| Name of the file: Trials of Mana Cheat Codes - Author: DAV |
| Cheat Codes: ------------ Submitted by: David K. Tips & Tricks for Beginners: ---------------------------- Written by to dream * Dodge! Even normal enemies can blast through your health if you just try to stand and tank the damage, let alone a boss. * Red circles can lie. A number of normal enemies, and bosses, project a red circle when they are doing a special attack, but sometimes the circles aren’t as large as the area they do damage in. An example might be the Cooper Knight, whose spin in place move seems about 25% larger than the circle they telegraph it with. Don’t try to game the system by staying just outside the circle until you realize how big it is. * Don’t skip equipment shops. I have opened a lot of chests, smashed a lot of pots, and picked up a lot of sparkles, and the rarest thing to see out of those has been equipment. You’ll usually have an excess of money anyway, so always stop and buy when a new shop appears. * Tailor you item wheel. You cannot use items from a menu in this game, you must equip the item to your item wheel or item quick-menu before you can use it. While some items should always be on the wheel (heals and cups of wishes) tailor the other slots to the area you are in. For example, when exploring a wind cave, equip your earth coins and earth claws. * Talk to unique NPCs, a lot. Many unique NPCs give you new chain moves for your party. Most duplicate chained moves you can learn from training, but this can give you extra copies so you don’t have to level someone down a stat you don’t want to. * You can pay to respec your training. This won’t appear until a while in, but the town that this is available in is a hub for its chapter. * Spells have their own wheel. When controlling a character with a spell, there is a menu command that sends you to their spell wheel. On controllers, this is down and right on the same control that brings up the item wheel. * You can avoid some fights. Not all of them, but some monster groups can be walked past if you give them a wide berth. * Handle the shields yourself. These shields, visible when you strike an enemy and visible as an icon to the right of their health bar, makes these enemies immune to damage until you hit them with a fully charged power attack or a class skill. The party AI will eventually do this, but not until wasting a lot of time. When you start a fight with such enemies, take a moment to break all the shields so your party can skip straight to the damage. * The party AI will use heals, but not until usually too late. They don’t seem to judge how much damage an enemy is doing, and ignore healing themselves when they are above a certain threshold, even when they could be one-shot at their current HP. * Use your class skills, don’t save them. If you are doing well in combat, you will recharge your CS every 2~3 normal fights. You will fully recharge several times during boss fights, even without breaking the CS pots scattered around the arenas. Try to always be charging a CS gauge and you will make a lot of fights much shorter. * The AI is "usually" pretty good at dodging. During a boss fight, if a huge red mark appears but your teammates keep wailing on the boss without trying to avoid the attack, it’s probably because this attack can be cancelled by doing enough damage (there should be a blue health bar either on the boss, or on something he summoned during the attack that you need to deplete) so you’d better help them! Secret boss fight: ------------------ To fight the secret boss, first complete both the Dark Stone Benevodon dungeon and sub-boss mission of your first main party member (for example, if you chose Duran as you main character, you must complete both Crystal Desert and Dragon's Maw). Then, instead of going to the Sanctuary Of Mana, return to the entrance of the Dark Stone Benevodon's dungeon. Once there, you will now see a statue of a Black Rabite. Examine it to teleport to the sub-boss area again. A warning message about a powerful enemy that lies ahead will appear. Proceed to fight the game's toughest boss, the Black Rabite. Character Story Pairings (How It Works): ---------------------------------------- Written by Anna_Maniac The game has a "pairing system" that ties into how the story is presented, this guide explains in detail how it works. -=How It Works=- Trials of Mana is a game that is meant to be replayed, with a large focus on replayability by means of making certain content exclusive depending on which characters you picked for your party. Each character has their own storyline that can only be experienced if you select them as your Main Character, for a total of 6 possible storylines (well, sort of), meaning that any characters that are in your Companion 1 and Companion 2 slots will not have their story play out in your playthrough... with one exception that is the pairing system. Certain characters form a "pair" where they share common story elements and what main antagonist they'll face at the end. What this means is that the game doesn't truly have 6 possible storylines, but rather it has 3 storylines with differences based on which character from a "pair" is the Main Character. Respecting the pairing system is crucial if you want to have a lot more story and character interaction scenes, basically for a richer story experience. The three pairs (and thus storylines) are as follows: * Duran and Angela * Hawkeye and Riesz * Kevin and Charlotte In order for the pairing to work correctly and be actually counted as a pair, one of them MUST be your "Main Character" while the other MUST be your "Companion 1". Meaning that even if you have two characters that form a pair in your party but for example only have them as "Companion 1" and "Companion 2", they won't count as a pair and you'll miss out on all the extra story scenes that would've come from that. Likewise the same is true if you make one of them the "Main Character" but the other one your "Companion 2", again the pairing won't count and you'll miss out on extra scenes. The way it plays out if you have characters that form a pair is that the main story will still follow the general script of your Main Character's story, but the paired character in your Companion 1 slot will actively partake in that story due to shared goals and plot points, resulting in a lot of extra scenes. That means that if you want to see most of what the game has to offer in terms of story you'll need to play through it a minimum of three times, once with each pair, however there's still differences even in a pair based on who the main character is so if you're a completionist it's worth trying out both permutations of a pair, for example Duran as Main and Angela as Companion 1 and then Angela as Main and Duran as Companion 1. Now that you know how the pairing system works, you might wonder where this leaves your Companion 2 character. The way Companion 2 works when you've already got a pair is no different from the way the character in Companion 2 slot normally works, meaning their primary function is only to round out your party for gameplay reasons and only offer minor interjections and commentary during story. As such you'll generally want to pick a character that compliments your current pairing, for example in a Duran and Angela pairing, Charlotte as your Companion 2 will generally offer the most well-rounded party setup due to her role as a healer/support character. New to this remake in terms of dialogue are also "All Boys" and "All Girls" parties, which while nowhere near as robust and extensive in narrative as the Pairing System, will also offer their own unique minor dialogue that you can't see otherwise. They are quite self explanatory in that your party must be composed exclusively of male (Duran, Hawkeye and Kevin) or female (Angela, Riesz and Charlotte) characters. Just to reiterate, be warned that they don't share narrative or have any unique scenes like paired characters, only have extra unique minor dialogue. |