Trials of Mana, Part 8 - Class Changes

FALCOR THE LUCK DRAGON, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.

Now that we've got a dragon, we can torch Potos Village fly to the Mana Sanctuary (real name Mana Holy Land, previous translation Pure Land). This overworld looks very Dragon Quest XI from the air, with sky-portals for the final areas and everything.

Finally, Pure Land. "Decision Bell" returns as the music, and it looks tremendous with modern-ish visuals.

Most importantly, this is where you can class-change to tier-3 classes. So I burn through my ??? Seeds (which actually exist in this version) to get any class items I can.

IMPORTANT: Gold Item Seeds give you the best equipment available for tier-3 classes, as do Rainbow Item Seeds. However, don't use Rainbow Seeds for that. They can give you the best equipment available for the new tier-4 classes, which Gold Seeds cannot. But not until you have those classes, obviously. Point is... don't use Rainbow Item Seeds until the postgame, as they'd be a waste before then.

Here we are, the class change shrine. This is what I generally look forward to for most of my Seiken Densetsu 3 playthroughs, which is why it was disappointing when it took until like the last 5% of the game to be able to do this in the SFC version port on Collection of Mana. This time around it's the other end of the spectrum, as I'm able to do this immediately upon arrival.

NOTE: This is because it's New Game Plus, and on initial run-throughs of this remake you won't start seeing ??? Seeds until the third God-Beast dungeon onward. That said, you'll see plenty of them from then on, and it's still early enough to have your tier-3 classes for 6 of the 8 God-Beasts if you want.

Angela's dark side tier-3 classes. It's a choice between Magus, which has the wildly-OP AOE spell Ancient Curse, or Rune Seer which has...black tights. Rune Seer also gets the strongest version of Dark Force, which looks just like Dark Bomb from Chrono Trigger and does a ton of damage to bosses (unless they're strong against Dark...which quite a few lategame bosses are).

Going with Rune Seer.

Angela with a metamorphosis. BLACK TIGHTS IT IS.

Kevin's dark side class choices. For me, there's no choice besides Fatal Fist. If he goes dark side, it's generally for the express purpose of dishing out as much damage as humanly possible, which he does better than any other character in the game except maybe Angela. Downside is he has to be up close to do it, but it isn't much of a downside when he just obliterates things. Fatal Fist is insanely strong.

The boy...has become a MAYN.

Riesz's light side class choice is the easiest of the lot. Vanadis has a potent summon, but so does Starlancer, plus it has group buffs. The downside is that it isn't a very damaging class, which is very apparent when you put her next to Kevin and Angela in two of their most-damaging classes.

Riesz's BIG TRANSFORMATION. She's now...a space Valkyrie, or something like that. I think this is the best of her tier-3 outfits too.

There it is, our tier-3 class lineup. Not bad at all. It's unfortunate that the postgame of this remake is mandatory (if you want to continue onto NG+) because the new tier-4 classes really obsolete the tier-3 classes and eliminate a lot of the importance of your choice here. At least if you get tier-3 classes early enough, like I'm doing here, you can still get a lot of use out of them.

Kevin's new class strike with Fatal Fist is a massive AOE that absolutely obliterates enemies. Probably the best class strike in the entire game, including tier-4 class strikes.

Unfortunately I didn't know any better yet at this point, and planted the majority of my Rainbow Item Seeds. Oops. Gold Item Seeds are just as effective now, while Rainbow Item Seeds are much more important later.

Class armors start to roll in. Here's Riesz's best armor as a Starlancer. In the original game, these seeds would be your top tier of equipment.

Kevin's best claws. Matter of fact I was able to get all of the best-in-slot equipment for all three characters at this point. It helps that you can save-scum to an extent, so 20-30 Gold seeds is more than enough to get everything for everyone even without save-scumming that much.

Some of the class armors have huge stat increases, as they should.

Speaking of huge increases, here's Riesz's best weapon. It's nearly 50% stronger than her previous weapon.

Now that all of that is done...it feels like that should be the end of a post, but we're just getting started. Time for Mana Holyland. Where Secret of Mana was winding to a close, this game is barely past the midpoint of runtime. We've only got a few posts left, though.

At the end of the zone is the Mana Sword, which our heroes all attempt to pull. None of them can accomplish what Young Randi did, though.

Angela should make like Black Widow and go "that's a question I don't need answered" for this.

Kevin is the CH-CH-CHOSEN ONE since I picked him as the MC, and...

...succeeds. Too bad he doesn't use swords. It doesn't matter though, because nobody can use the sword as a weapon in this game.

Getting the sword summons the Mana Goddess and her giant pigtails.

She informs us that THE WORLD WILL DIE, then gives us good news:

We can summon Flammie at any time now, which makes traversing our doomed, dying world a snap!

Seriously, Kevin's new AOE is so wildly overpowered that nothing has a chance anymore as long as he has enough weapon energy for class strikes. Angela doesn't even need to unleash her overpowered Dark Force spells because there's nothing left.

Here's the point where all of the other scenario villains show up and reveal that the villain of our scenario has bested them. First up, Darth Vader.

Looks like Poor Man's Dalton got bested by Goremand and the beastmen. What happened to their sweet airship? Who knows.

Isabella (with her two best friends) is next to show up and talk about how her evil plans were foiled by a more evil villain.

Oh, she also murdered Count Dankula. Murdered him in cold blood!

...who was that guy again? Well, moving on!

A good shot of Riesz's killer Starlancer outfit.

Speaking of killer outfits... as much as I like this look on Angela, I wish it looked a little less like the outfit of a carnival barker.

Summoning Flammie gives you the same fly-down animation as in Secret of Mana, which is awesome.

Now we can go anywhere in the world, though this world feels a little on the small side. It's the problem with having a densely-packed world map. The longer it takes to reach the same place while flying in a straight line, the bigger the world feels. Secret of Evermore had the same issue, as the world took about five seconds to loop.

Our next stop is Kevin's homeland of Ferolia, which has become the base of the primary villains.

This area is now a dungeon, with some powerful enemies. Not sure if each scenario has a different dungeon here that lines up with their villains.

Riesz whips out her devastating new summon spell, Seraph. While this is a great attack, her main function in battles at this point is to drop group buffs right away and get us rolling.

The depths of Ferolia show off some sweet lighting effects.

Of course, all of this leads to the bad guys getting the Sword of Mana by holding Faerie hostage. So basically, your doofus heroes accomplished nothing by unsealing it aside from getting it for the bad guys so we could then deliver it to them. I mean, really?

Kevin delivers the sword so that Goremand can take over the world. This is absolutely ridiculous.

Oh yeah, remember Heath? He's still here. He's a little less Magus-like in this version.

"Existence is Suffering"

NIN ft. Tainted Soul

Interscope Records, 1995

Goremand disappears into a blue portal with Heath and their new sword. Well, the world is fully doomed now, but at least we saved Faerie!

The good news is that while the bad guys have unleashed the eight elemental God-Beasts (now "Benevodons", can't say anything religious-sounding), we can still run around and slay all of them to save everybody. It's sorta like when the WEAPONs get unleashed in FFVII.

Next time on Trials of Mana: Angela leaps through time.

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