Visions of Mana

I thought I was easy to find just about any game enjoyable until I played this game. It's truly awful and one of the worst games I've every played. Whoever wrote the story for this game should write children's books. In pretty much every single cutscene that is trying to be surprising or intense, you know exactly what is going to happen next. It's highly predictable and boring. The combat is fine. Nothing crazy. It doesn't feel bad but it's also not exciting or satisfying by any means. The side quests are unbearably repetitive and boring. The villain is flat out laughable right down to their looks and their name. Really the only thing done decently well in the game is the visuals.

序盤のシナリオとキャラクターの描き方がカスです。というよりシナリオライターはヒロインの魅力の出し方がカスです。 ヒロインが死んでからの方がシナリオライターが変わったんかっていうくらい、テンポが良くなり物語に引き込まれました。 途中で挟まるPTメンバーの微恋愛描写以外はかねがね満足です。 （こちとらヒロイン死んでんのになにピンク色の空気だしてんねん。と突っ込まざるえませんでした） 全体評価として、LOM未満の佳作

Visions of Mana is a game of almosts and I don't mean it's almost 10/10 I mean it's almost ok. For example the story is almost ok if it didn't play out like every other JRPG trying to copy the FFVII formula. Swap Sephiroth for Daedolos and it's pretty f***ing clear from chapter 1 who's going to die off during the story. You see it worked in FFVII because the player spends a huge chunk of time doing goofy stuff with she-who-must-be-killed-off like cross dressing, stamping all over her flowers, rescuing her from a lab. In Visions of Mana they-who-must-be-killed-off is literally an NPC on the side lines of the battlefield. And the only build-up we have is an end of chapter spiel about everything that happened in the chapter... Which brings me to my next point. The dialogue is endless drivel that repeats itself over and over so much that I ended up skipping most of the dialogue in the second half of the game and still understood what was going on. The story has this over emphasis on explaining everything, like everything needs a reason or a backstory or worse a fetch quest to make sure loose ends are tied up. "Hey did you hear about the [b]Rabbites[/b] down the road? Man I was just walking down the road and saw these [b]Rabbites[/b]. They looked pretty menacing so I avoided the [b]Rabbites[/b]. I'm worried about other merchants who might walk the road, what if they run into the [b]Rabbites[/b]... You know, the [b]Rabbites[/b]. The [b]Rabbites[/b] down the road... Go kill the [b]Rabbites[/b]" [i]Our hero valiantly wonders down the road and slays all the [b]Rabbites[/b]...[/i] "Oh hey it's you did you kill all the [b]Rabbites[/b]? I was walking down the road again and didn't see a single [b]Rabbite[/b]. You see this isn't just the road I walk every day, this is the road I take when I need to reach the market. I used to walk this road every day with my pet [b]Rabbite[/b], until one day [b]Rabbites[/b], something something [b]Rabbites[/b]. then [b]Rabbites[/b], more [b]Rabbites[/b] f***ing [b]Rabbites[/b]. Thanks here's some gold... But that piece of gold there is special, you see it's shaped like my pet [b]Rabbite[/b]..." AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH [i]Our hero valiantly pulls the power cord out of their computer[/i]. The soundtrack (I don't normally review these) is almost an absolute banger. There are some parts of the game especially the boss battle against The Gary where there's actual power metal. The only problem is these moments are short and fleeting so you don't get to spend much time bathed in them whilst slaying the [b]Rabbites[/b] down the road! It's almost as if they're doing it to make you buy the Soundtrack. The combat system is very basic. Use element X against element Y, or use element X class strike against element X in which you will do 3x it's HP as damage anyway. Hell you can use a class strike against an enemy that is immune to the element of the class strike and you'll still kill it. The problems were blaringly obvious from the start when I could cheese a lvl 50 dungeon at level 14. Those enemies are the median point on the damage/progression table and their damage couldn't one-shot me, so god forbid, and I was right, enemies above lvl 50 are equally as trivial. 8 elements, 8 Alms and the game gives us 5 characters max and only 3 in combat. There was so much opportunity for diversity and depth but it was all thrown away for what? To have a meaningless, obvious and contrived plot devices? I give it a positive review because at the end of the day I don't regret the time spent. It's a wholesome story and the game feels like it would serve as an entry point into the RPG genre. It's nice to play while having a video playing in the background. I'll give credit where it's due, [b]the level designers for this game did a fantastic job.[/b] Every area looks great and unique. The weather and atmosphere is carried really well. And when the budget started running out and the later stages of the game got smaller they made the effort to keep those areas interesting... Except for the part where they just repeated half the locations to create a bigger dungeon before the final boss.

As others have said, there are some graphics quality issues, I won't go into that. The game is also buggy. I've had it crash 3 times while trying to load into a new area. Those aside, there are 2 main issues with this game. The first is the time wasting tactics. It's obvious that they want to waste our time to make the game seem longer than it is. There is a large amount of forced back tracking. Also each area is rather large with very few enemies, and an endless supply of pointless things to collect. The game loop is basically, go to a new area, run around for 30 minutes collecting treasure boxes based on the marks on the map (yes all the treasure boxes are marked for you, how can they make you waste time running around if you don't know where to run?), kill the boss, watch 30 minutes of story, then repeat.. That wouldn't be terrible, but many times the story is spread across multiple locations that you have to manually travel to (loading screens and all). I've probably wasted over an hour of game time just ttraveling around to finish cut scenes. That aside, characters aren't ugly, but they are kind of boring and lifeless. All the characters are very goody-two shoes and forgettable. There are no decent jokes (adult or not) or snide remarks, sexual innuendos or anything else thrown in to make the characters and story intersting or memorable. The entire cast could die and be replaced and I wouldn't feel a thing, which is kind of sad, because that's kind of the point of a jrpg and Square used to be really good at making them. It's definitely better than some of the other slop Square has been putting out lately though. The last Final Fantasy I played had a bunch of gay and effeminate male characters in it. I gave up on it because of that. No wonder this company is going bankrupt lately. It's definitely lost is soul. Hopefully Dragon Quest 12 is decent when it comes out, I'm not holding my breath though, since Arika Toriyama passed and the director of the last few games (which were amazing) dropped off of this project mid-way through. Side note, there is definitely some forced econsorship in this game. It's obvious that they went back and modified the designers original choices, for example, the ice queen boss had a dress that would have revealed a small amount of side-boob, but it was covered up by large, out-of-place snowflake patterns that looked really out of place for absolutely no reason. Whcih ws strange because one ofhte main characters has very revealing outfits already, so I'm not sure about the logic of that. I guess someone at Square thought it was ok to show bare thighs and bikinis, but not ok to show side boob? One of the many odd decisions in this game. In the end, I'm not really sure who this game was made for. The story and character are simple and 1-dimersional almost childlike, but children wouldn't be playing a game like this. This type of game is almost exclusively played by teenagers and adults, since they involve a large amount of reading and strategy. It's not the worst game I've ever played, but it's definitely not good either. There were some very odd design choices made here.

Ótimo jogo. Joguei os títulos dessa série na época SNES bem como alguns títulos que foram lançados para Nintendo DS, via emulador, então já estava familiarizado com o estilo do jogo. Os desenvolvedores procuraram manter coisas que sempre estiveram nos outros jogos da série como os espiritos elementais, o rpg de ação e o visual "bonitinho" e infantil dos personagens e dos inimigos, entre outras coisas. O sistema de classes é da hora e abre espaço para diversas maneiras de jogar o jogo, pois cada classe tem um estilo diferente, fazendo com que o jogo seja diversificado. O mundo é semi aberto e os cenários são muito bonitos visualmente. O jogo roda suave a 60 fps. Testei a 120 fps e rodou bem também. Achei ele bem otimizado. O final é mais ou menos. Só faltou um tradução para pt-br.

7.5/10 Pros: - Some of the best level design I've ever seen. Maps are sprawling and gorgeous, and feel extremely fun and rewarding to explore. - Combat feels fast-paced and challenging, while still being manageable. - Great collect-a-thons; lots of reasons to go back and re-explore areas, with plenty of different things to find on each map. - Art style looks amazing. Haven't had any performance issues either (GeForce 3060 here.) Cons: - Voice acting is a very hit or miss. There's some great performances, but also some really bad ones. - Character design is kind of bleh. It's obvious who any main players in the story are going to be, since they're so ridiculously flashy instead of just looking... somewhat normal. - Story is pretty bland thus far. I'm into chapter two at the time of writing this, and while there's been *hints* that things might change, so far there's been very little for me to care majorly about; feels like a reverse FFX in a way... group of friends super excited to go on a pilgrimage to sacrifice themselves.

the story and writing are pretty terrible

at best this game is worth $20. would avoid and just spend your money elsewhere.