Visions of Mana PC Review
Summary: The triumphant return of the Mana series! A wonderful RPG that mostly keeps things light and enjoyable while having fun combat and lots to see and do in the world.
4.3
Wonderful!
Helmed by Masaru Oyamada and developed by Ouka Studios, Visions of Mana is the first brand-new, mainline entry into the Mana series in 15 years. I was fortunate enough to be able to take a look at the game ahead of its release on August 29th.
Visions of Mana follows the protagonist, the Soul Guard Val, and his companions as they journey to the Mana Tree in order to rejuvenate the world and stave off otherwise certain destruction.
Val’s mission as a Soul Guard is to protect the elemental Alms and escort them to the Mana Tree so that they may complete their duty – performing the ultimate self-sacrifice in submitting themselves to restore the flow of mana to the world. Along the way, Val and Hinna meet up with an array of colourful characters including the other elemental Alms and the mysterious Eoren.
The world of Visions of Mana is presented through large, open, biomes. It isn’t open-world in the traditional sense, however, many of the areas of the game are so vast that it almost feels like an open-world game. Small groups of enemies are scattered throughout the wilderness and there’s a huge number of things to find and collect while exploring each area.
There’s very little in the way of dungeons in Visions of Mana, at least not in the classic sense. Almost all events take place in these huge, game-fields, in the multitude of towns scattered around the world, or in smaller areas that feel as though they were designed specifically for the scene that takes place there. It isn’t a problem per se, I was 12 hours in before I really noticed their absence. That said, it would have been nice to have the opportunity to dig through some hidden alcove of the world, uncovering mysterious and defeating powerful enemies.
Running into any of the multitude of creatures littering the field triggers combat. Battles take place in the same place as encountered, with no transition to another scene. The only caveat to this is that a ring appears around the immediate area, indicating the bounds of the fight. Advancing beyond this ring constitutes running away and ends the battle.
Combat itself is entirely real-time. To begin with, Val and his cohort have access to light and heavy attacks as well as a dodge and jump. As the game progresses abilities can be harnessed and equipped, up to eight for each of the five playable characters. These abilities range from damaging magical spells to different ways to heal as well as passive effects that raise stats under certain conditions or grant immunity to the various debilitating status effects that can be inflicted on the party by enemies.
The primary method for unlocking these new abilities is defeating enemies. Beating an enemy in combat has a small chance of dropping a corestone. These corestones can then be exchanged at NPCs for corresponding skills that can be slotted into and out of a character at will.
This is further augmented by the class or vessel system present within the game. At key points in the story, Val acquires up to eight elemental vessels items that embody the qualities of each of the elements. Equipping each character with an elemental vessel unlocks a corresponding class for that party member for a total of 40 different classes. Each of the classes has its own equipment (thankfully equipment managing isn’t a huge part of Visions of Mana) and specialties, be it melee combat, long-ranged magic, healing the party, etc.
Vessels can be switched out on the fly (although not while in combat) and each has its own miniature list of skills to enhance them further. It encourages mixing and matching different combinations of classes across the different characters, many of which play fairly differently from one another.
Overall, it’s a relatively simplistic combat system, but does have some depth once you’re far enough into the game to unlock all the various options that it gives you and for the most part I enjoyed the combat. Not every class was fun to play, but the choice to use whatever you want, whenever you want really makes that a non-issue. Fights tend to be over quickly, and even bosses don’t outstay their welcome.
Most of the bosses are creative, visually if nowhere else. Many have some complexity, oftentimes turning them into a protracted game of Dance Dance Revolution – dodging a multitude of AoE attacks before waiting for an opening to attack.
Graphically, Visions of Mana is quite a striking game. It doesn’t have the highest visual fidelity, but it makes excellent use of bright colours and lighting and creates some stunning vistas occasionally. Several months before launch, a Visions of Mana demo was released, and anyone who played it may have noticed that the game was riddled with performance issues.
Thankfully, this seems to have been almost completely eradicated for the full release, with the overwhelming majority of my time with the game being flawless. The game is very performant now, even when pushing it up to 4K on a lower-end machine, and as such, should scale well across a wide range of hardware with little difficulty.
The audio side of things is a similar story. Background music is largely understated, definitely prescribing to the notion that it should be there but not particularly noticeable (something I don’t necessarily agree with). It’s all very pleasant though, even if none of it stands out particularly. Voice acting, however, is the exact opposite.
Most of the actors do a fantastic job and really convey the emotions of their characters well. Rachel Rial, the voice actor for Careena, was very obviously having fun with the role and as such was enjoyable to listen to.
Final Thoughts
Visions of Mana marks a wonderful return to the Mana series. It’s generally a light-hearted tale, that still manages to tackle some darker material occasionally, all the while keeping it enjoyable and not taking itself too seriously. The gameplay is fun and has a level of depth that might not be immediately apparent. With hours of world to explore, treasures to find, and enemies to defeat.
Whether you’re a long-time supporter of the series or a newcomer to the Mana games, Visions of Mana is well worth checking out for RPG fans.
It releases on PC, PS4, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on August 29th, and a demo is currently available.
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