Square-Enix reveals how they decided what to keep and what to change for Trials of Mana

When updating a classic game, it's always hard to figure out how far you should go in changing things. With Trials of Mana, the challenge was harder than usual, as games have progressed so far since the original Super Famicom release. In an interview with NoisyPixel, producer Shinichi Tatsuke discussed how the team tackled the project.

We started by clearly defining what we would and would not change: we would change the graphics as well as the battle and growth systems, but we would not change the original world and characters. For example, looking at the battles, the original action battle was enjoyable, but in bringing the action battle system to the remake in 3D, I wanted to add even more, with actions like evasion, aerial attacks, and combo attacks.

Additionally, we incorporated features designed to expand upon the strengths of the original as much as possible. The biggest draw of the original was its story, which would play out differently depending on the combination of characters you chose. We wanted to dig deeper into that feature, so we added more dialogue between party members during battle and travel.