Visions of Mana

Play it on: PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Current goal: Gather the last Alm

I’m a huge Mana freak and have been since Secret of Mana on SNES and Final Fantasy Adventure on Game Boy (whose title was a lie to trick unsuspecting Western fans at the time). So I am going to finish Visions of Mana one way or another, but I’ll admit it’s been something of a slow burn. Some of that is being distracted by all the other great games coming out. Detours include Astro Bot, Space Marine 2, and Frostpunk 2, to name a few. And part of it is Visions of Mana’s own choppy pacing. There’s an immersion-breaking number of cutscene interruptions and the pacing of exploration, dungeons, and new story beats is all over the place. The result is that, while I want to play more, it never feels like I need to play more.

All that said, I’m still enjoying the overall package and hopeful that it grows more substantial and compelling by the mid-to-late game. The NetEase-owned Ouka Studios, which was unceremoniously shuttered as soon as the game came out, did an impressive job for such a new team. There’s a lot of cookie-cutter action-RPG stuff in Visions of Mana, but it fits together surprisingly well. There have been a lot of middling Square Enix sequels to legacy franchises in recent years. Between the polished combat and gorgeous world, Visions of Mana succeeds more than most of them. What’s the inverse of damning with faint praise? Praising with faint damning? Despite some flaws, Visions of Mana is scratching my retro-RPG itch right now, and I’m looking forward to (eventually) seeing it through. — Ethan Gach