I've always enjoyed the Mana games because of the storylines, the combat, and the unique art style. I was happy to check out Visions of Mana and dove in immediately. Visions of Mana introduces us to Val who has been chosen to be a soulguard, an escort for people known as Alms who are chosen by the Faerie of Mana to sacrifice themselves to the Tree of Mana in order to sustain the flow of mana in the world and avoid calamity. One of the people chosen is Val's childhood friend Hinna as the Alm of fire. The art delivers with beautifully bright and bold colors and this really shows in Val and Hinna's village.
There is a small bit of tutorial on the battle system which is pretty straightforward. The accessibility settings are decent with being able to adjust the difficulty of the game, adjusting the size of the subtitles, and adjusting the text speed to name a few. The game is fully voice acted too although it did throw me off hearing one of the characters Careena speaking with a full southern accent. I was curious and looked that up and the answer is in the Japanese voice acting she speaks with a heavy Kansai accent so for English the localization is southern accent and apparently this is pretty common. It took a bit of getting used to, but after that I barely noticed it and Careena is one of the more amusing characters with her wisecracks and humor.
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| Faerie of Mana talks to Val and friends. |
I liked all the characters in Val's group, but Careena and Morley stood out the most to me. Where Careena can be a bit more boisterous Morley is a little more reserved, but he has moments of being quite blunt that lead to pretty hilarious results. Julei joins the party last and he's pretty adorable and loves making up songs and sharing them with everyone. Val is the heart of the party bringing everyone together with his cheerful optimism and his vast empathy for others. It was always great to see the others rally around Val on their adventure and really start to become good friends who genuinely care about each other. Throughout the story you get to see how each individual in the party grows and changes for the better because of their experiences and that includes Val as well.
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| The group of friends takes in the view. |
The story of Visions of Mana is interesting and very well done. It's not anything groundbreaking, but that's not a bad thing. It tells a good story and it does a great job about getting you to care about each character. I really felt for Val when he was struggling with self doubt while trying to continue his journey with everyone and helping them. The combat in Visions of Mana really shines because it's fast and fun with over the top special attacks according to each individual's class. The class system and combat mesh really well together making for some fantastic fights and boss battles.
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| Fighting a giant frog monster. |
I also liked that you can swap between characters during battles according to what you need or if there's an individual you prefer for combat. I tended to choose Morley often because of his quick dual wielding rogue abilities as well as his slow time ability he had as an Alm of the moon. You can also swap characters out of your party for others as needed. The world in Visions of Mana is huge and I did enjoy exploring everywhere. The map could be a bit difficult to navigate sometimes because some areas have lots of twists and turns like a desert area. It wasn't a big deal as I still had fun playing the game.
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| Arriving at the Tree of Mana. |
*Visions of Mana is available to play on the following platforms: Steam, Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 4, and Playstation 5
