Trails of Mana: Riesz

I played Secret of Mana a few years back, shortly after the remake was announced. I’ll be honest, I kinda didn’t like it. I saw the charm and how everyone could love it, but I found it mediocre. Maybe it's because I played it alone, but I thought it was more tedious than fun. When I announced this to the world, one of my friends told me the third game was better. Trails of Mana remaster came out a few months ago, and it looked fun! It inspired me to try my hand at the SNES version, and here we are. The music further encouraged me! I played a little bit of it a few months ago, during lockdown, and only played it for two hours before deciding to start this blog. It was an enjoyable experience, but I wanted to go a different route at the time. But now I’m back on the hype train, ready to give this a full shot.

As the title suggests, my main character will be the Amazoness, Amazon from henceforth, Riesz. My secondary will be Angela, for the magics, and Durran, for the tanks. I also think Riesz and Durran have the same enemy, so there’s a good connection. Angela just seems like the one I’d connect with the most, which is why I’m not running with Charlotte, the healer, or Kevin, the monk. Backstory aside, at least until the memorandum, let’s get on with it.

We start in the cliffs of Laurent, where a group of warriors has come for reasons dealing with the wind. Laurent is the Kingdom of Wind and is nearly impenetrable due to the strong winds around the castle. Riesz is the princess and priestess of Laurent, as well as the captain of the Amazon Warriors. Main character syndrome, I guess. Her Amazon warriors have come here to train, I guess. It’s not really stated why, but she sees a lone monster, and a fight ensues.

 It's somewhat hard. The fight is primarily an introduction to the combat system, which is an action focused, hack-and-slash type thing that mixes some turn based features in. You can’t spam the attack button, for example, or not if you want to deal full damage. If you hit something four times, you gain access to a special skill that does four times the damage. Ultimately, the wannabe boss fight is more long than hard, and the bird dies in due time. After the battle, Riesz says that the monsters have increased lately, and she can hear the cries of the wind.

We then go to the castle, where Riesz is looking for her younger brother, Elliot. He’s late for his training, so she goes looking for him. The first person I find is her father and king, Joster. She asks if he’s seen Elliot, to which he responds that that’s a dumb thing to ask a blind man. I approve of the humor so far. King Joster says he can sense his son on the castle grounds, and we continue our search. When the proper conditions are met, we see more backstory on the family. The Queen died giving birth to Elliot. This event greatly affected Riesz, who, after she cried as much as she could, turned those feelings into a positive and became a surrogate mother to him. We then see a scene where Elliot is talking to a shadow that soon reveals itself to be a magician. The magician turns into two and begins to manipulate the young boy into leading them to a sacred altar beneath the castle. Riesz may not know, but we do, so we guide her there.

While there, the magicians scare the boy and force him to turn off the winds that protect Laurent. They start by promising he’ll see his mother before outright threatening him, which he, being a small child, responds to and turns off the winds. Riesz shows up a minute too late. Before she can do anything else, the magicians, Bil and Ben, remind her that her blind father is missing his protector. What a terrible time for the country of Nevarl to now siege the castle. Riesz and Elliot leave, but Elliot trips and is left behind. The thieves kidnap Elliot. We can return, but we only gain minor dialogue where Riesz laments her predicament and blames herself.

She then rushes to her father, who tells her he knew this day would come but could do nothing to stop it. Something is wrong with the Mana in the world, and the priests in Wendel are the only ones who can help. He then dies of injuries before his daughter's eyes, with his last words being to save Elliot.

We then have a SNES cutscene showing Riesz leaving the castle and asking her mother for guidance. The winds return but far too late. Riesz travels down the cliffs and crags of her homeland before reaching a nearby village and sails to a town called Jadd. The credits roll, and the Final Fantasy Overture plays for some reason. The tutorial is over, and we’re on our own.

Jadd has been taken over by Beastmen, who don’t allow us to leave. Several citizens tell us the Beastmen become feral at night, which would the time to escape. We’re then introduced to the concept of time. In a SNES game? This would have blown my mind twenty-five years ago. While in town, we see the two characters I’ll be traveling with later, but they don’t join yet. I wonder if it’s happenstance they’re here now? To advance, sleep at the inn until night, or enter and exit a building when the lights go down. When it’s time, the guardsmen turn into animals that are easily dispatched. We then wander around the Rabbite Forest, trying not to kill the adorable rabbites because they’re adorable.

We head south until we come to the town of Astoria. To the northeast of the town is a cave we need to go to first. Try to enter, and we’re repelled by an unseen force. Return to the city and talk to various NPCs. One mentions seeing a light over the lake last night and wonders if he’ll see it again. Here, I make a minor mistake. I traverse more of the Rabbie Forest, killing the now waken rabbites I just claimed to love, and come to a place I’ll be back to soon. There’s nothing here now but the same NPC and dialogue. I got to level three, so it’s not all a waste. The way to progress is to stay at the inn overnight. In the middle of the night, we’re awoken by a bright light. We chase after it until we come to where I just was. The light reveals itself to be a fairy. Fairy mentions the Mana problems and says she’s out of energy. She then, sorta, possesses Riesz...but in a friendly way. A red light then appears from Astoria. We travel back and see the city in ruins with no survivors. Riesz and Fairy assume it’s the Beastmen.

They then travel back to the cave, and we see Angela there. She says the cave is blocked. Riesz says she can open it, Fairy does, and Angela joins up.

She gives us her backstory, which is a trounced version of what her tutorial would be. Her mom sucks, Angela got kicked out by an evil foreign mage, she gets minor amnesia, finds her way to Jadd, and is now here. We saw her sleeping in the inn there, so it checks out. Oddly, Angela says she’s not a dedicated mage.

Anyway, the three make their way through the Cascade Caverns until they stumble upon a child named Charlotte. She’s one of the could-be characters, so we get her backstory. She has the hots for one of the priests in Wendel and chased after him when he left. He was attacked, tried to save him, failed, and was locked out of her home in Wendel. When we opened the cave, she followed in and fell off a cliff where we save her. She has an annoying accent. Lotte runs off, and we casually go to Wendel.

After getting better gear, we go see the Priest of Light. The two characters ask for help in their overarching plots, with Angela being a bit snotty before Fairy pops out and says that the Mana Tree is dying. This then takes full precedence. The priest says that we need a hero to travel the world, going from Mana Crystal to Mana Crystal and repair everything. If we combine all the powers of the Mana Spirits, we should be able to venture into the Land of Mana and find the Mana Sword. The Mana Sword can save us all, somehow. The topic of Benevodons, ancient mana beasts, is also brought up. This likely means fighting a big bad boss somewhere, too. As luck would have it, the Light Mana Crystal is in the Cascade Caverns.

As we return, we see Charlotte beg us to let her join us. Had I picked her, I assume this is where she’d join us. Instead, we break her heart and leave her behind. We reach the deeper areas of the cave after Fairy siphons magic from a waterfall, allowing us to fly across small gaps between ledges. We continue on until we meet the first real boss of the game.

This dude is hard, man. Focus on its head and give your characters diabetes pounding candy, what this game calls potions. Angela died to poison, so bring some poison heals, too. I accepted Angela’s death and soloed the Fullmetal Hugger. Afterwards, we meet the Spirit of Light, Lumina. Fairy informed them of the plot while we were fighting vis telepathy, and Lumina teaches Angela some spells. I think. I didn’t check, honestly. I have a strange relationship with mages that I’ll get into somewhere else. With one spirit down, we start the search for the second. On our way out, we’re ambushed by Beastmen, who push us to the bottom of the cliff and kidnap us. They thank us for opening the cave to Wendel, and we switch to Fairy’s backstory.

She and three friends set out one day from the Forest of Mana to find the hero needed to save the world. Three of her friends had to return as their powers began to wane. She ended up alone until she found us. She needs our body to survive because of how low Mana levels are. Her form cannot subsistence in such conditions. The priest in Wendel also said we’re stuck together forever now. I hope she’s nice.

We return to Riesz and Angela, stuck in prison. We’re not there long as Durran tricks a guard into freeing him and then opens the door for us. With the first Mana Spirit aligned with us and a jailbreak about to happen, I called it a night.

I almost didn’t want to stop playing, and if I had read the Star of Bethlehem couldn’t be seen at 1 AM, I might have continued. Instead, I’ve been here for two hours, so good night.