Trials of Mana, the remake/reimagining of the game formerly known only as Seiken Densetsu 3, has released the first of three character spotlight trailers showing off two of its six playable characters. The first character to be shown off is Duran, who’s the definition of vanilla. I find his personality and arc so intolerable that I’ve never been able to use him. Luckily, the second character delved into is Angela, who has one of the best arcs and the single best starting area of anyone. Her story goes that she’s a princess who’s unable to use magic in a city of magic-users, and so her mother uncharacteristically decides to sacrifice her for nefarious ends that end up being linked to one of Trials of Mana‘s villains.

I usually play as Hawkeye with Angela and Riesz as my second and third characters, but Angela’s snowy starting area makes for one of the most memorable gaming openings I can recall (and I desperately hope that the remake captures all of the original game’s inspired little touches like the lights in the trees as she flees to the nearest village). That alone is often enough to bump Hawkeye to the second position while Angela leads. For those unfamiliar with the original game, you select three characters at the beginning, and that decision dictates which story branches you’ll encounter. Each antagonist has a connection to two of the playable characters, and which one ends up being the “big bad” is determined by the first character you select. It’s an awesome system that should have caught on but didn’t because the game took 24 years to be officially localized.

Still, the Trials of Mana remake is looking like a “better late than never” situation. Seiken Densetsu 3‘s combat was always kind of awkward, inheriting many of the hit detection and physics peculiarities that Secret of Mana suffered from, but the shift from 2D to 3D appears to do it a lot of good. From the footage I’ve seen, Trials of Mana‘s combat looks a lot like a modernized, less floaty version of the combat in Dawn of Mana for the Playstation 2. I’m less enthusiastic about the voice acting and lip-syncing, both of which land firmly on the “ehhhhhhhhhh” side of things, but overall, Trials of Mana is looking like it could be a very worthwhile remake. If store pages are to be believed, it should be out on April 24th, 2020.

Trials of Mana‘s character spotlight trailer showcases Angela and Duran first appeared on Killa Penguin