Fans of the original Secret of Mana did not like the remake because it was a cheaply made cash grab by Square that failed to do justice to the original. Tam is right to the extent that Square should have done justice to the original while addressing shortfalls in gameplay—but they did neither of those things.
There is an excellent YouTube video that highlights many of the remake’s deficiencies, but I will try to summarize here:
Keep in mind that Square remade Adventures of Mana on mobile and sold it for $14. The SoM remake had a similar level of quality, used many of the same mobile assets and was sold for several times more. The graphical detail and attention to detail in the original SNES release was vastly superior to the remake. The character models in the 3D version were cheaply made. The voice acting was horrific—on par with Arc Rise Fantasia. A cheap remake like this would have been better off with text boxes instead of trying to voice every single character by using the same few voice actors. Character mouths were not animated which was weird and creepy because the game keeps focusing on them as their speaking. The audio in general was a disaster. The SNES version has one of the best soundtracks of all time. The remake’s soundtrack alternated between shrill, sappy and cheesy. Sure you can switch back to the original soundtrack, but given the cheap visuals in the remake, why bother buying this?
AI was not improved at all in the remake. In many ways, it is worse because you cannot set character aggressiveness to same degree as original. This results in your party getting stuck and dying more often. Bosses were made much, much easier and the remake has almost no challenge.
In short, those of us who love the original Secret of Mana disliked the remake because it is the most expensive, worst way to experience the game.
