Visions of Mana

A worthy new entry in the Mana series and a no-brainer if you liked the Trials of Mana remake. The combat and progression systems take a while to shine, but the story hook is strong and the characters, though lacking in depth, are generally likable. Be advised the English dub is incredibly obnoxious. Change to JP dialogue. You're welcome.

fun

TLDR: This does for the Mana series what The Force Awakens did for Star Wars. While the game has basically rid itself of the combat clunk many of the games used to have, its also very button mash friendly even on Hard Mode. It also made the strange decision of limiting fast travel to the current continent...making revisting areas for things such as Nicollo's shop more involved than it needs to be.

Mah boy Val deserved better :c

I may edit this review later, even if I'm unsure I'll keep playing. To sum it up until now, VoM plays like an occidental open world. Yes it is pretty, but combat is boring, slow, and there are THOUSANDS of collectibles and chests all around the map and playing this game feels like grinding stuff in any random UBI Open World games I totally loathe. 90% of the experience so far are cinematics, fetch quests, and running around a beautiful but empty map, opening treasure chests with nothing interesting in it. I want to keep going, but it is painful for me. BONUS : No Widescreen support :(

(game complete review at 38.8 hours) (short version) A perfectly picturesque plot, visions of mana's strong story, outstanding score, and enjoyable combat keeps the player engaged for the entire play-through. The biggest weak point of the game is the reward system which starts to feel stagnated around chapter 5. Though in all honesty this is also where most of the cracks start to show. Full AAA pricing in my opinion is pricey, I would recommend waiting for a sale until it is $40 due to Visions falling to many typical JRPG shortfalls. At $40 Visions is well worth the price. WHERE IS THE MULTIPLAYER!? (not screaming but honestly why not? That would have made this game 1000% better) (long version) Overall Visions of Mana (VOM) is an enjoyable game though it suffers from typical JRPG short falls, if I had to list the qualities that are most impressive from top to bottom I'd start with the musical score, the music is outstanding from start to finish in VOM. Second place would fall under the full voice cast, they do a great job and I never once felt the need to push the "A" button to advance the dialog. Third place would be the story, it is engaging and honestly I don't think you really need to do any side quests to keep within level difference. (At the end the final boss was 11 levels above me and I was able to defeat it with a satisfying challenge). Lastly (but not least) the combat is satisfying from the first sword strike to the last spell cast, I never found wanting for combat enjoyment and mostly played as a spell caster, spells are very satisfying to use as are the mana vessels. Now for the down side; On the down side I'd rank the reward system to be the biggest detractor in the game, quests often don't feel very rewarding and the items you can buy are often ignored because they're really not all that interesting until about 75% through the game, an idea of this comparison is an ability that lets you do 10% more damage at 100% health (woo?) compared to an item that lets you cast any spell of a domain for free during a mana break (wow!). The issue is 95% of your items/abilities are lack luster and forgettable so I just stopped looking. Secondly, many things are locked behind hidden progression, this is unfortunate because (while story fitting) it hides the possibilities from you making me feel like all items will be just lack luster and again caused me to stop looking. In addition to this areas are hard locked (I don't know if they ever open up and now I don't care b/c I finished the game) I'd much rather that they soft locked an area behind levels differences vs a hidden locked door, that way I could explore them if I chose. Thirdly, the combat circle is often a pain in the butt, it's easy to have a monster knock you over to the edge and cause an accidental escape from battle causing the fight to reset (this happened to me about 5 times) it is infinitely frustrating when it does happen, and even caused a game over for me when a boss essentially "got me against the ropes" and nuked me due to bosses having collision. Not a game breaker but just irritating. Fourthly, chapter 5 is where the cracks start to show, as I understand the development team was dissolved either prior to release of VOM or shortly thereafter which makes me wonder if chapter 5 was when it happened, especially the boss fights around 60% through the game, it starts out very interesting and game dynamically changing (the first fight with the earth boss) but after that it basically just becomes a face roll. This is unfortunate because if they would have kept up like they did with the first one VOM would really have been something special. Lastly, VOM has many JRPG tropes, (I won't list them b/c if you played JRPG's you will notice them) but unfortunately these tropes often are the downside of JRPGS. Lastly lastly, no multiplayer? Honestly? That was the biggest mistake you could have made, the reason the orginal secret of mana was so insanely exciting beyond the outstanding gameplay, was that it was the first 3 player multiplayer rpg that ever existed.

这剧情唐完了，完全理解不了这群神人的逻辑

this is one of the prettiest games ive ever played through. stylistically it really is breathtaking.