Published , by Donovan Erskine
Published , by Donovan Erskine
The Mana franchise is back with its first original mainline installment in over 15 years, and it’s a worthwhile revival of the series. Visions of Mana packs all the JRPG staples, seamlessly combining a heartfelt character-driven story with a challenging combat system that’s rich with strategy.
Visions of Mana subverts the Chosen One trope by having its main character, Val, serve as the soul guard for his childhood friend, Hinna. After she’s chosen to be the village’s alm, the person who must travel to the Tree of Mana and offer their soul, you’re entrusted with ensuring her safety on that journey. It’s instantly clear that there’s a lot of history and love between Val and Hinna, and the twist of her being selected as alm was a neat formula shakeup.
The relationship between our protagonists provides built-in narrative stakes, as the thought of Hinna “offering her soul” and what that might entail gave me a good deal of concern throughout the story. This connection only deepened as additional characters joined us on the journey. Each party member has their own backstory and motivations that bring them together and toward the Tree of Mana. These backstories flesh out the world and provide lore for its various settings and NPCs. My personal favorite was Morley, a swordsman who hails from a cursed land.
The trek to the Tree of Mana takes the party through a diverse set of biomes and environments, offering a good look at the beautiful world that Square Enix and Ouka Studios have crafted. The art style remains true to the franchise’s signature look, while providing the most enhanced visuals in the series to date. It’s gorgeous, and I found myself taking screenshots when standing on cliffs or looking out at vast open fields.
The craftsmanship in Visions of Mana extends to the music as well. Soundtracks are essential to a good JRPG, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Not only does the overture beautifully call back to the franchise’s signature theme, but the full OST is filled with songs that amplify emotion and intensity at all the right moments. I loved how the music would transition when triggering combat and ending it.
Visions of Mana ran excellently on my mid-range PC, with no notable performance issues to share. However, the game locks its cinematics at 30 frames per second, which made for many jarring moments as my 120 FPS gameplay instantly dropped down to a quarter of that during cinematics. Your eyes will eventually adjust to it, but it seems like a strange limitation for a game that’s not all that graphically demanding to begin with.
Although I admittedly prefer a traditional turn-based combat system in my RPGs, Visions of Mana does a phenomenal job of delivering an action combat system that’s still rich with variation of strategy potential. When you engage an enemy in the field, there’s a seamless transition into combat, with an invisible circular battlefield appearing around the participants. Should you want to escape the battle, doing so is as easy as walking out of bounds.
In battle, players can deploy a laundry list of spells, physical attacks, and special abilities to damage enemies and support allies. I loved launching enemies into the air, hitting them with a flurry of attacks before slamming them back down into the ground. You can freely swap between the active party members in combat, and provide combat instructions for the CPU when you aren’t controlling them. Boss battles offer a unique challenge through aggressive attack patterns that you’ll need to learn and adapt to. Some bosses have weak spots that you can destroy to put that at a disadvantage and deal critical damage.
Each character has their own specialty, but you’re not locked into them. You can equip different weapons, gear, and items that will influence their stats and available abilities. There’s a fine balance in building each character, deciding what abilities and items to assign to shortcuts, and figuring out the playstyle that fits you best. Each character shouts voice lines during combat as they attack and use their abilities. This applies not only to the character you’re controlling, but the entire party. It adds to the immersion and makes encounters even more engaging.
The areas between towns and major points of interest are large zones that you can freely explore, fighting random creatures and collecting treasures. You’ll spot various collectible items and shiny areas to interact with for loot. Chest locations appear on the map, which makes some of the exploration feel more like a checklist than rather, well, an exploration. In general, the explicit barrage of items tossed into the open areas felt more like busywork than an encouragement to explore, and I even found myself passing up on some of the loot in the later portions of the game. I would have loved more puzzles and emergent moments that piqued my curiosity.
Visions of Mana is simply refined RPG goodness in every way. It’s got compelling characters, an engaging story, and a challenging combat system. Its only shortcomings are minute, and don’t do too much to bog down what is an overwhelmingly enjoyable adventure.
This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Visions of Mana launches on August 29, 2024, for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S.