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People in GameFAQs are reporting a relative increase in difficulty...while comparing the full game to the demo. XD

Oh, and some folks think Kevin was nerfed.

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14 minutes ago, Karimlan said:

People in GameFAQs are reporting a relative increase in difficulty...while comparing the full game to the demo. XD

Oh, and some folks think Kevin was nerfed.

I find that concerning. But oh well, I already ordered my copy based on the demo.

 

I hope Bravely Default II will do the opposite, or will have difficulty settings, because that demo was way too difficult, and I did not enjoy it one bit.

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I've barely gone through Kevin's prologue myself (work is the culprit). Got myself a copy from the eShop since I have spent money on limited editions of Xenoblade DE and Trails III.

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Got the game today. Continued playing from where the demo left off and so far Hard difficulty hasn't really been all that difficult. 

Game has been fun so far; Right now my team is Kevin, Charlotte and Duran. All three of them are Lv. 18.

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High 20s for my party (Kevin, Riesz, Charlotte). Went through first job change as well. I just might go with Angela as main on the next playthrough.

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I finished the main story with Kevin, Duran and Charlotte with Kevin as my main.

I quite like the gameplay and the characters. Their story was alright,I enjoyed how Charlotte's story developed, Kevin's was alright and Duran's plot was more or less dropped at one point but it became quite obvious at one point that some characters have more chemistry with certain villains so I expect him to get more relevant in my next run. 

The game is at its best when fighting bosses. I only have one complaint and that is that the AI can sometimes get really bad when fighting certain bosses. 

---

Now it's time for post-game content!

 

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5 hours ago, Strullemia said:

Their story was alright,I enjoyed how Charlotte's story developed, Kevin's was alright and Duran's plot was more or less dropped at one point but it became quite obvious at one point that some characters have more chemistry with certain villains so I expect him to get more relevant in my next run.

Your intuition is right: While there are six characters, there are (only) three different “paths.” Your first character defines the “path” that you will be playing.
While your units may be from each of the three different paths, if you choose two units of the same one (as you did with Kevin and Charlotte), they will have more interactions during the game and bring you a better picture of their stories.

I have yet to play this version, but I played the original many times about twenty years ago. 😜

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Finished the post game content and unlocked NG+. 

From what I read about the game the post game content wasn't included in the Original? If so that's a bit of a surprise. Both Charlotte and Kevin's stories felt somewhat natural.

Also fought the last Lv. 75 boss with my team that was 67-68 and it was still somewhat easy even on hard. I had to waste a lot of Cup of Wishes because the AI just isn't smart enough to dodge and my team almost got wiped out but I managed to go all out with skill attacks at the end and defeat the boss. 

---

I tried out NG+ but I saw right away that the bonuses you get from NG+ make the game even easier than it already and sadly you can't choose to take certain bonuses with you and reject others so I'll be starting a normal NG run. This time with Angela, Duran and Charlotte with Angela as my main character. I'll use Charlotte and Duran again because Duran and Angela are a story pair and I want to keep my final "story" run with Hawkeye and Riesz as new as possible although I might use Charlotte as a third member in that one as well. 

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19 hours ago, Strullemia said:

Finished the post game content and unlocked NG+. 

From what I read about the game the post game content wasn't included in the Original? If so that's a bit of a surprise. Both Charlotte and Kevin's stories felt somewhat natural.

Also fought the last Lv. 75 boss with my team that was 67-68 and it was still somewhat easy even on hard. I had to waste a lot of Cup of Wishes because the AI just isn't smart enough to dodge and my team almost got wiped out but I managed to go all out with skill attacks at the end and defeat the boss. r

---

I tried out NG+ but I saw right away that the bonuses you get from NG+ make the game even easier than it already and sadly you can't choose to take certain bonuses with you and reject others so I'll be starting a normal NG run. This time with Angela, Duran and Charlotte with Angela as my main character. I'll use Charlotte and Duran again because Duran and Angela are a story pair and I want to keep my final "story" run with Hawkeye and Riesz as new as possible although I might use Charlotte as a third member in that one as well. 

That's what I noticed. The bosses are never truly hard, but the AI dies pretty much instantly to AoE attacks, so you go through a lot of Cups of Wishes. In Hawkeye's story, the Door and Malocchio were particularly bad offenders. 

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19 hours ago, Strullemia said:

From what I read about the game the post game content wasn't included in the Original?

I have yet to play the new version, but, yes, the post-game content is a new addition, exclusive to this version.
 

19 hours ago, Strullemia said:

Also fought the last Lv. 75 boss with my team that was 67-68 and it was still somewhat easy even on hard.

 

19 hours ago, Strullemia said:

I tried out NG+ but I saw right away that the bonuses you get from NG+ make the game even easier than it already and sadly you can't choose to take certain bonuses with you and reject others so I'll be starting a normal NG run.

The original version was not particularly punishing, but it was not a piece of cake either, you must knew what to do or battles would take ages. This is, you needed to know the weakness of each Element/ God Beast and cast the appropriate sabres on your team (and change them during battle according to the bosses’s new forms), to cast stat-ups and stat-downs, to restore status ailments (which were so common that there even was a trick to do it with the Chibiko Hammer), and to rely exclusively on Level-1 techniques, for they were the only ones affected by sabres and the only ones which did not trigger counter by the bosses (imagine werewolves casting Death Fist on your party after every single technique of yours, or Bill and Ben chain-casting their all-screen techniques; that was certain, instant death.)

If anything, what made it easier was that most sabres, and all stat-ups and stat-downs could be purchased super cheap in the Black Market. Therefore, if you knew what to do, you could buy enough of them for various (or all) Elements/ God Beasts in advance and fill your inventory, bring prepared for all bosses ahead.

I love casting magic, but the original game was significantly faster with a party of strong physical classes (Duelist, Death Hand and Night Blade or Dark Dark Lise), even if you had no magic and no healing.

I use to beat games at relatively low-levels, never grinding, thus these preparations were a must, or I would get killed in seconds by a powerful attack. 😂

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3 hours ago, starburst said:

I have yet to play the new version, but, yes, the post-game content is a new addition, exclusive to this version.
 

 

The original version was not particularly punishing, but it was not a piece of cake either, you must knew what to do or battles would take ages. This is, you needed to know the weakness of each Element/ God Beast and cast the appropriate sabres on your team (and change them during battle according to the bosses’s new forms), to cast stat-ups and stat-downs, to restore status ailments (which were so common that there even was a trick to do it with the Chibiko Hammer), and to rely exclusively on Level-1 techniques, for they were the only ones affected by sabres and the only ones which did not trigger counter by the bosses (imagine werewolves casting Death Fist on your party after every single technique of yours, or Bill and Ben chain-casting their all-screen techniques; that was certain, instant death.)

If anything, what made it easier was that most sabres, and all stat-ups and stat-downs could be purchased super cheap in the Black Market. Therefore, if you knew what to do, you could buy enough of them for various (or all) Elements/ God Beasts in advance and fill your inventory, bring prepared for all bosses ahead.

I love casting magic, but the original game was significantly faster with a party of strong physical classes (Duelist, Death Hand and Night Blade or Dark Dark Lise), even if you had no magic and no healing.

I use to beat games at relatively low-levels, never grinding, thus these preparations were a must, or I would get killed in seconds by a powerful attack. 😂

Hmmm interesting. Seems like the remake is easier then. I've seen those Saber abilities you're talking about but I didn't have any need for them. Well there was one boss that would've been a lot easier if you put it in a confused state and from what I've heard from other people that's only possible if you damage it with a specific elemental attack/item. 

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23 minutes ago, Strullemia said:

Hmmm interesting. Seems like the remake is easier then. I've seen those Saber abilities you're talking about but I didn't have any need for them. 

That alone makes it much easier. In the original, you had to discover the elemental weaknesses of the bosses, otherwise it would take you ages to kill them (you would be doing little damage or, even worse, heal them!) That gave Sword Master Duran an edge, being able to grant elemental proprieties to the weapons of your entire party, and access to HP- and MP-recovering sabres. On a physical party, you would be doing more damage than any spell could dream of. It also made Ninja Master broken, for it could cast full-screen elemental damage and stat-downs with for cheap.

Anyway, I am glad that you enjoyed this new version. I will try it later this month (I already have it, but I want to fix some things on my Switch first.)
I played the original multiple times. The party combinations were so much fun!

Try Night Blade, it had tons of offensive spells, and Hawk looked awesome.

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Playing through this now. I'm roughly at the game's halfway point. I'm really quite charmed by this game, it seems to fully understand what drew people (or at least me) to the original game but revamped the gameplay from something which was clunky (despite admittedly being experimental/innovative in 1995) to something which is a lot of fun to play on top of it. And it still has beautiful environments (the transition from 2D to 3D), a great soundtrack, and wonderful enemy design. I'm into this.

Playing on Hard, it's not super challenging overall but does enough to keep me awake. I did actually die a couple times early (to Halocypete and Zehnoa) but not recently.

On 5/2/2020 at 8:16 AM, starburst said:

The original version was not particularly punishing, but it was not a piece of cake either, you must knew what to do or battles would take ages. This is, you needed to know the weakness of each Element/ God Beast and cast the appropriate sabres on your team (and change them during battle according to the bosses’s new forms), to cast stat-ups and stat-downs, to restore status ailments (which were so common that there even was a trick to do it with the Chibiko Hammer), and to rely exclusively on Level-1 techniques, for they were the only ones affected by sabres and the only ones which did not trigger counter by the bosses (imagine werewolves casting Death Fist on your party after every single technique of yours, or Bill and Ben chain-casting their all-screen techniques; that was certain, instant death.)

If anything, what made it easier was that most sabres, and all stat-ups and stat-downs could be purchased super cheap in the Black Market. Therefore, if you knew what to do, you could buy enough of them for various (or all) Elements/ God Beasts in advance and fill your inventory, bring prepared for all bosses ahead.

I love casting magic, but the original game was significantly faster with a party of strong physical classes (Duelist, Death Hand and Night Blade or Dark Dark Lise), even if you had no magic and no healing.

Hmm, I definitely agree with some of this, but not all. Physicals being "faster" depends on your definition; in real time you are correct, since any animations stop the battle flow. In "game time", though, magic does more damage than physicals (and benefits from hitting weakness, buffs, and debuffs in the same way, except you don't even need sabres). Only Wolf Kevin can even come close. Additionally, about a quarter of the game's bosses go through phases where they literally can't be hit by physicals due to moving or flying to some out-of-range place, but you can still blast 'em with magic then. And if you wanted to be really cheesy, there's the menu trick for magic spam which Ice Dragon already mentioned. The only disadvantage of magic (besides real time concerns) is that a few bosses had counters for it (Ludgar being the most famous), but said bosses are usually extremely weak if you don't trigger those counters.

If you use the Black Market, the best party in the original is fairly clearly Kevin, Angela, and one of Hawkeye/Riesz IMO. Kevin has the best physical DPS, Angela the best magic, and Hawkeye/Riesz provide debuffs if taken to their dark class change. This is because the Black Market can, as you noted, provide buyable replacements for healing, sabres, and buffs (debuffs could not be purchased), which sadly renders the advantages of Duran and Charlotte largely moot. I personally did not use the Black Market because I found it overpowered and reductive to the party-building choices you could make. Without it, the character choices are more balanced, though I still generally have a high opinion of Kevin and Angela for their ability to end dangerous fights more quickly.

This version is a bit different because a lot of those specific quirks (bosses who fly out of range of physicals, counters, animations stopping the battle) are either mostly or entirely gone. Magic still seems extremely powerful, though physical combos are faster now so the gap may have closed.

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5 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Magic still seems extremely powerful, though physical combos are faster now so the gap may have closed

I'm seeing playthroughs online of folks maining Angela (Magus) and obliterating everything with Ancient Curse.

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6 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Physicals being "faster" depends on your definition; in real time you are correct, since any animations stop the battle flow. In "game time", though, magic does more damage than physicals (and benefits from hitting weakness, buffs, and debuffs in the same way, except you don't even need sabres). Only Wolf Kevin can even come close. Additionally, about a quarter of the game's bosses go through phases where they literally can't be hit by physicals due to moving or flying to some out-of-range place, but you can still blast 'em with magic then.

A campaign with a physical party was at least 20 % shorter than one with a magical party. That was like 18-20 hours versus 15 hours of gameplay. Any screen would be cleared faster and “cheaper” by three physical fighters going berserk than it would be by spell casters. Enemies had basically equal Defence and Resistance. Elemental weakness granted a bonus, but it was never enough to one-hit, and by the time you cast twice, a physical party would already be done.
You are right about the untouchable bosses; one had to wait until it was reachable. But three physical units with the right sabre during those seconds dealt more damage than any combination of spells could.

I am talking by memory about something that I played twenty years ago (literally), but the difference was clear and noticeable. Trust me. I completed the game about ten times, and tried even more parties (I would save before class-changing and try other paths, but would still count the saves as one campaign.)
You know what? I even searched the original conversations that we had about this on GameFAQs many years ago, for back then there were various technical users who would give you exact numbers, but the site no longer hosts such old threads (I had not been there in over fifteen years.) Those guys would later write the technical FAQs that one can read there.
 

7 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

I personally did not use the Black Market because I found it overpowered and reductive to the party-building choices you could make.

I used it because I hate grinding and did not want to die too fast. 😂

Honestly, I class-changed right before the last God Beast, and ended the game at Level 40 or so (do not quote me on this, but I do remember searching for Seeds in that foggy desert, and there was not much left afterwards.)
God, I need to replay this! Ha, ha.

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@KarimlanYeah Magus seems kinda ridiculous. I decided to class-change into whatever seed got dropped first, but I've been very happy with getting that one. Randoms die horribly, bosses... either they barrage me with attacks all over the place and keep me on my toes (and some are very good at this!) or they give me too many openings and die. I've beaten five of the benevedons at this point, still having a great time.

@starburstClass-changing right before the last godbeast is pretty much always what I did too, though you'd have to be higher than 40 by the end since you need to be 38 to class change and then get a lot of exp in the big lategame dungeons. I think the required bosses alone would give you more than 2 levels, but not certain. (I usually just fought whatever I came across rather than stopping to grind, though I did stop to grind ??? seeds sometimes. That mechanic is better in the remake, you get one in a treasure chest in each godbeast/benevedon dungeon.) I usually finished around 51-52, which conveniently is just high enough to avoid being killed by the Deathspell used by 2 of the 3 final bosses.

 

On 5/4/2020 at 4:35 PM, starburst said:

You know what? I even searched the original conversations that we had about this on GameFAQs many years ago, for back then there were various technical users who would give you exact numbers, but the site no longer hosts such old threads (I had not been there in over fifteen years.) Those guys would later write the technical FAQs that one can read there.

Yeah, I've number-dived on this game too; the person who wrote the Technical FAQ is a friend of mine actually! You're wrong about the defences being equal; I'm looking through the notes he made on all the bosses (see this thread, scroll down to get to the bosses) and they all have more defence than magic defence, although the formulas are rather different anyway. You can also see, e.g. endgame Duran does 95 damage with his physical (unmodified) while a Level 2 spell from Angela does 431. In game time, Duran can probably attack twice in the time it takes a L2 spell to charge, but that still leaves Angela over 2x ahead (the gap widens further if you open the menu while she's charging to negate the charge time, also if you're fighting multiple targets since split spells still did something like 75-80% normal damage). Additionally, an extra physical fighter beyond one you control has diminishing returns because the AI doesn't control them as aggressively as a player would, while you can order your mage to cast from the ring menu just as well whether they're your primary controlled character or not.

You're right about real time of course. If that's a priority then you use animation-stopping things as little as possible. At that point the best party is Kevin + two characters with the job of supporting him, which should definitely include one of the debuffers. It's faster but not easier because you're actually killing bosses more slowly in game time which means they get more chances to use their best attacks.

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All Benevodons down. Have been putting off tackling the final dungeon in favor of getting 49 of the 50 Lil' Cactus spawn locations. Team is at 70 (Dark-Dark Kevin/Light-Light Charlotte/Light-Dark Riesz), and a couple of skills (Kevin's Class Strike, Riesz' Seraph) are helping out immensely in crowd control.

As far as the ??? Seeds are concerned, I found the initial ones I've gotten didn't yield the one I had wanted for Charlotte and Kevin (High Cleric and Fatal Fist respectively). Luckily I farmed for more seeds in Woods of Wandara and got what I needed.

Edited by Karimlan
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13 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

Yeah, I've number-dived on this game too; the person who wrote the Technical FAQ is a friend of mine actually!

You know MeepleLard?! What are the odds! 😱
Yeah, I was there before he wrote his FAQ. We were not friends or anything, and I used to tease him because he would go hyper technical on every single message, even when we were discussing parties lightly. But I do remember him. Zero was there too, and Ryu… God, it has been twenty years already!
 

13 hours ago, Dark Holy Elf said:

You can also see, e.g. endgame Duran does 95 damage with his physical (unmodified) while a Level 2 spell from Angela does 431.

I was mostly talking about normal battles. But in the context of boss battles, why would you use a bare attack for comparison instead of an attack with the right sabre? You would never go with bare attacks. And you are not factoring Level 1 techs, whose gauge is filled fast and is affected by sabres. By the time your magician is casting their second spell, the fighter already hit enough times to activate one Level 1 technic. More importantly, I did not say that one fighter would deal more damage than one magician, I said that a physical party would clear screens faster. The magical damage dealt should be compared to the damage dealt by Duran plus Kevin plus Hawk or Lise in the same amount of time.

Anyway, I should probably stop here, or certain friend of yours might come back with a wall of text to prove me wrong just like ages ago. 😂

Edited by starburst
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Annihilator Kevin (all-Dark) is broken. Having access to the Payback skills gives him a rebate on Class Strikes, and with the Lil' Cactus quest rewards (a ring that gives you 1% on the CS gauge while simply walking, and a Chain ability that gives you 200% on the gauge before any battle starts), he is definitely has crowd control outside of Angela and the Ancient Curse spell.

Edited by Karimlan
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On 5/6/2020 at 7:11 PM, starburst said:

I was mostly talking about normal battles. But in the context of boss battles, why would you use a bare attack for comparison instead of an attack with the right sabre? You would never go with bare attacks. And you are not factoring Level 1 techs, whose gauge is filled fast and is affected by sabres. By the time your magician is casting their second spell, the fighter already hit enough times to activate one Level 1 technic. More importantly, I did not say that one fighter would deal more damage than one magician, I said that a physical party would clear screens faster. The magical damage dealt should be compared to the damage dealt by Duran plus Kevin plus Hawk or Lise in the same amount of time.

Anyway, I should probably stop here, or certain friend of yours might come back with a wall of text to prove me wrong just like ages ago. 😂

😂 Too true. If you want me to shut up about this I happily will, I'm just enjoying being a nerd about a game I haven't been a nerd about in a very long time. 🙂

Spoiler

Sabres hit weaknesses, but so do spells, so that part's a wash (at least if we're talking about Angela. I remember seeing arguments that Hawkeye can outpace his own physical damage just by spamming shuriken, but that part would be less true against elemental weaknesses presumably). L1 techs help, but you certainly aren't getting one before a spell goes off; as mentioned, even without opening the menu to cheat, you get about two swings per spell, and you need four to charge a L1.

 

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Hawk and Kevin will both activate their Level 1 Tech before the magicians cast their second spell. In the meantime, the fighters already dealt more damage and will always clear screens faster. Just try it and you will see.
We can continue talking about this through private messages.

I have not turned on my Switch in several weeks. I need to make some time to play these games. 😮

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