I’ve had a bit of a peculiar relationship with Square’s long-running Mana series (also known as Seiken Densetsu). It’s one of gaming’s most enduring action-RPG series, and its influence on the genre is quite palpable. I have my share of fond things to say about several Mana games, yet I’ve always wanted to see one that truly takes that next step forward. As such, I was hopeful when I saw early teasers for Visions of Mana.
Developed by Ouka Studios and published by Square Enix, Visions of Mana is the first truly new main series installment in the franchise in nearly two decades. Like with 2020’s Trials of Mana (a remake of the 1995 cult-classic Seiken Densetsu 3), this game was developed in Unreal Engine 4 and feels like a further iteration of what the Mana series is like when moved into a 3D engine. I generally enjoyed Trials of Mana, so I definitely went into Visions of Mana with optimism that it could deliver.
Bringer of Alms
After a fairly dramatic intro, Visions of Mana introduces us to our main hero and heroine, Val and Hinna, who live in a village near a currently active volcano. Every four years, a faerie from the Tree of Mana goes out to the world and appoints the role of “Alm” of each of the eight elements to individuals who are to journey to the Tree and offer themselves in sacrifice in order to stabilize the world’s energy to prevent its destruction. As expected of one who lives near an increasingly unstable volcano, Hinna is appointed the Alm of Fire, while Val is given the title of “Soul Guard” and is tasked with escorting the Alms to the Tree of Mana.
On their journey, the party grows after meeting several new faces, and must confront all manner of monsters and strange phenomena that they come across. Along the way, they have to come to terms with what the journey of the Alms really entails and what it means to offer oneself in sacrifice for the greater good.
By and large, Visions of Mana feels reminiscent of older fantasy JRPGs in how it handles its story, and I mean this in a positive way. It’s very much high-fantasy, with fantasy races and concepts aplenty, while following a fairly conventional hero’s journey structure that often worked well for JRPGs of old. It’s not an especially story-driven game, but gives you enough to get moving and feel like you’re in this unique fantasy world (though with many Mana series staples around as well). It does still attempt a share of themes and ideas with its story to keep things interesting though, so it’s not a total excuse plot.
Getting the Band Together
Along your journey, you gather a band of playable characters that expands to five total members. By and large, the story sticks to the journey of these five, with a few supporting characters and a couple of main antagonists. While I don’t find any of their characters or arcs especially compelling or deep, I think the main crew are generally likable enough. They have their share of fun exchanges, and I do like how often they chatter among themselves in background conversations while exploring the world of the game, giving them a welcome touch of personality.
I think the plot around these characters definitely had more potential than it ends up delivering on, however. At several points, the story involves the cast questioning their fate and the purpose of their journey, and expressing their doubts and fears of what it means to give up their life for the preservation of the world despite accepting what is considered to be an honor. This is further challenged by one character who clearly wants to find another way that doesn’t result in such loss of life. While there’s some interesting ideas at play here, they ultimately felt underexplored, especially as the game’s story shifts about halfway through into something both more straightforward and less potentially thought-provoking. I didn’t go into this game expecting too much out of the story, but by the end I felt like it had some good ideas without quite having the execution to make them pay off in especially gratifying ways.
The Vision
Presentation in the Mana series has always been pretty high quality for its time, from the gorgeous art style of games like Legend of Mana to the iconic 16-bit score of Secret of Mana. I am pleased to say that this game carries the series legacy into modern platforms with aplomb. Visions of Mana is one of the most artistically gorgeous JRPGs I have ever seen when it comes to its world. Some of the cinematography and landscapes were honestly jaw-dropping, and the beauty of this game did a lot of lifting in terms of selling me on its journey. This is helped by the game’s feature of a double jump and several means of mounted travel, which give you that much greater of an ability to directly explore and engage with its various pretty maps.
This is further helped by the game’s fantastic accompanying soundtrack. Longtime Mana composer Hiroki Kikuta returns to the series he is perhaps known for, alongside composers Ryo Yamazaki and Tsuyoshi Sekito who have frequently worked on several Square Enix titles like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. The music does a lot to capture that sense of epic fantasy adventure, with big and bold arrangements that make it feel particularly grandiose. And while there are plenty of symphonic compositions as you may expect from this sort of fantasy tale, there’s also plenty of variety. Many boss themes lean into hard rock, several places also have rather pretty flute and woodwind arrangements, and some tunes feature distinct instruments like the steel drum and the oud. This game has all the character of a classic Mana soundtrack, brought to life in a modern score.
Visions of Mana has a lot of welcome variety of character and enemy designs. Plenty of franchise staple creatures (e.g. Rabites and Mushbooms) and bosses appear throughout in addition to new ones, and you get your share of fantasy races of cat people, people with squirrel tails and dragon wings, and so on. They even kept the dancing shopkeepers!
If I had to say I had one issue with the visuals of this game, it would be with some cutscenes and character models. Some characters occasionally have facial expressions or animations during cutscenes that don’t quite fit, like a wrongly timed or overly stiff smile. Most cutscenes were fine, but some just felt off, particularly those involving less important NPCs with simpler models than the main cast. Also unfortunate is that some cutscenes were locked to 30 frames per second while others were 60 FPS. Thankfully combat animations were smooth and I rarely experienced issues (e.g. lag) during gameplay at least.
It’s worth noting I also have a somewhat middle-end gaming PC so I didn’t play on max settings. If anything, the fact that even I still found this game to be as stunning as it was in many spots is a testament to how enticing its aesthetics often are.
Swinging the Holy Sword
At its core, Mana has always been a series about action RPG combat that is easy enough to pick up and start hacking at things. Visions of Mana definitely has some of that…but I can’t help but feel I wish it was just a bit deeper than what it is. Hitting stuff is fun, but the combat system isn’t especially gripping.
In combat you have light attacks, heavy attacks, a sidestep dash, a double jump, a couple of specials, and the usual ring menu for items and spells (the latter of which you can also set shortcuts for). It feels like standard ARPG fare in terms of available options, and in practice it’s adequate but seldom thrilling. Most field mobs are not very engaging to fight with, and as such I spent much of the game just avoiding them unless I was close to a level up. Bosses have pretty telegraphed moves and several of them felt fairly samey and repetitive. Combat also doesn’t feel quite as fluid as some other, tighter action RPGs, though it doesn’t feel especially weighty either.
I spent about 30% of the game playing on Hard, but I honestly didn’t find Hard difficulty to add to the excitement for much. From my comparisons, I did around half the damage and took double the damage compared to Normal, but given how bosses worked, this simply prolonged boss battles rather than making them more thrilling. The rest of the game was spent on Normal, mostly to keep combat from dragging on. This isn’t helped by an issue I’ve long since had with the Mana series, that being that the games’ AI party members tend to be more frustrating than helpful. They don’t contribute a ton on their own and love getting hit, soaking up more healing items and resources (which interrupts the flow of combat) if I wanted to keep them alive. I found Visions of Mana to at least be a tougher game than Trials of Mana’s remake was at launch, but I don’t think this game handles difficulty in a way that made it more fun to play on higher difficulties. Also, some status effects (e.g. freeze, sleep) were so debilitating as to be painfully unfun to deal with no matter which difficulty choice I made, though thankfully only a few bosses hit with the really nasty ones.
Visions of Mana also features a class system based around its elements. Each class allows for a different build and some customization for each character, although you can’t have multiple characters with the same elemental class. You can also allocate points to unlock certain skills, magic, and passive bonuses to your liking, and you can freely swap between classes if you so choose (although you need an item to reallocate points). You also have a few slots for held items that offer further perks to your characters. In theory, this adds depth to how you build your character, which can add some welcome variety to gameplay. In practice, I found it underwhelming. Magic wasn’t particularly fun to use on most of the classes I tried, and most passive bonuses you give involve pretty basic stat ups rather than anything that would alter one’s playstyle, so my actual approach to combat didn’t change much throughout my playthrough.
All this said, there were a couple of bosses that offered some inventive gameplay concepts. There’s also a boss very late in the game that I found pretty fun on account of being more involved than many others. A few of the dungeons in this game also had really fun ideas, with one particular standout in the midgame that made for one of the most memorable setpieces I’ve seen in any action RPG. This game also has a lot of fast-travel options that keep it moving briskly along as well, so the game thankfully rarely feels like a drag to navigate.
Additional Comments
I played most of Visions of Mana with the game’s Japanese voiceover, which I generally felt got the job done. While the game has an English dub with some talented voice actors who worked on it, I had some issues that led me to prefer Japanese. At times I felt like the lip sync or line reads didn’t quite match the cutscene, and there were a couple of directional choices I wasn’t fond of, particularly with accents. For example, one of the party members speaks with a distinct accent in the original Japanese, which is translated into English as a Southern American accent. This is somewhat common in localization, but I felt like the choice of how the character talked didn’t really fit the more crass, feisty nature of the character in Japanese. I like many of the English VAs in other roles, but I wasn’t fond of the dub for this game specifically.
On another note, not long after this game released, reports came out that developer Ouka Studios would be shutting down. While I do have my hangups about this game, I genuinely believe the team at Ouka who developed this game had many talented staff who put a lot of hard work into making it. After experiencing their work in this game, I hope to see more from them in the future.
Verdict
If you’re a fan of the Mana series, I’m confident that you will most likely enjoy Visions of Mana quite a lot. There’s a lot here that feels in line with what the series has to offer, while offering some absolutely gorgeous locales accompanied by a great soundtrack. If you’re like me and you’ve wanted more out of the Mana series in the past, I don’t quite think this game elevates the bar all too much. Still, it’s a gorgeous game that’s still decently fun enough to play much of the time. While I would have liked to see it do more with its potential in terms of combat and story, I still found it a satisfactory adventure. If you’ve never played a game in the Mana series and you want to get into it, this is a fine place to start.
VISIONS OF MANA IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another action RPG, you might want to check out our review of Granblue Fantasy: Relink.
Many thanks go to Square Enix for a PC review code for Visions of Mana.
Been playing games since my papa gave me an NES controller in the early 90’s. I play games of almost all genres, but especially focus role-playing, action, and puzzle-platform games. Also an enjoyer of many niche things ranging from speedrunning to obscure music from all over the world.
