Stepping into the world of Qi’Diel is an ocular sensation. Everything around you is so vibrant and colourful, the landscape so inviting — the enemy designs so adorable! You can’t help but smile. Visions of Mana brings a sense of childlike energy and wonder to a genre so often dominated by dark, gloomy settings.
The game has its share of issues, with story pacing problems, restricted movement within towns, and various elements of combat that didn’t quite click for me. But despite these stumbles, Ouka Studios has delivered a solid RPG, with a fabulous world, and stellar boss battles.
Story
Mana is the power that sustains the world, creating new life and reabsorbing the essence of the dead – It’s the circle of life basically. Every four years, eight people are chosen to become the alms of each element and journey to the Mana tree, where they offer their own souls to the goddess to replenish the mana of the world.
Not sending an alm means certain doom for your village, quite literally. During the prologue of the game we see the alm of earth defy her position and run away with her lover. Retribution is swift, with the village of Gudju crumbling to ruins and the alm herself turning to stone.
The story picks up four years later, with main character Val being appointed this year’s soul guard, tasked with escorting and protecting all of the alms on their expedition to the Mana tree. Coincidentally, his childhood crush, Hinna, is chosen as the alm of fire. Strangely, not only does the alm sacrifice system not seem to bother most people, it’s actually seen as a high honour to be chosen for the pilgrimage. There’s a sense of duty among the people of Qi’Diel, happy to offer themselves up to protect their friends and family… Not that they have much of a choice considering the alternative.
Val and Hinna travel through Qi’Diel picking up companions as they go. Careena, the one-winged alm of wind from the dragonfolk tribe is brash and sarcastic. The alm of the moon Morley, is a reserved character, racked with guilt over the destruction of his village. While Palamena is torn between her duties as Queen and that of the alm of water.
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I enjoyed the story for the first half of the game, picking up the alms on the one-way road-trip, it gave me no small amount of Final Fantasy X vibes. The alm’s journey to sacrifice themselves for the good of the realm, is much like what Yuna was set on doing before Tidus changed her fate.
Halfway through the game the ‘big bad guy’ Daelophos is revealed and from there on the story struggles. There was a lot of busy work, backtracking, and frustratingly slow plot. There’s a whole section of story dedicated to researching forbidden methods to defeat the bad guy, crafting a trap to weaken him, and then successfully setting it off. But then the group essentially just let him hobble away in his enfeebled state because Val has been knocked unconscious, wasting their best chance at defeating Daelophos for good. Not long later when you next see him, he’s back at full power with no sign of the injury you just inflicted. It just felt like a lot of time wasting.
While the mid to late section of the game felt weak, it at least ended better. The last handful of hours really kick up the pacing, with scores of cool boss fights in relatively quick succession. I’ll be vague to avoid spoilers, but I was content with the ending the game gave me, though I would’ve preferred to see more of the repercussions the ending had on the wider world and its characters.
World
The world that Visions of Mana presents is its greatest strength. It’s high-spirited and playful, full of delightful enemies and charming characters… Even if they often stray into caricature territory.
From the windy vale of Longren, to the bustling waterside metropolis of Illystana, there are many interesting destinations to explore on your journey, though not all are warm and welcoming. Morley’s hometown of Etaern is under a curse and its residents lost to time, after a powerful artifact, the Lunar Sanglass, was broken. Morley’s appointment as alm of the Moon breaks the curse, and the small parish can be rebuilt once more, something you can see for yourself when you return later in the game.
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Some of my favourite RPGs, like Final Fantasy IX and Star Ocean The Second Story, are filled with a variety of humanoid species that bring variety and colour to the world. It’s an instant hit of intrigue, an urge to find out more about that faceless black mage with glowing yellow eyes, or the swordsman possessed by a twin-headed dragon. Visions of Mana has that same allure, with dragonfolk, beastfolk, and other tailed species inhabiting the world.
I was particularly enamoured with the philanthropic merchant Niccolo; an anthropomorphic rabbit who advises Queen Palamena in secret and also acts as a father figure to Morley. The developers could’ve gone a little deeper with the details, showing off more of the cultural differences between the races and regions, but it’s a far sight better than a world filled with only humans, who are overly bland in comparison.
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As you travel throughout the world, you’ll find pods of amber syrup dotted around the landscape waiting to be collected. The cute and cuddly traveling merchants, Dudbears, will trade the syrup for useful items. A lovely little touch is the Dudbear Dictionary, that offers translations of the Dudbear language (which sounds like a mixture of scat singing and baby babble). For example ‘Dubba’ means friend, while ‘Babadu’ means to trade. It’s very cute stuff and it delighted my daughter as she listened to the various phrases.
Gameplay
Aside from the main story, you’ll spend most of your time exploring open-zoned areas, completing small sidequests, and slaying scores of monsters.
Sometimes the zones are quite narrow and linear, not requiring much exploration. Other times the regions can be so expansive they feel big enough to be an open-world. These large areas are filled with treasure chests to find, syrup pods to collect, and artifacts to activate with your elemental abilities. However, while these areas feel massive and open, there are still plenty of inaccessible routes that don’t unlock until later in the story.
A little quality of life feature I appreciated was that chests and artifacts are plotted onto your map, which cuts out the need to check EVERY nook and cranny to find hidden loot. It was a nice change of pace and lent well to the more relaxed tone of the game.
Obtaining elemental vessels allows you to harness the power of the elements; Fire, wind, water, earth, wood, the moon, light and darkness. You can use the vessels to activate triggers around the world that affect your surroundings in different ways. Step into a strong updraft to be sent flying to new heights, control giant golems to smash through walls, or even rewind time to grab the item from an already empty chest. Unfortunately, these triggers are location specific, so you can’t run around summoning wind gusts or infinitely rewinding time to farm chests of their loot!
With a jump, double jump, and a dash, exploring the world feels fun and free. There’s light platforming built into the terrain too, offering a change of pace while you jump around collecting syrup pods.
Annoyingly this freedom of movement isn’t extended to towns and cities, leaving you feeling slow and sluggish. I can’t think of a good reason why the developers would put these restrictions in place; it left me not wanting to explore any of the urban areas and just get back to the freedom of the outside world.
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For the larger areas, you eventually gain the ability to summon a pikul, a gigantic black wolf-dog that is adorable as hell. Sprinting through the land and knocking enemies on their asses is always funny. While riding a pikul you won’t enter combat, so it’s a good way to get around when you don’t feel like fighting. Later in the game, you’ll come across sacred beasts that allow you to zip around the ocean and air, but there’s nothing quite like riding a floofy pikul.
Combat
Combat in Visions of Mana is very action oriented. Weapon strikes are your bread and butter, with combos, charged attacks, and special attacks up your sleeve to dole out the damage. There’s also offensive and defensive spells and abilities, powerful class strikes which require you to build up a meter first, elemental vessel attacks, and elemental breaks.
Class strikes might be the coolest things in the game. After filling up your CS gauge during battle you can unleash a devastating attack on your enemies which will often wipe them out in one hit. The attacks are beautifully choreographed and animated, with dozens of unique variations depending on which elemental vessel you have equipped. It never got boring watching Palamena do a 1990s handspin and summon a tornado of fire, or Careena throwing out moon energy blasts faster than Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z!
As you progress through the story, you’ll slowly acquire elemental vessels that allow any character to wield that element. After a short and flashy animation the characters’ base stats will change, as well as their class, weapon type, passive abilities, and what moves they have access to. Most importantly however, it changes your outfit; as we all know, drip comes first! Each of the five characters has a base class which changes when equipping one of the eight elemental vessels. That’s a total of nine unique classes per character and a whopping 45 all up!
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Having an elemental vessel equipped also gives access to a corresponding vessel strike. For example, the Luna Globe creates a bubble of moon energy which slows down enemies trapped within, but speeds up the casting of spells and attacks for your team. When your mana gauge is full you can unleash the true potential of the vessels with an elemental break, which boosts casting time and damage dealt for attacks of the same element. Breaks also enhance vessel effects, the Lunar Globes’ bubble of time is extended to the whole battlefield, for instance.
The fact that only one character can have the same class equipped at the same time, combined with the slow rate at which the vessels are obtained during the story, meant that it took far too long to actually own enough vessels to have one per character. For over a dozen hours I had Val running around with no elemental class (it felt wrong to recruit an alm and then not let them equip their own elemental vessel!) I had nothing to spend his elemental points on, and he had far less combat abilities to choose from.
Aside from elemental vessels, you can also equip ability seeds which have a variety of effects, from stat boosts to new attacks or defensive abilities. Early on you only have two seed slots available, which felt a bit limiting, and made combat less varied. Val has a passive power to transform defeated enemies into precious gems called corestones, which can be traded at the shops for more ability seeds.
Certain aspects of combat didn’t feel quite right to me. Regular attacks don’t close the gap between you and your enemy enough, so if you misjudge the distance and pull up a little short, your whole combo misses its mark. Attacking flying enemies can also be a pain in the ass for the same reason. I also found most magic to be a bit slow and weak, so most of the time I opted for physical and class attacks over magic. Though, in the late game I did unlock some powerful spells that made the casting time worth the tradeoff.
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Foes
Enemy design leans towards being more cute and colourful than scary or menacing, which fits the tone of the game well. I almost felt bad carving through packs of cuddly rabites and Sonic-like molebears. There’s a large bestiary of baddies to test your sword against, including considerably stronger versions of some foes called nemeses.
Visions of Mana has some superb boss battles, pitting you against oversized enemies that have you dodging around the battlefield to avoid massive area-of-effect attacks and bullet-hell-like projectiles. Their designs are also excellent, appearing both intimidating and cartoonish at the same time. The giant squid that attacks your boat mid-cruise, swipes at you with mammoth tentacles while spitting out spheres of salt water.
Another standout battle was against the Benevadon (elemental kaiju) of Earth. You’re aboard an ancient ship in the desert, firing cannons at the giant worm’s weak spots. You also need to keep an eye on the battlefield to avoid its deadly strikes, dispatch the smaller minions that appear on the deck, and be ready to switch cannons when the beast rockets out of the sand and over the side of your ship!
Should you buy Visions of Mana?
Visions of Mana is not a perfect RPG by any means. Its story starts strong, falls flat around the middle, and struggles over the finish line. While combat was fun, it wasn’t long before it felt a bit to repetitive, and I can’t help but feel let down by some of the game’s systems.
However, the world is a joy to roam around, its vibrancy and whimsy is something we don’t get enough of in RPGs these days. Character and enemy designs are great and there are some excellent boss battles that can offer a bit of light ‘bullet-hell‘ as you whittle down their health bars.
While the game isn’t an instant classic, I would recommend that RPG fans pick this up and give it a try, there’s a demo available to help with that. It could also be an excellent entry point into RPGs for younger gamers, as the world is very inviting and playful… Though they might need Mum or Dad’s help with some of the harder bosses.
Visions of Mana is out now on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
Quest Daily scores Visions of Mana:
7.5/10
A review copy of Visions of Mana was supplied to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review.
