Secret of Mana remake announced!

Square Enix is remaking Secret of Mana. The beloved role-playing game will be released in North America on February 15, 2018. In August 1993, the game was originally released as Seiken Densetsu 2 in Japan on the Super Famicom (SNES), but sold outside Japan as Secret of Mana.

Earlier this summer, a Mana collection with Final Fantasy Adventure, Secret of Mana, and Seiken Densetsu 3 was released in Japan for the Nintendo Switch. Now the second game in the series is headed to current PlayStation hardware and Steam.

According to the announcement, Secret of Mana "retains its long-held charm while incorporating improvements such as upgraded gameplay for modern platforms and a newly arranged musical score." The game will also include voice acting. 4Gamer reports that the Secret of Mana remake will have online multiplayer for up to three players. The Vita version will use local multiplayer.

Square Enix are also doing some unique preorder bonuses; preorders on the PlayStation store will include two sets of skins for Randi, Primm, and Popoi as well as a set of PSN avatars. On Steam, orders made between now and the end of the first week of release will get the costumes and a desktop wallpaper image. In Japan, a collector's edition will be available that will include the game, a pop-up art book, a music CD, and figurines of the main characters; orders from Amazon Japan will include a copy of the original 1993 instruction manual. No word yet on whether either of those two options will be available in the West.

You can pre-order now at the SoM English site. There is also a nice Japanese website.

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Given that I never played the first one, I have to check this out.

never played the first one?! If you ever do so, hope you got the patience to play a gb no color game that plays similar to legend of zelda. I certainly had the patience and its worth trying out for sure. Especially since seiken densetsu 1 uses some designs that were originally planned for ff2 nes and sprites of characters look like ff nes designs overall. Sumo, the lead character looks like a greyscale fusion of link and the fighter field sprite. Fuji looks similar to Elia/Aria in her ff3 nes appearance. The Dark lord looks like Dark knight job class from ff3 and so on.

I think @Turbotastic was reffering to Secret of Mana, the first North American game, which was supposed to have a sequel with same name for Super Nintendo (Seiken Densetsu 3 in Japan). As for the original Seiken Densetsu, are the GBA remake Sword of Mana or phone remake Adventures of Mana any good?

gba sword of mana shifts up how the story goes and trys to replicate gameplay of seiken densetsu 2 and 3 while also incorporating elements from the psx mana game. The mobile one is faithful to the original while still enhancing the overall gameplay

Yes, I was referring to the SNES game. However, I haven't played many games of the series.

The only Mana game I played was Sword of Mana.

Well this is certainly news to me. Secret of Mana is one of my first loved and most cherished games. I still remember the first time I beat the second boss and was overwhelmed with happiness and rushed off to brag to my parents. About the remake -- I can only hope that they include some if not all of the left out content that was scraped in the final version, or I could care less about this remake. Graphics update alone is not worth getting hyped up over imo; Secret of Mana has some of the prettiest graphics of any snes game. Also, they say there's a new soundtrack?! New or remastered, I'm not really sure... but one thing SoM doesn't need is a new damn soundtrack. There was a LOT that was left out of the original game, and with all these years I'd hope they'd meet the fan's needs of getting that lost content back into the game, or else what's the point.

This makes me excited, happy, nervous, and sad.

I'm worried it'll be another flopped remake. Of course, if its NOT... I probably won't be playing it any way, cause no PS4/PSV.... maybe PC release at some point?

I actually never finished the original even though it influenced a lot of my personal fantasy settings in my younger years.

Graphics update alone is not worth getting hyped up over imo; Secret of Mana has some of the prettiest graphics of any snes game. Also, they say there's a new soundtrack?! New or remastered, I'm not really sure... but one thing SoM doesn't need is a new damn soundtrack. There was a LOT that was left out of the original game, and with all these years I'd hope they'd meet the fan's needs of getting that lost content back into the game, or else what's the point.

I don't think this is your regular SE cheap remaster. It seems a lot more work is put into this than as an example the FFXII PS4 remaster. I like the graphic style and it fits the original game style as well. I'm pretty sure the soundtrack will be a remaster, with maybe an extra song or two? PS4 Network play is also really cool. The rest like special character outfits is a bit accessory..

I'd like also the lost content being put back in the game, it would be a big plus but that is not the only reason for me to buy or not buy this game.

I'm worried it'll be another flopped remake. Of course, if its NOT... I probably won't be playing it any way, cause no PS4/PSV.... maybe PC release at some point? I actually never finished the original even though it influenced a lot of my personal fantasy settings in my younger years.

Same here. For me it's just a PS4 game that I did not saw possible to have so I'll take everything coming since I own a PS4. I have never owned the game until 2009 on real hardware but as a kid I've rented it a few time and was never able to finish it. However it was a really good game and made me play Secret of Evermore later so it had an influence.

BTW, there will be a Steam version ;)

Secret of Mana was my first RPG and first Squaresoft game, and what ultimately got me hooked on Squaresoft games. It's still a good game but it does have glaring flaws. I don't really have high hopes of the devs making an improved version, gameplay-wise. The updated graphics look nice and the style is pretty faithful to the original designs, but those voiceovers are terrible. I hope they can be turned off.

What SoM really needs is some updated gameplay. Besides a wealth of bugs that needs to be fixed, the terrible hit detection and hit stacking mechanics should be addressed. One of the best features was the multiplayer mode, but the ring menus broke that by pausing the game. I hope that's addressed too, and of course the multiplayer needs to be online and modernized. Letting people team up with their own characters to cooperatively clear parts of the game on a higher difficulty would be neat.