Visions Of Mana review: A generous helping of RPG comfort food
When it comes to pizza, I tend to stick with what I know I’m going to love. I might stray outside of my comfort zone every now and then, but more often than not you’ll find me ordering a good, solid pepperoni pizza. I know it, I love it, and it’s impossible to get wrong.
Visions Of Mana is a delicious pepperoni pizza. The latest RPG from Square Enix and Ouka Studios doesn’t reinvent the wheel or attempt to defy expectations. What it does is offer up a generous helping of high-quality adventure that you can really sink your teeth into. It is beautifully prepared video game comfort food of the highest order.
A confession before we go any further: outside of 1993’s Secret Of Mana, I’ve never been particularly well-acquainted with Square’s Mana series. Certainly, I think it’s fair to say Mana has always trailed behind the likes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy in terms of popularity, so I’m probably not the only one.
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The good news is you don’t really need to be up on the lore to understand what’s happening here. Visions Of Mana is set in a fantasy world in which various tribes must offer up an ‘Alm’: a representative chosen by fate to journey to the Mana Tree and sacrifice their soul to prevent the realm from falling into ruin.
As Val, a young Soul Guard from a remote corner of the world, it’s your job to escort Hinna across the land to pick up the other Alms and get them to the Mana Tree without dying. You know, so that they can die in the right place instead.
If that sounds a little messed up to you, the game clearly agrees. Visions Of Mana attempts to ask some big questions about free will and what it means to give up certain freedoms for the greater good, and while it doesn’t always stick the landing, there’s a surprisingly dark story lurking underneath the game’s candy-coated shell.
As with any good RPG, the real strength comes from the cast of characters and their relationships with one another. Visions Of Mana has a wonderful party of heroes along for the ride that managed to keep me invested whenever the larger plot stalled.
Val and Hinna’s relationship, for example, is a driving force. How does a young couple travelling the world together cope when they know the journey’s end will see one of them sent away to die?
Other party members like Careena, a stubborn half-dragon, and Morley, a stoic cat-man with a traumatic past, grow together in surprising new ways throughout the journey. From their idle banter to the deeper conversations had during key moments, each and every hero was a joy to get to know.
And what a journey it is, helped largely by the fact Visions Of Mana is a genuinely stunning game to look at. From towering waterfalls and rich, green meadows, to vast oceans and barren deserts, Visions Of Mana’s world feels truly humongous. Every new biome offers up jaw-dropping new vistas to admire and sights to drink in.
There are several sandboxy open-world areas to explore in between various towns, cities, and dungeons, but as gorgeous as these are on the face of it, they begin to feel slightly empty after a while. There are side quests to complete and enemies to face, but they rarely amount to much more than wander over to a certain area to kill X monster or pick up Y item, and the rewards feel minimal.
Galloping across the grasslands on your steed or soaring through the air (much later in the game) is always visually stimulating, but I very rarely felt that pure sense of adventure and discovery properly kick in. A shame, given how thoroughly beautiful every inch of the world is, but I simply never felt the motivation to engage with it much beyond the main story.
Combat fares much better. Visions Of Mana combines real-time combat and a spot of turn-based action in a system not a million miles away from the Final Fantasy VII remakes - albeit much simpler and, I suspect, more accessible to newcomers.
While fights start off fairly basic - you combine light and heavy attacks with dodges and the occasional spell - before long you’re switching between characters with their own unique playstyles, abilities, and weapons. You’ll face down some truly spectacular bosses, assessing weak points and making sure you’ve got the biggest and best spells equipped for each job. The way in which the training wheels come off Visions Of Mana is sudden, shocking, and tied into the story itself in a way I won’t spoil, but the game really kicks things up a notch about a quarter of the way through.
Visions Of Mana also deserves praise for its class system, which like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 before it has rejected the idea you need to be locked into one class or style of play per character for the entire game, and instead allows you to play around with a huge combination of various builds for each character at any time.
It’s a smart move that keeps combat consistently fresh, with a steady stream of new mechanics coming at all times. The ability to freeze enemies mid-combat with a kind of temporal bomb was a favourite of mine, but I also enjoyed the boomerang that could whip up devastating gales.
These abilities can also be used outside of combat when exploring to reach new areas, but Visions Of Mana unfortunately fails to ever really do anything too interesting with these tools when it comes to solving puzzles or making your way through dungeons.
Visions Of Mana is ultimately further proof, as if any more were needed, that when it comes to making quality RPGs, Square Enix remains best in class. This is an epic, heartfelt adventure with a memorable cast of characters set in a stunning world with consistently engaging combat and lots of fun ideas. Yet another must-play 2024 release.
Pros: Absolutely gorgeous, great cast of characters, engaging content and class system
Cons: Open world feels empty, repetitive side content
For fans of: Dragon Quest XI, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Secret Of Mana
8/10: Excellent
Visions Of Mana is available 29 August on PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox Series consoles, and PC. Review code was provided by the publisher. Find a complete guide to GAMINGbible's review scores here.
Topics: Reviews, Square Enix, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest