Okay so... Trials of Mana has a pretty good demo. There are some issues though.
Mostly voice acting. It's extremely clunky for pretty much everyone except for the Mage girl and the himbo Knight.
Kevin's va I think has been given bad direction with the lines. I get that they're trying to convey he's really bad with language but he stops and starts at weird points. Reisz's va is competent enough but her delivery feels... Forced and unnatural.
Also there's some... Kinda blatant clipping issues with the characters and their outfits at points, and also certain visual glitches that make the game feel like it came out a decade earlier. There's a certain level of polish that makes it feel kinda lazy.
The music, while amazingly faithful to the original SNES ost is perhaps just a little TOO faithful. It honestly feels just like someone took the original tracks and slapped new hd instruments on them. There's no other changes
The character models however are incredible, despite some clipping issues. While hair is just a lump of stuff on the heads with some jiggle physics, they're really faithful to the original artwork, and are extremely, and dare I say IMPRESSIVELY expressive. If only the dialogue and voice acting were up to scratch, it'd fall less flat.
Also Hawk is every bit the pretty boy he was in the original and then some. Duran is cute too. Kevin is legit badass too.
As for the girls, Reizs, Jessica (I think that's her name?? I always forget) and even Charlotte are exceptionally well rendered and animated too. Visually, the game is a real treat. The combat and movement are awesome as hell and there are so many really nice quality of life improvements that it's really worth checking out...
It just... Feels like it's let down by some really minimal effort feeling additional stuff, and whoever directed the VAs needs a slap I think.
@Nine i'm assuming it uses the same translation as the original english release? Since that was only last year i imagine they wouldn't have bothered retranslating it
@Felthry yeah probably. I never tried out the straight English release in the collection of Mana set. Just the fan translation from years back of sd3... Which... Had it's own weirdness. Though it seemed to be a pretty good translation nonetheless.
@Nine a japanese game with bad english voice dirrection? No never~ that's unheard of!
On the upside though, the gameplay has clearly received the most love and attention. It handles great, the world is beautiful and nicely detailed, exploration is rewarded with extra goodies to find in chests and on the ground, and because you can JUMP now, the world has been given more verticality in its layouts, leading to far more impressive locales and hidden objects to find.
Plus you can dodgeroll now. No more being forced to facetank boss moves!!