After an excellent start, my anticipated playthrough of Visions of Mana kept me excited for what was still to come. But once the honeymoon period was over, some of its undeniable cracks started to show very prominently. Fortunately, they weren’t enough to drive me away, and there’s much to discuss about this fantastic tale.
Consistency At Its Core
The premise for Visions of Mana is simple, as one could imagine from its overall visuals. In order to keep the world’s balance, humans have to offer their souls to the Mana Tree every four years. The chosen ones are dubbed Alms, and being elected as an alm is one of the greatest honors for any person in the world of Fa’Diel. As the journey to the tree is filled with dangers and monsters, a Soul Guard is elected to protect them in their travels.
The game follows the Soul Guard Val and his convoy of alms during their arduous journey to the Mana Tree, as they slowly learn more about the world and its vast culture. Each city has an elemental as its patron, and these small, plush-able creatures play an important part in people’s lives, and lend their power to the soul guard and the alms to defend themselves during the inevitable conflicts they’ll be facing.
As mentioned during the preview, Ouka Studios nailed the flow for this trip. As soon as you hop into the world, you feel the urge to explore each corner of the map looking for treasure, enemies and any other possible secret you can find. The zones will lead you through these small adventures in a natural way, and you barely notice time passing while all you’ve been doing in the last 20 minutes is running around these beautiful maps.
Dungeons are no different, which is even more impressive considering their linear structure. Most of them are glorified corridors in their root, but they still feel unique and, most importantly, never overstay their visit. A good comparison would be Final Fantasy X. Also notorious for having very linear zones, its level design was good enough to make them feel somewhat different. The PS2-era game comparison here is intentional, as the game feels like a modern title from that console.
The whole presentation is always on point, and the exact vibes are set in stone very early into the story. You know what to expect from the moment you start the journey, and this is both a blessing and a curse, as it sets a low bar for many of its elements rather early. And unfortunately, the story is one of them.
A Lot Of Soul That Lacks Depth
As charming and carefree as the story is, it ends up being too predictable for its own good. While aimed at younger audiences, it has far too many plot conveniences to take it seriously at times. It’s hard to do it when characters turn around to say “Hey, here’s that ancient relic that gives us even more power!” right after a life-deciding battle. It wouldn’t be bad if they at least had some excuse like “The monster swallowed it and that’s why we couldn’t find it!”, but it keeps happening, like, two or three times in a row.
One of the main characters’ flashbacks shows a traumatic event when they’re introduced. However, the whole situation is nothing short of hilarious due to how nonsensical it looks and the sheer proportions it takes. This completely strips the drama away from their character’s arc, making the whole section feel like a burden. They do return to this specific moment later in the game, but refuse to elaborate further, which only adds insult to injury.
Dialogue doesn’t help much either. Most conversations are always on the verge of being too polite or too unpolished, and this inconsistency (one of the few you find in the whole game) is highlighted by an already subpar but not terrible plot. Surprisingly, quirky dialogue characters such as the feline Merchant Sisters (who say “mew” instead of “you”) were the most enjoyable instead of annoying. Another example is Queen Palamena with her overly mannered vocabulary filled with admirable, articulated alliterations.
We’re constantly fed with lots of moments that feel half-baked at best, and end up leading to nowhere at all or exactly to where you would imagine. That is, until halfway through the journey when we get a new, greater goal that spices up things. But while it’s a good change in pace, its buildup is done so poorly that it feels like a bad asspull no one asked for. Not the usual JRPG “let’s kill God!” asspull (we don’t even have to kill a God here!). Just a bad one in general.
Yes, the buildup is there in tiny details, but never in the spotlight, and it feels more like an easter egg instead of a plot point. Both halves of the story feel very disjointed in general as there’s virtually no turning point between them. However, the narrative also has its strengths. It’s just that it’s easy to see how some of its potential wasn’t fully tapped into.
Once again showing its consistency, the game is very bold when it comes to actions and consequences in the story. A once-lost treasure is never to be recovered. When bad things happen, characters have to struggle to fix them, and they won’t be magically solved at the end of their journey. The tale does thread a rough patch, but it manages to keep lots of its stakes up when it’s needed, and it deserves some praise for that.
Fighting and Running For Ages
The action combat is one of the main appeals in Visions of Mana. Each character has access to nine different classes (the default one plus eight elemental forms), and each of them has specific abilities to set them to different roles in the team. Careena has a huge emphasis on debuffs across all of her classes, while Val’s a natural tank with elemental enchants available for his team, for example.
Elemental Vessels are the key here, as you can give them to a character to change their class and use them for various effects during battle. You can pull enemies to your side, create defensive zones or even stop time for a while. They also affect your elemental affinity and your Class Strike (the game’s ultimate attack), which changes slightly depending on your equipped class.
Unfortunately, “slightly” is the definitive word here. Classes do feel different from each other, but only when they use different weapons. Most of the time, they’re just new skins for your characters with a few different passives, as their ultimate attacks are functionally (and almost visually) all the same.
This doesn’t make the combat bad at all, as adjusting your team’s elemental affinities for the next boss adds an enjoyable layer of complexity, and can make the next conflict much more interesting to engage with. Add the myriad of skills you can get through exploration and side questing to the table and it gets even better.
However, you’ll need a lot of patience to deal with side quests. The game does have some modern features to make the whole progression quicker, but its extra content is still a bit disappointing. Most tasks are always simple fetch quests or “kill X monsters”, and it only gets worse as you advance. They start sending you to different continents only for you to kill a monster or two, then return. I wouldn’t mind a few of these, but the exact situation above is the objective for a good portion of the 110+ available side quests.
Their division is also questionable. The first few chapters have almost no side quests available. But once you get to Chapter 5, they start popping up as crazy, and you barely get to advance in the main scenario if you’re a completionist like me. It doesn’t help that chapters are also very disproportionately separated. Some chapters last for over 6 hours, while others have a total of 20 minutes including cutscenes and gameplay. Some of them are literally just a cutscene. It’s… weird.
On the flip side, some of the depth previously lacking in the main story is sometimes found in those small errands. We learn more about the world and its traditions, or even more about some of the most prominent side characters such as Niccolo. Their rewards are also worth the trouble, especially if you’re interested in post-game content.
An Amazing World Held Back By Its Own Legs
Visions of Mana brings a lot of the essence of old-school games to a modern age, but it also brings both modern and older issues. FPS drops were frequent after the first chapter, especially during bosses. The game also gets a bit clunky whenever you do something in quick succession like mashing A right as you open a shop or trying to interact with a save point the moment you touch it.
I also felt a lack of customization options for anything that isn’t an ability. For equipment, you just roll with whatever you find/buy until you get the best ones, and visuals cannot be changed at all without changing your class, with weapons being the exception. I love how Morley looked in his Grass class, but playing with the not-so-visually appealing Earth class feels much better to me, so I couldn’t enjoy his cool looks as much.
The game also has one of the most severe cases of Same Face Syndrome I’ve ever witnessed in a non-mobile game. Shopkeepers borrow not only the same silly dance from one another, but also the same clothes and hairstyles. Just give them some new colors and call it a day. Their facial expressions (or lack of, to be more precise) are also astonishing. Not even the main characters are free from this curse at times.
But if it shows something, is that a strong art direction can and will carry a game’s visuals harder than anything, as is precisely the case here. Scenarios and monsters are so perfectly modeled that you’ll be quick to forgive other flaws. Characters blend perfectly in the zones, and even just running around while doing nothing can be satisfactory at times.
No particular point stands out, but nothing in the game truly disappoints you either. You know it could be better, but it’s still some good food. Not all games need to be the next biggest hit ever. Personally, I would be much happier if we had more enjoyable titles such as these readily available every few years. And with this being the Mana series’ grand return, it would be nice to see it more frequently from now on.
With all of its ups and downs, Visions of Mana is a very competent title in delivering exactly what it promises. A light, predictable but enjoyable story with compelling combat mechanics is way better than being too ambitious for its own good. The pilgrimage for the Mana Tree may not be the most magnificent journey out there, but it’s still worth taking.
Verdict: Recommended
Visions of Mana releases on September 29 for PC, Xbox and Playstation. A review code for the game was provided by the publisher. Reviewed on PC.
Published: Aug 27, 2024 08:00 am