Visions of Mana

(available for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X & S, and PC. PC version used for this review.)

Visions of Mana is the latest in the rather dormant Mana series that Square Enix has owned, with titles like Trials of Mana and Secret of Mana, or as it’s known in Japan, Seiken Densetsu.

Now Square Enix, at the end of the 2010s started to put a bit more of faith in the franchise; they released the Collection of Mana, which not only gave excellent ways to play Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy Adventure (the Gameboy title that’s the beginning of the series), but they also brought Trials of Mana to the US and Europe for the first time ever, and then came out with a remake, which I previously reviewed.

I was actually in high hopes for this title, since it looks like they took onboard a lot of criticisms from the remake of Trials of Mana when this was announced at the Game Awards.

To bring everyone up to speed, I would say that the remake was very good. It had a good combat system, and the story was okay, but some of the voice acting did leave a little bit to be desired- nothing against the voice actors themselves, but it seemed as though they were given some bad direction.

Visions of Mana doesn’t tie into any of the other entries in the series. Rather like Final Fantasy, this is a new story in a new universe, though it maintains some of the frameworks of previous series.

It’s once again an action RPG, where you’ll control a party of 5 who are sort of avatars for the Mana Tree known as Alms, who are travelling on a quest to the Mana Tree in order to offer themselves to maintain the world’s balance. The different classes you can unlock throughout the game revolve around the 8 elements, which you will unlock through time. Of course, it’s an action RPG, so it does tie different abilities through those locked classes- so while some classes have their own abilities that will only be active while playing a subclass, you can bring over some of the powerful attacks that you unlock through upgrading those abilities, though they are tied to the ability seeds that you will get during your adventure.

Visions of Mana is actually a much beefier experience than I expected. You’re looking at around 30 hours for just the main story and 40-50 hours if you want to do extra side content or go for 100% completion, though for various reasons, I’m not sure if I’d recommend that.

I also wouldn’t recommend doing what I did and trying out the demo before you buy it. The demo sticks you straight into the centre of the opening act and doesn’t allow you to bring over your save data to the main game, and it also doesn’t do you any favours with how customisable the characters can be. So, if you got negative reception from the demo, I would say don’t take it too much at face value, it’s a badly made demo.

PROS

• Graphics

I’m pretty sure that this game was built in the same engine as Trials of Mana, but I was surprised at how much of an improvement this game was in terms of looks. Granted, I played the PC version, so I got the full 4K experience with a good framerate, so that probably helped my opinion of the game. I didn’t play it on either PlayStation or Xbox, so I’m not aware of what the experience of the visuals are on those ones- but from what I’ve heard, they aren’t much worse.

The team did a pretty good job modernising the Mana art style. One of the bigger issues I had with the Trials of Mana remake, while I thought they did a decent job, it didn’t feel like they put much effort into modernising those designs from the 16-bit generation.

Because they had a blank canvas this time, they’ve actually managed to make it work a lot better. There are certain sequences in cut scenes that were incredibly visually stunning.

• The Class System

As I mentioned, you get different classes depending on which element you unlock for which character- it basically boils down to some extra class abilities which you can unlock after spending a certain amount of elemental points (more on that later) as well as some extra class abilities.

Each character is really going to be tied down to one of three different weapons, with each class using the same weapons. For example, the moon and wood elemental abilities for one character use daggers, so his combat style doesn’t change up that much, though obviously, there are other elements that make it customisable, for example, adding the ability seeds can really benefit characters that use magic of certain classes. I would recommend unlocking all of the classes for all of the characters, not just because it’s tied to an achievement, but because you might want to swap, especially considering that some of the bosses and enemies that you encounter do have specific elemental weaknesses or even resistances.

I personally really liked this way of doing things, I don’t think it’s as user-friendly as a game like Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which has a very similar system, though I would stress that I did find it enjoyable to mix and match when I was deciding what classes I wanted for which characters. Though in fairness, I made a couple of my choices based on how much I liked certain character’s designs.

• Combat

It’s an action RPG, and it’s very similar in many ways to the Trials of Mana remake, but they definitely took a lot of inspiration from the Final Fantasy games.

You can put a pause on the combat to bring up an ability wheel, and you can also tie certain abilities and items to shortcuts to bring them out much quicker in battle.

The combat is something I would describe as really fluid; I did not hesitate to take up random encounters to grind levels because I really did enjoy testing out different combinations of characters and abilities. It definitely made the game an enjoyable experience.

The boss fights were a bit of a mixed bag if I’m honest, not because they were challenging or difficult but mostly because they were annoying, but as a whole, it’s a really good combat system. I don’t think it’s going to convince anyone who really enjoyed FF7 Rebirth’s combat system, but I thought it was really good.

MIXED

• Story

I mentioned Xenoblade Chronicle 3 on purpose earlier because it definitely reminded me of that game, and I got hints of Final Fantasy 10 as well. Maybe because of the hints of gleeful sacrifice, which those two games do play as themes.

I’ll obviously avoid spoilers, but I will say that there were a few times where it didn’t entirely work. The characters get pretty good arcs when they’re first introduced, but after that, it’s just the main character’s story and they don’t have much to do in terms of the plot.

While it does have interesting themes, it never quite capitalises on them. That’s not to say it’s a bad story, I actually thought it was pretty enjoyable, I just didn’t think it was as engaging as the writers wanted it to be.

• World Size

I don’t think people will enjoy the world size on this one. I didn’t think it was too bad, I don’t want every game to be a massive open world traversal game, but I was surprised at how often I repeated areas, especially considering that only some areas have access to fast travel and you can’t fast travel between continents, something that I think was a massive mistake, since it cuts off areas until you get the ability to travel at sea.

CONS

• Easy Difficulty

The exact same problem I had with Trials of Mana is back with this one: it is still TOO EASY! I played this on Normal difficulty, but it might as well have been easy- I didn’t die once! I don’t even think turning up the difficulty helped that much, I had to really go out of my way to see a Game Over screen by challenging enemies that were much higher levels than me by accident.

What I found interesting was that when I tried this again later on, even with a five to ten level difference I was able to win fights consistently. The boss fights did give me some challenge, but this was more out of annoyance than difficulty that I mentioned before. I still won all of the boss fights.

If you’re looking for a challenge, you really need to turn up the difficulty. While I think it’s good for beginners looking for a good RPG, I think it can be off putting to the RPG players that like a challenge.

I also think that when you make a game too easy it can often make you feel like you’re on autopilot while playing. Thankfully, it never got that bad, but I felt the need to mention it.

• Side Quests

I didn’t like doing any of the side quests, they are really, really dull. Some of them are a bit cryptic, for example, some of them say to kill a certain number of monsters and you’ll have to look up where in the world to find those kinds of monsters.

While I did enjoy the combat, the side quests felt like they were time wasting to grind levels. None of them offer interesting stories or really interesting ways to explore the world, I again think back to games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 which had a similar dynamic, but those side quests were really good, and I did all of them!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Visions of Mana is a really good game, but I think that it’s lack of difficulty and tedious side quests hold it back from being a great game. That being said, I would recommend it if you wanted to get into the Mana series. While there are a few references that only fans of the series will understand, as a whole it’s really enjoyable and newcomer friendly.

The combat is great, the storyline has its issues but it’s serviceable, and I think it’s a really good-looking game, and I hope Square Enix makes more of them if they hadn’t significantly dismantled the studio that makes them upon its release.

Nevertheless, I want this game to sell well because I want Square Enix to take advantage of their lesser-known RPGs so we can get new entries in these series.

If you like good action RPGs made by Square Enix, this is a good one to try out, but as I said, if you want any sort of challenge, you need to turn up the difficulty.

FINAL SCORE: 8/10