Visions of Mana

• Genre: Action RPG
• Time Played: 66 Hours
• Too Short/Long: A little longer than it needs to be because of the side quests. I kept playing them because I was still having fun, but maybe I should have cut some out and went straight for the main story.
• Pleased/Disappointed: I liked it a lot, it was a lot of fun. I was hoping for a bit more, but I'm not disappointed.
• Why I played: Despite remakes and rereleases, we haven't received an actual new Mana series game for 17 years. Which feels crazy to think about. I was just real hyped about it after seeing it in action.
• Recommend to others: This is a tough one, because I liked it, it was fun, but it's not exactly something I would go out of my way to recommend. If you're looking into an RPG because of it's compelling story, narrative, characters, I don't know what I'd say, but I'd recommend it to people who are on the fence and just want a fun game.

While playing Visions of Mana, I said something like "The only thing this game has got going for it, is it's fun." Similarly, I feel like "If this game wasn't fun, it would suck".

It's not a bad game by any stretch, it's just... on par with every Mana game. I feel like the Mana series gets some undue recognition. Almost all the Mana games are fun to play, but they're all flawed. Even Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 3), are rather acclaimed, or were closer to their time, and even then I feel like there were better examples of similar rpgs that don't see quite as much recognition due to their lack of Final Fantasy ties. Even Legend of Mana, my personal favorite of the series is an exceptionally flawed game. Fun to play, but flawed.

That's okay though. If you ask me what'd I'd change about this game, there wouldn't be much. A few nitpicks here and there about navigating the UI, both in and out of combat. Some jankiness experiences while traveling the world. Some choices that make for some annoying time wasting rather then the smoothest experience. Nothing that really kills the game stand alone. Not even combined. But combined does have a bit of an overall impact.

The biggest flaw though is the story, and in typical Mana fashion, I think the story once again takes a back seat. It's fine. It's pretty much exactly on par for anything you'd expect, but it's not going to inspire authors of a generation. Also the way it's presented is a bit stilted, offering you bits here and there, and then shoehorning some info you could have had all along. My biggest complaint about the game as a whole is really how they could have just had things progress more naturally.

One more little complaint before moving on, the party does not shut up. Every time you do absolutely anything in the game - a game of which there is a lot to do - somebody has to comment. Sometimes you can mix it up by having direct control of a certain character, but sometimes that just means your doubling up on that character and Val's comment. There are a lot of little overworld actions, and they just do not shut up about it. I think I had a similar complaint with FFXV.

I know having spoken dialog is an important aspect of modern games, but if you're going to include repetitive dialog for completing actions, make it cycle using that dialog every so many times. Like 1/4 times you perform that action, if you will be doing that action HUNDREDS of times.

Anyway, I did really like the game. It's visually very appealing, a bright, saturated world that almost never feels like too much. There are tons of things to do while exploring the more overworld-like maps, and even the dungeon-like maps have a decent amount of interactions and exploration activities. The Mana artifacts do a great job of being relevant outside their story purpose. Not just with that, but also the combat actions. If not for these the game would not be nearly as good. Not bad, but definitely your more typical action rpg where you just kind of beat things til you win. Instead, they are also tied to your class, and give you unique class actions to perform as each character in combat. Using the right ones can really change the experience. 

I don't know how badly it would affect balance of the game, but one thing I wish the game had was an ability to hotswap classes or characters in combat. Sometimes you can wedge yourself in a corner in a battle by not having the best character loadout/class selection. In combat only 3 of your 5 party members participate. It would be nice to be able to swap them on the fly, during combat. There were a couple harder battles I really struggled with or lost the first time that was just solved by having a different character/class/artifact.

I feel like I do have to give props to the balance generally speaking though, because even during the points where I over leveled some of the content doing all the side quests, there were still battles that offered challenge, but not just because of HP Inflation. The game doesn't waste your time with old battles which are quick and snappy, transition in and out of battles is smooth.

 
Really the game doesn't waste your time at all outside of not telling you most of the side quest content feels pointless. I would have been perfectly happy if they cut out 75% or more of the side quests. There maybe a handful of side quests relevant to world building, fleshing out the main party, or otherwise thoughtful side quests. The vast majority of them are "Random npc wants you to deliver a love letter to random npc" or "Random npc wants you to kill 8 monsters because they are pests". This game didn't really need filler side quests, it had enough going for it already and I actually feel like they detract from the game's overall polish.

I didn't intend for this to be a very long post, I didn't think I had much to say but I guess I can go into tangents. I tend to focus on every element that I didn't like, but I did enjoy the game, it's very fun, even if a little flawed, and the post would be way longer if focused on every thing I liked.