOE.
  • The number of spells characters can learn is much more limited, and is defined by their class. The class system also means that, without carefully planning in advance, the player will likely end up with a party lacking significantly in certain types of spells (i.e. no healing magic).
  • In the second-to-last dungeons, where no healing statues or merchants are available, you will be forced to fight to your fullest. The removal of inventory limits is therefore less of a difficulty drop than it is acknowledging the game is that much harder than its predecessor.
  • The remake's 1.1 version update brings back the two words old-school Mana veterans dread: No Future. Jacked stats, item restrictions, denial of certain overpowered abilities... oh, did we mention every boss battle is timed?! Good luck — you'll need it!
• Shocking Moments: The game's sheer appearance in a Nintendo Direct at the time of E3 2019 shot its profile considerably up for the World of Mana franchise. Not only was the original game finally officially localized for English-speaking countries after spending over two decades with no word on on it ever being officially released in English, the localized version would be released on the very day of the Direct as part of the Collection of Mana! On top of that, a full-on 3D remake was announced in the same Direct that would also be localized.
• So Bad, It's Good: The English voice acting in the remake quickly became notorious for its low quality, but a lot of people consider it to be hilariously entertaining in its corniness.
• Special Effects Failure: The game can look really pretty at a lot of points, and the remake is very ambitious with what it adds to the game, but there are some serious model clipping issues at points. Most of it isn't too egregious; plenty of games even in 2015-2020 could have clipping issues ( Fire Emblem: Three Houses can have some clipping issues with weapons, for example), but the biggest offender has to be the Elfin Elder. He has a long beard and a massive mustache, and whenever he turns (which he will do if Charlotte isn't in the party to address her) nearly half of one side of his mustache and a large chunk of his beard will clip into his pauldrons and robe. This can take a player right out of an otherwise emotionally-charged scene. (But then, so can Charlotte's So Bad, It's Good voice acting.)
• That One Attack:
  • Ancient Curse. Usable only by few end-bosses (or Angela as Magus), it can easily deal 300+ HP damage even if you are protected by buffs, and is one of the few spells which can circumvent Counter Magic. The remake doesn't freeze the action, but it hits a large area for far more damage, so don't dawdle or the poor target is going to die.
  • Stone Cloud in the original game hits a single target for a good amount of earth damage and may petrify them. The remake makes it far more dangerous by making it hit a decently-sized area, enabling it to hit packed-in adventurers who aren't paying attention. Did we mention that a party of petrified adventurers counts as a Total Party Kill? Goremand wouldn't be half as dangerous if this wasn't packed in with the magic spam.
  • Counterattack is a special remake-only ability that is used by Ludgar and the Darkshine Knight, which makes them outright invincible for a short time while they wallop the party hard. It also comes out of nowhere and has no AOE warning, so you or your AI companions will trigger it more often than not. Darkshine Knight makes it more dangerous by linking it with the Quakebringer Class Strike, which hits a massive area for equally sizable damage.
• That One Boss:
  • Super Famicom version:
    1. The following have a tendency to counter any spell or Lv. 2 & 3 Tech with their own specials: Bil & Ben, Ludgar, and Darkshine Knight. To put it in perspective, Darkshine Knight will counter any offensive spell with a full-party attack. (And conveniently enough, you must fight him in Angela's story, and she's a dedicated mage.) He may also pull them off without being provoked. Two of these in a row will eradicate your party unless you're over-leveled.
    2. The Machine Golems in the Frostbite Fields/Sub-Zero Snowfields. You need to level up as much as you can to at least a level 18 to 21, or you will be hurt by these three bastards, even when you change jobs beforehand. While they don’t attack as often as the previous golems, they are much more powerful. You’ll need Angela for this, or you will suffer. Not only that, but they will take a very long time to defeat.
    3. Ludgar during the first visit to Chartmoon Tower will come as a nasty surprise to players who like to abuse Lv. 2 Techs. He reacts to them with a special of his own. And once he Turns Red, he starts using full-party variations of said attacks—and potentially in succession if the player is careless. Meaning he can cause a party wipe faster than a player can recover health.
    4. Dolan and Zable Fahr are considered the trickiest of the eight Benevodons. Aside from its immense strength, the former can temporarily reduce your max HP. Likewise, the latter strengthens its own attacks by pelting the party with debuffs. It also has an insta-death spell which kills any party member who is at a lower level than Zable Fahr. Thankfully, Zable Fahr has fairly low HP, and through hard work it's possible to class-change before this battle.
    5. The Darkshine Knight. He's is the hardest to defeat of the third-in-commands. Because he's Duran's father, he knows all the classes that Duran can learn and any of the spells he has, with Vacuum Sword, Whirlwind Sword and Eruption Sword probably being his most used. At level 44 and with 17132 HP, the heroes must be high-levelled or else they will suffer. If you attack either close-range and/or with a strong attack, he can strike twice or hit several foes and his counterattacks are horrifyingly strong.
    6. Who would've thought Heath would be such a beast? Most fans agree that even if the Dark Lich is the easiest final boss (or the easiest boss period), he's protected by the hardest "mini"-boss. Not only is he a cross-class cleric/mage, he has improbable amounts of health (which he can heal), knows full-party debuff spells that nullify your melee attacks, and has mastered all darkness and light spells. He can also summon three of the four possible summons for Riesz, which are all party-wide and inflict heavy damage plus status effects: mute (Marduke), poison (Jormungand), or Shrink (Freya).
    7. The Crimson Wizard can be reduced to a joke by using Matango Oil or Hawkeye's magic (see above). But chances are you won't know that, and will be bombarded by a very fast magician who abuses Flash Step to evade you all the time and takes inordinate amounts of punishment.
  • 2020 remake:
    1. Zehnoa is a big step up from its predecessor. He uses a wind attack to keep you at bay, can raise spikes throughout the entire room, and has devastating fire spells. And like the original, it summons a pack of Shape Shifters to keep you busy. To make matters worse, its attacks get faster and more aggressive when its HP is low. If you don't have Charlotte in the group, say goodbye to your supply of candies and chocolates. Oh, and while its weakness is water, only Hawkeye (as a Ninja) has access to any kind of water magic without using up your cache of Ice Coins. The traps themselves also have no purpose other than to annoy you into oblivion - because if you get stuck in one, it can take longer to recover than it takes for them to go off again, meaning you can just keep on getting stuck and chain-trapped until you die. Oh and you get hassled with shapeshifters... who enjoy shapeshifting and healing themselves back to full health.
    2. Normally it's a good strategy to concentrate your attacks on one target and move onto the next. This is not the case with Bil and Ben. In addition to having elemental resistances across the board, having moves that will lower your stats on a regular basis, having armor, and being the hosts of some intense attacks, Bil and Ben will also revive one another if one has been downed for some time.
    3. Dangaard, the Benevodon of Wind. In the original Super Famicon, he was a Damage-Sponge Boss, but he was actually pretty easy. In the remake, however, he can fly away and attack you without being able to hit him. He'll return eventually, but he spends chunks of the battle invulnerable. Also, dodging is much harder to do on this boss because the arena on Flammie is significantly smaller than other arenas, making it hard to move out of the way. And he still retains his Damage-Sponge Boss nature to boot.
    4. Xan Bie, the Benevodon of Fire. The darn thing just won't stay still, zipping around its arena with more speed than any other boss of its kind. It's also got fiery orbs that rotate around it like mines, which you need to disable by destroying altars. But never mind the sheer difficulty of just hitting him; he'll also drop pools of lava to force you to move, and use three Heat Beams at once to do major damage to your party while knocking them all apart from each other. Xan Bie's big charge-up move is also very powerful, and not only are his altars that need to be destroyed to cancel the move unusually durable, but Xan Bie is one of the few bosses that continues to attack you while charging his attack. Try to get clever and hit it with Angela from a distance? You'll find very quickly that this boss can hit you much faster than Angela can cast a spell, even if she just dodged its last attack, and it will force her into a battle of attrition - one Angela is set to lose without a ton of healing. Finally, every single one of Xan Bie's attacks can potentially cause the Burn status to make your characters take more damage. This all adds up to a boss that makes it difficult to find an opening, and even more difficult to build up some offensive momentum.
    5. Mispolm, the Benevodon of Wood. While the main body remains stationary, its minions will tend to attack (and poison) the party from all sides while the main body joins in by attacking with a large area sweep that can knock the party back. There's also no point in trying to kill the minion parts, as even more will come back to replace them.
    6. Dolan, the Moon Benevodon, is arguably even worse than he was originally. While most of his attacks are fairly slow, they hit hard and cover large areas, and he can summon gravity wells that severely inhibit the movement of anyone caught in them. He also loves using a hard-to-avoid Ground Wave that goes across the entire arena and has a chance of shrinking characters. As the fight progresses, he'll start sending out multiple waves in a row, with very little room to recover in-between.
    7. Malocchio comes in a close second to the Darkshine Knight in terms of the first boss of the chosen Big Bad; while he doesn't hit hard as the fallen tin man, he compensates for being a Goddamned Boss incarnate by having his super move heal him instead of taking away your own health. His armored shield also regenerates, meaning that if you don't act fast and intercept his attacks (and use fire-based attacks to speed things up), you'll be in this fight forever.
    8. Shadow Angela, battled as Angela's Mirror Match Duel Boss to obtain her Class 4 item. Shadow Angela will spam multiple magic attacks in a row, faster than Angela could ever cast them; getting hit by one spell will usually leave Angela to get hit by every other spell in the chain. And since Shadow Angela hits like a truck, this will deplete Angela's health very fast, since Angela is a Glass Cannon. The arena is small and prone to Event-Obscuring Camera issues, even if you lock on to Shadow Angela. Even worse, Shadow Angela likes to use Annihilate, which is practically a guaranteed One-Hit KO if Angela doesn't evade it; even if Angela survives the hit, another spell chain will start almost immediately, leaving very small windows to heal. And Angela can only use items to restore her health since she doesn't get a healing spell from any of her class changes, meaning what healing Angela does have is finite. No wonder Queen Valda warns Angela that nobody has passed this trial for centuries. To put into context how frustrating this boss is compared to virtually every other boss fight in the game, this boss can take off half of Angela's HP when player!Angela a few levels over the boss with one of her magic combos... in Beginner difficulty^note This is the easiest difficulty designed to let players steamroll the game. At normal or higher difficulty she can potentially OHKO Angela. Combine this with an extremely small arena and the boss having really low downtime, and it's clear that the boss was massively overtuned.
    9. Out of the Class 4 boss fights that isn't a Duel Boss, the Revenant that guards Charlotte's Class 4 item is more difficult than the other two, as the Revenant will constantly summon more zombies for you to fight against, something the other two bosses don't do. As a result, you'll be fighting this boss for a much longer period of time while they continue to knock you down.
• That One Level:
  • Chartmoon Tower is filled with some of the toughest non-boss enemies in the game. It doesn't help that the Moon Benevodon is pretty damn hard in itself.
  • Each of the exclusive dungeons has their share of problems that will slow a party down:
    1. Mirage Palace is small, but seemingly every room has a hidden exit, and the last one inside the mansion will probably stump you for several minutes without a walkthrough.
    2. It's quite easy to get lost inside the Dragonsmaw while looking for the bosses (they're all scattered about) and trying to tell apart which roads you've already been down and which ones recently opened. There are no landmarks like the other two dungeons, it's all rock formations. Even if you run from fights, the obnoxiously long, identical, looping paths will send you running in circles. Not even a FAQ is guaranteed to help. What's worse, Dragonsmaw requires you to go through the Crystal Desert in order to enter. The other dungeons start with a maze, too, but this is particularly annoying: it's full of dead ends with enemy nests, and the sediment can send you tumbling into environmental hazards.
    3. Dark Castle is a labyrinth of corridors blocked off by countless gates. Said gates must be opened by levers, which either open or close other gates. Only the right combination of switches will enable access to certain rooms as there are pairs of doors toggled by different sets of switches. It's a formula that can make one's brain hurt.
  • Any desert level (including the aforementioned Crystal Desert) if only because of one thing: The sand. There are shifting sand tides that can force your party into a very small area (meaning they have very little ways of reliably avoiding the Area of Effect attacks even with their Artificial Brilliance in play.) What's more, you end up facing flying enemies there, which your allies have difficulty attacking when they fly over the shifting sand.
  • The Lampbloom Forest and the Woods of Wandara in the remake. These areas are filled with Goddamn Bats of the highest caliber. The Ladeebs and Queeneebs are Demonic Spiders on their own, and the chaos of battle can make it difficult to see the tell for their Class Strikes. Compounding this is the sheer amount of enemies with poison attacks - if you don't have someone who can magically heal poison you will go through Medical Herbs faster than Hawkeye can thrust a dagger. Both sections of these woods also culminate in bosses with easy access to poison abilities or minions, and both are more than happy to abuse them (the Woods of Wandara host the aforementioned Mispolm). While poison is mostly an annoyance in a random encounter, in a drag-out boss fight, it can be an outright menace, and unless you have Charlotte on hand, you risk running out of Medical Herbs and Marmpoto Oils if you take those fights lightly.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: For as much flack as Secret got for its pathfinding, the absence of the aggression meter in Trials means your wizards will keep charging into battle, wailing on monsters with their ineffectual attacks. It makes more sense to take control of Charlotte or Angela and let your teammates do the pummeling. Just set it and forget it. But this makes the single-player mode less fun. Probably helps explain why so-called "suicide teams" (i.e. no characters or classes with heal spells) are so popular.
• Tough Act to Follow: Both towards future Mana games, and the game itself experienced this. Being released in the same month as the Final Fantasy VII Remake (after its delay from March), multiple reviewers and gamers themselves expressed disappointment that the game still played like a nineties game.
  • Although for others the fact that it's a very faithful remake that's essentially the original game modernized is a huge point in its favor, especially after the more controversial previously mentioned remake.
• The Un-Twist: The Darkshine Knight is Duran's father. This is so obvious that he even calls Duran out for being too much of an idiot to notice it.

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