Heroes of Mana - scenario by Masato Kato.

But really... the important thing here is the possibility of a new Mana score by Shimomura, which just has me tingling with glee.

No announcement in her blog.. yet.

I don't know if she has the time though, as FF Versus XIII seems like a huge game which probably means a shitload of music. But then again, I guess she did Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time and Kingdom Hearts II simultaneously..

The thing about FF Versus XIII, though, is that I think it's probably a looooooong way off.  They've shown quite a bit less of it than of just normal FFXIII.

Well, TGS 2006 is just around the corner As well as the Wii conferences.. I definitely feel excitement in the air!

Maybe they can actually make a good Mana game again?  Or is that just silly talk?

Anyway, I hope this one gets a real soundtrack and doesn't get relegated to iTunes like Children.

Of Xenogears and Chrono Cross? I wonder how that'll jive with the Mana universe.

But YES, Shimomura doing Mana again is cause to get pumped. When is this puppy coming our way?

Also worth noting is that this game is an RPG/Strategy and not an Action/RPG.

The hero will be the "contact" for the Mana Tree, one of the main villains will be his father in some form, etc, etc...

Shimomura is good news.  Legend of Mana ftw.

I'm not sure how to feel about the SRPG thing.  I like SRPGs, but it seems like it'd be a odd change for the SD series, seeing how it has always been action/RPG.

Pass on Kato (maybe...he's hit or miss...Easily better than Kawazu, who did LoM), vote yay on Shimomura, vote yay on the SRPG thing. I'd prefer Kikuta, but I love LoM's OST, so it's not a noteworthy drop-off.

I was never in love with LoM's battle system and I love SRPG's, so this sounds like a cool change to me.

It is nice to see Square remember they have more than 1 franchise (I'm including Final Fantasy in with Kingdom Hearts in that statement).

Bah... SRPG.  There goes my interest in the game.  Probably good, seeing as I always manage to get excited for Mana games and then don't actually like them when I play them... knowing it's a genre I don't do in advance helps prevent that from happening!

Anyway, I'm certainly hoping for a CD release!

Guys, it's not a Disgaea style SRPG. It's an RTS, probably with action-RPG combat mixed in.

Everyone seems to be forgetting Kato already did a DS Mana game, and the plot was as bland and threadbare as can be.

It would take a lot for Shimomura to return to LoM form, and another churned-out handheld game isn't going to do it.

Every once in a while a post on this forum will just leave me speechless.  I'm not sure whether to start with questioning why the handheld aspect of the game is going to detract from its quality or why Shimomura's quality would be affected by the programmers making the game.  I mean, come on, Legend of Mana, while the score and art direction are brilliant, is not exactly the pinnacle of good gaming.

...I love LOM.

-Joshua

To be fair, I've played every Mana game released in English thus far and Legend was the only one I managed to play all the way through, so that probably says something.  Even still, I'd be hard pressed to say it's a really good game. 

We'll see. I haven't been impressed with Shimomura since LoM.

Pretty much my thoughts...Kingdom Hearts has been pretty bare, music-wise. It's bad when I think her best work for the series are arranges of "Under the Sea". LoM, on the other hand, was quite the little masterpiece.

I always wanted to like the game, but I could never get into it. The combat seemed a little too button-mashey for me and the hit detection was funky (plus I never saw the point of HP regenerating after each minor skirmish)...I think I restarted it about 6 times and the most I ever got was three hours into it.

She did some decent stuff for the KH series but they always seemed overshadowed by the Disney remixes and the increasingly crappy synth. Neither soundtrack is one I can listen to all the way through (unlike LoM).

LoM had problems. I didn't care for the game because it was short and the story was unsatisfying. I'm not saying the stories for the past games were masterpieces (they weren't) but they always had a purpose whereas LoM felt like a bunch of disconnected skits. The battle system was okay but it was way way way WAY too easy. All the bosses were pushovers.

Uh, that's because it was. That was the point of a game. It's a storybook. The story wasn't supposed to be in the overarching plot, but in the details of the character's lives. And if you thought the game was too short, you were probably rushing it.

Anyway, if Shimomura is handling Heroes of Mana....do you think she's also handling the soundtrack for the PS2 Chain of Memories remake? Even if it's only an upgrade to the cheesy sound quality of the regular KH games, I can't wait to hear some of the COM tunes (like the Castle Oblivion themes and the penultimate battle theme)..

On topic of the Seiken Densetsu series, Ryuchi Sakamoto is composing the main theme to Seiken Densetsu 4: Dawn of Mana.

It didn't work for me. That's probably because I didn't find any of the characters to be that interesting.

Wait a minute, they're remaking the entire game?
I thought they were just including the battle system as a sub-game in KH2 Final Mix!?

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/tgs06/titles/kh2fm/

It says it's a "full remake", but I was wrong, it's not a seperate game.

Chances of coming out in US much lower

Holy Shit, they're including the ENTIRE GAME!?

This just made the top of my most wanted list.

Well, I'd be interested to see how they handle the voice issue. I mean, Sora's VA alone sounds almost nothing like KH1 Sora, which CoM is supposed to be immediately after, and it's not like you can ask the voicer to just regress through to the other side of puberty.

Well, as of yet it's only been announced for Japan, and since both Sora's sound exactly the same, there shouldn't be a problem.

The American Sora for KH1 was done by Haley Joel Osment right?
Did they use someone else for KH2, or did his voice just break or something?

Same actor. Poor kid hit puberty.

That's right.  And besides, the game has three independent plot arcs that I enjoyed quite a bit.  You've got the Jumi/Jewel Hunter story, the Larc/Draconis story, and the Matilda/Irwin story.

I always wondered that - was Sora voiced by the same person in the Japanese version or did they just have a girl do his voice initially or something and an older guy to do the second one?

As for the Chain of Memories thing, the booklet from TGS seems to indicate it will be a two disc set, so presumably one disc will be Chain of Memories and one will be KH2.

Uhhh.....he was voiced by the same GUY for both games.

That's what I was questioning - being that I didn't know for sure and young boys are often voiced by women in the world of Japanese voice acting, I wouldn't think it's too far fetched to have wondered if they did the same for younger Sora.  But apparently not!  And wow, that kid actually has done a lot of stuff, I see now that I've looked it up...

A trailer for Heroes of Mana has been released, and the tune that accompanies it is kind of....Legend of Mana-lite. Nothing I would listen to outside a game, but it sounds like Shimomura, sure enough...

*crosses fingers and hopes for something real special*

I like the idea of it being an RTS instead of yet another Tactics game, but damn does it look confusing in that video.  As for the music, I can't tell if that's Shimomura or not, but it sounded like very generic trailer music, so here's hoping it's not.

Edit: Just saw this: http://www.the-magicbox.com/0609/game060924i.shtml

Note the two screens with the SD3 characters and screen layout.  I'm not sure how this figures into the game, but now my curiosity is piqued more than ever (SD3 has always been my favorite of the SD series despite the language barrier).

This is a direct sequal to SD3, so they are probably in "what happened before" cutscenes.

-Joshua

The trailer music sounded exactly like Shimomura, but it's probably just made for the trailer. Anyhow, since it's a SE NDS game, a soundtrack is likely..