Review: Visions of Mana (Sony PlayStation 5)

Visions of Mana is Secret of Mana, 20 years later. I said as much in my preview, and the deeper I played the more the game seems exclusively interested in tapping into my nostalgia for that SNES classic. Given that the Mana series has been otherwise highly experimental in recent entries (anyone remember Heroes of Mana, the real-time strategy?), and that direction hasn’t really worked out for it, Visions of Mana is exactly what Square Enix needed to do.

The narrative concept is going to feel very familiar to anyone who has played Final Fantasy X… and I’m going to hazard a guess that this is pretty much everyone who will play Visions of Mana. The two main protagonists are Val and Hinna, and they are on a pilgrimage. Hinna was selected to be the required sacrifice that every town in the world needs to provide to the Mana Tree to keep mana flowing into the world. It’s almost exactly like how Yuna was on a pilgrimage to throw her life away to appease sin. Visions of Mana is a little lighter in that it’s not also a philosophical thesis on organised religion and the nature of human sin, but as you can probably guess there are still plenty of emotional beats to work through given the bittersweet way this quest is presented.

In fact, one of the most intriguing things about the narrative – and it will keep you playing even if you’re not thinking about it in the moment-to-moment gameplay, is why everyone is so damned happy about making these sacrifices. Val and Hinna are exceptionally close friends, and it’s pretty obvious that Val in particular wants to have all kinds of adventures with Hinna, and yet, when Hinna is selected, Val is over the moon for her. You’re going to play on for the simple reason that this does not make sense. Sure the Mana Tree is presented as a benign entity, but then again, it’s taking on all these sacrifices from apparently blissfully naïve townsfolk… so what’s up with that?

Tonally the narrative set-up is a massive contrast to other pilgrimage-and-sacrifice stories like Final Fantasy X or the largely forgotten (but exceptional) I Am Setsuna. So you’re going to continue to play on, waiting for the penny to drop and Val to decide that no, he’d rather keep Hinna around and the world at large to decide that this Mana Tree isn’t their friend. I’m not going to give away whether this is actually the case, but you’re going to play the game expecting that to happen.

To put it another way, it’s essentially a ten-chapter page-turning narrative that, bittersweet in substance as it seems to be, is tailored in its entirety to give players the warm-and-fuzzies in playing a classic JRPG narrative. Just one that looks like a very modern game. Visions of Mana is gorgeously colourful, with a heavy emphasis on highly saturated colours. The world is linear but large and semi-linear, giving you plenty of excuses to wander off the beaten track and just explore, and the nooks and crannies are often where you’ll find some of the most vivid visual delights. I’m not usually one for exploring every inch of a game’s world for loot or optional bosses, but I did with this one because wandering the world was a reward in its own right.

Another strength of Visions of Mana is the characterisation. Val and Hinna kick things off very nicely with a truly believable, childhood sweethearts-style bond, and things just get better as more characters are added to the mix. Thanks to an expressive localisation effort, all of these characters have unique quirks, speech patterns and attitudes, and the overall result is a very well-rounded cast that comes with plenty of quality banter over time. Thanks to good pacing between the “gameplay bits” and the “narrative bits” you’re never too far from another cut scene or interaction which helps to keep them personable, and you’re going to care deeply about their quest. The Mana series has always been quite good at providing interesting characters within an action-combat structure, and that’s the same here.

The one big difference between my time with the preview and what I’ll say here is that the combat system IS much more modern than a nostalgic re-tread of the series classics. There’s a properly-nuanced job system, as well as elemental affinities and an array of upgrades that you apply to each character. It’s an action combat system, but you’re really encouraged to make good use of buffs and debuffs and not focus purely on button-mashing and dodging. It’s just that a lot of this comes in much later on, so if the gameplay seems a little overly simple at first, just enjoy the ambience for a bit. The gameplay catches up to everything else soon enough.

One other thing that I wasn’t able to appreciate from the opening chapters, but soon became clear to be a strength of the game, is the side quests. There are not too many of them, so players who feel a compulsion to complete everything won’t be overwhelmed by them, and while the activities that you get up to are standard (find items, kill monsters), the storytelling that is woven around them enhances and deepens the world around you.

It’s a bigger game than I was expecting. At around 50-60 hours at a reasonable pace, working through everything, it’s by far the largest Mana game ever produced. The fact that it doesn’t stop being a highly playable joy from the start right through to the end should be a good indication of just how beloved this one is set to become – it may even just unseat Secret of Mana itself. Visions of Mana might not be quite so genre-refining as that classic, but otherwise, this is the perfect representation of what Mana has always meant to represent.