It's a little cheap-looking, but as long as the Vita game allows you to switch off the mobile touch play (and it sounds like it does, or at least it allows button play if not a full removal of the touch graphics?) then I'm happy to have this be the start of something on Vita. Square could have put its iOS ports on Vita for a long time now (Chrono Trigger and all those FF remakes would have been great additions to the platform,) I hope this helps put Vita in that same space of the workshop.
The screenshot shows it running at 20 fps on Vita.
Yeah, nice catch... not promising there either. These ports are probably on Unity (Square used it for its FF remakes, right?), I know relatively little 3D Vita games on Unity have shipped but does anybody know if Unity cleans up at all once you focus on a final output of a Vita version of a project?
The Dengeki interview is interesting. I've only had time to skim it a little, but the guy in charge says that they're remaking the first game in 3D to act as a foundation for more remakes in the series. Mainly so they can have all the older titles from SD1-3 on the same platforms in 3D sharing assets and whatnot, and it can pave the way for a SD5 possibly.
Well, it's not the way we'd want SD5 to come about, for sure. I'm sacriligeously OK with mobile being its future or at least a big part of Mana's path forward, but Square should show this series more love than just mobile games using shared assets. (Especially these shared assets...) But hopefully this does well and fortunes turn and they do whatever they can to give Secret of Mana something close to the remake it has richly deserved after all these years?