These are first impressions from a game meant to last for a while, after finishing all the story content available at the moment and feeling how progression flows, my perception will surely change a lot as new updates arrive, but this is how I feel at this moment.

First and foremost, this is a gacha RPG, if you don't like the main idea of pulling characters and getting a lot of bars to put a lot of resources in to progress, this won't change your mind.

Having said that, this is an incredibly polished experience, with a nice and intriguing story so far. The battle system might not be superficially deep, with characters having just two skills and an ultimate, but I think theory crafting with team compositions is a lot of fun. At the same time considering you have to pull to get new options to build teams, it can be somewhat boring after you figured your team out and won't have any new possibilities for a while.

The greatest detail for me when it comes to Star Rail is just how little time it requires to complete the "daily grind". You can have your long sessions going through the missions or checking out Simulated Universe, but when you are just burning your stamina it is done really quickly and with very few limitations.

So far I'm very invested in the story, and curious about the future, the time commitment is somewhat low so I don't feel like it is wasting my time, and I'm having a lot of fun building my characters.

The best description I can give to Trials of Mana is: it's alright. It plays alright, it looks alright, nothing really stands out, for better or for worse.

I think most importantly, this is still an SNES game, just with a new 3D shell. I think playing it with this in mind you can enjoy it more, but even still, I think the systems here are not as great as other older RPGs.

There is also some confusing things like when you save a mana spirit and the game says you unlock their power, but in reality you'll only have mana powers way later when you can change classes for the first time.

Progression for classes, items and skills also don't feel exciting. I can't say for sure because I haven't played the original, but it feels like sticking too much to the source material might have prevented this remake from reaching its full potential.