Visions of Mana

Well i was going to give this game a positive review until at the final boss second form i got the famous glitch where the boss just stands there. You can not finish the game, reloading has no effect as it seems to be a bug within the save file. 40 hours wasted on a bug that should never happen. BEWARE OF THIS BUG BEFORE BUYING THE GAME!!!!!!!

This game is over a year old now and even though I bought this game on release I just now forced myself to finish it. I found myself reading excerpts about the endings of other mana games, conversations that people are having about decade old games; because those games had much stronger story lines with much deeper and themes. The story sucks. The characters aren't very interesting or well developed. The combat and platforming is so-so and doesn't evolve much throughout the span of the game. The side content is wholly uninteresting. It's hard to recommend this game because there are so many other high quality games available to play. If the game didn't have "Mana" in the title, there would be absolutely nothing remarkable about this title.

The fights, at least, are relatively fun. The combat system is mildly cumbersome and the difficulty suffers the issue of "normal too easy and hard makes it overly long with no in-between," but many of the boss fights are to a degree enjoyable. The graphics and art design are also passable. The biggest issue with the game is everything beyond that. Any time I would end a fight to wind up in another cutscene, I was reminded just how terrible the story, voice acting, pacing, and characters are. Everything feels like a one-note, generic JRPG game trying to copy Tales of Symphonia but without real plot elements, characters, buildup, twists, or message - to the degree that it feels as though the game was written by an AI engine. The skill system seemed interesting at first, but falls completely flat in its customization options - something the game attempts to sell itself on. Every sidequest is tedious and the rewards are pointless, to the tune of a small amount of in-game currency or a healing item. I would rather have to pull a 90-hour workweek twice than I would be forced to 100% this game. I am genuinely surprised Square Enix greenlit this - it feels like a relatively good idea for a game that was released as a rough outline with no substance.

Shame on Square Enix for giving this project to NetEase for development. JRPGs is definitely not their forte. I played Trials of Mana fairly recently and compared to that, this game is missing a lot despite being a follow up to Dawn of Mana. To start, the story is extremely paint by numbers and bland, you'll be able to guess what happens next because of how corny the script is. The dubbed voice acting is terrible and sounds AI generated so you'll want to turn on JP voices. Once you've played for an hour, you'll see what this game has to offer. The 6 characters have different classes with a skill grid but they are all just clones of each other so there is little variation besides passive abilities as special moves and magic can be used between classes. While this is interesting on paper, since you can just craft the same magic and skills there is no specialty between crafting magic and adding levels on the grid. There's no worthwhile side quests or optional content that will give you anything you won't already find in the shops. You have the option of buying new equipment in shops however you'll sometimes just find that same equipment in chests and this game has an awful mechanic where if you get a duplicate of any equipment you immediately have to discard it as you can only have 1 of any equipment so you can't sell any dups. You will get so much currency and nothing to spend it on because once you get access to a healing spell, there would be no need for healing items besides a cup of wishes here and there to revive fallen allies. After I unlocked the revival spell, the only items I used were EXP boosts to clear dungeons faster. The enemies are just color palette swaps of the same enemies over and over with no difference in moveset. The bosses are also quite easy, the only one I found difficult was a boss that can drain HP and heal itself only because the AI controlled party members kept letting themselves get caught by it. Over my playthrough, I encountered numerous game breaking bugs. There is a lot of platforming involved in this game and it appears that maybe the studio was unprepared for that as I've gotten stuck several times on weird collision gaps in the map when trying to get items scattered on the map. I've also gotten stuck because my character fell halfway under the map either during the overworld or in combat. Whenever you get a new element for your classes, it also gives you an ability to use when exploring the overworld which usually involves more platforming similar to powerups you would see in a mario game. However similar to my experience earlier, I've gotten stuck using them multiple times. In all these cases I was forced to go back to my previous save. The biggest annoyance for me though was the fact that if you are traveling by sea or air you can't pull up the map or the main menu until you go to a town. After experiencing this, I lost all interest in completing side quests especially since there was never any good rewards anyway. I wouldn't recommend this game to any JRPG fans, I say only play this if you are a casual gamer looking for a linear cozy low spec action rpg. I wouldn't pay full price for this game at all, the content in my opinion is worth $10-$15 at the most so I'd wait for a sale.

정신나간 스토리 내가 이상한건가 인신공양 가는데 이걸 좋단다 옆에선 부럽다한다 도저히 공감불가 전투나 이동도중에도 자꾸 같은얘길 미친사람처럼 계속한다 정신이 나갈것 같음

Worse Mana game to date. Elements lock you into a weapon type/class. Combat is so slow and boring, talent system is petty. If you wanna play a mana game get Trials of Mana.

This can be fun to play, but man does it love to waste your time a lot of the time. Here's a quick breakdown: Pros: * Beautiful colorful scenery * Fun but simple combat * Interesting story elements, but... Cons: * Really bad execution on those story elements - further note, biggest gripe. Some bigger ideas really dealt with using kiddy gloves/conclusions * Horrendous writing - I started skipping cutscenes because I didn't want to hear character belabor a point over and over - further note, some bad/annoying voice acting, I think due to direction not talent * Incredibly tedious side content... and main content I didn't enjoy it. I have no idea why I spent so much time on it, something is wrong with me.

Incredibly lukewarm reccomendation. I'd give it a 6-7/10 overall. Consider on 50% discount minimum if you're looking for a fairly by-the-numbers action RPG. Visually it's okay. Probably its strongest point although the character designs are a bit... malformed. The concepts are fine but the 3D modellers may have dropped the ball here and there. The characters aren't annoying but they're all also pretty flat and chipper with no real depth to their personalities. The combat is okay but again, nothing incredible - not really a lot to sink your teeth into. Passable action RPG gameplay with a good variety of weapon types (every character has 3 weapons split across 8 classes, each with their own unique movesets, but essentially they all boil down to the same button mashing). The story is completely and utterly unremarkable and every plot beat feels like its handled with kids' gloves. Some interesting premises are raised but none are seen through to a worthwhile conclusion. The game is also very fond of wasting your time, with many pointless cutscenes that state the obvious, or moments where you frequently go "and why was this a loading screen? could this 15 second walk not have been part of the previous cutscene?". I beat the game on Hard and have no real desire to engage with the postgame or do NG+ on the unlocked "Expert" difficulty. I'm out.

Last Boss Second Phase got glitched and tried to reload multiple times and kept happening....