Seriously, though, I had no idea the Trials of Mana remake was crammed so full of sexy fanservice. I guess I just never expected a SNES game to be interpreted this way. And I really didn't expect a mainstream-ish game released in 2020 to have so much blatant T&A. Why didn't anyone tell me? I would have played it on Switch years ago instead of finally playing it now thanks to Xbox Game Pass.
You can watch a video version of this article below - using the same script - so jump down there if you don't want to read.
Usually, a game with so much fanservice like this gets a thread on ResetERA where some white knight feels the need to warn everyone else about scary boobies and tell everyone they're not allowed to play it anymore, at which point I go and buy that game immediately out of spite, but that didn't happen with Trials of Mana for some reason.
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What fanservice am I talking about? Well, the game has six playable characters and you choose a party out of three of them at the beginning of the game. I, of course, chose the two sexy ladies (and the runt) because, hey, they looked amazing. I honestly probably wouldn't have even played it if those two - Angela and Riesz - weren't so prominently featured in the trailer for the game, but I was all like "Wow, they look crazy great and I need to play this".
All of the women in this game wear hilariously revealing outfits. Not just your party characters, but other story characters, some enemies, NPCs, and more. They all have crazy cleavage and / or side boob just hanging out, and it's awesome. In a somewhat stunning show of restraint by the developers, most of them actually have appropriately realistically sized boobs and not typical giant anime juggs, which I appreciate.
So, Angela is the scantily clad princess of a magical kingdom where all of the mages are mostly identical scantily clad hotties. Riesz is the scantily clad princess of a different kingdom where all of the soldiers are mostly identical scantily clad amazon warriors. Angela's mother is the scantily clad True Queen. A major villain in the game is the scantily clad, and busty, Belladonna and she's really awesome. A ridiculously cute fairy is the main driver of the story. There's a shady underground night market early on where you can watch a surprisingly great sexy dance routine. There's a whole class of enemies that is literally just "bees but with sexy lady bodies". This game just went nuts with fanservice.
As you play through the game you can change your character class, and their outfit changes with each different class. If you choose the dark upgrade path, the last couple of costumes for Angela and Riesz are simply outstanding.
How is the game itself? I'm liking it. I never played the original Seiken Densetsu 3 - even though the translated ROM has been available forever - so I have no real frame of reference for how the remake is. It's an action RPG, though, so I'm into it.
One thing that is impossible not to notice is that it must have had an incredibly small budget. It seems to be about 50/50 where some things were done to intentionally pay homage to the origianl release, but they also just didn't have much money to do much more. Things like every village having the same wizened old man and identical shopkeepers - who all do the same silly dance all day long - are obviously homages to the old days, but they kinda seem out of place in 3D. When your characters travel via being fired out of a cannon and their models just spin through the air is another throwback that just kinda seems corny. I do like the presentation overall. It's just surprising to see a modern Square Enix release where slick visuals and endless cinematics weren't the main focus. I honestly love that about it because I don't actually like the way too cinematic turn JRPGs have taken over the last 25+ years.
One other thing that can't be ignored is that the voice acting is pretty atrociously bad. Angela's delivery is just awful, but everyone else is just as bad. Strangely, I actually like Charlotte's cutesy speech impediment - she talks like a little girl version of Elmer Fudd. Other capital G Gamers like to hate on her, but they've probably never actually been around little kids before. Charlotte is charming and endearing, darn it.
There was one moment where I entered a snowy area in the game and Charlotte asked the other two if they were too cold because of their skimpy outfits, to which the others just replied with excuses and stammering and couldn't really answer. I love scenes like that where a game knows exactly what the player is thinking and then bluntly addresses it.
This isn't meant to be a review, though, I just wanted to show off how ridiculously fanservicey the Trials of Mana remake is, and how that fact seems to have slipped through the cracks over the last few years since it was initially released. I like fanservice, dammit. I also would have never played it without Game Pass, so good get Xbox and good job Square Enix finally figuring out Sony moneyhats alone aren't enough to pay the bills.
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