Hollywood knows plenty about remakes. The video game industry is treading a similar path. With hardware upgrades that produce more lifelike visuals, publishers have found success in remaking older games. Capcom has made a mint with the "Resident Evil" series and Blizzard has dabbled in it with its real-time strategy games, but the publisher that has the most to gain with remakes is Square Enix.

The company sits on a trove of games that could benefit from a modern retelling. Look no further than "Final Fantasy VII Remake."

One of the gems that Square Enix has recently produced is "Trials of Mana," the third entry in the Mana series. It was released in Japan, but the Super Nintendo title never made it to American shores. Well, that is until the publisher picked Xeen to remake the chapter from the ground up.

It was the right move given the poor reception of the "Secret of Mana" remake. From the outset, the developers modernized "Trials of Mana" for a new generation. The game unfolds differently from the other entries with six potential protagonists that players choose in the beginning. They pick a main hero and two supporting cast members.

Once that's done, the campaign unfolds with a distinct story line. I picked Duran, the prototypical sword-wielder, and backed him up with Angela, a mage, and Riesz, a valkyrie-type support character. The game weaves their stories together and I discovered that the other heroes that I didn't pick had crucial roles in their respective kingdoms.

Despite being based on a 25-year-old game, "Trials of Mana" feels updated while maintaining its inherent nostalgia. Players jump from town to town, with each new locale offering better equipment for the road ahead. Meanwhile, players level up their heroes and craft their roles in the party.

While the final third of the campaign proves anticlimactic, the team behind "Trials of Mana" mixes just the right amount of 1990s nostalgia that lets the remake feel as if it's part of that era while improving the combat mechanics so that it doesn't feel out of place in this current generation. It transports gamers to not just a fantasy world but to a different time altogether.