Visions Of Mana is a fantastic JRPG with a story line that will pull on your heartstrings, a fast-paced battle system and has a beautiful world for you to explore. The game is not without its faults, however, with some plot pacing issues, plenty of filler quests and an abundant of needless cut scenes.
The mana series started in 1991 and became a popular JRPG franchise from the behemoth that is now known as Square Enix. However, in the last decade we've had a sleuth of mobile and handheld mana games released, including several remakes. So when Visions Of Mana was announced for major platforms in 2023, our ears perked up.
If you've never played a Mana game before and you like traditional JRPGS, you will definitely find familiar elements in Visions Of Mana that you will enjoy. The first Mana game ever released was called Final Fantasy Adventure, so you'll find plenty of similarities between the two franchises.
Visions Of Mana even has Moogles!
Visions Of Mana Story
On my first play through of Visions Of Mana, I didn't do any of the side quests and just powered through the first five chapters. And because there isn't much slowing you down between areas apart from the odd boss, it felt like a cut scene simulator at times.
On the second play-through, I took my time as I was writing the Visions Of Mana Walkthrough- making sure I explored each area thoroughly, doing side quests and taking the time to understand my character's abilities. On the second play through, that's when the story really started to shine through.
You play as Soul Guard Val, who has been tasked with protecting the Alm Of Fire, Hinna, his childhood sweetheart. Along the journey you pick up other Alms and together venture towards the Mana Tree, where the Alms must give up their souls to ensure the flow of Mana continues. Without these sacrifices, the world is thrown into chaos and destruction.
This makes for a fascinating story, with themes of sacrifice, morality and love at the heart of it. The characters often question whether sacrificing themselves is the right thing to do "for the greater good" and makes the journey much more tense than the beginning stages would have you believe.
The characters you meet along the way all have their own interesting back story that you get to explore. Some of them do take more of a backseat than others, with Val being the protagonist that was always going to be the case.
As you dive deeper into the game, the history of the world starts to unravel and the reason for the Alms sacrifice becomes more clearer. It does get a little bit plot-dumpy towards the end stages, but the game does have a satisfying narrative throughout.
Visions Of Mana Game Play
The battle system of Visions Of Mana incorporates the popular action-based system seen in other games like Final Fantasy 7: Remake, Kingdom Hearts and Star Ocean: The Divine Force. It allows you to switch between party members on the fly, has a plethora of classes to choose from and a decent magic spell system.
Visions Of Mana employs a Elemental Vessel system, which allows you to switch classes for all 5 party members in the game. You gain Elemental Vessels as the story progresses, unlocking more and more classes until eventually you've unlocked over 50 of them. You can switch out different abilities between the classes, allowing you to have a Fire Blaze move alongside a Ice Shard attack. This interesting mechanic will allow you to properly strategize for the many, many boss battles in Visions Of Mana.
The first few chapters, you won't see many boss battles. However, in the last two chapters, the story is mostly filled with bosses. And of course, the end-game has some really interesting challenges that will test your skills.
The party system allows up to three characters to fight at once and you switch between them using the keypad without interrupting the flow of battle. You can also change the battle strategy from the main menu, setting party members to either focus on suitability or go all-out attack.
Overall, the battle system is very fun and rewarding; we played the game on normal difficulty and found it enough of a challenge on our first play through.
Visions Of Mana World
The world of Visions Of Mana is set in Qi'Diel.
You can tell each area in the game has had hundreds of hours of work put into it; there is so much detail in some areas that you only spend a few minutes in that you just feel bad for the game designers.
Whilst each area is beautifully designed- there wasn't really an area that felt unique and made you think it was anything new. You still have your snow mountain, desert area and plenty of lush green valleys to explore.
The music of Visions Of Mana OST is definitely one you can add to your work playlist for later, when it releases in October 2024. There are several areas in the game where the music feels spot on, such as Log'grattzo Dark Archives and the Radiant Playhouse Terratio. Hopefully it releases on Spotify too!
The characters for Visions Of Mana are a mix of between great and "NPC". The main cast all look great and they have some really cool class outfits available to them. But there are lots of side characters who have the generic NPC look, despite some of them having some important roles in the story.
The voice acting is so-so; we played with the English-dub so it didn't quite match up with the lip movements but it did okay.
The monsters and Bosses of Visions Of Mana are very well designed; when you get towards the end of the game, you really feel you're in a battle with some of the toughest enemies due to the sheer size of them! There are also some battle abilities and animations that make your jaw drop with the level of detail the game designers have put into them.
Visions Of Mana Overall Thoughts
This game is priced as a full AAA game and so we need to judge it as such. The main story line takes around 15-20 hours to complete if you power through it without doing any side quests. With side quests, you're looking at around 40 hours. Whilst the pacing of the story felt correct, and by the time you get to the last chapter, you do feel that the story has run it's course, for £55 you might feel the story runs a little short.
The overall game play of Visions Of Mana is great fun; the battle system works well with the class system and exploring this world is never dull with the amount of detail on show at every corner. The side quests are not terribly exciting or interesting; most of the hard-work is done for you through a guide system that tells you where you need to go. The boss battles might give you a tough time of it if you're under-geared or don't have the right classes equipped at times, but it has a good balance of tough bosses versus cannon-fodder.
The story for Visions Of Mana has you at times cringing from behind your sofa, to dabbing your eyes ever so slightly. There isn't much character development and most of your party members storys are wrapped up without much hurrah either. But the story does carry a satisfying punch that will make you want to play through to the end.
Overall, we definitely recommend Visions Of Mana as a great JRPG!
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