I personally was hoping for new references and acknowledgement of Heroes of Mana in the remake of Trials. With the exception of Anise (who doesn't really acknowledge the actual events of Heroes either), I haven't found any. I know Heroes is far from the best game in the series, so I kinda understand why there isn't much mention. Any thoughts or interesting things that I might have missed?

So I notice we don't actually have a page for this game, despite it being the first in the series. True it has the name 'Final Fantasy' in it, but the fact is it's the first Mana game. Also lots of articles relating to it only cover Sword of Mana and fail to cover the original or Adventures of Mana, so I figure that's something to work on. Also there're a lot of bosses in FFA, and we only have a fraction (Dragon Zombie isn't here, for example). So I'd suggest directing efforts towards that.

Also we may have book citations now. Not sure.

Still learning some critical tools for getting non-web citations up and running, but we do have the [citation needed] template now. Just put {{fact}} at the end of text that needs citing. If it's extremely outrageous stuff, you can still just remove it though. {{fact}} is more for things that seem right, but need a source to verify them for sure.

On pages with multiple games, I recommend putting them in release order.

A few years ago since buying the Seiken Densetsu 3 overseas materials, I made it a bit of a pet project to want to translate the materials inside as a sort of "expansion" of the original Neil Corlett English translation and to help give further backstories and lore on the world and characters of Seiken Densetsu 3. But as we all know, this is also a hobby, and we also have our own lives to see through. Even though the epidemic lockdown and quarantine has allowed us more time on our hands, admittedly, there are also other series I have been translating for, specifically the Street Fighter and Battle Arena Toshinden wikis, and I am also not a Japanese major, infact, far from it. Translating in this case, takes up a bit more time than I would like to admit.

I was hoping to probably get a massive plethora of lore done, and to pretty much get the classes lore done as well (absolutely guilty of lacking much for Charlotte, many apologies, Charlotte fans, do I want to get to her stuff soon) before the release of Trials. The thing about it is, however, much of the equipment for the classes, and especially concerning master classes, also have insights that require using your introspection, imagination, investigation, and piecing together what mystique and workings they have for a full picture. Admittedly, Kevin's lore has written itself practically, as well as Hawkeye's, due to my interest in martial arts and Japanese martial arts, including ninjutsu; for example, the Fatal Fist (Death Hand) has its forbidden nature explained only through the Seiryuu Uniform and Sapphire Band, while requiring some familiarity to know that antagonists in martial arts genres will go down ways that the martial arts world would not find to be good in the long run, especially using one's art to attain things with force and learning forbidden techniques that are not meant to be used irresponsibly, or for more vicious styles, at all for their instantaneously lethal and cruel nature (though I am a fan of Fist of the North Star, so this can definitely go another way considering the interpretations of good and evil). As much as the official word is important, I have strongly felt since finding the series that there is an emotional core to each and every class that reflects upon each of the characters and comes to draw upon their being to help manifest them when they make the choice to go down that job path, and the findings I have made I know have come to be evidence to reinforce this fact.

Riesz's admittedly will be the hardest because her equipment and class lore are the most storied and interconnected with the Mana universe, and to especially Fa'Diel's own lore around the heavens and the Mana Goddess, yet have the greatest divides to attempt to bridge together. For example, the Rune Maiden's focus of being a follower of a forgotten god of war, that I did not get because that piece of information was in the SD3 Prologue book, which has even more extensive information on classes. I have already translated class info on the Starlancer, but even with both Guide and Prologue lore, I don't feel I'll get much until I translate the lore of their ultimate equipment. It's that much of a task.

So at the end of it all, I do admit that this will take quite a while with the pace I am going, but I still am committed to wanting to translate everything and see through my projects to the end.

@ThatOneScribe , thank you for your contributions, and I will do my best to incorporate your insights when I get to translating Duran and Angela's Light paths and Charlotte's Class paths. I like your incorporation of whimsy and fantastical interpretations from the official Trials of Mana descriptions for classes from Square's site.

To the one from this address, 75.73.174.159, thank you for your encouragement and kind words. I am glad that my work in providing expanded information from official sources on job classes and showcasing their emotional core shows people a world of wonder and potential that the Mana series has to offer not just as a game and story, but a vibrant imaginative world of its own, and to resonate with people on a more emotional and resonant level than just through tactics and usefulness as mere roles. I believe that is what the creators of Seiken Densetsu 3 really wanted to entail.

To everyone, great work and I hope you are all doing well and are safe in these troubling times. May we meet again soon.

~~~~

Barring the two specific sets of exceptions, Mana games are not in the same universe. They're completely different settings with shared themes. I've still run across articles trying to reference everything as one universe or "timeline". If you see any such references, please make sure to remove them, as we're supposed to be only talking about facts of the games as is, not inventing "game theory" fan fics.

I don't mean to come across as harsh, but a wiki is an encyclopedia, so it needs to be factual.

In the midst of the storm that is this virus, I've had way too much time to think about things, to write about stuff as I tend to do. One thing became very clear. From the professional reviewers to the lowly influencers, people are genuinely looking forward to this Friday's outing of Trials of Mana. They're not really looking forward to hearing from Charlotte. At all. And a few find little nitpicky things that just don't make sense to pick on when they don't really have much to compare them to. So I wrote to my followers on Facebook:

As a gamer, and I've been one for a long time, I cannot help but express joy and satisfaction that two storied franchises have released their latest titles. Both have been at least 23 years in the making. I have had the extraordinary privilege to play them both.



If you're expecting that I will review both, you may be waiting a while. Not in the plan. I will tell you that I played both demos in March as those came out. I was thoroughly impressed. And what I've played of the first has me wanting more. Out of concern for the resources I have, however, I wait ever so patiently for the second.

There are things—many things—I love and hate about both of these classic titles from the late 1990s. Whether it's the heart-pounding combat of a completely reimagined Final Fantasy VII or the fantastical, whimsical action and world-building of Trials of Mana, I find myself in a state of zen while I wait out the plague. As a writer, however, I can't help but think there's too much negativity way too early, even less than a week before the latter is released.  To be fair, my only complaint about the former so far is the excessive use of the word "shit". Even the original was kind enough to censor most of it.

The community around retro games seems to me far more brutal than I care for. Even the tiniest of mistakes seems to cause a huge backlash. If the voices are off, if the motion capture is out of sync by even one frame with the dialogue, then boom! Instant negative review.  Sometimes, it leads to personal attacks against developers and their supporters on social media. I don't find any fault with constructive criticism, but the things I've been seeing of late are absolutely ridiculous. "I don't want to see this guy touch this game ever again!" Yes, the voice acting is questionable, at times "howwibowe" for the game that will be released next Friday. Hell, we've got a reprise of Elmer Fudd in a girl who's supposed to be 15! And a lot of folks are docking the game based on that. What do you expect? You gave her a kind of lisp 20 years ago.  It just happens that I know someone with the same speech impediment the character has now. I can only imagine that the young lady in real life endured quite a few barbs in her time. But she's no less of a person because of it. She's actually quite smart, like her mother and her sister before her.

We've waited 23 years. Be happy with what you've got.

I've just been in contact with a manager from our Spanish-language affiliate (link below). No lo hablo myself, but given that the US has a sizable Latinx population, such an affiliate makes sense. You may be able to help by transcribing some of our articles into authentic Spanish. I have seen some scenarios where text gets plugged into Google Translate verbatim and then pasted over on the "foreign" wiki no matter the target language. Personally, I would hate that if I had to read it, because it's way off.

So, if you know enough Spanish to get around, drop on in there. Tell WFlash I sent you, and maybe drop a line to Fandom Adoption so that you can keep tabs on it. Good luck!

https://mana.fandom.com/es/wiki/Mana_Wiki

The current Secret of Mana has a bad ending, with Popoi and Flammie being lost in another world, and Mana coming to an end. What would you think of a "true ending" where the Mana Beast becomes benevolent after noticing Flammie, and chooses to adopt him. Mana persists in this world (although the fortress actually is destroyed in this case).

Took them long enough. The Mana masters finally smashed their heads together and came up with a patch to fix the Incredible Shrinking Screen glitch in SoM for iOS. The update weighs in at a paltry 193.2 MB, but rockets the minimum OS to 11.0, dropping anything earlier than an iPhone 5s and adding filler for the X and later.

Let us know what you think in the comments below. If you're now planning on downloading the game,, please be sure to rate your experience on the App Store afterward. Looks like it took a drubbing for something that was out of their hands for a bit.

Redacted

I was surprised to discover Circle of Mana's existence, and thrilled to see all the official arts on the characters that came with it. But then I noticed that only a few characters (namely, Riesz, Angela, Charlotte and Popoi being the ones I checked) that have all their Circle of Mana cards on display. I was wondering, why don't the other characters have it displayed too? Would it even be possible to find the images of those cards nowdays? I scoured the internet after them but could only find a couple of Duran ones. Kevin is my favorite mana series character, so I was really disappointed to see that he doesn't have all those circle of mana arts in his profile, haha.

I think with Trials of Mana HD coming up, and looking to release on a considerably more popular console than the previous two remakes, we really need to make a focused effort to have this wiki looking a bit better in time for that.

Things that need doing:

-standardized monster names

-character infoboxes for all characters with their own page

-fanon removal (including timeline references, as there isn't one)

-removal of analyses and non-encyclopedic content

Remember people, this is an encyclopedia, not a blog or journal or something. Pages need to stick to facts as the series presented them.

Spoiler ahead-read at own peril!

A little bit of background here, and this is not to brag; but I was extremely fortunate to be able to get a Friday pass to PAX West 2019 right here in the Seattle area. Tickets are often extremely hard to come by, so this is the first time I’ve been back in no less than three years. As it happens, Square Enix was trotting out its latest remastered demos, including Trials of Mana. This, of course, is not due till February 2020. You can say what you want about it, but hold that thought a moment while I break it down for you. This demo encompasses a small part of Duran’s scenario as leader, with Charlotte and Riesz joining in later. Compared to the few bits that I’ve seen of the original, I’d say this is mostly true to form if you were to compare Team 2 with Team 1 Duran has to find a way out of a besieged Jadd City, but the beastmen in control guard the most obvious exits. A bartender tells him to wait until nightfall, when they transform and get competitive. Easy enough: get from point A to point B to point C and collect a few treasures along the way. Riesz searches for—Hawkeye, is it?—and gets stuck there. So, Duran takes his siesta and heads out to the Rabite Forest toward Cascade Cave. As soon as the party enters, it’s a face-off with the Original Giant Enemy Crab Thing (the name escaped me in the heat of battle).

Spoiler ends here

Battles are pretty much as you expect from the series, except now you have different buttons for strong and weak attacks. You can’t leave a particular zone until all the enemies in that zone are clear; and you collect crystal power for special attacks as you land blows. But to execute special attacks requires an awkward button combination that is difficult for me as someone without the full use of his left hand; because of cerebral palsy, I have very little control over it. That very same condition also means I have to use a wheelchair to get around. There, I’ve said it. For better or worse, the admin of this wiki is a gimp.

There was an unbelievable queue to get to play the game. So I moved on to FFVIII Remastered before taking lunch. After a bit more browsing to see what was new and exciting — and there’s a lot — I came back mid afternoon and got a terminal. Needless to say, I was quite impressed. The young lady helping manage the booth was surprisingly very helpful. I wish I could find a woman after my own heart, but that’s a story for another day.

Anyhow, I decided to share my experience on Twitter, but technical limitations separated what to them is a very long thread. If you folks don’t mind, I’ll publish it here:

This one for @SquareEnixUSA, @ManaGame, @FinalFantasy and any others interested. May take a few tweets. And lest I forget, big thanks to Matisse for her patience and help in the booth today [at] #PAXWest . You, girl, deserve an Awesome pin from @DissidiaFFOO.

As a gamer with a #disability, I was honored to have experienced both #FinalFantasyVIIIRemastered and #TrialsofMana firsthand, though with queues as long as they were, I had to make two passes at the booth. Both games look spectacular for what they are. One is exactly as I remember it 20 years ago. The other looks as if it could be fantastic barring somebody messing w/ the script and gameplay. But both need options for limited dexterity such as I have with #CerebralPalsy. I have full use of my right hand, not of my left. This makes working with directional pads and left triggers exceptionally difficult. Though Microsoft has the world‘s first and only accessible controller, I find the PlayStation controller most comfortable. Been a #playstation fan since 1998. Experience is 2nd to none. [But] neither @PlayStation nor @NintendoAmerica have designed an experience that I can fully enjoy with my limitations taken into account, but I still enjoy games with solid play controls and decent stories. This is why I play games like #StarOceanAnamnesis, @FFRK_Official,and @FFBE_EN as well. They are simply easier to get to with simplified control systems. Most games, your newest included, have a long way to go to achieve such simplicity.

With this in mind, I believe the gaming industry has done little to proper[l]y address an underserved population of disabled gamers. Today alone, I’ve met no less than five. Each was having his or her own challenges, barriers to enjoying the games they know & love. With an estimated 1/4 of the American population experiencing some form of disability, is it not time that all industry leaders did more to help? Square Enix is a pioneer in story-driven gaming of all genres, and so has an opportunity to reach this specific population as so few have dared to do. Will you accept the challenge before you? #makegamesaccessible

There appears to be a dispute over what is and is not "canon" (i.e. established lore and supporting materials that explicitly define the natural order of a given text/universe/world). The best known example of a canon work is the Christian Bible. No, this is not a debate on individual editors' religion or lack of it. The Bible itself was compiled over more than a millennium, but the actual form of it was not molded until some 300-400 years after the final books were written. It took a council of hundreds to decide which books were proper Scripture, as well as what went where. Lots of candidates, but far fewer made it into the final product.

So it is also with other books, films, serials, and video games. Here, canon is not only the natural order of things, but the spirit of the material. On this basis, and with respect to the Mana series, we have one editor trying to decide both for the sake of the series, and another who wants to cut out fan speculation while holding to canon. These are extreme approaches. Let's just say that we need to find some common ground, or die trying.

We know that the canon of the Mana series was established under one Koichi Ishii, who set up his vision for the world(s), story, and gameplay almost 30 years ago. Until he exited, that vision was the series as most have come to know it. That vision somehow took a wrong turn after 2003 when an attempt at a compilation failed and two spin-off games failed to achieve recognition; and so the series fell silent.

I recall reading a post from the reboot director, Mr. Oyamada, as he took the helm to port Secret to 3D. He mentioned that he was on staff when the original Secret moved to smartphones. In the same post, he expressed appreciation for the series as a whole, possibly indicating that he may have had a further history with the series. But he also spoke of wanting to make these releases right in terms of the overall experience. To that end, he had the original material and, at least for Adventures, stuck with it, thereby holding to canon. Parts of Sword were clearly shoehorned in by comparison; that is a game I don't consider canon because a significant amount was changed, causing a departure from canon. Had Secret Advance surfaced (it didn't), one might argue that canon was being rewritten. Poor sales stopped it cold.

I won't argue that Secret 3D took liberties with its script. Oyamada added some backstory that was not in the original, in the form of cutscenes that play out when staying at an inn. But apart from the bad voice acting and other glaring mistakes, he stuck with the spirit of the original, therefore holding to canon.

It remains to be seen whether Trials will hold up to canon in 3D...

Y'all got way too much fanon on here. Some, like the timeline, were blatantly wrong. Really need to institute citations or something.