Visions of Mana

Fun game until it glitches at the very end and won't allow you to finish the game.

Overall, 7/10 game. I'm not sure that it's a full-price $60 dollar game though; I picked it up on a sale and don't regret what I paid on sale, or the time spent with the game. It feels like the developers played the old SNES "Secret of Mana" game, and said "Let's make a [modern] version". Plays like an action-combat style RPG, with Mana artistic style and Ring menu system. AI companions are a bit dumb, but mostly do as the AI Strategy says. (You may need to tweak the settings though...) Best point is easily the Artistic Design - more than once I stopped in an area just to appreciate the view. It feels a lot like a "modern take" on Secret of Mana, for better or worse. Worst point is how many times a side-quest will ask you to repeat an area you just cleared through, which then opens up another quest asking you to go back to the same dungeon/area [i]again[/i]. Combat is serviceable, but nothing too special. Each character eventually unlocks 8 classes outside their starting base class, but realistically there's only "3" archetypes for each character. Some classes repeat types but have different passive abilities, which continue to unlock additional small passive buffs further into the game. ( Val has 1h Sword, 2h Greatsword, and Lance+Shield styles, but he's always a melee attacker. ) Spells you unlock in one class can be used in any other class; so that was my big reason to spend points in the "Vessels" skill point trees. Story is fairly good. The topic is mentioned in several reviews and trailers, so this isn't really a spoiler... It tells you right off that every few years, people are selected as sacrifices to give their lives/souls to the Mana Tree, and [b]everyone is taught to celebrate it as a good thing[/b] ([i]basically, a step shy of Brainwashed[/i]). So everyone is like "I want to be chosen!!" and various NPCs are all hoping they get selected, or congratulating those who get picked. ([i]and if they refuse the duty.... well you find out bits in the first 30 minutes of the game why that generally doesn't happen..... [/i]) Each party member has their own views on this sacrificial duty; One sees it as being given a "last hope" when they had nothing else left ; one sees it as "whelp I guess it can't be helped, I'll be gone anyways so let's go". Some of their views do change slightly as the characters grow (just a bit) on their journey... The repeating underlying theme is "Hope" and "Loss", and different ways characters deal with "Loss", (Future, Past, Recent); and some bad ways to deal with that grief. ..... with the sugary-sweet "Mana" artistic design painted on top. A bit darker story than I really expected; and some parts do feel a bit rushed or passed-over. But overall worked well. I do want to give praise to Val's english voice actor, for a few key emotional parts. ... otherwise voice acting is a bit dry, but then, so are the characters they are voicing.

[b]Visions of Mana is absolutely an adorable, fun, and exhilarating experience.[/b] Gameplay is fast with acceptable amounts of breaks and cut-scenes, combat is snappy and multidimensional (can basically be played as an RTS if desired), no instance in-fight, characters are fun to follow, build diversity is there in spades, exploration is entertaining and, most importantly, this game (while touching some pretty serious topics) makes me smile like a jolly kiddo. On the QoL side, you can pause and skip any cutscene (seems such a hard feature to get nowadays). Lastly, I also want to praise the no BS approach with DLCs. After 120 hours I can only say that VoM is one of the most enjoyable action RPGs I played in the last decade. Don't let a bunch of fake-accounts/ bots (often stating absolute falsehoods) discourage you from from a nice game!

[b]Kansai-accent-Tsundere-Dragon-Waifu, the Journey and other stuff....[/b] + good graphics + wide landscape + you can talk with nearly every NPC + gorgeous town structures + simple action based fights a la Mana Series + better QoL than Trials of Mana + very superb japanese dub! (especially Careena) + Careena pretty charming character full of Life and other Emotions + others are cool too + controls are responsive and very easy to get into + skill system is very easy to understand as well as the tutorials + lively NPC Voices that differ from each other +++ superb Sidequest talk and interesting NPC dialogue! +/- [spoiler]expect 80% sidequests of the whole gameplay[/spoiler] - as always localisation is sh*t. well done Squenix. same sh*t as in trials of mana. - voice allocation sometimes false (child with a voice of a grandma or young ppl with beefed up muscle voice) - Wokeness Level 1 (female activist speech detected several times) - some limitations in the skill system - also buggy Summon - some bugs remain (stuck hair, stiff animations, missing audio etc.) Conclusion: Some ppl say it isnt woke, but when you translate sentences wrong and shove femine supreme-ism or other stuff into the gamers throat, which isnt present in the japanese original, so I say its level 1 wokeness. Which hasnt any place in any game, because orginal should stay original. Hope in the future AI translation is a thing, cant read that westernized wokesh*t anymore. As for graphics the game is pretty, but must be supported with community patches to stabilize, the stutter, fps drops or other problems. The characters are )when you can understand japanese) very memorable, because of their behaviour, speech patterns or reactions. But beware it is only reflected in the japanese original dub, I urge to learn japanese if the evil very bad localisation in games continue. As for combat and movement it feels very fluid, the Background is full of Life. This Game is a little bit weaker then its predecessor, because of some design choices which drag the game longer than it has to. Game has all in all better graphics, better system, but longdrawn story and unimportant repetitive conversation. An attempt to make a good successor shouldnt rely on sidequest content and unimportant repetive content. Score: 70 13/10 Kansai-dialect Careena <3 13/10 Scared, lively and superb Careena 1337/10 Careena forever!

Unfortunately fairly mediocre - compared to the Trials of Mana remake they added some cool gimmicks to the combat (mainly the elemental vessels/breaks), but it still feels pretty clunky and shallow and I can really only call it passable. it's conceivable you'll have fun with the more open class system, but there's just not enough to the game for it to be interesting imo Incredibly, given how limited the story of Trials of Mana was, I think where this game underperformed in comparison is the writing - The characters talk a lot more, which would be nice if they were charismatic or interesting, but there were really only two characters in the whole game I enjoyed & only one of them was a full party member. Also, the main conceit of the games plot is handled so weirdly that the motivations of the party members felt like a big mess for the majority of the game, and they only really make it feel right for the final push. Trials might not have been particularly complex or dense, but at least the characters had fun, straight forward motivations and personalized villains as they set out for revenge & to save their kingdoms and friends.

like the story

La vibe secret of mana... J'ai surkiffé redécouvrir les mobs et boss dans ce nouvel opus. Si vous avez eu de bon souvenir de secret of mana (et/ou de seiken destsu 3) FONCÊ !