Visions of Mana (PS5) Review – An Alm’s Worth of Sacrifice

Barring a successful remake of the third Mana title in the series, it’s been seventeen years since Square-Enix brought a new title to the console masses (the last entry was a mobile and PlayStation Vita exclusive in Japan). As Square-Enix continues to revive franchises from the vault, it’s refreshing to see them pay homage to a series that has persisted since the original Nintendo GameBoy. Visions of Mana is the first of the series to make its way onto PlayStation 5, but does it feel like a proper next-gen adventure?

Players assume the role of Val, a Soul Guard tasked with guiding Alms of each element on a pilgrimage to the Mana Tree where they’re sacrificed for the continued prosperity of the land. Failure to make the journey or shirk off the duties typically results in the decimation of an entire town, as the opening prologue makes clear. Nevertheless, it’s a sacred duty that Val and his childhood friend are all too keen on embarking on.

Along the journey to the Mana Tree, Val and his childhood friend Hinna meet four other Alms each willing to sacrifice their lives all the same. Visions of Mana presents a world where sacrifice is all but expected of those chosen by the faeries and spirits with few to question the futility of it all. However, as Val ventures from region to region, solving everyday problems or befriending the locals, players will see firsthand what happens when that cycle is broken. 

Visions of Mana brings the action RPG combat to new heights for the series, empowering Val and his entourage with mobility and finesse. Combos interweave quick and heavy attacks, with many inputs being held for an additional attack. Blocking and dodging are a key component of survivability in ways that the Mana series never truly utilized before. There is still an element of pausing combat with the series’ signature Ring Menus to cast magics or use healing items in a pinch. Players can also pause the combat and issue commands to their fellow party members, such as telling one party member to revive the other while you focus on damage dealing or playing the role of a tank and drawing the enemy’s focus away.

The Class system in Visions of Mana is something that I found to be somewhat lacking in execution. As players gain the blessing of each element, characters are bestowed with the ability to unlock a new class of that specific element. While earlier Mana games would have locked players into their class choices, players can freely swap between elemental classes at any time with the main caveat being that no two characters can share the same element at a time. With a base class and one for each of the eight elements, players can freely swap around archetypes across nine total classes. These classes each come with one of three different weapon types for each character, so just because you might want to leave the fire element on one character doesn’t mean Val would be locked out of using his favorite weapon. As for Val’s arsenal, players can pick between a simple one-handed sword, a combination of lance and shield, or a massive two-handed sword. The other four characters have more versatility to their weapon types which all have a distinctively different feel to one another.

Class growth is one of the weaker elements of Visions of Mana. Each class has a single horizontal track that unlocks new spells and passive abilities at a predictable rate. While players can freely bring the spells from one class to another, the passive abilities are locked per class with some of the more interesting skills available to the same elemental class as another party member, so there were several party class combinations that I would have loved to try but couldn’t as they shared the same element across multiple classes. Some classes are simply far better for each character than any other. As the Archmage class is unlocked for Palamena, for example, no other class of hers comes anywhere close to matching the magical attack stat or damage output; similarly, Careena is an unstoppable force with her Dark element class. 

Multiple difficulty modes are available to the player from the onset of Visions of Mana and I stuck with Hard Mode almost exclusively through my playthrough. This held a nice balance between taking massively increased damage while limiting the number of healing items that players can bring into combat at a time; players will have the usual stash of up to 99 of a given item but may only be able to take in a fraction of those candies or cups of wishes per encounter. With enemies routinely dealing upwards of a hundred damage per attack as early as the middle of the adventure, Visions of Mana’s Hard Mode is geared towards those who want to take full advantage of the defensive capabilities in combat to survive. Val’s role as a Soul Guard felt best suited to using the lance and shield combo, as he would naturally gain abilities to draw the enemies’ attention and even absorb damage by empowering his shield. Players shouldn’t consider themselves locked into any particular difficulty as they can freely switch outside of combat. For those on a masochistic streak, an advanced difficulty level is unlockable upon completing the main campaign which comes with higher growth caps for each character to compensate.

Visions of Mana features a lot of retreading familiar ground as players will routinely return to earlier cities to solve less-pressing issues than saving the world regularly to the point where I felt like so much of the adventure felt like padding to stretch an already lengthy runtime. By the time I saw Val’s journey to its end, I had easily clocked in somewhere between sixty and seventy hours along the way. In that time, I routinely went back to each and every town at the start of each chapter to see what new side quests were available to undertake; managing this feat before the likes of fast travel were unlocked made this a far more obnoxious chore while I soon learned that it’s possible to fast travel from any save point on the same island to another (you’ll still need to make use of a certain aquatic mode of transportation or flight to go between the various continents). Many of the side quests were basic fetch quests that could largely be overlooked for the common rewards while others granted equipable accessories with passive boons. 

Overall, Visions of Mana is a solid entry in the storied tales of the Mana Tree that action RPG fans will appreciate. While there are some pacing issues and overall padding to the game’s length, players will have little complaint about the title’s length for a series that traditionally wraps up by the 15-20 hour mark. It may not be the most memorable tale of the Mana Tree to be told, but it certainly offers the most enjoyable combat to date.

Reviewed on PlayStation 5 (code provided by the publisher).

Visions of Mana

Visions of Mana is a fun JRPG for the first thirty hours but the continuous backtracking and overall padding left me feeling like my time wasn’t being respected by the time Val’s journey came to a close

Buy for $59.99 from Amazon

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